Are You Happy Now? (7 page)

“A serious dose,” Lincoln replies, though, of course, he disdains the chronically dreadful Cubs and their bleached, arriviste fans who know nothing about baseball but treat a ballgame as a huge, chattering singles party. Not so long ago—before the Cubs started playing night games at Wrigley—the team was lucky to draw ten thousand fans to a midweek matchup in July, most of them babbling obsessives of the Bill Lemke variety, jabbering on
about the sweet flick of Ernie Banks’s bat and the unfairness of life.

“I was wondering,” Breeson says, “did you ever consider publishing any mysteries?” He’s a large, shapeless man of indeterminate age—somewhere in his late thirties or early forties—who has been with Duddleston since the trading days. Breeson has always treated Lincoln with a kind of distanced curiosity, if not awe, never able to grasp the messy, unquantifiable work of literary creation, but earnestly trying to figure it out.

“Not specifically,” says Lincoln. “I’m not really conversant with the genre.”

Breeson whispers conspiratorially, “I love mysteries. I like to try to figure them out before the end.”

“Really. And do you?”

“Sometimes,” Breeson says. “Sometimes.”

The van finally drops them off at the corner of Clark and Addison, and the Pistakee group makes its way through the mob into Wrigley. Lincoln can’t visit the place without thinking of the Roman Colosseum—not just because the entertainment within diverts the restless masses, but because, like its Italian counterpart, the ancient Chicago landmark is falling apart. Crumbling concrete forced the team to install protective netting. The interior walkways are narrow and decrepit. The foul and inevitably overcrowded men’s restrooms feature long, communal troughs, a plumbing innovation Lincoln recalls from the public bathrooms at Pompeii. Still, after a visitor approaches Wrigley on a sea of pavement, passes through the stadium’s gray walls, walks up the concrete steps to the field-level seats, he’s suddenly confronted with an explosion of green—the outfield grass, the ivy walls, the huge, old scoreboard, all so lush and verdant it’s almost dizzying. Lincoln thinks of that scene in
The Wizard of Oz
when Dorothy steps out of the uprooted house and the black-and-white movie turns Technicolor.

As promised, the seats are excellent, six rows back, just behind the Cubs’ bullpen along the left-field line, and Bill Lemke is waiting. Duddleston orchestrates a clumsy minuet that sends Lincoln down the row to sit next to the author. “Hi, Bill! Great night for a game, huh?” Lincoln enthuses as he sits down.

Lemke nods slowly, barely acknowledging his editor. He holds a hot dog in one hand, and a daub of mustard colors the corner of his mouth.

Soon, however, Duddleston has corralled several vendors, and he’s passing beer, hot dogs, and peanuts all around. The game starts, and as the beer continues to flow, Lemke’s mood lightens. He’s a balding man with a halfhearted comb-over across the back of his pate and a round, florid face marked by bumps and crannies. Lincoln can’t be certain of Lemke’s age, though his wardrobe—knit gray pants and a knit shirt with pale, green stripes—appears to come straight from a Sears sale in the 1950s. He’s unhappy with the state of sports writing today, as he explains to Lincoln over the course of several innings. “It’s a bunch of psychological crap,” Lemke laments. “Where are the facts? You read a story and you don’t even know what happened in the goddamned game.”

“It’s tough today,” Lincoln points out. “The scores are out there immediately—on the Internet, TV. There’s a lot of pressure to find new angles and ways to tell the story.”

Lemke ignores the point and leans close, his breath reeking of mustard. “Twice I was voted Illinois Sportswriter of the Year,” he confides.

Lincoln thinks: right, the only difference between Lemke and Nelson Algren is Algren didn’t get any breaks. “That’s a great honor,” Lincoln tells him.

On the field, the Cubs’ Alfonso Soriano overswings, as always, but gets enough of a fat pitch to send a ball high into the night sky and two rows deep into the left-field bleachers. The crowd stands and roars. The stadium lights pushing against the
enveloping darkness create a dome of golden illumination over the playing field and the stands. The effect is so intimate that Lincoln feels as if he could reach out across the outfield and grab a handful of peanuts from a shirtless guy sitting in the bleachers. It’s like having a ball game in your living room. Lincoln glances down his row and sees Amy at the far end, cheering and clapping around a beer in one hand. If he can maneuver his way beside her, he thinks, this would be a good night to drop the seeds of the book.

