Losing It Read Online Free PDF Page A

pale, deathly beautiful, tinted with night sweats, too pink in pallor. The poor dear, saddled with Poe, a dead-poor, luckless, mercurial poet, scathing critic, inventor of the detective story, author of all those cryptic tales, wildly ambitious, jealous, driven, haunted, alcoholic, unstable, brilliant, morose, half-starved, bitter, possibly mad.
    “Curiously,” Bob said, glancing at his watch – he didn’t want to miss the flight, and giddy as he was he could see himselfdoing it – “Curiously enough, one time Poe
almost
got a government job. It was as if the gods were playing with him. Prominent writers used to get cushy jobs back then –”
    “Yes, you said,” Sienna cut in. “I remember you mentioned this in class.”
    “Did I?” Bob asked. “Yes, probably. My God, the old professor has started repeating himself.”
    She might have interjected something about him not really being old, but instead she said, “His name was actually published for the post, wasn’t it?”
    “Yes! Well, it was
Pogue
, under the list of new appointments, and Poe inquired and was apparently told the name was his, garbled by the press. He was all set for the swearing-in.
At last, a government job!
He waited and waited …”
    “Should we get going, Professor Sterling?” Sienna asked.
“Bob
, I mean.”
    “Yes, we should,” Bob said, but stayed a moment more just to look at her. Then while they were walking to the departures gate they passed a mirrored wall at which Bob couldn’t help glancing. He was struck, as he had been several times lately, by a feeling of being an impostor, but quite a good one: solid-looking, squarish, fleshy, yes, but tanned, too, and prosperous and well turned out. She was gorgeous, a real head-turner. But he too had a presence, didn’t look hopelessly drowned beside her.
    There was an annoying delay in the customs line-up which Bob hadn’t figured on. Being Canadian, he found it hard to consider the United States an entirely foreign country, and he’d forgotten about this small matter. Time really was pressing now, so he sent Sienna into another line down the row. Then he waited patiently while a young woman with an English accent and seven rings in her cheek showed her passport, answered onequestion, then was let through. She was followed by a raggedy, intense man with a sickly pale face and dust on his jacket who squinted at the customs officer like a known criminal, also said only a few words, and was similarly waved through.
    “Next!” the customs officer said, staring at Bob. He pulled his luggage up to the yellow line, stood with his briefcase under his arm.
    “Name?”
    “Uh, Bob Sterling.
Professor
Bob Sterling.”
    “From?”
    “From here. From, uh, Ottawa.”
    “Destination?”
    “New York City.”
    “Purpose of trip?”
    “Oh, uh -” Bob couldn’t seem to get the rattle out of his voice. He felt suddenly and completely guilty. “I’m going to New York for the Poe conference at Columbia University.” Then he added, “Edgar Allan Poe. The writer.”
    “You’ll be there for how long?”
    “What’s today, Friday? Till Sunday.” That was better. His voice sounded more normal. The customs officer was a plain-looking woman, her uniform puffed-out and sexless, her face quite blank: pale blue eyes behind wispy brown lashes. In her identity-tag photo she looked as if she was being busted for drug possession. Rebecca Williams.
    “Do you have anything to declare?” It was a standard question, and it may have been the way she ran all the words together that made Bob pause to consider that, given his age and stage and position, perhaps he had, or at least ought to have, things to declare. She didn’t mean it in a philosophical way, of course, and he realized it nearly right away, but for an instant he tried to think what he could possibly say to excusehimself, as if she had seen into his soul and was demanding some sort of justification or analysis.
    “Uh, no,” he said,