The streets were worse than Lincoln expected. He almost got hit by an SUV that couldn’t brake in time for a red light. The whole trip took most of his dinner break, and when he got back to the office, his parking space was gone. He had to park in the overflow lot a few blocks away.

When he first heard the crying, he thought that it was a cat. It was a terrible sound. Mournful. He looked around for it and saw a woman standing next to one of the last cars left in the lot. She was slumped over her car and standing in a giant mud puddle.

When Lincoln got closer, he saw the flat tire and the jack lying in the mud next her.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Yes.” She sounded more scared than convinced. She was a small woman, solid, with blondish hair.

He’d seen her a few times before, on the day shift. She was soaked through and crying hard. She wouldn’t look at him. Lincoln stood there dumbly, not wanting to make her feel more uncomfortable, but not wanting to leave her alone.

She tried to steady herself. “Do you have a cell phone I could use?”

“No,” he said. “I’m sorry. But I can help you change your tire.”

She wiped her nose, which seemed fruitless, considering how wet she was. “Okay,” she said.

He looked for a place to set down his dinner, but there wasn’t one, so he handed the woman his McDonald’s bag and picked up the lug wrench. She’d already gotten a few of the nuts off the tire; this wouldn’t take long.

“Do you work at The Courier?” she asked. She was still so upset, he wished she wouldn’t try to talk.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Me, too, on the copy desk. My name is Jennifer. What do you do?”

Jennifer. Jennifer?

“Security,” he said, surprising himself. “Systems security.”

He jacked up her car and looked around for the spare. “It’s still in the trunk,” she said. Of course it was. Lincoln couldn’t look at her anymore; what if she recognized him? Maybe it wasn’t her. How many Jennifers worked on the copy desk? He let down the car, opened the trunk, grabbed the tire, jacked the car back up. He was pretty sure she was crying again, but he didn’t know how to comfort her. “I have some French fries in there if you want them,” he said, realizing as soon as he said it that it made him sound like a weirdo. At least she didn’t seem scared of him anymore. When he glanced back at her, she was eating his French fries.

It took about fifteen minutes to change the tire. Jennifer ( Jennifer?) didn’t have a true spare, just one of those temporary tires that new cars come with. She thanked him and gave him back what was left of his dinner.

“That’s just a doughnut,” he said. “You should have your tire fixed as soon as you can.”

“Right,” she said. “I will.” She didn’t seem to be paying attention. He felt like she just wanted him to leave. And he wanted to leave. He waited for her to get into her car and turn on the engine before he walked away. But when he looked back, her car hadn’t moved. He stopped walking.

He wondered why Jennifer—if this was Jennifer, the Jennifer—was crying, what had happened.

Maybe she’d gotten into a fight with Mitch. Maybe she’d started a fight with Mitch. But there was no sign of it in her e-mail. Maybe …

Oh.

Oh.

When was the last time she’d mentioned …Why hadn’t he noticed …He should have guessed when the e-mails stopped, by the way they were talking, by what they weren’t saying.

The baby. He should have realized.

He was so selfish. All he’d cared about was finding himself in their conversations. Not that it would have mattered if he had noticed. Not that he could have said he was sorry or sent her a card.

Lincoln walked back and knocked on her window. It was fogged over. She wiped a circle clear, saw him, and rolled it down.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” he said.

“I’m fine.”

“I really feel like I should call your husband.”

“He’s not home,” she said.

“A friend, then, or your mom or something.”

“I promise, I’ll be fine.”

He couldn’t leave her alone. Especially now that he knew or thought he knew what was wrong. “If somebody that I cared about was crying alone in a parking lot,” he said, wishing he could tell her that she was somebody he cared about, “at this time of night, I’d want somebody to call me.”

“Look, you’re right. I’m not fine, but I will be. I’m leaving now. I promise.”

He wanted to tell her that she shouldn’t be driving at all. The streets were a mess, she was a mess …

But he couldn’t tell her what to do. He couldn’t say anything to comfort her. He handed her his McDonald’s bag. “Okay. Just. Please go home.”

She drove away then. Lincoln watched her leave the parking lot and get on the freeway. When she was out of sight, he ran into The Courier building. He was so wet and cold, he took off his muddy shoes at his desk, and tried to figure out which of the ceiling vents was putting out the most heat so he could huddle below it. He ended up eating dinner out of the vending machines. (He’d have to tell Doris that the sandwiches seemed to be going bad a few days before their expiration dates.) He wondered if Jennifer had gotten home okay and whether he was right about what happened. It might not be anything so terrible. It might not even be the same Jennifer.

LINCOLN SPENT THE night at his apartment again. It was still icy out, and it was closer to drive there than it was to drive home. He thought about calling his mom to tell her he was okay, that he hadn’t been in an accident. She hadn’t mentioned it yet, the fact that he wasn’t coming home every night.

Maybe she was trying to give him space. What if he didn’t have to move out? What if he could just ease out…?

CHAPTER 73

From: Jennifer Scribner-Snyder

To: Beth Fremont

Sent: Wed, 02/09/2000 10:08 AM

Subject: I think I met Your Cute Guy.

Unless there are two dark-haired, practically Herculean, cute guys wandering around this place.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Met? You met him?

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Yes. Last night. When I was leaving work.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Are you stringing this story out for your own amusement?

<<Jennifer to Beth>> I’m not sure I want to tell you at all. It’s the kind of story that might make you worry about me, and I really don’t want that.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Too late. I’m already worried about you. Tell me—in detail.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Well …

I worked a swing shift last night, which meant I had to park in the gravel lot under the freeway, and I didn’t get out of here until 9, and it was cold out, and sleety and nasty, and when I finally got to my car, I had a flat tire. (Already, this sounds like the opening scene of a Law & Order episode, right?)