By the seventh inning, the home team is winning. The Cubs’ pitcher is throwing a shutout, and Lemke is maundering on about his life and career as if Lincoln were his favorite nephew. When everyone stands during the seventh inning stretch, singing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” under the direction of guest celebrity soloist Vince Vaughn, Lemke sings a few lines, then wraps an arm around Lincoln’s shoulder. Swinging his head to indicate the buff young traders in Polo shirts, the suited businessmen in their expense-account box seats, the chattering girls showing off their navel jewelry, the suburban dads with their troops of restless kids—the whole nouveau Cubs family—Lemke whispers hoarsely, “These are my readers.”

With the last call for beer, the Pistakee lineup shifts. Lincoln and Breeson go out for refills; Lemke slides over to recall his career triumphs for Duddleston. On his return, Lincoln manages to slip into the seat next to Amy. “Enjoying yourself?” he asks.

“This is a blast,” she exclaims. “I love this place. I’ve never been to Wrigley Field before.”

“I guess Professor Davoodi didn’t organize too many field trips up here.”

Amy eyes him coolly. Just then, a Cubs outfielder dashes in, flops on his stomach, and, sliding, grabs a soft line drive. Amy lets out a whoop, along with everyone else in the stadium. When the crowd quiets, Amy says, “You’re disdainful of the U of C, but a lot of people who went there really liked it.”

“I know the school has a lot of great qualities,” Lincoln says, trying to sound reasonable. “Hell, in the fifties, the U of C was the hippest place in the country. While everywhere else was sleeping through the Eisenhower era, Hyde Park was overrun with smart, edgy, creative types. Mike Nichols, Elaine May, Susan Sontag, Philip Roth. Mostly Jews from the East. Children of immigrants. Second City started down there. They invented improvisational comedy—cutting-edge, intellectual stuff with real political bite.”

“So?” Amy asks.

“Something happened. By the time I got there, the place had lost its spark—turned insular and crabbed. Nothing but kids who beavered away in the library all through the weekend.”

Amy stares off at the field for a second, then says, “You know, you always seem so sour. You must be really unhappy.”

The remark sets Lincoln back for a moment. Unhappy? Lincoln always thought he was just cynical—or maybe touched by cynicism’s journalism-refined cousin, skepticism. But unhappy?

“What do you really want?” Amy presses. “Do you even know?”

“I’m an editor,” he tells her. “I just want to make things better.”

Amy shakes her head in exasperation, setting in motion her dangly silver earrings, showcased now with her styled short hair combed behind her ears. She and Lincoln watch the game wind down at a glacial pace. Though the Cubs are far ahead, the Brewers keep bringing in relief pitchers, prolonging the inevitable. Lincoln would like to lure Amy away to a neighborhood bar, where they can talk in privacy about his sex book idea, but he doesn’t want to leave before Duddleston. Down the row of seats, Lemke is blattering into the boss’s ear.

After a while, Lincoln tells Amy quietly, “I’ve been enjoying your stories.”

“Really?” She turns to him, unable to mask her excitement.

“They’re raw,” he says, dialing back, trying to play this carefully, “nothing that could be published yet.” He watches her deflate. “But you’ve got a nice touch. An eye for detail.”

On the field, Soriano homers again. Everyone in the stadium stands except Lincoln and Amy. “Take ‘Standard Deviation,’” Lincoln says over the commotion. “I think that story shows promise. The setting has possibilities.”

“I
know
. That’s such a weird situation—asking all those utterly private questions, in this totally clinical, sexless manner. I think I could really do more with that.”

“Yes.” Lincoln nods slowly. “Yes, you may be right.” Bingo, he thinks.

At the end of the eighth inning, Duddleston announces he has to leave to tuck in his kids. Everyone from Pistakee gets up to follow the boss; only Lemke will watch the game to its last, staggering out. Lincoln jockeys over to shake the old sportswriter’s hand. “I’ll call you this week,” Lincoln promises.

Lemke won’t let go. “I was telling Byron about when the Cubs’ outfielder George Altman ran over between innings and bought a hot dog from a vendor,” Lemke says. “He thought we should put that in the book.”

“Maybe, maybe. We’ll talk.” Lincoln manages to pull away.

The fans are already streaming out of the ballpark. The Pistakee gang falls into the pack and works its way toward the exit. Duddleston edges close to Lincoln. “Nice job tonight, Abe” he says. “I think you smoothed it right over. Bill’s eager to get going again.”

