Also—confirmed by whom?

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Confirmed by me. I know a cute guy when I see him. Remember when I told you about the cute messenger? (And I just now made up the alarm. It felt necessary.)

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Oh, that messenger was cute.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> And that’s why he didn’t last. This place can’t sustain cuteness, I don’t know why. It’s cuteness-cursed.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> You’re very cute.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Oh, I was. Once. Before I came to this decuteing factory. Look around you.

We journalists are a homely lot.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Matt Lauer isn’t homely.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Now, that is a matter of opinion. (And I can’t believe you went straight to Matt Lauer. Have you seen Brian Williams?) Regardless, TV journalists don’t count; cute is their job.

There’s no reason to look pretty in print journalism. Readers don’t care if you’re cute. Especially not my readers. The only time I’m out in public, I’m sitting in the dark.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Now that you mention it, I haven’t worn lipstick to work in three years.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> And you’re still too cute for the copy desk.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Damn me with faint praise, why don’t you.

Tell me more about this cute guy you’ve imagined.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> There’s not much to tell—beyond his monumental cuteness.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Monumental?

<<Beth to Jennifer>> He’s very, very tall. And strong-looking. Like the kind of guy you feel standing next to you before you actually see him, because he’s blocking so much ambient light.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Is that how you spotted him?

<<Beth to Jennifer>> No, I spotted him the first time walking down the hallway. And then I spotted him at the drinking fountain—and I thought to myself, “Now there’s a tall drink of water …

getting a drink of water.” He has really nice brown hair and action-hero facial features.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Explain.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Manly. Kind of square. Harrison Fordish. The kind of guy you can picture negotiating for hostages and also jumping away from an explosion.

Do you think it’s scandalous that someone in a committed relationship like mine is checking out guys at the drinking fountain?

<<Jennifer to Beth>> No. How could you not notice a cute guy around here? That’s like spotting a passenger pigeon.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> A passenger pigeon with a sweet ass.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Why did you have to go there?

<<Beth to Jennifer>> To bug you. I didn’t even look at his butt. I never remember to do that.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> I’m going back to work now.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> You seem a little testy. Is everything okay?

<<Jennifer to Beth>> I’m fine.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> See what I mean? Testy.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Okay, I’m not fine. But I’m too embarrassed to talk about why.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Don’t talk, then. Type.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Only if you don’t go repeating what I’m about to tell you. It makes me sound unbalanced.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> I won’t. I swear. Cross my heart, needles, etc.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> All right. But this is really stupid. More stupid than usual. I was at the mall last night, walking around by myself, trying not to spend money, trying not to think about a delicious Cinnabon …and I found myself walking by the Baby Gap. I’ve never been in a Baby Gap. So, I decided to duck in. On a lark.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Right. On a lark. I’m familiar with those. So …

<<Jennifer to Beth>> So …I’m larking through the Baby Gap, looking at tiny capri pants and sweaters that cost more than …I don’t know, more than they should. And I get totally sucked in by this ridiculous, tiny fur coat. The kind of coat a baby might need to go to the ballet. In Moscow. In 1918. To match her tiny pearls.

I’m looking at this preposterous coat, and a Baby Gap woman comes up to me and says, “Isn’t that sweet? How old is your daughter?” And I say, “Oh, no. She’s not. Not yet.”

And she says, “When are you due?”

And I say, “February.”

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Whoa.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> I know. I just lied. About being pregnant. If I were really pregnant, I wouldn’t be at the Baby Gap, I’d be sitting in a dark room, sobbing.

So Baby Gap lady says, “Well, then you’ll want one for next season, size 6 to 12 months. These coats are a steal. We just marked them down today.”

And I agreed that a faux fur coat for only $32.99 was indeed an irresistible deal.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> You bought baby clothes? What did Mitch say?

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Nothing! I hid it in the attic. I felt like I was hiding a body.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Wow. I don’t know what to say. Does this mean you’re softening on the baby issue?

<<Jennifer to Beth>> I think it means I’m softening on the sanity issue. I’m viewing this as a dysfunctional appendage to my general psychosis about babies. I still dread getting pregnant. But now I’m buying clothes for the child I’m terrified to have, and guess what, it’s a girl.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Wow.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> I know.

CHAPTER 20

SOMETIME AFTER MIDNIGHT, Lincoln walked up to the newsroom. It was mostly empty. There were a few nightside copy editors left, poring over the next morning’s newspaper. Someone was sitting at the city desk, listening to a crackling police scanner and working on tomorrow’s crossword.

Lincoln walked to the other side of the long room, where he assumed the Entertainment staff worked. Back there, the cubicles were full of movie posters, concert flyers, promotional photos and toys.

He stopped at a printer and opened it, just to look like he had something to do. Which desk was he looking for? Maybe the one with the R.E.M. stickers. Probably not the one with the stuffed Bart Simpson and half a dozen fully poseable Alien action figures …but maybe. Maybe. Would Beth have a Page-a-Day cat calendar? A potted plant? A Sandman poster? A Marilyn Manson press pass?

A Sandman poster.

He looked back at the copy desk. He could hardly see the copy editors from here, which meant they could hardly see him. He walked over to Beth’s cubicle, to what he thought was her cubicle.

A Sandman poster. A Rushmore poster. A three-year-old flyer for Sacajawea at Sokol Hall. A dictionary. A French dictionary. Three books by Leonard Maltin. A high school journalism award.

Empty coffee cups. Starburst wrappers. Photographs.

He sat at her desk and lamely started to take apart her computer mouse.

