Shriver (13 page)

Before he knew what had happened, Ms. Apple interrupted to announce that the class was over. The students applauded and lined up to have him sign copies of his book.

First in line was the pigtailed girl, whose name, she informed him, was Cassandra.

“Sorry I gave you a hard time,” she said. “The truth is, the book is totally hot.”

Inserted at the title page was a card with her name and a telephone number.

“Oh, you can keep that,” she said. Her face, with its healthy complexion and youthful shine, betrayed no indication of her motives.

He wrote,
To Cassandra, My book may be dirty, but I, alas, am not. I predict you will be a fine writer someday. Best . . .

He then placed the card back in the book and handed it to her. She shrugged good-naturedly and, still smiling, walked out of the classroom.

As he signed the others' books, using the same signature he penned on his checks to the electric company, he wondered what the real Shriver's autograph was like. Was it florid, or jagged? Did the letters lean forward, or backward, or rise straight up and down? Was he left-handed? Was he clever with inscriptions, or did he make do with “Best wishes”?

Last in line was the student from the back row. He plopped a well-worn copy of
Goat Time
onto the desk and told Shriver, “Please make it out to Vlad.”

“Vlad?”

“As in Vladimir.”

“That's an exotic name.”

“I think my father was really into
Pale Fire
.”

The student stared at Shriver as if he expected a reaction.

“
You
know,” he continued, “the one where the narrator pretends to be someone he isn't?”

Little pearls of sweat formed on Shriver's brow. “Yes, of course,” he mumbled as he quickly signed the young man's book.

Vlad stared down at Shriver. “You don't remember me, do you?”

Shriver looked up at the long, pale face, shadowed by budding black whiskers, the eyes small and almost as dark as his clothing. He
did
look familiar.

“Have we met?” Shriver asked.

Vlad's face drooped in disappointment, and then he loped out of the room. Only then did Shriver recall where he had seen the young man before: he was the waiter at the restaurant last night.

“Well, that was really great,” Teresa Apple said. “They loved you.”

“I'm not sure I helped them at all,” Shriver said absentmindedly. He kept thinking of that boy, Vlad, and his comment about the narrator who pretends he's someone he isn't.

“Sometimes it helps,” Teresa said, “just to know that books are written by real flesh-and-blood people.”

“Yes, I suppose you're right.”

He followed her down the stairs to the front door of the building. “I could use a drink,” she said.

“A drink?” It sounded good to Shriver. Vlad had unnerved him, and the panel discussion loomed like an impending rock slide. But then he needed to keep his wits about him, if only to convince Simone that he was not a complete lush. “I'm afraid I can't,” he said finally.

“That's cool,” Teresa said as they descended the steps to the sidewalk. “We could just screw instead.”

Shriver stopped. Ms. Apple turned and looked up at him from the step below.

“You don't have the panel for another hour,” she said. “We could run over to my place. It's nearby. Or—even better—we could go to my office. It's right over there.” She nodded toward the school building next door.

Shriver thought of last year's randy author, plowing his way through the faculty.

“I'm very flattered.”

“Time's a-wastin'.”

She was a pretty woman, he thought, with her flame-colored hair and fleshy lips. But then he thought of Simone—the freckles on her chest, her tiny hands.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I couldn't.”

“You got a sweetie?”

“You might say that.”

She shrugged. “Okay. I'll walk you over to the Union, if you'd like. You can rest up before the big panel.”

She said this as if he had just turned down an offer of iced tea. She walked so quickly along the path between school buildings that he had to double-step to keep up.

“I've never been on a panel before,” he said.

“You'll do fine,” she assured him. “Just act like you know what you're talking about.”

“I suppose so much of life is just that.”

He smacked at a mosquito on his hand.

“The first of many,” Teresa Apple said.

In the ballroom, seven hundred–plus people had gathered for the panel, creating an aural wash of literary chatter.

“They're all here to see
you
,” Ms. Apple told him.

“Please don't say that.”

“Shriver!”

