The first time I met Edgar Allan Poe was the night he walked into my bar.Alexandra “Ren” Reynolds
The first time I met Edgar Allan Poe was the night he walked into my bar.
That might not seem strange in Baltimore, where Poe was practically a Halloween mascot, but my instincts rang like church bells, warning that everything about this man was from the nineteenth century. He wore a rumpled, black, hand-stitched suit with a dingy white neck-cloth tied over a high collared shirt. His trademark black hair was matted, his mustache too thick and unevenly trimmed, and he stank of corn whiskey and unwashed wool. To most people, Edgar Allan Poe in a twenty-first-century bar was just a guy in a costume.
I wasn’t most people.
I had just opened The Door, the bar I owned in Fells Point, and had served a couple of regular customers their first drinks when Poe stumbled inside. His head swiveled owlishly, as though his eyes couldn’t focus on any one point, at least not until they found me. The moment they locked on mine they widened slightly, right before they rolled back in his head. He crumpled to the floor in a puddle of black wool and melted bones.
“Damn it,” I muttered under my breath. I had a feeling my life was about to get complicated. I threw the bar towel into the sink and rushed to kneel by his head.
“You need help, Ren?” Paul asked. He and Marla lived in one of the Douglass Place houses, and they used The Door like an extension of their living room.
“It’s okay, I got him,” I said. Poe’s eyelids fluttered and his chest rose and fell with each breath, so at least he wasn’t dead. Yet? Or was it ‘again,’ considering that Edgar Allan Poe had been dead for something like a hundred and seventy years. We were still a month away from Halloween, and even then not many could pull off a perfect impersonation of the odd-looking, unmistakable man, so the chances of him being remarked upon were high.
I felt for the pulse in his neck and found a strong, steady beat. His skin had the waxen, sweaty look of someone who was likely to vomit in his unconscious state. He groaned and sat up, so I helped him to his feet. “Paul,” I called to the man whose conversations with his wife inevitably turned to gossip about the neighbors, “I’m going to help him to the bathroom. Will you watch the bar for me? Macey will be here in a minute, and I want to make sure this guy’s okay.”
“Sure thing, honey. We’ve got you covered.”
I threw Poe’s arm over my shoulder and walked him to the back. We’d nearly made it to the bathroom when his knees gave way again and he went down. Realizing the bathroom was too much to manage, I turned and dragged Poe with me into the storeroom. I lowered him to the floor and rolled him to his side so he wouldn’t choke on the inevitable vomit. Then I stood and looked down at him.
What was Edgar Allan Poe doing in my bar?
I could leave him there to sleep off the alcohol, but I knew that both Macey and I would be in and out of the room all night, and I didn’t relish the explanations or the experience. I needed to keep him safe and out of sight until he could tell me how and why he was here, so I stepped over him and got to work shifting boxes off a metal rack. The rack looked like a built-in storage shelving unit, but where the post met the wall, a clever hinge allowed the empty rack to swing open, revealing the nearly invisible seam of a door hidden in the wall behind it.
It had been a long time since I’d opened that door, but the key was still on the rack, and the lock turned easily enough. I flipped the switch inside the room, and an ornate wall sconce flickered to life. The bulbs were old and looked like candles, but the light hadn’t been used much, so I wasn’t too worried it would burn out and leave Poe in the dark.
I debated dropping the twin mattress that lay propped against the wall, but decided it would be easier to clean vomit off the floor, and the early October night was warm enough that his wool suit would be adequate for insulation. The space between the walls was the width of the twin mattress and twice as long, so I was able to drag Poe’s unconscious body in and position him on his side without kicking him more than two or three times. When he was as safe as I could make him, I left the space I’d always just called ‘the nest’ and pulled the door closed behind me. Then I pushed the empty rack back in place and replaced the full cases with empty ones, surprised at how easily the old habits came back.
I quickly checked my reflection in the mirror I’d hung by the door, looking for evidence that I’d just dragged an unconscious man into a hidden room. What I saw was the same woman I’d seen in mirrors since I started looking – dark, unruly curls, brown skin that still had remnants of a summer tan, and the green eyes I’d inherited from my white father. My parents had been dead a long time, but I could still see the echoes of my mother’s serious expression on my own face, especially when I was determined. That determination stared back at me from the mirror when I squared my shoulders, took a deep breath, and pasted a smile on my face as if Edgar Allan Poe were not passed out behind my storeroom wall.
“Ren?” Macey called from the back. “Sorry I’m late. I’ll be out in a minute.”
