“I can’t,” he said. “I can’t. Not tonight. I have a …a thing.”

“A thing?” she asked, resting back on her heels.

“A party,” he said.

“Oh,” she said. Then she was digging in her black velvet purse. It had a bone-colored handle that looked like ivory. “Here,” she said, pressing something into his palm. “Here’s my card. Call me. Call me yesterday, Lincoln, I’m serious.”

She made a serious face. He nodded and held on to the card.

“Lincoln,” she said, all knowing smile and heavy eyelashes. She held on to his shoulders and kissed him quickly on both cheeks. “Kismet!”

And then she was walking away. The soles of her high heels were pink. She didn’t even rent a movie.

And Lincoln …Lincoln was still standing.

CHAPTER 67

HE DIDN’T RENT Hairspray or Harold and Maude.

A few minutes after Sam left, after standing dumbly for a while in the H s, Lincoln decided he didn’t feel like going home anymore. He didn’t feel like sitting still or being quiet. He left the Blockbuster empty-handed and stopped just outside to toss Sam’s business card into the trash. It wasn’t a terribly meaningful gesture; he knew where Sam worked, and he still her knew her parents’ phone number by heart. And then Lincoln took out his wallet and found Beth’s e-mail about him, the one with the phrase “trying not to bite his shoulder.” He read it again. And again. One more time. Then he crumpled it into a tight ball and threw it away.

And then …he went to a party. The Newish Year’s party. Chuck had given him a flyer, and Lincoln was pretty sure it was still in his car. When he dug around for it in the backseat, he noticed that his hands were trembling. That’s OK, he thought. Still standing. When he was parallel parking in front of Chuck’s house, he caught himself grinning in the rearview mirror.

The party was already in full roar when he walked in.

Lilliputian Emilie was there with her pumpkin bread, and Lincoln didn’t steer clear. He didn’t want to. Emilie was perfectly nice, and she thought all of his jokes were funny—which actually made him tell funnier jokes, because he didn’t have to worry about no one laughing. And also, she made him feel eight feet tall. Which is a very good feeling, there’s no getting around it.

He kicked ass at Electronic Catch Phrase.

He drank Shirley Temples.

He brought the house down during 1999 charades with a two-minute, completely silent reenactment o f The Sixth Sense. “When you mimed the ring falling on the ground,” Chuck said, applauding, “I forgot that I already knew you were dead.”

And when the clock struck midnight—it was a VCR clock, and it didn’t strike so much as blink— Lincoln kissed Emilie on the cheek. That immediately seemed like a mistake, so he grabbed the crazy- eyed paste-up artist and kissed her, too. Which seemed like a bigger mistake. He quickly kissed every other girl standing in his reach, including Danielle the copy desk chief, two women he’d never met before, Chuck’s estranged wife, and finally Chuck himself.

Then everyone sang “Auld Lang Syne.” Lincoln was the only one who knew any lyrics beyond “should auld acquaintance be forgot” and the chorus. He belted them out in a clear tenor: We two have run about the slopes, and picked the daisies fine; But we’ve wandered many a weary foot, since auld lang syne …

CHAPTER 68

WHEN LINCOLN WOKE up, it was snowing. He was supposed to meet Doris at her apartment at ten, but he didn’t get there until ten fifteen. He had to park a few blocks away, in front of a bakery. He wished he had time to go in.

There weren’t many neighborhoods like this in town. A nice mix of old, expensive houses, big brick apartment buildings, and trendy shops and restaurants. Doris’s building was yellow brick—four stories, with a courtyard and a small fountain.

Lincoln ran up her front steps, brushing the snow off his hair, and pressed the button by her name.

She buzzed him in. “I’m on the third floor,” she yelled down. “Come on up.” It smelled good in the stairwell. Dusty. Old. Lincoln wondered how Doris had made it up all these stairs every day with her bad knee. She was waiting for him in her doorway.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she said. “They turned off the heat already, and I’m freezing. The cabinet’s right over there.”

There was nothing left in the apartment but the Bubble-Wrapped cabinet. Lincoln looked around the living room, at the high tin ceiling and creamy plaster walls. The wood floors were dark and scratched, and the light fixture looked like something you’d see in an old opera house. “Have you lived here long?” he asked.

“Since I got married,” she said. “Do you want the thirty-second grand tour?”

“Sure.”

“Well, this is it. Back there’s the bedroom.” Lincoln walked through a doorway into the sun-filled bedroom. There was a tiny bathroom through another door, with a freestanding tub and an old- fashioned sink (small, with separate taps for hot and cold water).

“Over there’s the kitchen,” Doris said. “It’s all old as sin. Those countertops have been here since World War Two. You should see my new kitchen—wall-to-wall Corian.” Lincoln checked out the kitchen. The fridge was new, but the rest of the room did indeed know the difference between Red Skelton and Red Buttons. There was a rotary phone attached to the wall. Lincoln reached out to touch the Bakelite handle.

“Will you miss this place?” he asked.

“Oh, I suppose,” Doris said. “Like anything.” She was opening the kitchen drawers, making sure she hadn’t left anything behind. “I won’t miss the radiators. Or the draft. Or those goddamn stairs.”

He looked out the window over the sink and down into the courtyard. “Is it hard to get into this building?”

“Well, it’s secured access.”

“I mean, to rent.”

“Why, are you looking for a place?”

“I …well …” Was he?

No.

But if he was …This was exactly the sort of place he’d want.

“We can talk to Nate, the super, on the way out if you want. He’s a good guy. One of those alcoholics that doesn’t drink. If he forgets to fix the toilet, he’ll give you an amends.”

“Yeah,” Lincoln said, “sure, let’s talk to him.”

