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“Um, I’m not sure if …”

“Linc, for real”—Justin set his keys on the table—“I’m going home with Dena.”

“But what about those other guys, your brother …”

“I think they’re gone.”

“What?”

“I’ll pick up the truck tomorrow. Leave the keys under the mat and lock the doors.”

“I really don’t think …” Lincoln picked up the keys and tried to hand them back to Justin. But Justin was already gone.

EVE WAS SITTING
at the kitchen table when Lincoln came downstairs the next afternoon. He’d spent the night in one of Justin’s backseats, then driven home sometime after dawn. His neck still felt like it was folded over an armrest, and his mouth tasted like licorice and sour meat. “What are you doing here?” he asked his sister.

“Well, good morning, sunshine. I brought the boys over to play with Mom.”

He looked around the kitchen, then settled heavily into the chair next to his sister.

“They’re in the backyard, building a fort,” she said. “There are egg rolls on the stove. And fried rice, are you hungry?”

Lincoln nodded, but didn’t move. He was already thinking about all the things he was going to do when he had the energy to stand up again. Like, go back to bed. That was the first thing.

“Geez,” his sister said, getting up to make him a plate. “You must have had some night.”

Standing at the stove, stirring the rice, Eve looked like a younger version of their mother—an
older
younger version. At thirty-six, Eve looked like their mother at forty-five. “Being responsible gives you wrinkles,” his sister would say when their mother wasn’t around. “Doesn’t Eve look tired?” his mother would say, whether Eve was around or not.

“Mom says you didn’t come home until seven,” Eve said, handing him a plate. “She’s livid, by the way.”

“Why is she livid?”

“Because you didn’t call. Because she stayed up half the night waiting for you.”

Lincoln took a bite and waited to see whether his stomach had forgiven him yet. “What’s in these egg rolls?” he asked.

“Goat cheese, I think, and maybe salmon.”

“They’re really good.”

“I know,” she said, “I ate four. Now, stop stalling, and tell me where you were all night.”

“I went to a bar with Justin.”

“Did you meet anyone?”

“Strictly speaking?” he said with his mouth full. “Yes.”

“Were you with a girl last night?”

“No. I was asleep and drunk in the back of Justin’s truck. Is there still a yellow SUV in the driveway?”

“No.” Eve looked disappointed.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Lincoln was feeling better already. Maybe he’d even take a shower before he went back to bed. “Would you really rather hear that I’d spent the night having premarital sex with a girl I’d just met at The Steel Guitar?”

“You went to a country bar?”

“It’s only country on Thursday nights.”

“Oh. Well.” Eve took one of his egg rolls. “You could have stayed up all night
talking
to a girl you’d met at The Steel Guitar. I would love to hear that.”

“Okay,” he said, getting up for more, “next time, that’s what I’ll tell you.”

CHAPTER 13

From: Jennifer Scribner-Snyder
To: Beth Fremont
Sent: Mon, 09/06/1999 10:14 AM
Subject: ALL HAIL THE GOLDEN VIKINGS!

I know how you devour the Sports section, so you’ve probably already read how the North High Vikings
trounced
the Southeast Bunnies Friday night. The only thing missing from our coverage was the way the Viking defense rallied when the band played “Whoomp! (There it is).” You missed quite a night.

<>

1. Why is every school in this city named after a direction? Would it kill them to name something after John F. Kennedy or Abraham Lincoln or Boutros Boutros-Ghali?

2. Mitch has them playing
Jock Jams
? Has he no shame?

<>
Well, it is a football game. Besides, the kids love that song. It’s really cute, the tubas do the “Whoomp” part. How was your weekend? Did you go see Chris? Did his band play any
Jock Jams
?

<>
Yeah, you should hear his guitar solo on “Tootsee Roll.” My weekend was good. I did stop at the Sacajawea show Friday night and ended up catching their whole set. There were a few songs I hadn’t heard before.

<>
Was Chris surprised to see you at the show?

<>
Nyah.

<>
Nyah? You’re so coy. I’ve been thinking about why you won’t tell me how you met. I think it must be scandalous. Was he married? Are you related?

<>
Yes and yes.

<>
There you go again. Coy.

<>
Sorry. It’s just …

I know how you feel about Chris. (I know how
everybody
feels about Chris.) And it feels weird telling gushy romantic stories about him. I can sense your disdain.

<>
How
do I feel? And who’s
everybody
?

<>
You don’t like him.

And everybody is everybody. My parents. My siblings. You, did I mention you?

<>
That’s not fair. I like Chris.

<>
But you think I can do better.

<>
That’s not quite true.

