The week following Lenore’s sudden disappearance from my room, I receive a package from Pa. He sent me a uniform coat, six yards of striped cloth for the uniform’s pantaloons, and four new socks, which, yes, I need, but he didn’t enclose a single penny in his package. The bills pile up on my table. The amount of interest I owe on loans robs me of sleep. My brain refuses to produce a single line of poetry, but I don’t have the time or the energy to search for my muse.
I study until my eyes blur and attend my lectures with sober attentiveness, yet my studiousness is rewarded with debt and a loss of respect from my West Lawn neighbors.
I pack up my trunk and move to a more affordable room in the West Range, a long arcade of dormitories unattached to any grand pavilions, unadorned by Tuscan columns.
“Welcome to Rowdy Row,” says a stocky, hazel-eyed fellow at my door. “I’d like to formally invite you to a gathering of kindred spirits in my room later this evening.”
I recognize his round cheeks and his smile wrought with mischief: He’s the card player Upton Beall, the fellow Garland mentioned. He’s also one of about fifty students included on a recent Grand Jury list of known university lawbreakers. My courage to acquire money through gaming falters.
“Thank you, Beall, but—”
“Poe, is it?”
I nod. “Yes. Edgar Poe.”
“I’ve heard you’ve fallen on hard times.”
I cringe and peer down at my new coat Pa sent. It doesn’t quite match the coats worn by the other students—the gray is too pale; the buttons are a dull brass; the fabric scratches. Upton isn’t even wearing the uniform, however, and might not care a damn about my clothing.
“No need for shame, Poe.” He cups a hand over my left shoulder. “Many of us over here have run into financial predicaments due to youthful extravagance. Come have a bit of fun with us.”
Youthful extravagance! If only that were the source of my “financial predicament”!
“Are the hotelkeepers oblivious to these ‘gatherings of kindred spirits’?” I ask.
“Hardly.” Upton snorts. “They’re often sitting right there with us, shuffling the decks. Spotswood. Richardson. They ‘accidentally’ drink with us, too, as they put it.”
I rub my lips together and calculate my debts, which are mounting to well over three hundred dollars. “I’ll consider joining you.”
“I hope you do.” He pokes his head through my doorway. “I’ve heard your walls are a marvel to be witnessed.”
“I haven’t yet had a chance to decorate this room.”
He pats my arm. “Bring your friend O’Peale along tonight. Some of your other friends say the two of you together are the reigning lords of satire.”
“Perhaps,” I say.
Instead of joining the card game, I sequester myself in my new room and read books I’ve borrowed from the library to help with my classes.
Garland knocks on my door and calls in, “Aren’t you coming out tonight?”
“I’m not ready for that yet,” I call back without even opening the door.
“I thought you moved over here to be with your own kind and earn money through cards, Poe.”
“I’m not ready for that yet!” I say again, and I return to my studies.
Miles and Tom venture over to my room Saturday evening, but my other friends from the Lawn refrain from joining them. Some West Range fellows—Philip Slaughter, William Creighton, and Thomas Gholson—also wander in, carrying a punch bowl for brewing up peach and honey. Garland strolls in behind them, wearing his odd green spectacles. A patch of gray feathers now covers the nape of his neck, which I pray the others don’t see.
Tom leans back on my bed and sighs at my bare walls. “Your walls are in need of your caricatures, Poe.”
“Yes,” says Garland with a clap of his hands, “let’s christen your room with a sketch of Professor Long.”
Philip stirs a ladle through the liquid in the bowl, churning up the soothing scents of sugared spirits.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see my imposter of a uniform slumped over the footboard of my bed and wonder how Pa can bear to sleep at night, knowing that I’m sitting here, miles from home, tearing at my hair, debating whether I should pay for food or firewood this week. And I wonder what the Rowdy Row fellows in the room would do if I broke into one of my poems about heartbreak instead of giving them the caricatures they want. I imagine Lenore stepping out of the gasping flames of my fire and reciting “Visit of the Dead.”
Thy soul shall find itself alone—
Alone of all on earth—unknown
The cause—but none are near to pry
Into thine hour of secrecy.
“Poe’s plotting,” says Tom with a smile. “Give him a moment.”
Pa probably isn’t even home right now, I realize with a scratch of my head. He’s off impregnating the widow Wills, and he’s not even thinking of me or Ma. Ma’s likely coughing alone in her chamber, too weak to leave her bed, while Aunt Nancy paces the landing, and the servants huddle around the fire in the outdoor kitchen, escaping Pa’s kingdom through tales of the dead.
I throw my arms into the air. “‘Vivamus, moriendum est!’”
“Is that Virgil?” asks Philip, scooping streams of the golden nepenthe into a crystal glass.
“No—Seneca,” I say, taking that glass and dumping the brandy down my throat. I then exhale a fireball into the air and translate the phrase: “‘Let us live—we must die!’”
“‘Vivamus!’” says Miles, raising his own glass.
And the other boys chant the phrase with me as I leap onto my bed and draw a sketch of Professor Long’s wide-open mouth with his gargantuan gums and giant horse teeth, and out of the man’s fleshy lips springs our song of the evening: “‘Vivamus, moriendum est!’”