T. Wätzczesnam, having changed into a denim suit jacket over a denim shirt, sauntered over with an ungainly number of books stacked under his arm.

“Hello again, Teresa,” he purred to the graduate student. “What's shakin'?”

Ms. Apple smirked. “Your hands, Professor.”

Sure enough, T.'s hands still shook like a pair of old leather gloves in a light breeze.

“It's been a pleasure,” Teresa said to Shriver, and moved off to join some friends.

“That gal is a tigress,” the cowboy said as he watched her retreat.

Shriver looked down at his own jittery hands.

T. laughed. “Got snakes in your boots too?”

“I'm just a little nervous.”

“Sure you are.” Wätzczesnam winked, then patted his denim jacket pocket and said, “No worries. I got some hair of the ol' dog right here.”

“I'm not sure I—”

“FYI,” T. said, “our favorite Sapphic poetess remains MIA.”

“Still?”

“I believe the authorities have been alerted.”

“Oh my.”

“What happened last night, anyway?” the professor asked, one eyebrow askew.

“What do you mean?”

“I seem to recall the young woman lying on your bed when I left your room.”

“She was?”

The cowboy shrugged. “I was hoping you'd regale me with the details of her conversion.”

“Sorry to let you down.”

“You are under no obligation to reveal anything, Shriver. Not to me, anyway. But listen, we should probably head on up to the dais and settle ourselves in.”

“They're going ahead with the panel?” Shriver asked. “With Gonquin missing?”

“The show must go on!” T. declared. “Our friend Zebra has agreed to step in.”

Shriver followed him toward the front of the room. En route he caught sight of Simone speaking to a very short man in a bright red suit jacket. In a sleeveless blouse and khaki capri pants, she looked as young and fresh as she had the first time he saw her.

Shriver took the seat on T.'s left on the dais. To their right sat Zebra Amphetamine and Basil Rather, gazing down upon the audience like a king and queen. In front of each author was a thin, snakelike microphone. Shriver's mouth had gone dry again, so he drank from the water cup provided. He coughed loudly as the liquid burned his throat. The cup had been filled with whiskey.

The cowboy placed a hand over his microphone and whispered, “I know you're accustomed to the good stuff, Shriver, but I'm living on a professor's salary.”

Shriver had intended not to drink today, but he had to admit the stuff hit the spot. He took another, more modest, sip and felt his hands begin to steady. Also on the table in front of him were a blank sheet of paper and a pen, placed there, apparently, by Professor Wätzczesnam, or perhaps by Simone, to help him organize his thoughts.

“Good afternoon,” T. announced into the microphone with a voice noticeably smoother than his usual growl. The crowd, previously abuzz, immediately became reverent. “Welcome to today's illustrious panel discussion, about which we are all understandably excited.

“I think our technical difficulties have been ironed out,” he continued, casting a glance toward Simone, who crossed her fingers. “Our apologies once again to Basil Rather, whose reading last night was magnificent, even if ‘loud roar'd the dreadful thunder.' But anyway, we're now ready to discuss literature, hopefully without all the sound and fury.”

He proceeded to briefly introduce Basil Rather and Zebra Amphetamine. Then, glancing over at Shriver, he said, “And the gentleman to my left would need no introduction if only his face were more familiar. But after twenty years we may be forgiven if we do not recognize by sight one of the brightest lights of modern American letters. He is the author of but one novel, but I'd wager that if you asked any major writer sworn to honesty which one book they wished they'd written, it would be
Goat Time
. I could go on and on about this classic tome but will instead limit myself to a brief quote from the revered literary critic Duke Manleyson, who wrote of Mr. Shriver's debut, ‘This is the sort of challenging, rude,
hilarious, and original novel that any serious author would kill to have penned. I predict that, twenty or thirty years from now, it will still be read and discussed and argued about by anyone bright enough to recognize its importance as a cultural artifact. Were its young author to disappear from the face of the earth tomorrow, he would remain a treasured contributor to the starving world of literature.' ”

The audience applauded as Shriver drained what remained of his whiskey. Off to the side, he saw Simone clapping. Near her sat Jack Blunt, still busy scribbling away on his dreadful notepad. Beside the door, like a sentry, stood the short man in the red suit coat, his arms folded, scanning the audience.