I love you. And I want you to be happy. And you’re not happy. So I look for what in your life is making you unhappy. And I think Chris sometimes makes you unhappy.

<>
Mitch sometimes makes you unhappy.

<>
That’s true.

<>
You’re thinking, “But …”

<>
I’m sorry. I don’t want you to feel like you can’t tell me things about Chris, gushy and romantic or otherwise. I tell you everything, and it’s such an enormous comfort to have someone to tell.

Also, maybe if you told me all the gushy, romantic things about Chris, I would understand why you put up with the
other
things, the things that do make me roll my eyes.

<>
That’s a good point.

<>
So …

<>
So?

<>
So, tell me something gushy and romantic. Tell me how you met.

Once upon a time, at a family reunion, I met a married man …

<>
You don’t have to like him to be my friend. As long as you like me, we’re cool.

<>
I want to like him.

<>
I shouldn’t have said that about Mitch making you unhappy. I love Mitch. I’m sorry.

<>
No, it’s okay. You were right. Mitch
does
make me unhappy sometimes, and you don’t hold it against him.

Once upon a time at a family reunion …

<>
Okay. Well. I met Chris at the Student Union.

<>
You don’t say.

<>
We both used to study there between our 9:30 and 11:30 classes.

I had seen him on campus before. He was always wearing this yellow sweatshirt and giant headphones. The kind of headphones that say, “I may not take my clothes seriously. I may not have brushed or even washed my hair today. But I pronounce the word ‘music’ with a capital ‘M.’ Like God.”

Are you rolling your eyes yet?

<>
Are you kidding? I love love stories. Keep going.

<>
So I had noticed him before. He had Eddie Vedder hair. Ginger brown, tangly. He was too thin (much thinner than he is now), and there were permanent smudges under his eyes. Like he was too cool to eat or sleep.

I thought he was
dreamy
.

I called him Headphone Boy. I couldn’t believe my luck when I realized we studied in the Union at the same time.

Well,
I
studied. He would pull a paperback out of his pocket and read. Never a textbook. Sometimes, he’d just sit there with his eyes closed, listening to music, his legs all jangly and loose. He gave me impure thoughts.

<>
You’re not stopping there! You can’t stop with “impure thoughts.”

<>
I have to. Pam just came over. One of the old movie theaters is closing. The Indian Hills. It’s got one of the last Cinerama screens left in the country. I can’t believe they want to close the place. (I’ve seen all four
Star Wars
movies there. I need to complete the series, damn it.) Pam wants a story about it by morning. So, I’m actually on deadline. Like a real reporter. I got no time for love stories.

<>
Okay, you’re excused. For now. But you’re finishing this story.

<>
I will, I promise.

CHAPTER 14

LINCOLN WAS NEVER
going to send Jennifer Scribner-Snyder and Beth Fremont a warning.

He may as well admit that, to himself. He was never going to send them a warning. Because he liked them. Because he thought they were nice and smart and funny. Really funny—sometimes they made him laugh out loud at his desk. He liked how they teased each other and looked out for each other. He wished that he had a friend at work he could talk to like that.

Okay. So. That’s how it was going to be. He was never going to send them a warning.

Ergo. Therefore. Thus …He technically,
ethically
, had no reason to keep reading their e-mail.

Lincoln had told himself all along that it was okay to do this job (that it was okay to be a professional snoop and a lurker) as long as there was nothing voyeuristic about it. As long as he didn’t enjoy the snooping and lurking.

But now he
was
enjoying it. He found himself hoping that Beth and Jennifer’s messages would get picked up by the filter; he found himself smiling every time he saw their names in the WebFence folder. Sometimes, on slow nights, he’d read their messages twice.

It had even occurred to Lincoln once or twice that he could open up their personal folders and read any of their mail, anytime, if he really wanted to.

Not that he wanted to. Not that he ever would. That would be weird.

This
was weird, he thought.

He should stop reading their messages. If he was never going to send them a warning, he should stop.

Okay
, Lincoln said to himself,
I’m stopping
.

CHAPTER 15

From: Jennifer Scribner-Snyder
To: Beth Fremont
Sent: Tues, 09/07/1999 9:56 AM
Subject: Nice story.

And on the front page, even. You haven’t lost your chops.

<>
Why, thank you. It was exciting working with the news editors again. Everyone’s so intense over there. I felt like Lois Lane.

<>
Normally, you feel like Roger Ebert, right?

Hey, guess who wrote your headline?

<>
Now that you mention it, it was a very clever headline. Pithy, even. It must have been Chuck.

<>
Funny.

