“Do these percentages make sense?” Chuck said, holding out the graph.

“I don’t know,” Lincoln said.

“I’m asking you to check them.”

“Did you say something about looting?”

“Yeah,” Chuck said. “But that was more of an invitation. If things get Mad Max around here later, I want you on my team. Don’t ask me what’s in it for you. I haven’t worked that out yet.”

“I can’t do this right now,” Lincoln said, pushing the paper away.

“Why not?”

“I …I have to leave.”

“Are you okay?”

“No.” Lincoln looked up at Beth again and started backing away from Chuck. Away from the newsroom. “I have to go.”

“Do you know something about the power grid that we don’t?” Chuck called after him. “What are the machines telling you?”

“I HAVE TO go home,” Lincoln said when he got back to the IT office.

“You look terrible,” Greg said. “But you can’t go home. We’re on the cusp of a new age.”

“I feel terrible. I have to leave.”

“If you leave,” Greg asked, “who’s going to lead the Strike Force through zero hour?”

Lincoln looked at the television on Greg’s desk. People were celebrating in London. Midnight had already arrived with an anticlimactic thud in Paris and Moscow and Beijing. Even Wolf Blitzer looked bored. The members of the Strike Force were shamelessly playing Doom.

“All right … ,” Greg said, frowning. “But you’re going to miss out. We’re ordering pizza.”

Lincoln shut down his computer quickly and hurried out of the building to his car. He didn’t even buckle his seat belt until he was on the freeway. Didn’t even know where he was going until he got there. Justin’s apartment. Lincoln had driven Justin home a few times, but he’d never been inside.

Maybe Justin would still be there. Maybe Lincoln could still get in on the millennial debauchery.

Dena answered the door. She was wearing her work uniform, a pink smock with little white teeth printed on it. Whole teeth, roots and all. They were supposed to be cute, but he found teeth without gums disconcerting.

“Hey, Lincoln.”

“Hey. Is Justin here?”

“Not yet. He had to work late. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I was just thinking I’d go to the concert with you guys. If that’s all right. If the offer still stands.”

“Yeah, of course,” she said. “Justin will be here soon. Have a seat.” He did. In the only chair in Justin’s living room, a giant leather recliner. “Can I get you something? A beer?”

“That’d be great.”

She handed him a Mickey’s big mouth. Beer, malt liquor, same difference.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked.

“Completely.”

“I was just going to go get ready.”

“Yeah. Definitely. Go ahead. Don’t mind me, I’ll watch TV.”

“Okay,” Dena said. She hesitated a moment, then walked away.

Lincoln was pretty sure that it was a mistake, coming here. But he couldn’t have stayed at work.

Knowing Beth was there, that she might be thinking about him. Knowing that he couldn’t talk to her.

That he didn’t have the guts, was that it? Or was it that he knew it was wrong, that even talking to her would be like trading with insider information?

Or maybe he was just afraid to do something real.

It was worse now that he knew what she looked like. It was already worse. Now that his wandering thoughts and warm feelings had a face. And freckles. And snug strawberry corduroys. It was unbearable to think of that face searching him out in the hallways. Lighting up when she saw him.

Watching him.

Maybe she was still there. At her desk. Maybe he could still catch her and kiss her and tell her …

tell her what?

When Justin walked in, Lincoln wasn’t sure whether he’d been waiting in the living room for a few minutes or an hour. Probably an hour. He’d finished three Mickeys. Three Mickeys on an empty stomach. He wasn’t drunk exactly, but he was fuzzy.

“What’re you doing here?” Justin said happily. “I thought you had to work.”

“I did. And then I didn’t.”

“Did something happen?”

He thought of Beth and her long brown hair and the phone cord winding around her fingers. He thought of himself standing like a moron against the wall. “No,” he said, “nothing ever happens. I had to get out of there.”

“Well, all right. Let me change into something I can afford for Dena to puke on, and then we’ll get this motherfucker started.”

Lincoln held up his empty bottle. “Cheers,” he said.

Dena came to sit with Lincoln while Justin got dressed. She’d changed into going-out clothes. Tight black jeans and stacked-heel boots. She’d put on makeup that would look fine at the bar, but looked too bright and shiny in the overhead light.

“We’re meeting a few of my friends at Friday’s first,” she said. “Are you hungry?”

“Sure,” he said. “That sounds great.”

“They’re all single,” she said.

“Single girls on New Year’s,” Justin shouted from the bedroom. “Double down.”

“My friend Lisa will be there,” Dena said. “Do you remember her? From The Steel Guitar?”

Lincoln remembered. He could still taste the licorice. Justin held out another Mickey’s on the way to the door, and Lincoln took it.

T.G.I. FRIDAY’S WAS a blur. He entertained Dena’s friends by ordering whatever they did, drinks with whipped cream and cherries and blinking plastic ice cubes. Even Lincoln’s steak had whiskey in it. He was more than tipsy when they got to the Ranch Bowl. Do guys get tipsy, he wondered, or, if you’re a guy, are there just different degrees of drunk? How many degrees of drunk was he? What would happen if he stopped drinking now? Would he feel better or worse?

They’d timed their arrival perfectly. Sacajawea was just taking the stage. Justin used Lincoln as a wedge to make room at the bar.

“Are you okay, big guy? Lincoln? Hey.” Dena was talking to him.

Lincoln nodded. He was okay. He was fine.

The first song started with a guitar solo. All Sacajawea’s songs started with guitar solos. Justin whooped, and the girls around them screamed. “Oh my God, look at him,” said someone at Lincoln’s elbow. “He’s so hot.”

Lincoln looked at Chris. Shimmering. Slithering at the edge of the stage. This wasn’t a good idea.

Coming here. Look at him, Lincoln thought. She’s his. That beautiful girl. That girl I think about when I’m not thinking about anything else. When I can’t think about anything else. Look at him. That magical girl. That light. His. The women in the room, the women around Lincoln, were swaying along with Chris’s guitar, reaching out to him with open palms. All these girls who weren’t the girl. All these girls who weren’t the only girl who mattered. Lincoln imagined himself pushing his way through them to get to Chris. Imagined how heavy his fist would fall on Chris’s delicate face.

“This song is just as good as ‘Stairway,’” Justin said emotionally. He and Dena were standing right in front of Lincoln, close enough that he felt like he was standing behind them in a class photo. Dena wasn’t watching Chris. She was watching Justin. Lincoln noticed Justin’s hand on Dena’s waist, his fingers just under her shirt, in the small of her back.

And then Lincoln stopped noticing anything at all.

THEY WERE HELPING him up stairs.

“We should have just left him in the car,” Justin said.

“It’s freezing outside,” Dena said.

“Would’ve woken him up. Jesus Christ, it’s like dragging a horse.”

“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 f**king 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 h*ps 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.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> 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.