That’s as good as passing judgment.

Last night was especially bad. Stef got all up in my face. He was high, and I think he was trying to impress some girl he picked up at a show.

“Beth … ,” he said, “why don’t you have fun anymore?”

I ignored him, which he couldn’t let stand. “I’m serious, Beth, you’ve changed. You used to be cool.”

“I haven’t changed. I was never cool.”

“You were. When Chris started bringing you around, the rest of us were jealous. You had that hair down to your waist and your tight Hüsker Dü T-shirts, and you’d get wasted and stay up all night rewriting our choruses.”

He’s vile in so many ways: 1. Implying that he ever liked me.

2. Reminding me how he used to stare at my breasts.

3. Making me scramble to insult him in a way that won’t insult Chris. I mean, I can’t say, “I’m an adult now” or, “There’s nothing to rewrite, you’ve been playing the same songs for six years …”

So I said, “Give it a rest, Stef, I’m tired.”

Then he got all fake-sympathetic and suggested that I go home so I would be all rested up for work in the morning. I told him that movie reviewers never go to work before noon. Union rules.

“I think that’s what changed you, Beth. Your job. The film critic. Critics are parasites. They live off other people’s creativity. They bring nothing into this world. They’re like barren women who steal other people’s babies in grocery store parking lots. Those who can’t do, teach, and those who can’t teach, criticize.”

Just when he’d settled into a fine rant, one of the other guys decided to cut him off—“Hey, Chris, aren’t you going to defend your girlfriend?”

And Chris said, “Beth doesn’t need my help defending herself. Trust me. She’s a Valkyrie.”

Which sort of made me feel good. That he loves me strong and independent. But also, I would like some defending. And also, don’t Valkyries steal the souls of fallen warriors? Or maybe just escort them to heaven or Valhalla or wherever? Either way, it doesn’t make me a warrior. Maybe a Valkyrie is just another parasite, reflecting the glory of the souls she claims. I don’t know, it’s not what I wanted him to say.

I wanted him to say …“Fuck off, Stef.”

Or, “Beth is not a barnacle on my boat. She’s the wind beneath my wings. And, without her, films like Armageddon and I Still Know What You Did Last Summer would claim scores of innocent victims, our friends and neighbors. Hers is important work, creative work.”

Or, “That’s it, I quit this stupid band. I’m going back to school. I’ve always wanted to be a dentist.”

<<Jennifer to Beth>> A dentist? Really, a dentist?

If Chris went back to school to become a dentist, I think you would dump him.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> I would not!

<<Jennifer to Beth>> I just can’t picture you married to a dentist, somebody who wears sensible shoes and always smells like fluoride treatment.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> I can …He’d have a comfy little neighborhood dental practice with back issues of Guitar World in the waiting room. I would stop in to see him some afternoons, and he’d pull down his white mask to kiss me hello. The kids would fight over a set of giant teeth, and his nice, grandmotherly dental assistant would give them each a sugar-free lollipop …

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Wait a minute, the kids?

<<Beth to Jennifer>> You bet. A boy and a girl. Twins maybe. With his curly hair and my grade point average.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> What about your job?

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Are you kidding? I’m married to a dentist.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Does this dental fantasy of yours take place in, like, 1973?

<<Beth to Jennifer>> I’ve always thought I would stay home when my kids were young. If I have kids. If I can afford it. My mom stayed home with us, and we turned out all right. I think I could handle being a stay-at-home mom for a few years.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Hmmm …I think I’d like to be a stay-at-home mom with no kids.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> You mean, you just want to stay home?

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

<<Beth to Jennifer>> What kind of crafts?

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

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

<<Jennifer to Beth>> 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.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> So you grew up in a headless household?

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

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

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

<<Beth to Jennifer>> 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 f**king 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 f**king 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 f**king 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 f**king 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.

“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.