“Today's theme is reality-slash-illusion,” the cowboy announced. “So, to get the ball rolling up here, I guess I'd ask the panel to react to the idea that what we write—the words on the page, whether as intended or as interpreted by the reader—is an illusion.
Or
, is it reality, whether that means actual reality or a constructed reality that is no less real for being constructed in the imagination? Who wants to start?”

Silence.

Shriver kicked himself for not writing down whatever it was that Professor Wätzczesnam had just said. He glanced over at the other panelists, both of whom appeared to be deep in thought. He took up his pen and drew a dark blue question mark, nearly pushing the pen point through the paper. Finally, Basil Rather inhaled theatrically and leaned toward his microphone.

“What I think is this: is not reality an illusion, anyway?” The playwright paused to let this question reverberate. “I think the topic as written on the schedule—‘reality-
slash
-illusion'—is wholly appropriate. That slash implies something synonymnal, does it not? Or at least it invites us to take the two terms as
able to coexist with one another under the same roof. After all, if I also wrote fiction, like my esteemed colleagues, I would be a ‘novelist-
slash
-playwright.' No one would have an argument with that. ‘Novelist-
slash
-playwright.' ‘Obstetrician-
slash
-gynecologist.' ‘AC-
slash
-DC.' ‘Reality-
slash
-illusion.' See what I mean?”

“An interesting point,” T. said.

Shriver drew thick circles around the question mark.

“Personally, I don't go in for this ‘reality is an illusion' bullshit,” Zebra Amphetamine declared. “That's a coward's way out. You can always say this moment—this very moment in time, in this place, with these people in this room—is an illusion, because, hey, it's gone now, man. There it went. It's not real anymore, is it? It's now just a memory. And memories, like writers, are notorious liars. So there you have it,” she said, leaning back in her seat for emphasis.

Shriver, his head bowed as he drew a horse rearing up on hind legs—the only thing he knew how to draw, having practiced it as a child, based on a sketch he'd seen on a matchbook—heard murmurs of thoughtful admiration from the audience. Though he could sense everyone looking at him, waiting for him to weigh in on this challenging topic, he continued to scribble on the paper:
Dear Ms. LeGros
, he wrote,
Help me!

“Mr. Shriver?” T. said. “I see you writing down your thoughts there.”

Wätzczesnam was poking fun—surely he could see that Shriver had mostly drawn senseless doodles.

“Perhaps,” the moderator continued, “you could relate this question to the idea of autobiographical fiction. Many have wondered how closely your work hews to your own life.”

Looking out at the undulating sea of faces, Shriver
experienced a vertiginous sense of dislocation, as if he had just been dropped into his seat via parachute, having fallen mistakenly from an airplane headed somewhere completely different. He cleared his throat, with no clue as to what he was about to say. Then, while continuing to doodle, he spoke.

“Last night,” he said, “from my hotel room, I saw a group of cheerleaders form a human pyramid two stories tall.”

The cowboy let out a little cough and squirmed in his seat.

“At the top of this pyramid stood a young girl,” Shriver continued, “I'd say about sixteen years old, in an aqua-blue one-piece bathing suit. A lithe brunette, with blue eyes and muscular arms, at once an innocent virgin and a jaded, experienced adult. From my window on the second floor, I could have reached out and touched her face.”

Shriver glanced over at Simone, who sat on the edge of her seat. Behind her, Jack Blunt had raised his face from his notepad, waiting for the next word.

“Beyond this lovely young girl, I would not have been able to make out where the prairie met the night sky but for an invisible line where the black earth ended and millions of stars began. Meanwhile, beating against the window screen were a hundred mosquitoes, drawn by the light in my room, or perhaps the smell of blood.”