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  <> And do stay-at-home-mom stuff. Bake. Do crafts.

  <> What kind of crafts?

  <> I could crochet sweaters and make elaborate scrapbooks. I could buy one of those hot-glue guns.

  <> If our foremothers could hear us, they would regret winning the sexual revolution.

  <> My mother didn’t fight in the sexual revolution. She’s not even aware it happened. My dad left 20 years ago, and she still goes on and on about The Man being the head of the household.

  <> So you grew up in a headless household?

  <> Exactly. With my mother, the housewife without a husband.

  <> Your mother is depressing. I’m going back to my dentist fantasy.

  <> And I’m going back to work.

  <> Killjoy.

  CHAPTER 26

  BETH AND JENNIFER seemed to have forgotten all about the rules and restrictions. They didn’t censor themselves anymore. Beth was so careless, some of her e-mails to other coworkers ended up in the WebFence folder, too.

  Beth.

  Lincoln couldn’t explain, even to himself, why she mattered to him. She and Jennifer were both funny, both caring, both smart as whips. But Beth’s whip always caught him by the ankle.

  He felt like he could hear her talking when he read her mail, like he could see her even though he still didn’t know what she looked like. He felt like he could hear her laughing.

  He loved the way she put on kid gloves when Jennifer talked about her marriage and Mitch. He loved the way she riffed on her siblings and her bosses and herself. He tried not to love that she could recite scenes from Ghostbusters, that she liked kung fu movies and could name all of the original X-Men—because those seemed like reasons a guy would fall for a girl in a Kevin Smith movie.

  Falling …Was he falling? Or was he just bored?

  Sometimes, when his shift was over, maybe once or twice a week, Lincoln would walk through the newsroom, by Beth’s desk, just to see the jumble of coffee cups and notebooks. Just to see the proof of her. By 1:00 a.m., even the copy editors were usually gone, and the room was lit by streetlights. If Lincoln felt a pang of conscience on his way to the newsroom, he told himself that it wasn’t very wrong what he was doing. As long as he didn’t try to see Beth herself. He told himself it was like having a crush on a girl in a soap opera, a radio soap opera. Not anything to be proud of, but harmless. Something to make the nights go faster.

  On some nights, like tonight, he’d let himself stop a moment at her desk.

  A coffee cup. A half-eaten Toblerone. A puddle of spilled paper clips. And something new, a concert flyer, pinned above her monitor. It was hot pink with a picture of a cartoon guitar—Sacajawea at the Ranch Bowl, Saturday night. This Saturday night.

  Huh.

  JUSTIN WAS UP for a concert. Justin was up for anything, always. He offered to drive, but Lincoln said they should probably just meet at the bar.

  “Dude, I get it, you’re a rambling man. I won’t tie you down.”

  They met at the Ranch Bowl about a half hour before Sacajawea took the stage. Justin was clearly disappointed with the place. It was dirty and cramped, there were no tables or shot specials, and you had to squeeze behind the stage just to get to the bar. The crowd was mostly men, and the band onstage—Razorwine, according to their drum kit—sounded like somebody playing a Beastie Boys album over a table saw. Lincoln and Justin found a spot along the wall to lean against, and Justin immediately started talking about leaving. He was too discouraged even to buy a drink.

  “Lincoln, come on, this place is depressing. It’s a graveyard. Worse. A fucking pet cemetery. Lincoln. Dude. Let’s go. Come on. Drinks on me for the rest of the night.”

  A guy standing near them, a bulky guy in a flannel shirt, eventually told Justin to shut up. “Some of us came to listen to the music.”

  “That’s your own fucking problem,” Justin said through clenched teeth and a puff of Camel smoke. Lincoln grabbed his friend by the sleeve and pulled him back.

  “What are you afraid of?” Justin demanded. “You’re a brick wall. You can take that guy.”

  “I don’t want to take him. I just want to hear this band, the next band. I thought you liked metal.”

