Now, in his little office at the Adlon Center for the Creative Arts, that person, Evan Parker, once again returned to him, and so sharply it was as if he too had entered the little room and was standing just behind his Californian counterpart.

The guy was still talking—no, raging. He had moved on from his fellow guest-writers, on from the Adlon and the food and the town of Sharon Springs. Now Jake was hearing about an “East Coast agent” who’d actually suggested he pay somebody, out of his own money, to guide additional work on his novel before resubmitting it (Wasn’t that what editors were for? Or agents for that matter?) and the film scout he’d met at a party who’d told him to think about adding a female character to his story (Because men didn’t read books or go to movies?) or the assholes at MacDowell and Yaddo who’d rejected him for residencies (Obviously they favored “artistes” who were hoping to sell ten copies of their book-length poems!) and the losers typing away at every single table in every single coffee shop in Southern California, who thought they were God’s gift, and the world was obviously waiting for their short story collection or their screenplay or their novel …

“Actually,” Jake heard himself say, “I’m the author of two novels myself.”

“Of course you are.” The guy shook his head. “Anybody can be a writer.”

He turned and stalked out of the room, leaving his folksy wicker basket behind him.

Jake listened to the guest (guest-writer!) as he clomped up the stairs, and then to the silence filling the wake of that, and again he wondered what he had done, what terrible thing, to merit the company of people like this, let alone their scorn. All he had ever wanted was to tell—in the best possible words, arranged in the best possible order—the stories inside him. He had been more than willing to do the apprenticeship and the work. He had been humble with his teachers and respectful of his peers. He had acceded to the editorial notes of his agent (when he’d had one) and bowed to the red pencil of his editor (when he’d had one) without complaint. He had supported the other writers he’d known and admired (even the ones he hadn’t particularly admired) by attending their readings and actually purchasing their books (in hardcover! at independent bookstores!) and he had acquitted himself as the best teacher, mentor, cheerleader, and editor that he’d known how to be, despite the (to be frank) utter hopelessness of most of the writing he was given to work with. And where had he arrived, for all of that? He was a deck attendant on the Titanic, moving the chairs around with fifteen ungifted prose writers while somehow persuading them that additional work would help them improve. He was a majordomo at an old hotel in upstate New York, pretending that the “guest-writers” upstairs were no different than the Yaddo fellows an hour to the north. I like the idea of a successful writer greeting the guests. Gives them something real to aspire to.

But no guest-writer had ever acknowledged Jake’s professional achievements, let alone drawn inspiration from his success in the field they supposedly hoped to enter. Not once in three years. He was as invisible to them as he had become to everyone else.

Because he was a failed writer.

Jake gasped when the words came to him. It was, unbelievably, the very first time this truth had ever broken through.

But … but … the words came spinning through his head, unstoppable and absurd: The New York Times New & Noteworthy! “A writer to watch” according to Poets & Writers! The best MFA program in the country! That time he had walked into a Barnes & Noble in Stamford, Connecticut, and seen The Invention of Wonder on the Staff Picks shelf, complete with a little index card handwritten by someone named Daria: One of the most interesting books I’ve read this year! The writing is lyrical and deep.

Lyrical! And deep!

All of it years ago, now.

Anybody could be a writer. Anybody except, apparently, him.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Tap, Tap

Late that night, in his apartment in Cobleskill, he did something he had never done, not once since he’d watched his fortunate student walk into a grove of trees on the Ripley campus.

At his computer, Jake typed in the name “Parker Evan,” and clicked Return.

Parker Evan wasn’t there. Which meant not much: Parker Evan had been his former student’s intended pen name at one point, but that point had been three years earlier. Maybe he’d decided on another name, either because switching his own actual name around was a dumb idea or because he’d opted for even more privacy from the infinity of other possibilities.

Jake went back to the search field and typed: “Parker, novel, thriller.”

Parker, novel, thriller returned pages of references to Donald Westlake’s “Parker” novels, and also another series of mysteries by Robert B. Parker.

So even if Evan Parker had gotten his book all the way to a publisher, the first thing they’d probably have done was instruct him to drop Parker as a pen name.

Jake removed the name from his search field and tried: “thriller, mother, daughter.”

It was an onslaught. Pages and pages of books, by pages and pages of writers, most of whom he’d never heard of. Jake ran his eye down the entries, reading the brief descriptions, but there was nothing that fit the very specific elements of the story his student had told him back in Richard Peng Hall. He clicked on some random author names, not really expecting to find an image of Evan Parker’s only half-remembered face, but there was nothing even remotely like it: old men, fat men, bald men, and plenty of women. He wasn’t here. His book wasn’t here.

Could Evan Parker have been wrong? Could he, Jake, have also been wrong, all this time? Could that plot possibly have disappeared into the sea of stories, novels, thrillers, and mysteries published each year, and sunk into silence? Jake thought not. It seemed more likely that, despite his boundless faith in himself, Parker had somehow not managed to finish his book at all. Maybe the book wasn’t here on his computer, comfortably ensconced in the first page of each and every one of his search results, because it wasn’t anywhere. It wasn’t in the world at all. But why?

Jake typed the name, the real name, “Evan Parker” into the search field.

More than a few Facebook Evan Parkers appeared in the search results. Jake clicked over to Facebook and ran his eye down the list. He saw more men—bigger, slighter, balder, darker—and even a few women, but no one remotely like his former student. Maybe Evan wasn’t on Facebook. (Jake himself wasn’t on Facebook; he’d quit when it became too demoralizing to see his “friends” posting news about their forthcoming books.) He returned to the search results and clicked the “Images” tab, and scanned the page and then the next page. So many Evan Parkers, none of them his. He clicked back to the “All Results” page. There were Evan Parkers who were high school soccer players, ballet dancers, career diplomats currently stationed in Chad, racehorses, and engaged couples (“The future Evan-Parkers welcome you to our wedding site!”). There was no male human even vaguely his former student’s age who looked anything like the Evan Parker Jake had known at Ripley.

Then he saw, at the bottom of the page: “Searches related to ‘evan parker.’”

And below that the words: “evan parker obituary.”

Even before his cursor found the link he knew what he would see.

Evan Luke Parker of West Rutland, VT (38) had died unexpectedly on the evening of October 4, 2013. Evan Luke Parker had been a 1995 graduate of West Rutland High School and had attended classes at Rutland Community College and was a lifelong resident of central Vermont. Predeceased by both parents and a sister, he was survived by a niece. Memorial services were to be announced at a future time. Burial would be private.