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He shifted the huge book around and scooted it toward her, one finger indicating a black-and-white thumbnail photograph. The image portrayed was of a gaunt, deep-browed man with unruly hair and a small black-comb mustache. His eyes looked sad, desperate, and wild all at the same time. Sunken and pooled by enormous dark circles, they seemed to ache with sorrow.
To Isobel, he looked like a nicely dressed mental patient in need of a nap.
She sank farther into her chair, picking at the pages. “Didn’t he marry his cousin or something?”
“The man is a literary god and that’s all you have to say?”
She shrugged and grabbed a book from the stack on the table. She opened it, then flipped through the pages, glancing up at him. He leaned forward over the table and scribbled something onto a yellow steno notepad, which sat atop his black hardbound book. Her eyes fell to the book. She couldn’t help wondering if it was some sort of journal or something and why he seemed to carry it with him wherever he went.
“Who’s Lenore?” she asked, turning another page.
He stopped writing, looked up. Stared.
What? Had she said something wrong?
“His dead love,” he replied finally.
“Poe’s?”
“The narrator’s.”
“Oh,” she said, wondering if there was a difference but knowing better than to ask.
She crossed her legs and adjusted herself in her seat. “So, how are we going to do the presentation part? Do I get stuck playing the dead chick?”
It was supposed to be a joke, something to help smooth down his prickly defense.
“You could never be Lenore,” he said, returning to his scrawling.
At this, Isobel scoffed outright, trying to decide if she’d been insulted. “Yeah? Why not?”
“For one,” he said, jotting along, “you’re not dead.”
“Oh,” she replied, “so you’re going to be Lenore, then?”
He looked up. Isobel smiled, swaying back and forth in her swivel seat.
His pen made a point of disconnecting with the paper, and there was another pause, followed by a slow blink before he said, “You do the talking for the presentation, I’ll write the paper.” He pulled off the top sheet from the steno pad and slid it in front of her.
Isobel picked up the paper. Leaning back in her chair, she watched him over the frayed top edge as he bent to extract a dark purple folder from his bag.
“Write these down,” he said, setting the folder aside and returning his attention to the book with the thumbnail.
Isobel pulled her purse onto her lap, rustling around in the front flap until she found a pen.
“‘The Fall of the House of Usher,’” he said, and Isobel started writing on the sheet of steno paper, right under where he’d already written “Major Works.”
“‘The Masque of the Red Death.’ That’s ‘Masque’ with a q,” he said, and Isobel had to hurry up and write the word “Usher,” only she ended up dropping the e and adding an extra r so that it slurred into “Ushrr.”
“‘The Murders’—”
“Hold on!” she said, her pen flying.
He waited.
“All right,” she said, finishing up the th at the end of “Death.” She crinkled her nose at the word. Why did it feel like she was inscribing someone’s epitaph?
“‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue,’” he continued.