  “This isn’t metal music,” Justin said. “This is horseshit.”

  “A half hour,” Lincoln said. “Then we’ll go wherever you want.”

  The table-saw band ended their set, and Sacajawea began setting up their instruments. It wasn’t hard to find him, Beth’s boyfriend. He was just as good-looking in person as he was in her photos. Willowy and wild-haired. All the guys in the band had long feminine hair. They were wearing tight pants and open, flowing shirts.

  “What the fuck,” Justin said.

  The crowd around them was shifting. The burly guys headed for the bar, and groups of women emerged from the shadows. Girls in low-rise jeans. Girls with pierced tongues and butterfly tattoos. “Where did all these belly rings come from?” Justin wanted to know. The lights dropped, and Sacajawea’s set started with a blistering guitar solo.

  The women pressed forward against each other, against the stage. Like Lincoln, most of the girls had eyes only for the guitarist. The singer—that would be Stef, Lincoln thought—had to woo them his way. He purred like Robert Plant and stomped like Mick Jagger. By the end of the first song, Stef was pulling girls onstage to grind against his mic stand. But not Chris. Chris was focused on his guitar. Every once in a while, he’d look up at the girls in the audience and smile, as if he’d just noticed them there. They loved that.

  “Let’s go,” Lincoln said to Justin, not sure anymore what he had come to see. He’d skipped D&D for this.

  “Fuck you,” Justin said. “These guys rock.”

  They did rock, Lincoln admitted to himself. If you liked that sort of thing. Sweaty, sexy, soaring acid rock. He and Justin stayed for the rest of the show. After it was over, Justin wanted to go the Village Inn across the street. He spent twenty minutes rehashing the concert and another two hours talking about a girl, the same girl he’d gone home with the night he and Lincoln had gone to The Steel Guitar together. Her name was Dena, and she was a dental hygienist. They’d gone out or stayed in almost every night since they’d met, and now Dena wanted to be exclusive, which was stupid, Justin said, because he didn’t have time to see anyone else anyway.

  But being exclusive, practically speaking, Dena said, was different from being exclusive, officially speaking. The former, she argued, meant that Justin was still allowed to have sex with somebody as soon as he had fifteen minutes of free time and a willing partner. Which was exactly fucking right, Justin said. He didn’t want a girlfriend. He hated the idea of being with just one person—almost as much as he hated the idea of sharing Dena with anybody else.

  Lincoln ate two pieces of French silk pie and listened. “If you really wanted to be with another girl,” he said finally, mulling a third piece, “you would be. You wouldn’t be here with me, talking about Dena.”

  Justin thought for a moment. “Evil fucking genius,” he said, slapping Lincoln on the arm and scooting out of their booth. “Dude. Thanks. I’ll call you.”

  Lincoln stayed at the restaurant to finish his coffee and think about whether the universe had rewarded Justin with true love at The Steel Guitar just to punish Lincoln for saying that Cupid could never get past the bouncer there.

  The Village Inn had reached its 3:00 a.m. nadir when Lincoln got up to leave. The restaurant was empty except for a man sitting in a corner booth, wearing headphones and reading a paperback. Even in the early-morning, bacon-grease light, Chris looked flawless. The waitress filling the ketchup bottles was staring at him, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  CHAPTER 27

  “HAVE YOU BEEN up to the newsroom before?” Greg asked Lincoln when he got to work Monday afternoon.

&nb
sp; “No.” How did Greg know? What did Greg know? No, wait, nothing. There was nothing to know. “I’m sorry,” Lincoln said, “what?”

  “What? The newsroom,” Greg said. “You’ve been up to the newsroom before, right?”

  “Right,” Lincoln said.

  “Right, anyway. So you know where the copy editors sit?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “I need you to install these new towers at a few stations.” Greg pointed to a stack of computer boxes and handed Lincoln a piece of paper.

  “Now?”

