The Devil's Scribe by Alma Katsu Page A

out slurred. “I do not mean to intrude on your solitude, but only wish to tell you that you are the loveliest sight I’ve seen inside a month and that I would regret it later if I did not find the courage to tell you so.” He bowed his head to me in a way meant to be gallant.
    Obviously, he was angling for an invitation to join me. He appeared to pose no threat to a woman alone: he was thin, almost scrawny, with a tentative manner. While he wasn’t expensively attired, he seemed neither destitute nor desperate. I found him unattractive, with his high forehead and sunken eyes and a tiny, pinched mouth like a parrot’s beak. There was something pitiable about him, as though he was accustomed to misfortune; indeed, as though misfortune was a companion he had given up trying to elude. In this, he had my sympathy, for I felt I’d been dogged by bad luck ever since I’d fled from America twenty years ago. Besides, I could use the company, a diversion from what lay ahead.
    I nodded at the empty chair opposite me. “Would you care to join me for a drink?” Where was the harm in one drink? I thought. My night would be long. He might be good company. If he turned out to be a bore, I’d retire to my room.
    He fell on the bottle before he took a seat, pouring two fingers of whiskey into his wineglass, streaked with the last of a red he’d consumed. Now that he’d gotten his invitation, his tentative edge fell away, replaced by relief. “This is most generous of you. As you can see, my companions have retired but I am not ready to join them. I favor the evening. I treat it as another man treats the day. So would you, it seems.”
    I watched him drink thirstily, as though it were water and not whiskey. “I like the evening, but I wouldn’t say I’m nocturnal by nature. My ship has just docked, you see, and I’m having a nightcap before . . .” I stopped. It seemed too intimate to say to a stranger what came next: retirement and bed. As it was, I already regretted my impetuous invitation and resolved to bid him adieu after one drink. He was far more interested in the bottle than in me, which boded well for a swift excusal.
    He gulped down the whiskey in his mouth in his haste to reply. “A traveler! Tell me, have you come from far away? Where have you come from, Miss . . . ?”
    “Lanore,” I said wearily.
    At the mention of my name, a change came over him. It was as though he had been half asleep and only now awoke. He stared at me, a glittering and amused look in his eye. “ Lanore, you say. That is a special name to me, Lanore.” His finger dawdled on the wineglass as though weighing a certain matter in his mind before extending his hand to me. “A rare pleasure to meet you, Miss Lanore. Welcome to Baltimore. Is this your first visit?”
    “Yes, it is. But I travel onward tomorrow.”
    “That’s a pity. If you stayed a few days more, I would show you all of Baltimore’s charms. It’s not a complicated city, or a pretentious one, but it has a few entertainments. Baltimore is an honest town, a workingman’s place.” He took a long pull on his liquor. “I can’t imagine higher praise for a city, really.”
    I decided to linger and listen to him. After all, I’d been traveling alone on the ship. There’d been casual conversations with the other travelers at cocktails and meals, and an occasional game of cards or promenade around the deck, but for the most part I’d shunned company. The task waiting for me in America was always foremost in my mind, and that spoiled any desire for companionship. Besides, I’d come to the conclusion that no one had ever benefited from my company and that, indeed, I might be cursed. But now I craved company, and this man would do.
    He told me that Baltimore was not his birthplace but rather an adopted hometown. His life story came out in snippets as he explained how he’d come to be in the hotel that evening. The poor man was both an orphan and a widower, alone in the world