<<Beth to Jennifer>> Ahem. Well. There we were. In the Student Union. He always sat in the corner. And I always sat one row across from him, three seats down. I took to leaving my 9:30 class early so I could primp and be in my spot looking casual by the time he sauntered in.

He never looked at me—or anyone else, to my relief—and he never took off his headphones. I used to fantasize about what song he might be listening to …and whether it would be the first dance at our wedding …and whether we’d go with traditional wedding photography or black and white …Probably black and white, magazine style. There’d be lots of slightly out-of-focus, candid shots of us embracing with a romantic, faraway look in our eyes.

Of course, Headphone Boy already had a faraway look in his eyes, which my friend Lynn attributed to “breakfast with Mary Jane.”

<<Jennifer to Beth>> And then …

<<Beth to Jennifer>> I know what you’re thinking now. You can’t believe I would knowingly get involved with a drug user.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> I knowingly got involved with a guy who plays the tuba. Finish the story.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Well, at first, I was sure that he would feel the cosmic forces pulling us together. I wanted him so badly, I could feel my heart reaching for him with every beat. It was destiny.

“He was a magnet and I was steel.”

This started in September. Sometime in October, one of his friends walked by and called him “Chris.” (A name, at last. “Say it loud and there’s music playing. Say it soft and it’s almost like praying.”) One Tuesday night in November, I saw him at the library. I spent the next four Tuesday nights there, hoping it was a pattern. It wasn’t. Sometimes I’d allow myself to follow him to his 11:30 class in Andrews Hall, and then I’d have to run across campus to make it to my class in the Temple Building.

By the end of the semester, I was long past the point of starting a natural, casual conversation with him. I stopped trying to make eye contact. I even started dating a Sig Ep I met in my sociology class.

But I couldn’t give up my 10:30 date with Headphone Boy. I figured, after Christmas break, our schedules would change, and that would be that. I’d wait until then to move on.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> I love this, you actually have me believing that all hope is lost. Tricky.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> All my hope was lost.

And then …the week before finals, I showed up at the Union at my usual time and found Chris sitting in my seat. His headphones were around his neck, and he watched me walk toward him. At least, I thought he was watching me. He had never looked at me before, never, and the idea made my skin burn. Before I could solve the problem of where to sit, he was talking to me.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Did he say, “Stop stalking me, you psychopath”?

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Nope. He said, “Hey.”

And I said, “Hi.”

And he said, “Look…” His eyes were green. He kind of squinted when he talked. “I’ve got a 10:30 class next semester, so …we should probably make other arrangements.”

I was struck numb.

I said, “Are you mocking me?”

“No,” he said, “I’m asking you out.”

“Then, I’m saying yes.”

“Good … ,” he said, “we could have dinner. You could still sit across from me. It would be just like a Tuesday morning. But with breadsticks.”

“Now you’re mocking me.”

“Yes.” He was still smiling. “Now I am.”

And that was that. We went out that weekend. And the next weekend. And the next. It was wildly romantic.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Wow, what a cucumber. (Cool, I mean.) Did he know all along that you were watching him?

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Yeah, I think so. That’s just Chris. He never hurries. He never shows his cards. He always hangs up first.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> What does that mean, he always hangs up first?

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Like when we first started talking on the phone, he would always be the one who got off first. When we kissed, he always pulled away first. He always kept me just on the edge of crazy. Feeling like I wanted him too much, which just made me want him more.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> That sounds excruciating.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Excruciating and wonderful. It feels good to want something that bad. I thought about him the way you think about dinner when you haven’t eaten for a day and a half. Like you’d sell your soul for it.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> I’ve never not eaten for a day and a half.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Not even when you had the flu or something?

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Maybe once. What happened to your Sig Ep?

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Oh God. It was terrible. I didn’t remember to dump him until Sunday afternoon. I had two boyfriends for like nine hours. Not that I called Chris my boyfriend then. I didn’t want to spook him. That first year was strange. I felt like a butterfly had landed on me. If I moved or even breathed, I thought he would float away.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Because he always hung up first?

<<Beth to Jennifer>> That. And other things, too. I never knew when I would see him or when he would call. A week might go by and I wouldn’t talk to him. Then I’d find a note slid under my door.

Or a leaf. Or song lyrics written on a matchbook.

Or Chris himself. Leaning against my door on a Wednesday afternoon, waiting for me to get back from economics. Maybe he’d stay for 15 minutes. Maybe he’d leave that night after I fell asleep. Or maybe he’d talk me into skipping classes for the rest of the week. Maybe we wouldn’t leave the room until Saturday morning when we’d finally exhausted my supply of salsa and Popsicles and Diet Coke.

He made me nervy. I spent a lot of time looking out of windows, trying to will him to me. I rented movies about girls who chewed on their hair and had fever patches on their cheeks.

I’ve never been happier.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> I think I’ve figured out why we weren’t friends in college. You were kind of scary.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Not scary. Single-minded.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Scarily single-minded.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> I was focused. I knew what I wanted in life. I wanted Chris. And it was such a relief not to be distracted by anything else. I had no boring subplots.

Weren’t you ever like that with Mitch?

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Never like that.

I mean, I was definitely head over heels. But, if anything, he was more caught up than I was, which is probably why we’re still together. I needed Mitch to wear his heart on his sleeve. I was so insecure, I needed him to bang down my door and fill my room with flowers.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Did he actually fill your room with flowers?