  “Yeah. They know you’re coming. They’ve moved their people to different desks.”

  Lincoln loaded the boxes onto a cart and took the elevator to the newsroom. The place was hardly recognizable at four o’clock, in daylight. There were people everywhere, all typing or talking or moving around. You wouldn’t think that writing and editing would make so much noise. Telephones ringing, televisions buzzing, babies crying …

  Babies? There was a crowd of people at one end of the copy desk, all fussing over a stroller. A small boy was sitting on someone’s desk, playing with a stapler.

  Lincoln started disconnecting cables, untangling wires, and trying not to look too closely at any of them. Jennifer must sit over here with the other day copy editors. She might still be here. This might even be her desk. No, not unless she was obsessed with Kansas basketball. What did he know about her? That she was married. Would she look married? That she thought she was fat …That could be any of them. Beth could be here, too. Walking around. Talking to an editor. Cooing over that baby.

  No, he told himself, don’t look.

  It took about three hours to install the new computers. The newsroom turned into its nighttime self while Lincoln worked. It got quieter and darker. The people wearing ties gave way to people wearing wrinkled T-shirts and shorts. One of the nighttime editors, a girl with a limp blond ponytail and nice blue eyes, brought in banana bread and offered him a piece.

  He thanked her, then headed up to the empty IT office without looking back.

  CHAPTER 28

  From: Jennifer Scribner-Snyder

  To: Beth Fremont

  Sent: Mon, 10/18/1999 4:08 PM

  Subject: This isn’t a day care, you know.

  It’s a newsroom.

  <> What are you getting at—that I shouldn’t be taking a nap? Or that I shouldn’t be using a sippy cup? Because it’s all part of my method.

  <> What I’m getting at is, I shouldn’t have to listen to babbling and cooing when I’m trying to edit Dear Abby.

  <> Why do you have to edit Dear Abby? Doesn’t all that stuff come in a package from the wire service?

  <> Someone has to write the headline. Someone has to give it a good once-over, make sure there aren’t words or entire paragraphs missing. Content doesn’t magically appear in the newspaper. Hence, the roomful of editors.

  <> Editors, huh? By golly …you’re right. They’re everywhere. What is this place? Heaven?

  <> Ha.

  <> You’re supposed to say, “It’s Iowa.”

  <> Maybe next time.

  Why do people with children bring them to work? This isn’t a place for children. There are no toys here. There are no changing stations. The drinking fountains are all set at adult heights.

  This is a workplace. People come here to get away from their kids—to get away from all talk of kids. If we wanted to work with children, we would get jobs at primary schools and puppet shows. We would walk around with peppermint sticks in our pockets.

  This is a newsroom. Do you see any peppermint sticks?

  <> You alliterate when you’re angry. It’s adorable.

  <> You are a barrel of laughs today, an entire barrel.

  <> Speaking of adorable, I saw my cute guy again last week.

  <> Are you sure? I didn’t hear the alarm. Also, when did he become your cute guy?

  <> No one else has claimed him. He definitely works in Advertising. I saw him sitting back there.

  <> What were you doing in Advertising? That’s on the other side of the building.

  <> I was trolling for cute guys. (Also, Advertising has the only pop machine in the building that sells root beer.) He was sitting at his cute desk, typing on his cute computer, looking super-super cute.

  <> Advertising, huh? I’m pretty sure they make more than us over there.

  <> They might just look like they make more.

  And he doesn’t necessarily look like he sells advertising. He’s not one of those guys with the suits and the Glengarry Glen Ross smiles. He doesn’t look like he wears product in his hair.

  <> I want to see him. Maybe we should take a root-beer break.

  <> How can someone who hates children enjoy root beer?

  CHAPTER 29

  BETH HAD BEEN there. At her desk. In the same room with him, at the same time. Thinking about somebody else. About somebody who worked in Advertising, no less. Lincoln hated the guys who worked in Advertising. Whenever WebFence caught a dirty joke, it inevitably originated from a guy in Advertising. Salespeople. Lincoln hated salespeople. Except Justin. And, honestly, if he didn’t know Justin, he’d probably hate him, too.

