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  “One more flight.”

  “I can walk,” Lincoln said, finding his tongue. He tried to support himself and jerked forward.

  “Let’s leave him here,” Justin said.

  “Just a few more steps, Lincoln,” Dena said.

  They helped him stagger through Justin’s doorway. He hit his head on the jamb.

  “That’s for making me miss the encore,” Justin said, “you fucking giant.”

  “I can walk,” Lincoln said. He couldn’t. They dropped him on the armchair. Over it. Dena was trying to make him drink water.

  “Am I going to die?” he asked.

  “I hope so,” Justin said.

  LINCOLN WOKE UP again some time before dawn and staggered through a bedroom to find the bathroom. He fell back on the recliner face-first and pushed it all the way back, almost flat. His feet still hung off the end. The back of the chair smelled like hair gel and cigarettes. Everything smelled like cigarettes. He opened his eyes. The sun was up now. Justin was sitting on the arm of the chair, smoking a cigarette and using the chair’s built-in ashtray.

  “He’s awake,” Justin called to the kitchen. Lincoln groaned. “Dena was worried about you,” Justin said, turning on the TV. “You sleep like a dead person.”

  “What?”

  “You don’t breathe,” Justin said.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Not visibly,” Dena said, handing him something red to drink.

  “What is this?”

  “Vodka and V-8” she said. “With A1.”

  “Not A1,” Justin said. “Worcestershire.”

  “No, thank you,” Lincoln said.

  “You should drink something,” Justin said. “You’re dehydrated.”

  “Did I pass out last night?”

  “Kind of,” Dena said. “One minute you were standing up. And the next minute, you were lying down on the bar. Like you were resting your head. I haven’t seen anybody drink that much since college.”

  “I never drank that much in college.”

  “Which explains why you’re so bush-league,” Justin said. “Honestly. A man of your size. It’s embarrassing.”

  “I’m really sorry,” Lincoln said to Dena.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “Do you want some eggs or something?”

  “Just some water.” He crawled out of the chair, and Justin immediately slid into his place. The world hadn’t ended. Not even just in the Central Time Zone. SportsCenter was on. Dena followed Lincoln into the kitchen. She was wearing a T-shirt and patterned scrubs. More teeth. She handed him a glass of tap water.

  “Did you chase it away?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “Whatever was making you want to drink that much.”

  He closed his eyes. Beth. “No,” he said, “but I might be done trying.”

  LINCOLN DRANK NEARLY a gallon of water before he left Justin’s apartment. He stopped at the gym before he went home, thinking maybe it would make him feel better. Superior Bodies didn’t close on holidays—it was even open a half day on Christmas—and plenty of people were already there, kick-starting their New Year’s resolutions. Lincoln had to wait in line for a treadmill. He didn’t feel sick anymore, not exactly. Just haggard and morose. He couldn’t help but think about Beth, but thinking about her was like thinking himself into a corner. Like realizing toward the end of a logic puzzle that you’d made a mistake early on, and that there’s no way to reach the solution without starting over. Without erasing everything. Without throwing out all of your assumptions.

  Now that he knew what Beth looked like, he couldn’t remember what it was like to have not known. He couldn’t remember picturing her any other way. She was nothing like Sam, physically. And Sam was his only frame of reference. What would it be like to be with a girl, a woman, who could just barely tuck her head under his chin? “Your own size”—was that what Doris had said? He’d loved how small Sam was. Little bird. Little slip. How he could cover her, swallow her. How it had felt to hold back so that he wouldn’t break her.

  What would it be like to hold a different girl? A girl whose hips and shoulders nearly met his, who wouldn’t disappear beneath him. A girl whose kiss wasn’t always so far out of reach.

  He ended up working out too long or too hard or too hungover. He felt weak and dizzy in the shower and ended up buying three of those horrible protein bars from the front desk. The girl working there talked him into drinking something with electrolytes that was supposed to taste like watermelon. It didn’t. It tasted like Kool-Aid made with corn syrup and salt.

  Lincoln was embarrassed to have given in, even for a moment, to the frenzy of the new year. To have believed there were cosmic forces at work in his favor. His moment had come and gone last night in the newsroom. And Lincoln had dropped the ball.

  CHAPTER 61

  From: Beth Fremont

  To: Jennifer Scribner-Snyder

  Sent: Tues, 01/04/2000 1:26 PM

  Subject: Is it just me, or is the new millennium a lot less cute than the old one?

  Serendipity is not my friend. It’s been five days since my last Cute Guy sighting. I saw Doris in the hall yesterday, and my stomach jumped. I don’t want to start getting excited about Doris sightings.

  <> My world is plenty cute. Mitch and I went crib shopping last night. We didn’t plan to go crib shopping—we were supposed to be looking at dishwashers—but we walked by the cribs, and there it was. Cream-colored with a rocking horse carved into the headboard. Now we can’t afford a dishwasher.

  <> A crib? Already? I wanted to help pick out the crib. Can I help pick out the bedding? You can’t do all this baby stuff without me. I’m trying to have a vicarious pregnancy here.