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Yep. Carnations, but flowers nonetheless.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Hmmm. In theory, I think that sounds wonderful. But in practice, I was drawn to Chris because he didn’t do that sort of thing. Because he would never do anything that was romantic in a traditional sense. And not just because he was trying to be different, but because his instincts were ( are) so different from every other guy’s. It was like dating the man who fell to Earth.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> I’m glad you finally told me all this. I hated feeling like there was this major part of your life that we couldn’t talk about.

That said, I don’t think you ever have to worry about me running away with or making a drunken pass at Chris. He’d make me insane.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Ditto on the being glad we talked about this. But I can’t give you a ditto on the drunken pass thing. Mitch is a hottie.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Now I’m rolling my eyes.

CHAPTER 16

THEY MUST BE about his age. Jennifer and Beth and Beth’s boyfriend. Twenty-eight or so. Maybe they’d all been in college together. After Lincoln transferred to the state school, after Sam broke up with him, he’d stayed in school a long time, through multiple degrees. There was a good chance he’d seen Beth on campus.

So much for stopping. So much for what he technically, ethically, knew he should do.

He’d meant to throw Beth’s and Jennifer’s messages away, as soon as they showed up in the WebFence folder. But then …he didn’t. He opened them, and once he was reading them, he got caught up in their stories, in their back and forth and back and forth.

I’m getting caught up, he thought to himself after he was done reading about how Beth met her boyfriend, after he’d read through the whole story a second time and spent a few minutes thinking about it, thinking about them, wondering what they all looked like …What she looked like …

I’m getting caught up, he thought. That’s not good …is it?

No. But maybe it isn’t exactly all bad …

CHAPTER 17

From: Jennifer Scribner-Snyder

To: Beth Fremont

Sent: Fri, 09/10/1999 1:23 PM

Subject: Herring cassoulet.

You shouldn’t be allowed to eat fish at work. I swear to God, whenever Tony works, I go home reeking of the sea. I know he’s from Rhode Island, where they eat fish all the livelong day, but he should assume that everyone around him here is disgusted by the stink of it.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> I’ve seen you eat fish sticks before. And popcorn shrimp.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Both of those have protective fried coatings. I’ll eat fish that’s processed beyond recognition, but I would never eat it at work. I don’t even pop popcorn here. I don’t like to inflict my food odors on others.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Very thoughtful.

I’ll trade you Tony’s orange roughy stench for Tim’s fingernail clipping any day.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> I thought you stole his fingernail clippers …

<<Beth to Jennifer>> I did. He has new ones. I’m not sure what bothers me more …the constant clip-clip noises or knowing that his cubicle is completely contaminated by tiny fingernail slivers.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> If we ever need any of his DNA for a paternity test or a voodoo spell, we’ll know where to look.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> If we ever need any of Tony’s DNA for a paternity test, one of us deserves to be pushed off a cliff.

Hey, remember when we used to have to leave our desks to have conversations like this?

<<Jennifer to Beth>> I don’t think we ever did have conversations like this. I know I never ventured into reporter land unless I had incredibly good gossip or unless I really, really needed to talk.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Or unless somebody brought cookies.

Remember that lady who sat in the corner, who used to always bring cookies? What happened to her?

<<Jennifer to Beth>> The city hall reporter? I heard they fired her when they found out she carried a loaded gun in her purse.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> That doesn’t seem fair. As long as she kept it in her purse.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Wow. It wouldn’t be 30 pieces of silver with you, would it? It would be cookies.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> No. ( Yes. Snickerdoodles.)

CHAPTER 18

THAT AFTERNOON, GREG introduced Lincoln to college students he’d hired to take on the Y2K project.

There were three of them; one from Vietnam, one from Bosnia, and one from the suburbs. Lincoln couldn’t tell how old they were. Much younger than he was. “They’re like an international strike force,” Greg said, “and you’re their commander.”

“Me?” Lincoln said. “What exactly does that mean?”

“It means you have to make sure they’re actually doing something,” Greg said. “If I knew anything about coding, I’d be the commander. You think I don’t want to be the commander?”

The Y2K kids sat at a table in the corner. They worked days mostly, between their classes, so Lincoln usually tried to meet with them as soon as he came in. He didn’t do much commanding at these meetings. The college students seemed to already know what they needed to do. And they didn’t talk much otherwise, to Lincoln or to each other.

After about a week, Lincoln was pretty sure that they’d hacked the firewalls and were running instant messaging and Napster on their computers. He told Greg, but Greg said he didn’t give a shit as long as he still had a job on January 1.

No one on the Strike Force had interoffice e-mail, so no one was monitoring them. Sometimes Lincoln wondered if anyone was monitoring his own mail. Maybe Greg, he thought, but it didn’t really matter because Greg was the only one who ever sent him messages.

CHAPTER 19

From: Beth Fremont

To: Jennifer Scribner-Snyder

Sent: Wed, 09/22/1999 2:38 PM

Subject: Roo-ah-rooo-ahhh.

Roo-ah-rooo-ahhh.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> What’s that?

<<Beth to Jennifer>> It’s the Cute Guy Alarm.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> It sounds like a bird.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> There’s a cute guy working here.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> No, there isn’t.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> I know, that was my first response, too. I thought he must have come in from the outside, a repairman, perhaps, or a consultant. That’s why I waited for two confirmed sightings before sounding the Cute Guy Alarm.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Is this Cute Guy Alarm something you made up with your eighth-grade friends? Do I need to be wearing Guess overalls to understand this?