Photographs. One was a concert photograph, a guy playing guitar. Obviously her boyfriend, Chris.

In another frame, the same guy sat on a beach. In another, he wore a suit. He looked like a rock star even without the guitar. Slender and slouched over. Never quite smiling. Always looking past the camera. Shaggy. Roguish. Handsome.

There were family pictures, too, of angelic dark-haired babies and nice-looking, well-dressed adults —but none of them seemed to be Beth. They weren’t the right age, or they were standing with what were clearly husbands or children.

Lincoln went back to looking at the boyfriend. Looking at his not-quite smile and his sharp cheekbones. At his long, twisting waist. He looked like he had a get-out-of-jail-free card in his back pocket. If you looked like that, a woman would forgive you. She would expect to have to forgive you now and then.

Lincoln set the mouse down and walked back to the information technology office. Lumbered back.

He could see his dim reflection in the darkened office windows along the hall. He felt heavy and plain.

Lumpy. Thick. Gray.

He shouldn’t have done that. What he’d just done. Gone to her desk.

It felt wrong, like he’d crossed a line.

Beth was funny. She was smart. She was interesting. And she had the sort of job that made someone more interesting. The sort of job a woman would have in a movie, a romantic comedy starring John Cusack.

He’d wanted to see what she looked like. He’d wanted to see where she sat when she wrote the things he read.

He was glad he hadn’t found a picture of her. It had been enough to see the pictures of people she loved. To see how he didn’t fit into them.

“I THOUGHT THAT if I moved back home,” Lincoln said to Eve when she called the next day, “that I’d get a life.”

“Are you retarded?”

“I thought you stopped saying ‘retarded’ and ‘gay’ so that your kids wouldn’t pick it up.”

“I can’t help it. That’s how retarded you sound right now. Why would you think that? And why would you refer to it as moving back home? You never moved out.”

“Yes, I did. I left for college ten years ago.”

“And you came back every summer.”

“Not every summer. There were summers when I took classes.”

“Whatever,” she said. “How could you think that moving in with your mother full-time would help you get a life?”

“Because it meant that I was finally done with school. That’s when all my friends got lives, after they graduated. That’s when they got jobs and got married.”

“Okay …”

“I think I missed my window,” he said.

“What window?”

“My get-a-life window. I think I was supposed to figure all this stuff out somewhere between twenty-two and twenty-six, and now it’s too late.”

“It’s not too late,” she said. “You are getting a life. You’ve got a job, you’re saving up to move out.

You’re meeting people. You went to a bar …”

“And that was a disaster. Actually, everything has been a disaster since I quit school.”

“You didn’t quit school,” she said. He could hear her rolling her eyes. “You finished your master’s degree. Another master’s degree.”

“Everything has been a disaster since I decided my life as it was wasn’t good enough.”

“It wasn’t good enough,” she said.

“It was good enough for me.”

“Then why have you been trying so hard to change it?”

THAT SATURDAY NIGHT, Lincoln played Dungeons & Dragons for the first time in a month.

Christine grinned when she saw him at the door.

“Lincoln, hey!” Christine was short and round with rumpled blond hair. She was carrying a baby in some sort of sling, and when she hugged Lincoln, the baby was smushed between them.

“We thought we’d lost you to the big city,” Dave said, rounding the corner.

“You did,” Lincoln said. “I found a group of younger, better-looking gamers.”

“We all knew that would happen eventually,” Dave said, clapping Lincoln on the back and leading him into house. “This game has gotten entirely too chaotic-evil without you. We tried to kill off your character last week to punish you for abandoning us, but Christine wouldn’t let us, so we left you in a pit instead. Possibly a snake-filled pit. You’ll have to work that out with Larry, he’s the Dungeon Master this week.”

“We just started playing,” Christine said. “You should’ve called, we would’ve waited for you.”

“You should have called,” Troy said from the dining room table. “I wouldn’t have had to ride my bike twelve miles to get here.”

“Troy, I said I’d pick you up,” Larry said. Larry was a little older than the rest of them, in his early thirties, an Air Force captain with a family and some secret job involving artificial intelligence.

“Your car smells like juice boxes,” Troy said.

“Do you have any idea what you smell like?” Larry asked.

“It’s sandalwood,” Troy said.

“You smell like a Pier One store with body odor,” Lincoln said, finding his spot in the corner.

They’d saved it for him. Dave handed him a slice of pizza.

“It’s a masculine scent,” Troy said.

“I didn’t say I didn’t like it,” Lincoln said. That made Rick laugh. Rick was pale and thin and never wore anything other than black. He even wore pieces of black cloth and leather tied around his wrists.

If not for Rick, Lincoln would have been the Shy One in the group.

Lincoln looked around the table, wondering where that left him.

If Dave was the Intense One, and Christine was the Girl …And Larry was the Serious One (and the Intimidating One and the One Most Likely to Be on a Black Ops Team) …If Rick was the Shy One, and Troy was the Weird One, and Teddy, a surgical resident who looked like the dad in Back to the Future—Teddy might actually be the Nerdy One …

Then who was Lincoln?

All the adjectives that came to his head (lost, stunted, mother-living) brought him down.

Tonight it was enough to be one of them. To be someplace where he always had a spot at the table, where everybody already knew that he didn’t like olives on his pizza, and they always looked happy to see him.

When Lincoln realized he was rewriting the theme song to Cheers, he decided to stop thinking and just play.

THE GAME WENT on for seven hours. Everyone made rescuing Lincoln’s character—a lawful-good dwarf named ’Smov the Ninekiller—the first order of business. They defeated a nefarious wind witch.