In Her Skin(17)

“Because this is where the good stuff is,” you whisper back.

The lady hurries out with three long folders. She warns us to keep them flat and not to use a flash if we take pictures. We lean and almost touch heads. Your clean smell is yum and I am looking at Poe’s “The Raven.” Poe’s handwriting is impossibly neat, almost girly. Nothing’s crossed out, so either the dude was on his game or this is a later copy. At the bottom, it says Edgar A. Poe; swirly, a ta-da at the end. It’s cool, and I have the sense I am looking at something I shouldn’t.

“What’s it about?” I whisper.

“Basically, a guy misses his girlfriend, gets crazier and crazier, and by the end he realizes she’s dead and he’s never going to see her again,” you explain.

“And he needs a bird to tell him that?”

“Apparently.”

We laugh at the same time. Apparently. I like the way you talk. I would like to sound more like you. I ought to sound more like you. The lady, who has now replaced the man, gives us a sharp look, and I like being bad with you. You slip the poem back into its folder and pull out a letter dated February 14, 1849, that’s addressed to F. W. Thomas.

“This one’s awesome,” you tell me. “He’s trashing Bostonians. Check it out.”

Bostonians are really, as a race, far inferior in point of anything beyond mere talent … decidedly the most servile imitators of the English it is possible to conceive. It would be the easiest thing in the world to use them up en masse. One really well-written satire would accomplish the business. But it must not be such a dish of skimmed-milk-and-water as Lowell’s.

“Satire?” I say.

“Yup. He’s saying they are fools and easy to fool. And he wants to skewer them, not be wimpy about it like the other author, Lowell.” You pull your hair back in an elastic, popping your ribs, enjoying the stretch. I feel the stretch in my own spine and arch my back.

You catch me mirroring you. You like it.

Before I can make a joke, you hide your smile behind your hand and point to the gray paper. “See here? What’s cool is that you see this brilliant work. Then you see the man, who’s kind of a snob. The two are not the same. Here, in this strange, sterile little place, you find the truth. Poe’s work doesn’t define him.” You press your lips, staring at the page.

I might speak rougher than you, have a rougher mind than you. But it doesn’t take Einstein to tell me that you’re saying your work as a first-rate student doesn’t define you. You can relate to Poe, and that’s how it is with rich girls who have everything. You’re always looking for someone to relate to you. If you knew who I really was, maybe you’d be saying my work as a con doesn’t define me, either. I like this unfolding of you, ribs popping, knobby parts revealed. The air here is dead and switched on at the same time, and I wonder how often you come here for answers, and if there are answers here that will define us. Definitions would be good: you are Temple, and I am Vivi, but are we friends?

We say nothing for a while, staring at Poe’s snobby letter. It is cold in this room and the librarians change shifts. Your eyes flick up when they pass. My stomach growls. I haven’t eaten since breakfast, and it’s funny how Mrs. Lovecraft can be so careful about some things and so forgetful about others. I am on the verge of asking about “the Dickinson” you’d asked to see along with “the Poe” when the sleeping man releases a death rattle.

You rise. “Time to go,” you say, tucking your laptop under your arm, heading through the door and into the dark lobby, past the desk where we were buzzed in.

“What about your bag?” I call helpfully.

You stop short and turn, smiling tightly. The librarian hands you your backpack and computer case and once again you are off.

I scramble to follow.

“Where are we going?” I ask stupidly. This is becoming my thing, asking Nervous Nelly questions: straight man to your zany. Maybe it was Vivi’s thing, too.

“To have fun,” you reply.

Fun is not the word I would choose to describe libraries. I’d go for safe, clean, even warm.

“I’m in!” I say.

“That sounds like the old Vivi,” you say as the door closes behind us in the Koussevitzky Room. “Do you know that you can’t be videotaped in a public building if there isn’t a sign warning you that you’re on camera?”

Um, yes. “I did not know that.”

The room has huge posters that show Koussevitzky was a conductor, and the room is encircled by a rickety-looking inner balcony. I’m wondering if we’re going to scale the balcony, but you’re already at the door to another room with a sign that says DWIGGINS.

“Be prepared for your mind to be blown,” you warn. You are cute and devilish and you think this is so crazy, and I’m starting to get you, Temple Lovecraft. This is your way of rebelling, pretending to be a college student to look at musty pieces of paper and breaking into secret rooms without permission, and you’re adorkable.

You slip inside and I follow. We’re surrounded by lit windows. Behind the glass are wooden puppets on strings. There’s a tin man, a bearded magician, and a beanie-wearing dude with a long black cigarette and a rabbit. There’s a dragon. A floating ghost-skeleton and a juggler. This is the stuff of nightmares and this is what you get off on and you are a freak. Above each scene is another lit window, where the puppet handles are, crosses of wood with strings, and they look unattached.