Are You Happy Now? (37 page)

Amy perks up. “Really? Congratulations. That’s nice. That’s what you’ve always wanted.”

“Yes, right. Well, here’s the thing.” As he prepares to deliver his plea, Lincoln balks. Amy looks so cool, determined, unyielding. Get on with it, he urges himself. “I know this is sort of out of the blue,” he bumbles, “but I really only realized myself this morning.” He stares at her, then blurts, “I was hoping you would come with me.”

Amy sits sharply back, looking stunned and pained, as if she’d been hit by a telephone book. “Why?” she demands.

Lincoln has coached himself to avoid the L word—too abrupt, too weighted. Words are too easy. “Because we should have this adventure together.” He takes another deep breath. “I know you think we’re a bad mix, but that’s not true. We’re a great team.” (Did he really say that?) “I mean, I’ve never felt smarter, never felt more alive than when we were working on your book. I never felt more
engaged
.” (Stop him! He’s out of control!) Lincoln blinks, resets himself. “Buford’s right—I do think too much. And at the time, I didn’t realize what was happening, because I was so addled with ambition. But it wasn’t the book, it was
you
.”

Amy rocks on the sofa, her gaze goes blank.

“Come with me,” Lincoln urges. “You deserve New York, too.”

“Sumbubbabitch,” Amy mumbles.

Lincoln sits back. “What did you say?”

“Sumbubbabitch.”

“I gave you that.”

“So?” Amy glares at him. “It fits. Why can’t I use it? If anyone has a copyright, it’s the old man on the work crew.”

Lincoln thinks: What else from my blather has stayed with her? You toss these things out and think they drop into a black hole, but then something catches. “No problem,” he says. “I was just...” He stops himself.

“Anyway, I like that word,” Amy says gently. “It fits.”

In the slight mellowing of her tone, Lincoln catches a hint that her intransigence may be weakening. Five years of failed
marriage has taught him that this is his tiny window. He gets up from the chair and sits beside her on the sofa. He puts his arm around her shoulders and rubs his forehead against the mussed hair on the side of her head. “I’ve missed you,” he whispers.

“You don’t know,” she says quietly.

“Yes, I do,” he insists. “I want to be with you.”

“You don’t know,” Amy repeats. “I’m pregnant.”

“Pregnant?”

“You know—with child.”

Lincoln stares, dumbfounded. “Me?”

“Of course you, you idiot. You’re the only man I’ve slept with in the last year.”

This is coming too quickly. Lincoln’s faculties are overloaded. “But how? You said you were on the pill.”

“It turns out the pill is not infallible. Well, maybe I missed a few days back when I was in a tizzy to finish the book. My gynecologist warned me, but who ever thinks of it?”

His mind galloping, Lincoln nonetheless manages to do the crude math. Around five months. “You don’t look pregnant,” he says, as if that were determinative.

“Not when I’m bundled up.”

Lincoln melts into the sofa. “Holy shit.” The words come out in feeble puffs. Pregnant. Lincoln remembers the efforts he and Mary went through when they were trying to start a family—counting days, checking temperatures, visiting doctors. Nothing worked. Now, this. Just at the moment of his triumphant departure. Is Chicago like quicksand? The harder you struggle to get away, the more it sucks you in?

Amy says, “I wasn’t going to tell you.” She stares at him, alarmed, then reaches over and touches Lincoln’s left arm. “Oh, I should never have told you, John. You should see your face.”

Her touch anchors him. “But why? Why not tell me?”

“Because.” She carefully pulls her hand away. “This was my mistake, not yours. I let it happen. And this isn’t 1955, when
people who didn’t plan to be together, who weren’t
meant
to be together, ended up getting married. I can do this. It will work out.”

Is it really that simple? Lincoln feels as if he’s floating away. He’s adrift in a vast and bottomless sea.

“Besides,” Amy continues, “you want to go to New York, you
are
going to New York. I need to be here, in Chicago, where my family can help. There are lots of single mothers in graduate school.”

The turn to the practical gives Lincoln something to cling to. “Have you told your parents?” he asks. He knows Amy well enough to know abortion was never an option.