  One time, he’d had to rebuild a hard drive up in Advertising; it’d taken a few hours, and the next day, when Lincoln went to put on his sweatshirt, it still smelled like Drakkar Noir. No wonder my mom thinks I’m gay.

  Jealous, he thought, as he walked by Beth’s desk that night—coffee cups, Halloween candy, Discman—I’m jealous. And not even of the boyfriend. He felt so far from being in the same league as Chris, that he couldn’t be jealous of him. But some guy who works in Advertising, some guy who tries to upsell, who makes cold calls …

  Lincoln picked up a miniature Mr. Goodbar and unwrapped it. Beth had been sitting right here while he was working on the copy desk. He might have been able to see her if he’d looked.

  CHAPTER 30

  From: Jennifer Scribner-Snyder

  To: Beth Fremont

  Sent: Tues, 10/26/1999 9:45 AM

  Subject: I think I’m pregnant.

  I’m serious this time.

  <> Have you been exposed to radiation? Eating a lot of tuna? Shooting heroin?

  <> No, honestly, this isn’t a paranoid thing. I think I’m pregnant.

  <> Because your period is three minutes late. Because you’ve had to pee twice in the last hour. Because you feel a presence in your womb.

  <> Because I had unprotected sex while I was ovulating.

  <> Is this a joke? Am I on Candid Camera? Who are you really, and what have you done with my friend?

  The Jennifer Scribner-Snyder I know and love would never publicly admit to having had any sex at all, and certainly wouldn’t sully her fingertips by typing it out like that.

  She also would never start a sentence with “because.” Where’s my prudish little friend? What have you done with her?

  <> I don’t have time to mince words.

  <> Why not? How pregnant are you?

  <> Four days.

  <> That’s a little specific. (Almost grossly specific.) How could you possibly know already? And how do you know you were ovulating? Are you one of those women who can feel their eggs moving around?

  <> I know I was ovulating because I bought a fertility monitor.

  <> Just assume that my response to your next 12 statements is, “Say what?”

  <> I thought that if I knew when I was ovulating, I could avoid intimate contact at those times (which, hon
estly, hasn’t been much of an issue lately).

  So, four days ago, I knew I was ovulating. On that day, I hardly talked to Mitch. He left for school while I was still asleep. When I came home from work, he was upstairs, practicing the tuba. I could have gone up to tell him I was home, but I didn’t. I could have yelled up to see if he wanted a grilled cheese sandwich, but I didn’t.

  When he came up to bed, I was already there, watching a Frasier rerun. I watched him get ready for bed, and he didn’t say a word to me. It wasn’t like he was mad; it was more like I was a piece of debris in the middle of the road that he was driving around.

  I thought to myself, “My marriage is the most important thing in my life. I would rather have a happy marriage than anything—a good job, a nice house, opposable thumbs, the right to vote, anything. If not wanting a baby is destroying my marriage, I’ll have a baby. I’ll have 10 babies. I’ll do whatever I have to do.”

  <> What did Mitch think?

  <> I don’t know. I didn’t tell him about the ovulating part. He was surprised by the unprotected part. I don’t know.

  <> Okay, so you might be pregnant. But you might not.

  <> You mean, I might be infertile.

  <> No, I mean, you might have at least another month to think about whether you really want to get pregnant. Most couples have to try more than once. You might not have sealed your fate four days ago.

  <> I hope I did. I just want to get this over with.

  <> Write that down, so you’ll remember to put it in the baby book.

  How long before you know for sure?

  <> Not long. They have those super-sensitive pregnancy tests that can tell whether you’re even thinking about getting pregnant.

  <> So, are we rooting for a positive or a negative result, here?

  <> Just root for me.

  <