Page 11 of Beneath the Poet's House

The waitress reappears with their drinks and Lucretia’s scone, which Lucretia breaks into tiny pieces.

Saoirse blows on the steaming liquid. “What about you?” she asks. “What do you do for work?”

Lucretia groans. “Financial planning company. I hate it. It’s the antithesis to everything I believe in.” She shrugs and grimaces. “But,bills, you know? I’m constantly asking Sarah for guidance in finding a position that honors transcendentalism while allowing me to, oh, I don’t know, maybe eat and pay rent in the same month.”

Saoirse nods. On one hand, Lucretia’s words sound New Agey and absurd, but on the other, she gets it. She worked for a pharmaceutical company before Jonathan’s death, and while Saoirse has never been a member of an animal rights organization, she still squirms when she thinks of the activists who staged protests on her company’s campus, how she always aligned more with their views than with her employer’s.

“What about you?” Lucretia asks, and Saoirse’s stomach gives a little lurch. This is part of it, of course, getting to know someone. She has to sharesomedetails of her life; she may as well lean into the innocuous ones.

“I’m not working at the moment.” She summarizes her past with the pharmaceutical company as having worked “in supply chain management,” and Lucretia doesn’t ask any follow-up questions. “I went to school here in Providence,” Saoirse continues. “At Brown. So, you can imagine how pleased my father is with my status as an unemployed Ivy League graduate.”

Lucretia sips her cappuccino, eyes wide over the rim of the cup. “Is he, like, really mad? What about your mom? Is she upset too?” Worry furrows her thick black eyebrows. “Shit, is your mom around? Sorry, I should have asked that first.”

“My mom lives in Connecticut,” Saoirse says. “My parents are divorced. I have a bit of a strained relationship with my dad.” She pauses. “But my mom and I are extremely close. She’s not upset that I’m not working right now.” Saoirse wraps her hands around her still-steaming cup. “Not at all.” Without meaning to, Saoirse’s voice has gone quiet. “She gets it. She understands. She’s the best.”

“That’s definitely good,” Lucretia says.

“Once I’m settled, I’ll start looking for a job. Not sure where, or doing what, but I’m in a position where—” She stops. If she’s going to spend time with Lucretia—and Roberto and Mia, for that matter—she’sgoing to have to tell them, and while it will be miserable no matter what, putting it off will only make it harder. She exhales, takes a sip of tea. Her hands are shaking, but the tremors are so slight as to be unnoticeable, and this small detail gives her the courage to push forward. That she has at least this much control over her body is refreshing.

“My husband died,” she says. “In January. From a heart attack. Well, a heart attack brought on by complications stemming from a dependence on several prescription drugs. Adderall. Ambien. A couple of others. He was forty, and he wasn’t as much an addict as he was a workaholic and perfectionist.”Not to mention a control freak,she thinks but doesn’t say. “His job—assistant university counsel at Princeton—was stressful. Because of his position, his life insurance payout was decent. Between that and my savings, I have enough to live on for at least the next year.”

She thinks she’s in store for moreoh-my-goshesand sorority-girl squealing, but Lucretia surprises her. “I’m so sorry,” she says evenly. “That’s terrible. I’m so sorry you’re going through this. No wonder you stopped writing.”

She’s touched by Lucretia’s use of the present in that Saoirse is very much still “going through this” but also struck with an almost uncontrollable desire to laugh.No wonder I stopped writing? You have no idea.

“Thanks,” Saoirse says instead. “It’s been tough, but I’m managing. And sorry if it seems weird to tell you about Jonathan’s death with regard to my financial situation, but most of the time, I can only process that he’s gone through the filter of things like finances and other logistics. If I think of anything beyond that, I—” Saoirse pauses, swallowing the lump in her throat, resisting the urge to blot the tears welling in her eyes with the sleeve of her sweater. She glances away, focusing on the man at the high top by the window, though, now that she’s looking at him, she thinks he’s a different man from the one who was here when she arrived. “It’s just too overwhelming,” she finishes.

“Be it life or death, we crave only reality,” Lucretia says, and at Saoirse’s puzzled expression, she continues, “Henry David Thoreau,Walden, 1854. I may be obsessed with Sarah Whitman, but Thoreau was my gateway drug into transcendentalism. So many people think he’s just the ‘walking in the woods’ guy, but his musings on death and dying are poignant to the point of otherworldly.” Lucretia looks down into her lap. “My dad died two years ago, and rereading everything Thoreau ever wrote was basically the only way I got through it.”

“I’m sorry, Lucretia. I’m glad you found something that helped you during such a tough time.”