He picked up the curio cabinet, a few bubbles popped. “Lift with your knees,” Doris said.

NATE SAID A few people had asked about the apartment, but that it was available until someone wrote him a check for the deposit. Lincoln didn’t carry a checkbook, but Doris did. “I know you’re good for it,” she said.

Nate took Doris’s key and handed it to Lincoln. “That was a short day’s work,” Nate said.

Lincoln rode with Doris to the new retirement tower. He carried up the cabinet, met her sister, and admired their Corian kitchen. Then Doris offered him some Sara Lee pound cake, and they looked at old pictures of her and Paul with a series of basset hounds.

“Boy, this is exciting,” she said, when she dropped him off at his car. “I feel like we’re keeping this old place in the family. I’ll have to introduce you to all the neighbors.”

After she drove away, Lincoln walked back to the building, up to the third floor, and opened the door to the apartment. His apartment.

He walked through each room, trying to take everything in. Every cranny. There was a window seat in the bedroom—he’d missed that before—and lamps that reached out of the walls like calla lilies.

There were tall oak-framed windows in the living room and a tiled area inside the entryway that said “welcome” in German.

He’d have to buy a couch. And a table. And towels.

He’d have to tell his mom.

CHAPTER 69

From: Beth Fremont

To: Jennifer Scribner-Snyder

Sent: Mon, 01/31/2000 11:26 AM

Subject: Have you seen Amanda?

Seriously, have you seen her today?

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Seen her? I feel like I have to buy her dinner.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> How can she walk around the newsroom, making eye contact with people, when she’s practically na**d to the waist?

<<Jennifer to Beth>> I couldn’t conduct a telephone interview in a blouse like that.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> I’m used to her wearing low-cut shirts (or refusing to button decent ones), but seriously, I don’t think I’ve ever seen that much of another woman’s breasts. Maybe in junior high, in the locker room …

<<Jennifer to Beth>> If my mother were here, she’d offer to lend Amanda a sweater. And if she said no, my mom would tell her what happened to Queen Jezebel.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> What did happen to Queen Jezebel?

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Godly servants pushed her out a window. For being loose. (And pagan.)

Amanda tried to talk to me a few weeks ago—she was wearing a cardigan sweater with nothing underneath. She started quibbling with me about a headline I’d written, and I deliberately took off my glasses. I can’t even see my own br**sts without my glasses.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> I don’t know what she’s trying to say with all that cleavage.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> I think she’s saying, “Look at my chest.”

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Yes, but why?

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Because when people are looking at her chest, they’re not reading her boring leads?

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Heh.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> What’s “heh”?

<<Beth to Jennifer>> It’s like “ha,” but meaner. I’m going back to work now.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> One more thing: I kind of love you for not asking me how I’m feeling.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Feeling about what?

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Thanks.

CHAPTER 70

HUH.

There they were.

Back.

INSTEAD OF GOING home that night, Lincoln went to his new apartment.

He figured his mom wouldn’t worry, that she wouldn’t think to wait up for him on a Monday night.

He could always tell her tomorrow that he’d crashed at Justin’s house. If he had to tell her something.

Lincoln hauled in an old sleeping bag that he kept in his trunk (it smelled like gym clothes and exhaust) and tried to fall asleep on his new living room floor. Even though it was late, he could hear people moving around the apartment upstairs. Somewhere else, there was a radio. In the apartment below him, maybe, or across the hall. The more Lincoln listened for the music, the closer it seemed, until he could make out every song—all sleepy oldies from the fifties and sixties, slow dances and prom themes.

“Come Go With Me.”

“Some Kind of Wonderful.”

“In the Still of the Night.”

Lincoln tried not to listen. He tried not to think.

What did it mean that Beth and Jennifer were e-mailing again?

Probably nothing, he decided. Probably the last few weeks of silence from them were just a fluke.

Not God’s way of helping Lincoln get on with his life. That had been a dumb thing for him to think.

Dumb and grandiose.

Lincoln listened to the phantom radio long after the people upstairs went to bed. “Only You,”

“Sincerely.” Maybe he’d try to find this station himself tomorrow night. He wondered when he’d learned all the words to “You Send Me” and whether it was supposed to be a sad song. And then he fell asleep.

CHAPTER 71

From: Jennifer Scribner-Snyder

To: Beth Fremont

Sent: Tues, 02/08/2000 12:16 PM

Subject: You wish …

That you worked on the copy desk.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Uh …No, I don’t.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Today, you do. Derek wrote a story about how the zoo is artificially inseminating tigers, and Danielle decided he couldn’t use the word p*nis. She says it fails the breakfast test. She’s making him say “male reproductive part” instead.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> What’s the breakfast test?

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Are you sure you went to journalism school? The idea is that you don’t want to write something so gross that people reading the paper over breakfast would be put off their cornflakes.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> I think I’m more likely to be put off my cornflakes by the double homicide on the front page than I am by infertile tigers.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> That’s just what Derek said. He also said that only someone as se><ually repressed as Danielle would find artificial tiger insemination too arousing to share with our readers.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> You make it sound like they’re inseminating artificial tigers. That is pretty kinky.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> He just asked Danielle if she blacks out all the dirty words in her Harlequin romances.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> He’s going to get fired.

CHAPTER 72

THEY WERE ALL like this lately, all of Beth’s and Jennifer’s messages.

They were writing each other again, but something had changed between them. They cracked jokes and complained about work, they checked in—but they didn’t write about anything that mattered.

Why did that frustrate him? Why did that make him feel restless?

It was nasty outside, cold and gray, with rain that was trying hard to be snow. But Lincoln couldn’t sit in the airless IT office for another six hours. He decided to drive to McDonald’s for dinner. He felt like something greasy and hot.