Attachments (22 page)

CHAPTER 66

COULD YOUR BRAIN
actually reject information? Like a foreign organ? Doris was trying to teach Lincoln to play pinochle, and the rules were bouncing off his brain. Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, that didn’t discourage her. He’d thought about eating at his desk. If he wasn’t trying to run into Beth, he may as well. But that didn’t seem fair to Doris, especially now that his mother sent treats specifically for the other woman. Now that Doris was the one sharing
her
cake with him.

“Some people just have trouble with games,” she said. “I’ll deal this time.” She did tricks when she shuffled. “Say, do you have big plans this weekend?”

“No,” Lincoln said. He might play D&D. He might play golf with Chuck. One of the other copy editors was having a “Happy New-ish Year” party that Lincoln was invited to. (“We always celebrate holidays a few weeks late,” Chuck had explained. “Those dayside bastards won’t cover for us on holidays.”)

“’Cause I’ve still got that curio cabinet at my old apartment … ,” Doris said. “I told the super I’d have everything out by the thirty-first.”

“Oh, right,” Lincoln said, “sorry. I can come by Saturday afternoon if you want.”

“How about Sunday? I’ve got a date on Saturday.”

Of course she did. Why wouldn’t she?

“Sure,” he said. “Sunday.”

WHILE THEY PLAYED
golf, Chuck tried to talk Lincoln into coming to the copy desk party.

“I don’t really like parties,” Lincoln said.

“It won’t be much of a party anyway. Copy editors throw terrible parties.”

“You’re really selling it.”

“Emilie will be there …”

“I thought I heard she was dating somebody.”

“They broke up. Why you don’t like Emilie? She’s adorable.”

“Yeah,” Lincoln said, “she’s cute.”

“She’s
adorable
,” Chuck said, “and she can recite the complete list of prepositions. And she’s bringing pumpkin bread and Electronic Catch Phrase.”

“It sounds like
you
like Emilie.”

“Not me. I’m trying to reconcile with my wife. What’s your excuse?”

“I’m sort of …coming off a bad relationship.”

“When did it end?”

“Slightly before it started,” Lincoln said.

Chuck barked a laugh, little bursts of steam breaking the January air.

“Isn’t it too cold to play golf?” Lincoln asked.

“Sunshine gives me a headache,” Chuck said.

LINCOLN DIDN’T CHANGE
his mind. He didn’t feel like parties. Or games. Or people.

Three weeks. That’s how long it had been since Beth and Jennifer had turned up in the WebFence folder.
This is good
, Lincoln told himself.
Even if it doesn’t make sense for them to be so quiet. Even if it’s wildly out of character. They’re making it easy for you. Easier.

He decided to rent a movie,
Harold and Maude
. He hadn’t watched it since high school, and he wanted to watch the scene at the end where Harold drives his Jaguar off a cliff and then starts to play the banjo. He hoped nobody from the newspaper would be at Blockbuster to see him rent
Harold and Maude
. (Chuck told him that before they knew his name, everyone on the copy desk called Lincoln “Doris’s Boyfriend.”) He almost hid the video box when someone touched his arm.

“Lincoln. Lincoln? Is that you?”

He turned.

The strange thing about seeing someone for the first time in nine years is the way they look totally different, just for a second, a
split
second, and then they look to you the way they always have, as if no time has passed between you.

Sam looked exactly like Sam. Small. Curly brown hair—a little longer now, not in that all-over-the-place bob that had been popular in college. Wide sparkling eyes, so dark you could hardly see her pupils. Black clothes that looked like she’d bought them out of state. Silver rings on her fingers. A pink necktie tied at her waist like a belt.

She was still touching him. She’d taken hold of both his arms.

“Lincoln!” she said.

Lincoln didn’t move or speak, but he felt like Keanu Reeves in that scene from
The Matrix
, when he slows down time to dodge a hail of bullets.

“I just can’t believe it’s you.” She squeezed his arms, grabbed the front of his jacket, pressed her palms on his chest. “Oh my God. You look exactly the same.”

She pulled his jacket toward her. He didn’t come with it.

“You even smell the same,” she said, “peaches! I can’t believe it’s you. How are you?” She tugged at his jacket again. “How
are
you!”

“I’m good,” he said. “Just fine.”

“It’s kismet that I’m running into you,” Sam said. “I just moved back last month, and I’ve been thinking about you every day. I don’t think I have a memory of this city that doesn’t include you. Every time I go to my folks’ house or get on the freeway, my head’s like, ‘Lincoln, Lincoln, Lincoln.’ God, it’s good to see you. How
are
you?
Really?
I mean, the last I heard, well …” She made a sad face. She touched his arms, his shoulders, his chin. “But that was years ago …How are you? How are you now? Tell me everything!”

“Oh, you know,” he said. “I’m here. Working. I mean, I work. With computers. Not
here
-here. Around.” What else could he say? That he still lived with his mom? That he was renting a movie that he’d probably watched with Sam the first time? That she was the Jaguar he needed to drive off the cliff?

Except she wasn’t. Was she?

Lincoln felt a surge of something like strength. He set down
Harold and Maude
, surreptitiously, and picked up something else,
Hairspray
.

“What about you?” he asked. “What brought you back?”

“Oh God.” Sam rolled her eyes, like it would take three hours and a Greek chorus to explain. “Work. Family. I came back because I wanted my boys to get to know their grandparents. Can you believe I’m a mom? God! And there’s this job at the Playhouse. In development, fund-raising, you know, making rich people feel important. Behind the scenes, but not off the stage. I don’t know, it’s a big change. A big risk. Liam is staying in Dublin for six months just in case this isn’t a good move. Did you know I’ve been in Dublin?”

“Dublin,” Lincoln said. “With Liam. Your husband?”

“As such,” Sam said, making another it’s-an-unbearably-long-story gesture. “I swore I’d never marry another man with a foreign passport. Once bitten, et cetera.” She said it in three hard syllables. Et-cet-ra. Her hands, small with perfectly manicured pink nails, flew around as she talked but kept landing on Lincoln’s chest and arm.

“I’ll tell you the whole adventure sometime,” she said to him, “sometime
soon
. We have to catch up. I’ve always felt that two people who shared as much as we did and shared such important years should never have drifted apart.” Her voice dropped intimately. From stage to screen. “It just isn’t right.

“I’ve got an idea,” she said, holding on to his jacket with both hands and standing on tiptoe, leaning into him. He mentally leaned back. “What are you doing
right now
?”

“Right now?” he asked.

“We’ll go to Fenwick’s and eat banana ice cream. And you’ll tell me just
everything
.”

“Everything,” he said, trying to imagine what part of everything he’d ever want to tell Sam.

“Everything!” she said, tipping toward him. She smelled like gardenias. Plus something muskier, gardenias with carnal knowledge.

“Fenwick’s closed a few years ago,” he said.

“Then we’ll just have to get in the car and keep driving until we find banana ice cream. Which way should we go,” she asked, laughing, “toward Austin? Or Fargo?”

“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 of
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.