  <> I’m sorry. It was unplanned. I’m probably picking out paint for the nursery this weekend, do you want to come?

  <> You know that I do. And that I can’t. This weekend is the big wedding.

  <> Oh, right. Are you looking forward to it?

  <> Looking forward to it being over.

  <> Does Kiley know how cranky her maid of honor is?

  <> She’s too deliriously happy to notice.

  I picked up my dress on Sunday. It’s deliriously ugly, especially with me in it, and I still haven’t come up with a Kiley-approved way to hide my upper arms.

  <> Your arms are fine.

  Wasn’t this wedding supposed to have a millennium theme? Is that still happening?

  <> It was indeed. Kiley was going to make 2,000 paper cranes to strew about the reception, but she fizzled out at 380. Now the theme is Winter Wonderland. (Hence the strapless dresses, I guess.)

  And, by the way, you only think my arms are fine because I keep them covered up. Because I’ve mastered the art of misdirection. All of my clothes are engineered to draw the eye away from my arm-shoulder area.

  <> Now that I think about it, we’ve known each other six years, and I’ve never seen you in a bathing suit. Or a tank top.

  <> Not a coincidence, my friend. I’ve got the arms of a Sicilian grandmother. Arms for picking olives and stirring hearty tomato sauces. Shoulders for carrying buckets of water from the stream to the farmhouse.

  <> Has Chris seen your shoulders?

  <> He’s seen them. But he hasn’t seen them.

  <> I get it, but I don’t get it.

  <> No sleeveless negligees. No direct sunlight. Sometimes when I’m getting out of the shower, I shout, “Hey, look, a bobcat!”

  <> I’ll bet he falls for that every time.

  <> It’s Chris. So recreational drugs are a factor.

  Anyway, I bought a dressy cardigan that I thought I could wear with my bridesmaid dress, but Kiley said it was too “frumpy” and that it w
as the wrong shade of sage. And then she said, “God, Beth, no one is going to be looking at your arms.”

  And my mom said, “She’s right, Beth, all eyes will be on the bride.”

  Which just infuriated me. Why did that infuriate me? It’s true. But all I could think was, if no one is going to be looking at me, then why can’t I wear my fucking sweater? We were at Victoria’s Secret. Did I mention that we were at Victoria’s Secret? My sister wasn’t happy with her strapless bra, so we all had to go to Victoria’s Secret. I’m not happy with my strapless bra either. Because I’m not happy with my strapless dress.

  While Kiley was trying on bras, my mom patted me on the arm and said, “Honey, this is Kiley’s day. Just roll with it.” Have I also mentioned that neither of these women have large arms? I got them from my father’s mother, my own Italian grandmother, a woman who is now dead, but who, while alive, had the sense to never wear a strapless dress.

  <> I can wait until next week to go nursery shopping.

  <> Would you do that for me?

  <> Of course I would. I’ll even let you wear your ugly green sweater.

  Is Chris going to the wedding with you?

  <> And to the rehearsal dinner. And to Sunday brunch. He told me that he didn’t think I should do anything wedding-related by myself. He said, “Every time you talk about it, you go all blurry around the edges.” Which of course made me cry. He’s pretty good when I cry. He doesn’t get flustered.

  <> Well done, Chris.

  <> I know. Five stars. He’s even letting me buy him a new jacket and real pants. Slacks. But I’m not allowed to call them slacks. That word gives him the heebie-jeebies. Normally, I’m not allowed to buy him clothes of any sort.

  <> I’m relieved to hear you’re not the one who picks out all those tight jeans he wears. What will he do with his hair? Put it in a ponytail?

  <> There’s nothing you can do with that hair. You just have to let go and let God.

  Hey, you know what? All this talk about my cute boyfriend is diminishing my cute cravings.

  <> As well it should.

  CHAPTER 62

  BETH MISSED HIM.

  Lincoln thought he’d hit bottom on New Year’s, and it had been a relief. Wasn’t hitting bottom the thing you had to do to knock some sense into yourself? Wasn’t hitting bottom the thing that showed you which way was up?

  CHAPTER 63

  From: Jennifer Scribner-Snyder

  To: Beth Fremont

  Sent: Fri, 01/07/2000 2:44 PM

  Subject: Are you here?

  Distract me.

  <> Distract you? Gladly. Productivity-schmoductivity.

  What are you supposed to be working on?

  <> I don’t know. Writing headlines, I guess. Reading the same stories over and over to make sure some idiot reporter didn’t use “they’re” when he should have used “their.” Changing “which”es to “that”s. Arguing with someone about sequence of tenses.

  <> What on earth is sequence of tenses?

  <> It’s top-secret copy editor stuff.

  <> I didn’t know there was such a thing.

  <> Are you kidding? Everything about being a copy editor is top secret—by default, really—because no one else cares.

  <> Can I ask why you need distracting? Are they making you edit the sports section again?

  <> No, it’s not work.

  I’ve been having these strange cramps for the last few days. Not even cramps—they’re more like assertive twinges. I called our midwife and described them to her, and she seemed pretty confident that nothing is wrong. She said that it’s natural to feel your uterus readjusting at the end of the first trimester. “This is your first pregnancy,” she said. “It’s going to feel strange.” She also told me that I might feel better if I talked to the baby.

