The Salinger Contract by Adam Langer Page A

drivers in other genre novelists’ books, but rarely said in his own: “Step on it, Driver,” and “Lose that tail.” But he just gazed silently out the window at the boats on Lake Michigan, the cars speeding along Lake Shore Drive; he looked west toward the Lincoln Park Zoo—an immense black emptiness beyond the rippling Lincoln Park Lagoon; he could imagine that lone coyote howling upon his slab of gray rock. He looked through the back window of the cab, trying to see if he could spot Pavel’s taxi, but there were at least a dozen cabs and it was impossible to say which one might have been his.
    When Conner got back to the hotel, he greeted the doormen and security guards loudly—he wanted them to know who he was and to remember him in case anything happened to him. He had never had these sorts of morbid, nervous thoughts before he became a parent. He zipped up the blue-carpeted steps, taking them two at a time. He greeted businesspeople heading to the cocktail lounge, tourists clutching bags from the Apple Store, tuxedoed and evening-gowned couples en route to rehearsal dinners. At the hotel’s front desk, he told the clerk, an officious young man of about twenty-five with a pencil-thin mustache, affecting some sort of English accent, that he wanted to check out early.
    â€œCertainly, Mr. Joyce.” The man typed on his computer to pull up Conner’s bill. “Oh,” he said. “Some men were looking for you before.”
    â€œMen?” Conner asked.
    â€œTwo of them. They left this.” The man produced a note written on watermarked, ivory-laid stationery. On it, in exquisite handwriting: “Mr. Joyce, I’m downstairs at the Coq d’Or Lounge. Regards, Dex.”
    Conner gave the note back to the desk clerk. He passed the man a twenty-dollar bill, and asked him if he could arrange to have a bellhop take his suitcases down to the lobby.
    â€œAre you sure there’s nothing wrong?” the man asked. Conner looked down to the main entrance of the hotel and saw Pavel approaching the revolving doors. Conner headed downstairs. He made his way to the first door he could find, which led to the men’s room.
    Conner scrubbed his face, using a white washcloth from a small wicker basket by the sink. Was he overreacting? What was there to be frightened of? An Eastern European man had bought a bunch of his books and asked to introduce him to a friend. Sure, something about the man seemed sinister, but no one had threatened him. Perhaps this Pavel and his friend Dex, whom Conner imagined as a bald-pated Russian mobster who dabbled in the black market—maybe something to do with uranium rods—didn’t understand that you didn’t randomly approach authors, buy all their books, and demand special meetings. Perhaps Dex was just uncommonly rich and didn’t think the usual protocols applied to him. Perhaps the usual protocols were stupid. Conner was continuing to work through scenarios when he looked in the mirror and saw the door to the bathroom opening. Pavel was entering.
    To his left, Conner espied another door. On it was a brass plaque engraved, to coq d’or lounge . His face not yet dry, Conner made his way to that door and entered.

10
    I knew the Coq d’Or well. When he was still alive, my father was a fan of the place—at least, that’s what my mother told me. When he was in town on business, he drank there, entertained friends, and, on one fateful evening, met a young cocktail waitress and invited her up to his suite, where I was conceived. After I graduated college and moved out of my mom’s apartment, I wrote short stories in the Coq d’Or, hoping to connect with some aspect of my past, but also because it was an atmospheric joint with excellent soups and the best club sandwich in Chicago. The waitstaff knew rich people tended to be eccentric; even if you dressed poorly and didn’t look like you had much