Outside in the mob on Clark Street, the group scatters. As Duddleston disappears into the crowd, Lincoln asks Amy if she wants to get a nightcap so they can continue their discussion. Of course, she does.

They join the crowd flowing south. The neighborhood is a riot of milling and shouting fans, lumbering buses, angry car drivers caught in the mess. An oblivious scrum of teenage boys barrels past, and Lincoln grabs Amy around the waist to pull her out of the way. His hand lingers on the taut muscles on the side of her stomach, then slides along her smooth back. Even though
he’s spent several days thinking on and off about her panties, her trim figure, her seeming makeover, for the first time a thought pushes into his head: Wouldn’t it be lovely to sleep with her? He immediately processes one of those internal debates, the sort in which the pros and cons sound somehow familiar and now are laid out in a babble of overlapping contradiction: He’s still married, and he hopes to get back again with his wife. (Well, they are separated for now, and the rules under those circumstances are muddy at best; and who knows if Mary remains faithful?) Amy’s just an exuberant, ambitious kid—sleeping with a grumpy married man twelve years her senior is probably the farthest thing from her mind. (But hasn’t she dolled herself up since he showed an interest, and isn’t there a flirtatious glint to her manner?) She’s a Pistakee employee, for fuck’s sake; he’s an executive, and this is 2009, when every accidental bump at the copying machine turns into a workplace sexual-harassment suit. (On the other hand, he doesn’t supervise her—they’re more like colleagues, and the law doesn’t want to meddle with genuine office romances.) Put it out of your mind, Lincoln tells himself.

“Do you want to come back to my place?” Amy asks.

Lincoln stares at her, stupefied.

“Oh, no, no, no,” she says, laughing, putting her hand on his chest and pushing him away. “I didn’t mean it like that. I mean all the bars around here are going to be packed and noisy. We’ll never be able to hear each other talk.”

“I think I know a place,” Lincoln says.

At a little round table in the Northern Lights Tap, Lincoln orders a Scotch on the rocks. Amy tells the waitress she’ll have the same thing, but when it comes, she takes a sip and makes a face, so Lincoln orders two beers, too. He continues to compliment her on her stories, pointing out scenes he likes, characters that show promise. He discusses her work, in fact, until he starts to bore himself, though Lincoln has spent enough time with writers to know that they possess the endurance of Indian
mystics—those fellows with towels wrapped around their loins who walk on coals—capable of withstanding unimaginable tedium and discomfort, as long as someone is talking about their prose.

Lincoln orders another round of Scotch and beer (I’ll pay tomorrow, he thinks; on the other hand, Amy’s eyes look as clear and bright as ever). He works his way back to the sex survey. “How much material did you leave on the cutting-room floor, so to speak?”

“One semester while I was working there, I was taking a writing course and the professor made us keep a diary.” Amy touches Lincoln’s arm. “I’ve got pages of the stuff.”

“Hmmmm.” Lincoln sips his Scotch, deep in contemplation. The bar is decorated to suggest a hunting lodge, with dark pine paneling, moose heads sprouting from the walls, fishing gear tacked everywhere. Lincoln wonders if the décor is pumping up his testosterone, because he has to fight an urge to nuzzle aside Amy’s dangly earring and kiss her on the neck.

“Do you think I could turn the material into a novel?” she asks.

“A novel,” repeats Lincoln, as if considering a fresh and intriguing idea.

“Oh, that’s stupid,” Amy chides herself. She sips her Scotch, then quickly follows with a gulp of beer. “I couldn’t write a novel. I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”

Now it’s Lincoln’s turn to touch Amy’s arm. “Wait a second. You may be onto something there.” He lets his gaze wander the bar, seemingly searching for inspiration from the moose head, the decaying trout basket, the warped and nicked canoe paddle. “A novel. A young girl just discovering her sexuality who’s thrust into an intense project to explore other people’s sex lives. The experience is supposed to be clinical, anonymous, she’s put off by it all, but then, slowly, she’s drawn into the life of one of the subjects.”

Amy is on fire. “I can write that!” she cries. “I can sit down and write that!”

“She enters a world that’s dark, slightly shrouded.” Lincoln speaks slowly. “Maybe there’s the hint of a crime, a mystery unfolding.”

Amy pulls away from his grasp. “Of course, it was nothing like that in real life.”

“Who cares? It’s a fucking novel! Anything can happen.”

“And I do have pages and pages of notes.”

“Exactly.”