I grabbed a case of beer and hurried out of the storeroom, calling over my shoulder, “Don’t worry about it. It’s just Paul and Marla in front.”
Paul looked up at me with a concerned expression as I set the case on the bar. “That guy going to be okay?”
I plastered a casual smile on. “He’ll have a hangover in the morning.”
“What’d you do with him?” Marla asked.
I shrugged and winked. “Oh, you know, same thing I do with all the drunks. I stashed him in a hole in the wall to sleep it off.”
The concern faded from Paul’s and Marla’s expressions, and they smiled. “Oh, good,” said Marla. “He’ll be alright then.”
I had always been a storyteller and could invent a lie without the slightest hesitation, but in my experience the best lies were truths told with an ironic smile. It was a skill that had saved my own life, and a few others.
The front door opened and Nick Pieretti walked in looking tired. He clapped Paul on the shoulder and took Marla’s extended hand in a friendly greeting before dropping onto a barstool in front of me.
“Long day?” I asked, slipping behind the bar.
“A cop day in Baltimore is the equivalent of three regular person days,” he said.
“What can I get you?” I asked. Nick was a police officer who worked out of the Central station. He came in almost every day after work and his answer to that question was always the same, but I still asked.
“Surprise me,” he said.
I poured a shot of white rum, then added the cucumber, lime, and mint simple syrup mix I’d made for mojitos, and slid it across the bar. “Anything good happen?”
Nick raised the glass and looked at it with a quirk of his mouth. “I just got dinner in a glass. Cheers.” He took a sip and smiled at the flavor. “Nice.”
“If that’s the only thing green you’re getting in your diet, you need a new diet,” I said, returning his smile.
Nick was a good-looking guy, but long hours and lots of take-out were leaving a mark.
“Or a new job. Got any openings here?” He asked the question every time he came in. Nick had never been very subtle about his interest in me, and he always took it well when I shot him down.
“Sorry, I’ve got nothing for you,” I responded, then changed the subject like I did every time. “What’s been keeping you up too late?”
He sighed and sipped his mojito. Nick was the only guy I knew who admitted he liked fruity drinks, so I tested my recipes on him before I served them to other customers. “Honestly, it’s the fear,” he shrugged. “The city’s full of it. The force is full of it. Everyone’s afraid of something or someone, and it’s killing all the fun in the job.”
“Being a cop is fun?” I asked, intrigued that he’d managed to surprise me.
His smile wiped away the exhaustion in his eyes. “On a good day, it’s great. There’s a group of kids who play ball over at Patterson. When they let me in on their games, it means everyone made it to school that day and they’re not afraid the cop will bust them. And the old guys who play chess in the park have all the stories about the city back in their day – even better when Malcolm’s wife sends him with cookies, because he saves me one for when I swing by to check on what they’ve seen. And you know the Chinese restaurant on Chester? Mrs. Ling uses me as her taster for every new dish she puts on the menu.”
“So you’re saying the perks are nice,” I chuckled. Nick’s ease and friendliness were infectious, and he inspired smiles every time he walked into the bar.
“I’ll save you half a cookie next time and you’ll understand,” he grinned. “Actually, why don’t you come with me to Ling’s? You can try the barbecued duck for yourself.”
I smiled and avoided his eyes. “I don’t date customers, Nick.”
“You eat though, don’t you?”
I looked up and met his friendly gaze. “Nope, I don’t do that either,” I said with a shake of my head.
He groaned and finished his drink, then put a twenty on the bar as he stood to leave.
“The drink’s on me tonight.” I pushed the money back at him.
“Turns out I don’t drink here anymore, which means I’m not a customer you won’t date. So consider this the tip on all those drinks I won’t be having.” He winked and sauntered toward the door. He turned just before he left. “By the way, keep an eye out for a drunk in a black suit. He was in Fells Point about an hour ago – caught on the security system in a pawn shop a couple blocks away. The owner is about one trespasser away from going on a neighborhood rampage.”
“You warning me about the drunk or the pawn shop owner?” I asked as casually as I could manage through a frozen smile.
“Both? Just take care, Ren,” he said on his way out.
I looked quickly over at Paul and Marla to see if they’d heard Nick’s parting shot. They seemed to be deep in conversation, so maybe they hadn’t, but I flinched when Macey came in tying a bar apron around her waist. She noticed. “What’s wrong? Was that Nick? Did he ask you out again?”