“Thanks.” Lucretia tosses her glossy hair over one shoulder and pushes up the sleeves of her black sweater, revealing the snaking black-ink designs beneath it. “Listen to us,” she says. “Talk about a morbid first coffee date. Tell me something good going on in your life, Saoirse, please, I beg of you.”

Good?Pathetic half thoughts fire uselessly. Should she tell Lucretia about the prescription bottles lining the shelves in her cabinets? Or that, lately, she worries she’ll find Jonathan around every corner, despite his voice in her head never quieting long enough for her to forget he’s dead? Should she tell her that Jonathan’s best friend may be looking for her to talk about the text Jonathan sent before he died? Or that flies whiz around her constantly, and she’s not sure if they’re real or a product of her overtaxed—yet frustratingly sluggish—mind?

“I’m thinking about getting a cat?” she says, and it comes out as a question. Which, of course it does, because she’s not even sure where the idea came from. She doesn’t think pets are allowed at 88 Benefit per her lease, but it’s something safe and carefree to say. Lucretia squeals and wiggles in her chair like a kid who’s just been told it’s time to head out for trick-or-treating.

“That issoexciting! Sarah’s ghost willlovethat.Oooh, you should get a black one—they’re the hardest for shelters to place, and Mia would be absolutely thrilled—and name her Catterina, after Poe’s cat! Can I go with you to pick her out? My cat, Cocoa, is with my mom in Arizona. She’s a Maine coon. I miss her so much.” Lucretia scowls. “I can’t have animals per my stupid lease.”

Saoirse should double back on her impulsiveness and agree with this last, rational statement, but the excitement lighting up Lucretia’s eyes is bizarrely contagious. Besides, if Diane Hartnett can’t be bothered to retrieve the keys to her property over the past five years, Saoirse can bend the rules enough to adopt a cat. Sharing the house with another living creature might offset the stillness of the rooms, the museum-like quality of the foyer, the way that, sometimes, she gets the feeling that Sarah Whitman is watching from the daguerreotype on the bookshelf, taking stock of Saoirse’s every move.

“Sure,” she says, and the decision—both to go forward with the idea and to invite Lucretia to embark upon it with her—is justified further by the flush of happiness she feels at her response. “I’d love the company.”

Their conversation passes into an easy rhythm, with Lucretia promising to find out which shelter Mia recommends and Saoirse making plans to peruse the website for available cats and fill out an application before that weekend. When they stand, donning jackets and slinging purses over their shoulders, it’s—somehow—five o’clock. The shadows on the street outside the windows are long, and the waitresses are tidying up. Besides Saoirse and Lucretia, the only patron inside the café is the man working at his computer by the window.

Saoirse’s steps feel a little lighter as they move toward the door, free from that sense of dread she so often experiences. Her coffee date with Lucretia has broken things up to the point where she feels equipped to deal with the impending nightfall.

They thank the staff and step outside. Lucretia wraps her in another hug. “I’ll call you tomorrow. And just so you know,” Lucretia says, “there’s no way you’re adopting the future Catterina without Roberto. He’s going to insist on coming to the shelter.”

Saoirse rolls her eyes. “The three of you were my uninvited welcome committee, why shouldn’t you be present for the adoption of my new pet?” Lucretia’s dark eyes skitter over Saoirse’s face, trying to gauge if some of her initial frustration with the trio has returned, but Saoirselaughs and pushes Lucretia’s arm gently to show that she’s kidding. Lucretia laughs, too, then, raising her hand in a final goodbye, heads up Benefit Street.

Saoirse pulls her sweater up around her neck—it grew cold while they were inside—and turns in the opposite direction. But before she can start forward, she senses movement, a flash of darkness in her periphery. Someone’s watching her from the coffee-shop window; she feels it as distinctly as she feels the wind on her cheeks.

For a moment, she hesitates, figuring she’s about to come face-to-face with a waitress wiping down tables along the café’s perimeter. But the feeling is too intense to ignore, and her head turns as if on a swivel. As Saoirse’s wide, frozen eyes meet the dark, asymmetrical ones of the Poe look-alike from the Athenæum, numbness overtakes her muscles like frost.

The man holds her gaze in the same way he did at the library. It’s not threatening but intense, demanding she straighten up and pay attention.He was here the whole time,Saoirse thinks.The watcher from the Athenæum, a mere fifteen feet from Lucretia’s and my table.

Or had he been? Therewasa man working at a laptop by the window, but had it been the same man the entire time? Saoirse isn’t certain. This man sits behind a Lenovo laptop, the same brand of PC Saoirse uses at home. She could have sworn the man who’d been at the high top when she entered was using a MacBook Air. She also has a vague recollection of the man at the window wearing a thin sweater, or maybe a button-up shirt, consisting of several bright colors. The man before her is dressed in black.

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