So …I immediately took out my phone to call Mitch, but it was dead. Right then, I should have just walked back to the building and called a tow truck or something. But instead I decided to change the tire myself. I mean, I’ve changed a tire before, I’m not completely helpless. As I was getting out the jack, I had this flash of “Maybe I shouldn’t do this in my condition.”

And then I remembered that I’m not in any kind of condition anymore.

It took me 20 minutes to get the first two lug nuts off. The third wouldn’t budge. I even tried standing on the wrench. It went spinning off and slammed into my shin. I was muddy by this time and soaked through and crying. Somewhat hysterically.

Then I see this huge shadow of a person walking toward me, and all I can think is, “I hope he doesn’t rape me because I’m supposed to wait six weeks before having intercourse.”

The huge shadow says, “Are you okay?”

I say, “Yes,” hoping he’ll just keep moving. Then he gets close enough for me to see that he’s cute —cute in kind of a specific, unexpected way; rough-hewn, one might say—and also wearing an unfashionable denim jacket. I immediately think, “This is Beth’s Cute Guy,” and I stop being scared of him, which is pretty funny when you think about it because, for all of your crushing, neither of us knows anything about this guy. And it might not have even been him.

Anyway, he changed my tire for me.

It took him eight minutes, tops. I just stood there, holding his dinner (McDonald’s) and watched.

And cried. I must have looked wildly pathetic because he said, “I have some French fries in there if you want them.” I thought that was such a weird thing to offer, but frankly, I’m exactly the sort of person to be comforted by French fries, so I ate them.

And then—seriously, minutes later—he was done (and also covered in mud, the whole lot was one gray puddle). He told me that I should still get my tire fixed and walked away.

So I got into my car, turned on the heat …and started crying even harder than I was crying before.

Harder than I’d cried since it happened. I don’t know if I’ve ever cried like that before. (Maybe when my dad left.) I was shaking and making these horrible, hollow elephant noises. I kept thinking about the word “despair” and how I’d only ever understood it before from reading it in context.

I was pretty far gone when there was a knock at my window. Your Cute Guy. He was still standing there. He seemed embarrassed by the whole situation, almost physically pained to have to deal with me. He said, “I feel like I should call your husband,” all firm and determined. (I was just a little bit hurt that he assumed I had a husband. It was kind of like being called “madame” when you still feel like a “mademoiselle.”)

I kept saying that I would be fine, and then he said, “If somebody that I cared about was crying alone in a parking lot this late at night, I would want somebody to call me.”

That’s just what he said. Isn’t that nice?

I told him that he was right, that I wasn’t fine, but that I would be, and I promised to go home. For a minute, it seemed like he wasn’t going to let me leave, like he was just going to keep standing there with his hand on my window. Which would have made sense—my eyes were swollen to slits, and I probably seemed like I was ready to drive off a cliff.

But he nodded his head, handed me his McDonald’s bag (?) and walked away.

I did leave then. I went home and ate his two cheeseburgers (extra pickles) while I was waiting for Mitch, who, I should note, was actually relieved to see me crying. I think he was beginning to think I was either inhumanly cold or silently imploding.

I pretty much cried all night. I looked so puffy and splotchy when I came in to work this morning that I told Danielle I’d had an allergic reaction to shellfish.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> You should have stayed home.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> I don’t want anyone to start wondering why I’ve been taking so many sick days.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> If they knew, they’d gladly give you some time off.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> I don’t want anyone to feel sorry for me. Actually, that’s not true, I feel like the entire world should feel sorry for me. I’m pathetic and I’m miserable. But I don’t want anyone feeling sorry for me if it means they have to think about my uterus.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Do you feel better today? Relieved to have let some of it out?

<<Jennifer to Beth>> I don’t know. I still don’t want to talk about it.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> But we can talk about My Cute Guy, right?

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Ad nauseam.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> I can’t believe you met him. I’ve been following him around for months without making more than passing eye contact, and you actually met him. And you didn’t just meet.

You had a meet-cute. Is it warped for me to be jealous of you right now?

<<Jennifer to Beth>> What’s a meet-cute?

<<Beth to Jennifer>> It’s the moment in a movie when the romantic leads meet. They never just meet normally. It’s never like, “Harry, meet Sally. Sally, this is Harry.” They always meet in a cute way, like, “Hey, you just got chocolate in my peanut butter!” / “What are you talking about? You just got peanut butter in my chocolate!”

Having a handsome man rescue you (crying in the rain in the parking lot), change your tire, and share his French fries, that’s very meet-cute.

Damn it, I was supposed to have the meet-cute.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Your meet-cute would have gone like this, “Hey, you got chocolate in my peanut butter!” / “Sorry, I have a boyfriend.”

Also, I feel like I should point out that it was freezing rain. Freezing rain isn’t cute.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> You still got to see him with wet hair …

So, break it down for me, what was your lasting impression of him? It seems like you thought he was weird.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> I wouldn’t say weird. I would say awkward, kind of shy. He seemed really uncomfortable—like only his chivalry and common decency were keeping him from walking away.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> So, awkward, chivalrous, decent …

<<Jennifer to Beth>> And very nice. It was a kind thing to stop and to stay until I pulled myself together. A lot of guys would have kept walking or, at best, called 911.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Awkward, chivalrous, decent, kind …

<<Jennifer to Beth>> And really, really cute. You weren’t exaggerating. Not Sears-model cute.