“Watch the bar for a bit, will you, Mace?” I didn’t wait for her answer and went straight into the back room. I leaned against the wall and listened as the front door opened and a group of three or four people came in laughing. Good. Macey would be busy behind the bar for a bit.
I shut the door quietly behind me, then pulled the rack out of the way and pushed into the nest. There was Poe, lying exactly where I’d left him on the ground. The drunk in a black suit? Possibly.
I peered at his face, wondering what someone would see on the security cam footage. The mustache was the obvious identifier, and with the longish hair, he could be straight out of the 1970s. I peered closer, wondering if he’d be recognizable without the mustache, and noticed bruises on his jaw and at his temple. They hadn’t yet faded to yellows and greens, so they’d happened within the past few days. I debated checking for other damage, but his breathing was still regular and he hadn’t vomited yet, so I decided it wasn’t completely irresponsible to let him sleep it off.
I did loosen the tie at his neck and unbutton his coat. Something crackled in the pocket, and I slid my hand into it to withdraw three brightly colored slips that appeared to be ballots for an election. They were dated October third with no year, but three ballots didn’t end up in a nineteenth-century man’s pocket unless he’d been cooped.
I had never encountered the cooping gangs that had run the voting fraud rings in Baltimore, because I couldn’t vote back then, but I’d heard about the thugs who kidnapped white men, beat them, plied them with drink and drugs, stuffed their pockets with voting tickets for their candidate, and then on election day took them around to every polling place they could until the men were finally recognized and had to stop voting.
Perhaps Poe had escaped from a coop? It might explain the drunkenness, the bruises, and the ballots. But did it explain the time travel? Beyond the fact that I knew it was possible, time travel was well outside my personal experience. If it had been Poe captured on the security cam in a pawn shop, was that where he’d come through? My focus was shifting from the shock of his presence to the problem of what to do with him, but until he woke up, I didn’t have enough information to solve it.
I left the ballots on a shelf of the bookcase that dominated one end of the room and quietly pulled the door shut behind me. I locked it, in case Poe woke up and in his stupor came stumbling out, then replaced the rack. I took a deep breath, grabbed a bottle of good cognac, and stepped out into my bar.
Sundays were generally slow nights, so I was able to steer a couple of conversations toward the newest bond measure for school facilities repair and away from talk about the latest crime stats in Fells Point. I had learned long ago that there were things I could impact and things I couldn’t. There were wars to fight, battles to win, and arguments to make, and inevitably, I had the best luck with planting the small-scale inception of ideas for change rather than doing anything that would put my face in the news. Standing out front just put the focus on me instead of the issue, and it had never gone well for me when I came out from behind the curtain.
I was able to look in on Poe enough times over the course of the evening to feel certain he wasn’t in danger. After I sent Macey home with a take-out container of soup I ordered from the deli next door – they needed the business, and her son had the flu – and made a couple of sandwiches for George, the homeless guy who watched my back door, I went in one last time to check on him before going up to my living quarters above the bar.
Poe no longer looked unconscious. He had moved and was snoring, but he didn’t wake when I opened the door to the nest. I wouldn’t be up again for hours, so I left a sandwich wrapped in wax paper, a jug of water, and a note on the small table by the door, under which was a chamber pot that had been there forever. Then I locked the door and pushed the rack back into place in front of it. There was plenty to read on the shelves in the nest, though if Poe woke before I returned, he might decide the books weren’t enough reason to stay. Hopefully my note would deter him from raising a ruckus or tearing the room apart to find a way out.
I was tired, but my brain was spinning, and as I lay in my bed staring up at the low ceiling of the attic space above the bar, I thought about Edgar Allan Poe. I’d read The Raven when it was published, of course. Everyone had. Not many black women of my station could read then, but my mother had been adamant that I learn. Words are the lights on the path to freedom, she’d said, as she taught me everything she had learned from my father. I’d started with the Bible and then expanded into newspaper articles and political treatises, pamphlets, and satirical opinions. The day I laid hands on my first novel was the day the world opened for me, and Baltimore became the place my body lived while my mind wandered freely.
Poe’s work had figured into my mental landscape, but I had rarely dwelled there. His preoccupation with death was a bit too self-indulgent for my taste. It had always seemed like the height of privilege to worry so much about death, because it implied a right to life which, in my experience, had not been granted.
I didn’t have to see the sun to feel it peek above the horizon, and as my body stilled, the last thought I had before my mind quieted was that I hoped Poe was a Descendant of Time so that he could return himself to his native era. Otherwise, I’d have to go in search of a Clocker.