“Of course. I’m not doing this alone.”

“I’ll help in any way...” He lets the comment dangle when he realizes how hapless he must sound.

Amy comforts. “Everything’s fine. Really. I love my obstetrician. She says the baby and I are going great.” With an effort, a hint of the life she’s carrying, Amy pushes herself up and stands beside the sofa. “And, now, you really must leave. My mother’s coming, and we’re going shopping for baby clothes.” She lifts her arms, palms up, in happy wonder. “There’s so much preparation! Today we’re hunting clothes, tomorrow a crib. There’s a sale at Land of Nod.”

Also with an effort, Lincoln heaves himself up out of the soft cushions. Light-headed, his legs rubbery, he shuffles behind Amy to the door. He has so many questions, so much to digest, to work through. But he knows he must flee—he desperately needs the bracing slap of the cold spring wind to get his mind back in focus.

Amy is not quite finished with him, however. “I don’t want you to think I’ve done this casually, John,” she tells him. “I’ve thought about it a lot, talked about it a lot—with my parents, my doctor, even a family friend who’s a lawyer. Everyone but the priest.” She laughs. “It’s better this way.”

Lincoln offers a dazed nod.

“Don’t worry,” Amy continues. “I won’t hide you. When the baby wants to know who her daddy is, I’ll tell her—tell her
nice
things. Maybe she’ll even want to come to visit some day. But you’ve got no obligations.”

Even in his muddled state, Lincoln realizes he has gleaned a spot of information. “Her?” he asks.

“The baby’s a girl,” Amy says, and her face blossoms into a huge smile.

When Lincoln remains speechless, Amy goes on, “That’s one reason why I was so upset about getting outed about the book. I don’t want my daughter to be wandering around the Web one day and reading about her mother being a pornographer.”

Lincoln thinks he’s solved another mystery. “So you steered Marissa Morgan and the other bloggers to me?”

“Of course not,” Amy scolds. “I’d never do that. Marissa found me, but I wouldn’t talk to her. It was Kim, the Pistakee receptionist. She kept nagging me while I was still there, so I finally let her read the manuscript. She loved it, and she always wanted to talk to me about it. She had a friend from Iowa in the production department at
The Reader
. And Kim’s the only one clueless enough to talk to a reporter.”

“Kim,” Lincoln repeats. Of course.

“But five minutes after I left your apartment, I was thinking about the baby,” Amy continues. “I didn’t even know why I came over.”

Drawing from a last, buried repository of bravado, Lincoln says, “Maybe you came over because you wanted to see your baby’s father.”

Amy’s smile disappears and she opens the door, ushering him out. “I like you, John,” she says, “but I don’t want to spend my life with you.” Just before she closes the door firmly behind him, she adds, “Have fun in New York.”

33

L
INCOLN LEAVES
A
MY’S
building and turns right, heading east. He has a dim understanding that if he turned left in his condition, he’d probably just keep walking, one foot ahead of the other, over and over, across the despoiled prairie until he tumbled off the bank into the Mississippi itself. Pointed east, though, after a few blocks he comes across Halsted, a familiar artery, and he takes a Number Eight bus home.

Back in his apartment, Lincoln occupies himself by inventorying what he’ll be taking to New York, making a list on a yellow legal pad. There may be enough that he needs to hire a moving company—Malcolm House will pay. Books, stereo, clothes. A few pieces of furniture—maybe he can even reclaim some items from his old apartment. Mary owes him that much. But soon he wearies of the exercise. It can’t distract him from rerunning his conversation with Amy, and it doesn’t allay his sense of loss. Finally, searching for a way to ease his restlessness, he takes a look at Vijay Sharma’s latest offering (might as well do the guy a favor, since he launched Lincoln’s online career), and reading the absurd but heroic adventures of the Indian private eye, Lincoln finds a way to make the hours pass.

In midafternoon Flam calls. He wants to know how the trip to New York went.

“Well, they offered me the job,” Lincoln reveals.

“No shit. That was quick. I’m impressed.”

“Thanks.”

“You must be feeling pretty good.”