  <> What are you supposed to say? Are you supposed to talk out loud? Or are you supposed to reach out for it on the astral plane?

  <> I’m supposed to talk out loud. “Relax,” she said. “Put on some quiet music. Light a few candles. Tune in to the life within you.” I’m supposed to tell the baby that it’s welcome and wanted and that it doesn’t have to worry about anything right now except getting big and strong.

  I’ve tried it a few times, when I’m alone in the car. But I never get past small talk. I feel sort of like I’m invading the baby’s space or like it’s going to wonder, after two months of respectful silence, why I’ve suddenly decided we need to get all personal with each other.

  Also, I don’t want to let on that something might be wrong. So I try to keep it light. “I hope you’re comfortable. I hope I’m eating enough iron. Sorry I stopped taking the expensive vitamins, they made me throw up.” I usually end up crying and hoping that the baby isn’t actually paying attention.

  <> I kind of like the idea of you talking to the baby. Even if it doesn’t understand you. There’s something living inside of you. It makes sense to be neighborly.

  Maybe I’ll start talking to my eggs. Pep talks. Like William Wallace’s speech in Braveheart.

  <> I think I’ll feel less ridiculous talking to it after it has ears.

  <> When does it get ears?

  <> I don’t know. I’d ask Mitch, but I don’t want him to know any of this.

  I feel like I’ve known all along that something was bound to go wrong at some point in this pregnancy. It’s all been too easy so far.

  <> Nothing is bound to go wrong. Nothing is bound, period. And the chances are so much better that everything is going to be all right.

  <> Easy for you to say. Easy for the midwife to say. It’s so easy for someone else to say, “Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be all right.” Why not say it? It doesn’t cost anything. It doesn’t mean anything. No one will hold you to it if you’re wrong.

  <> Your midwife says it’s going to be okay because she spends her whole life working with pregnant women. She’s speaking from experience.

  And I say it because I trust her, and because I believe that being miserable about some bad thing that might not ever happen won’t do you any good.

  <> I disagree. I believe that worrying about a bad thing prepares you for it when it comes. If you worry, the bad thing doesn’t hit you as hard. You can roll with the punch if you see it coming.

  <> Are you in pain? Maybe you should go home.

  <> No, it doesn’t hurt. It feels more like a muscle flexing. Besides, if I go home, I will obsess powerfully, with all my might. Even I don’t think that’s a good idea.

  So distract me. Tell me more about your cute security guard. Complain about your sister’s wedding. Pick a fight with me about ending a sentence with a preposition.

  <> Okay, here’s something distracting: I’ve gone to a tanning salon twice this week. My brother’s wife said it would make my arms look thinner. I think it will probably just make them look tanner—but big tan arms do seem more appealing than big pale arms, so I’m doing it.

  <> I hate to say this, because it’s advice I could never follow myself—in fact, this is probably the exact opposite of how I’d behave in your situation: But maybe the best thing for you to do is to let the arm thing go. Yes, somebody might notice that your upper arms are somewhat out of proportion with the rest of your body, but let’s be honest, almost nobody looks good in a strapless dress.

  <> So why has it become the dominant dress of our time? Do you know that they don’t even make wedding dresses with sleeves anymore? Everyone—regardless of weight, c
hest size, back acne, stretch marks, hunched shoulders, or over-prominent clavicle—is forced to wear one. Why? The whole point of clothing is to hide your shame. (Genesis 3:7)

  <> Did you seriously just consult a Bible?

  <> Derek has one on his desk, it wasn’t that big of a deal.

  Hey, I have to go now. I’m taking off early to get ready for the rehearsal dinner. Call me this weekend if you still need distracting, okay?

  <> You’ll be caught up in wedding stuff.

  <> And grateful for the interruption, I’m sure.

  <> I’ll bet you’re going to have a really nice time at the wedding and feel bad for having dreaded it for months.

  <> It could happen, I guess. There is an open bar.

  CHAPTER 64

  LINCOLN DIDN’T FEEL like going home that night after work. He kept thinking about Beth in a strapless dress. Creamy white shoulders. Freckles. Maybe he should go out with one of the girls Justin was always trying to hook him up with. Or with one of his sister’s Lutherans. Or with that girl who works at the gym, Becca. She’d been spotting for Lincoln lately on the bench press, and it seemed like she touched his arms a lot when she didn’t really have to. Maybe she was still impressed with his elbows.

  Lincoln ended up at the Village Inn, alone. When the waitress came, he ordered two pieces of French silk pie. She brought them on separate plates, which was embarrassing for some reason.

  He had a copy of the next day’s paper, one of the perks of working at The Courier, but he was so agitated, he couldn’t read it.

  He was so agitated, so at loose ends, he didn’t notice until his second piece of pie that Chris was sitting at the next booth. Beth’s Chris. He was actually facing Lincoln, both of them sitting alone at their tables.

  Lincoln remembered the last time he’d seen Chris, on New Year’s Eve, and considered leaping across the table to follow up on smashing his face. But he’d lost the urge.