“What did they give at Oxford?”
“Three,” he said.
“Oh, the misery!”
He loosened his tie before a quick glance my way. “Wait, have I said thank you for coming to my inaugural address, Joy? Or have I been a delinquent and unworthy friend by not saying it out loud?”
“Even though I wasn’t invited?”
He blushed, his cheeks dark red.
“Oh, I’m joking, Jack. Don’t look piqued. It was stupendous. You should have heard everyone talking about it as they came out of the room. I guarantee they’ll be forever quoting the line about medievalists—‘Use your specimens while you can. There are not going to be many more dinosaurs.’ The room was packed with so many robes and hats I could barely see you there, but I did listen.”
“I knew you were there, and it was calming. I was quite nervous. My first lecture, and there was all that recording equipment. I felt like I was inside a glass bell trying to make an impression that would last for all my tenure.”
“It’s a lecture they will talk about for years. But I must disagree with you on one point.”
His eyebrows rose. “Do tell me.”
“You made the case that the break between cultures came with the fall of Rome or the Renaissance, but I believe it was with the rise of science as logic.”
His mouth broke into a great smile. “Oh, you do?”
“I do. Are you sure you didn’t sacrifice accuracy in the name of entertainment?”
“No, I’m not sure at all. Now must I rethink my entire inaugural lecture?” He smacked his hand on his knee.
“You didn’t agree with everything I wrote in Smoke,” I said to soften the blow—if it was a blow at all.
“We mustn’t always agree,” he said. “Sometimes that is the intrigue.” He stood and ripped open a box and took out a pile of books.
I did the same, both of us in a jolly mood. The empty dark wooden bookshelves began to fill as we unpacked. From a dusty pile, I held up a copy of Dante’s Divine Comedy.
“‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter here,’” I said with great dramatic flair.
He bellowed that laugh and then furrowed his brow above his glasses. “‘The devil is not as black as he is painted.’”
We were off and running: as we unpacked, we chose a book and then quoted a line from memory. If we doubted the truth of the line, we’d check inside. When I pulled Charles Williams’s The Greater Trumps from the box, the very book my husband had written a foreword for, I flubbed the line “Nothing was certain, but everything was safe—that was part of the mystery of love.” Instead I stated, “‘Everything is safe, that’s the mystery of love.’”
“Aha!” Jack bellowed. “You aren’t perfect.”
“Perfect? Far, far from it, Jack. As you well know.”
Yet he didn’t flub one line. Not one. Soon we were competing to quote the most absurd or dirty line, one that might make the other blush. In any other small room with any other man, this might be considered flirting, but not with Jack—it was only great fun. Wasn’t it?
I plucked a book from a box and dusted off the cover. It was Phantastes. I smiled and held it up to Jack without a word—we knew what it meant to both of us.
“‘Past tears are present strength,’” Jack quoted and reached for the book.
“Oh yes! That’s so true.” I pressed the volume to my chest.
He reached over and eased it from my hands, held it up. “This book isn’t so much a book as a thunderclap.” He ran his hand over the cover. “Do you think anyone else could play this little game with us? Anyone who has the same photographic memory?”
“If there is such a someone, I don’t know them.”
He shook his head. “And neither do I.”
This game, which he won, though I gave him a great run for his money, went on well into the night.
At last I stood and ran my hands along the spines of newly shelved books. “Jack, it’s almost midnight. Let’s be done with this for the night.”
“Almost midnight?”
“Old lang syne,” I said and brushed off my shirt, which was covered in dirt and book dust. I was bone tired and yet unwilling to forfeit five minutes with him if he still wanted me near.
New Year’s Eve—would this be the moment when he would close that space between us with a kiss? Would he see and feel what flickered in his new rooms? As the tower outside tolled midnight, the bells echoing and clanging, he collapsed onto his desk chair, then swiveled toward me. “A new year. I can’t think of a better way to begin it than with you.”