On the prompting, Lincoln does a quick check of his systems. No, he’s not feeling all that good. “You bet!” he dissembles.

“How about celebrating over dinner tonight? The champagne’s on me.”

Lincoln has no plans, but he’s not in the mood for an evening with Flam, and he lacks the energy to exult over the move to New York when he can’t extinguish this outburst of melancholy. He begs off dinner and asks for a rain check.

After he hangs up, Lincoln suddenly wonders what Amy is doing tonight. Having dinner with her parents? Going out with friends? Another image slices into Lincoln’s thoughts: Amy rubbing noses with a fat-cheeked baby, both of them laughing, the baby waving its arms, the two of them, in that moment, utterly complete in their love.

New York! Lincoln tells himself. New York, New York, New York—his incantation to get out of this emotional warp and back into his own reality. And it works, for a time. He wants to attach himself to a great publishing house, edit profound writers, maybe even write a book or two himself. Bask in the pride of his parents. Wave those credentials in front of his rivals. Be somebody.

Returning to Vijay Sharma’s manuscript, Lincoln thinks of Peter Falcone. Hah! What would he think of this epic pile of subcontinental swill? Falcone would never even look at it. He’d be wining and dining agents and famous authors. And that is now Lincoln’s destiny. No more Vijay Sharmas! But late that night, after a delivered dinner of spicy Kung Pao chicken washed down by too much vodka, when Lincoln finally comes
to the end of Sharma’s book and the eponymous hero rescues the kidnapped young woman from the cult of religious zealots by hiding in the coffin in which the terrorists were planning to bury the poor girl alive for daring to seek a liberal education, Lincoln erupts in sobs. The melodrama! The glory! Teardrops splatter Lincoln’s shirt as the lionhearted private eye machetes his way through swarming fanatics and carries the beautiful, terrified victim to freedom. Lincoln puts his head on his desk and lets the waterworks flow.

When he gets up the next morning, Lincoln goes through his usual Sunday routine: scrambled eggs, English muffin, a pot of coffee, the
Tribune
, the
Times
. While glancing over the
Times
business section, he suddenly thinks: baby cribs. Amy is going to get one today. Haven’t there been stories recently about dangerous cribs—the slats are too far apart or the adjustable rail accidentally drops? After a few minutes on the Internet, he finds that, yes, some older cribs have been blamed for deaths, and even some newer models have been recalled. Does Amy know? He returns to the paper, but over the next half hour, the concern itches until it suddenly erupts in a full-blown panic: he’s got to warn her. He tries to call, but she doesn’t pick up. He sends an e-mail, listing the varieties of cribs that have caused trouble. But what if she doesn’t check her e-mail before her shopping excursion? In his agitated state, Lincoln has little trouble convincing himself that there is only one thing to do: he has to find her and tell her.

He showers and dresses quickly, then hurries outside to catch a cab. The driver, a dark-complected man of some Eastern nationality, soon picks up on Lincoln’s anxiety—the lugubrious sighs when they don’t crash a yellow light, the groans when a lumbering truck pulls in front. “You in a hurry?” the driver asks.

“Yes, I’m afraid so,” says Lincoln.

“What can be the hurry on Sunday morning?”

“It’s a personal thing.”

“Sunday morning is the only time Americans slow down. The rest of the time, always in a rush. In my country, every day is like Sunday morning.”

“Where’s your country?”

“India.”

“India,” Lincoln murmurs. The word jars loose an absurd question: “Do you know of a writer named Vijay Sharma?”

“What does he write?”

“Books. Thrillers.”

“No.” The driver shakes his head. “I mostly read newspapers.”

That ends the conversation until they reach Amy’s block. As Lincoln is paying, the driver says, “Vijay Sharma. I’ll remember that name and look him up.”

“You won’t regret it,” Lincoln says, and he realizes that his mind and his mouth are on two different tracks. He really has to get his bearings. He stands on the sidewalk for a moment. A spot of sunlight flowing down the east-west street warms his face, calming him. Then he walks to the entrance and makes his second siege of Amy’s building. But this time he sits on the buzzer for more than a minute with no response. Too late—she’s already left.