For a Tuesday night, The Door was busy, and I was glad I’d asked Macey to come in. I had hoped to be able to take off early for a spiral-hunting expedition with Poe, but between a bowling league tournament win and a surprise birthday party, we didn’t stop running until I locked the door behind her at 2:10am. And as tempted as I was to sit down in my chair and curl up with a good book, I found both chair and book occupied by my uninvited guest when I finally made it upstairs.
I had locked Poe in my library while the bar was open, and when I went to check on him, it seemed his only movement, given the size of the stack of books next to him, had been between the bookshelves and the chair. There was a notebook and pencil next to him, but his attention was deeply engrossed in the pages he was reading.
Poe looked up from his book. “I believe, when I wake up from this dream, that I shall never again presume to believe I know aught of the world.”
I looked at his reading material of choice and almost laughed out loud to see 1984 in his hand.
“I had the thought,” I said as I handed him the container of fried rice, “that I shouldn’t take you with me tonight when I go hunting for spirals.” I’d taken the other half of the food out to George, who’d been reading a two-day-old newspaper by the light above the door. He’d thanked me kindly for the meal and told me to keep an eye on my paper products in the coming months because the price of oil had gone up so much the supply chain could be affected.
Poe looked up in surprise from the rice. “How will you know whether it will work?”
“I have the drawing you made, and I can wander around nighttime Baltimore a lot less conspicuously than you can. If I find one, I’ll come back and get you, but until then, you can stay here and safe from anyone who might recognize you as the security cam guy, or worse, as yourself.”
“Why, pray tell, would that be worse?” His voice had the edge of an offended man, and whatever ease we’d managed to find with each other was suddenly tenuous.
I stared at him for a long moment, then tried to listen to my words as though I were him. “Time travel is not a normal or expected phenomenon, and the very few people who can do it are careful to keep their ability a secret. So, while it is true that there are people who would be utterly thrilled to meet the Edgar Allan Poe, there are also people who would see you as an oddity to be studied, or worse, to be feared. Those are the people who would have you locked up ‘for your safety,’ and certainly you would be poked and prodded and tested to see what’s different about your blood and your immunities and your genetics. And that’s just because you’re from the past, never mind that you happen to likely be a Clocker.”
He looked away, as though weighing my words. “So, I could perhaps find renown in this time because, as you say, my work has persisted and possibly grown in audience and appeal these last hundred and seventy years. But the fame would almost certainly come at the cost of my freedom, and perhaps even my liberty.”
“Exactly,” I said.
“Or I could return to my time and live out the remainder of my days entertained by the knowledge I’ve gained from my sojourn in this extraordinary time, surrounded by the familiar, albeit unremarkable, world that I know.” There was a glint in his eye when he studied me. “Perhaps I will one day write a story about a woman trapped behind a wall with nothing but her books to keep her company, and the quest for a doorway to the past that set her free.”
I scoffed, “Didn’t you once say, ‘The death of a beautiful woman is the most poetical thing in the world,’ or something like that? I’m guessing I should be worried.”
“Oh, I doubt that I would see to her death. It would be far more satisfying to torture her with the anticipation of seeing how she’d been immortalized.” The amusement in his eyes was real, and I barked a laugh at his look of gleeful anticipation.
That Edgar Allan Poe appeared to have a sense of humor was almost as remarkable to me as the fact that he had teased me, and I was startled to realize that I was growing to like him.
“You’ll stay here, out of sight of the window, while I’m gone?” I asked.
My question seemed to sober him. “I cannot claim to like that you put yourself at risk for my sake, Mistress Ren, but I will own that I appreciate it very much.”
“And I,” I said with complete sincerity, “appreciate that my books are getting so much love from you. I will admit that it has felt a bit selfish of me to keep them for my own use. Thank you for reading them.”
He smiled a genuine smile then, and it transformed his face. “I am able to admit when I am wrong, and about you, Mistress Ren, I was mistaken in earnest. These books are more than just words on a page to you. They are knowledge, love, reason, laughter, adventure, pain, mystery, and even fear.”
He looked proud of me, and of himself, for recognizing who I was inside my gender and my race. But his expression became serious as he continued. “The challenge, when one is as enamored of the lives one can lead in books as you and I are, is to find our way off the shelves so as to experience our lives first-hand.” He waved a hand around the library. “One could certainly spend one’s entire life within these walls and feel that one has lived. Yet, I would argue that with intimate knowledge comes intrinsic understanding. That I have loved gives meaning to the love I experience in a book. That I have experienced fear gives shape to the fear in the story. That I have felt pain makes the pain on the page real.”
“I have loved, feared, and felt pain,” I said quietly, hearing the unspoken words too much echoing in my ears.
Poe met my eyes, and his gestures stilled. “Of that I have no doubt.” Neither of us moved as he held my gaze. “I do believe, however, that like the muscles in your body which you seek to exercise, your life must continue to be experienced in order to be meaningful.”
I felt Poe’s words settle in and stick to the walls of the pit in my stomach. They felt substantial in the hollowness there, and the truth of them had weight.
The weight unbalanced me, and moving had always helped me find my balance, so I nodded, then grabbed my coat and keys. “Back in a few hours,” I said.
He settled back into my chair, picked up the book he’d been reading, and didn’t look up as I closed the door behind me.