<>
We make a great team, you and I. We should join forces and …start a newspaper or something.

<>
Mitch read your story at breakfast this morning, and he was p;ssed. He loves that theater. He saw
The Goonies
there six times. (His seventh-grade girlfriend had a crush on Corey Feldman.) He said that the Cinerama screen could make any movie look good.

<>

1. Mitch had a seventh-grade girlfriend? Play on, player.

2. I hope he wasn’t implying that
The Goonies
was a bad movie. I love Martha Plimpton, and Corey Feldman was excellent. He never deserved to become a punch line. Did you see
Stand By Me
?
The ’Burbs? The Fox and the Hound
?

3. I love picturing you guys reading the paper together over breakfast. It’s so blissfully domestic.

<>
Not this morning, it wasn’t.

I was reading the National page, and there was a story about a mother whose son tied her up because she wouldn’t buy him a PlayStation, and I said, “Jesus, one more reason not to have kids.” And Mitch snorted (really, he
snorted
) and said, “Are you writing these down somewhere? All the reasons we can’t have kids?”

I told him not to be mean, and he said, “
You
don’t be mean. I know that you’re not ready for a baby. You don’t have to rub it in.”

“Rub it in to what?” I asked. “Are you wounded?”

Then he said that he was tired and that I should just forget it. “I love you,” he said, “I’m going to work.” I told him not to say it like that, like he had to say it to be excused from the table. And he asked if I would rather he left without saying “I love you.”

I said: “I’d rather you said ‘I love you’ because you were so full of love for me that you couldn’t keep it in. I would
rather
that you wouldn’t leave the house mad at me.”

And then he said that he wasn’t mad at me, that he was mad at the situation. The kid situation. Or, rather, the lack-of-kid situation.

But I
am
the lack-of-kid situation. So I said so. “You’re mad at me,” I said.

“Okay,” he said, “I’m mad at you. But I love you. And I have to go to work. Good-bye.”

Then I worried that he’d get into a car accident on his way to work, and I’d have to spend the rest of my life thinking about how I didn’t say, “I love you, too.”

I purposely didn’t take my folic acid pill after breakfast—to spite us both.

<>
When did you start taking folic acid?

<>
After my last pregnancy scare. It seemed like it would give me one less thing to worry about. Do you think I should call Mitch and apologize?

<>
Yes.

<>
But I don’t want to. He started it.

<>
Maybe all of your pregnancy anxiety is starting to get to him.

<>
It is. I know it is. I don’t blame him. But I’m no good at apologizing. I always end up making it worse. I’ll say, “I’m sorry,” and I’ll be all sweet, and then once I’m forgiven, I’ll say, “But you really did start it.”

<>
That’s awful, don’t do that. That’s exactly what your mother would say.

<>
That’s exactly what my mother
has
said, to me, a
million
times.

I inherited it. I’m genetically programmed to be a terrible person.

Speaking of my mother, I foolishly told her last weekend that Mitch and I had been fighting about having a baby. And she sighed—have you heard her sigh? It’s like a balloon dying—and said, “That’s how it starts. You better watch yourself.”

“
It
,” of course, is divorce. Which she’s sure I inherited along with her straight teeth and her evil apologies. She’s just waiting. She keeps poking my marriage with a toothpick.
Almost done!

So I was like “
Really
, Mom?
It
starts with fighting? And here I thought it started with my third-grade teacher.”

(Which, of course, is where her divorce started. Though one could argue that my parents’ divorce started the day of their shotgun wedding, that my father’s affair with Mrs. Grandy was more of a symptom than a disease.)

So, after that horrible, caustic remark, my mother and I were fighting, and I said more awful things, and she finally said, “You can say what you want, Jennifer, but we both know who’s going to pick up the pieces when this all falls apart.”

So I hung up on her, and Mitch—who had wandered into the room, but didn’t know what we were fighting about—said, “I wish you wouldn’t talk to her like that. She’s your
mother
.”

And I couldn’t tell him, “But she thinks you’re going to leave me, and she’s already taking your side in the divorce.” So I just frowned at him.

Then on Sunday, my mom called again, and it was like we had never argued. She wanted me to take her to the mall, and she insisted on buying me a red sweater at Sears, which I’ll probably end up paying for the next time she can’t make her Sears card payment.

<>
Is that the sweater you’re wearing today? You got that at Sears? It’s really cute.

<>
Don’t distract me. (Thank you. Isn’t it though?)

<>
Your mom’s a nut. Your marriage is nothing like hers. Your life is nothing like hers. She was already married and divorced with a 10-year-old by the time she was your age.

<>
I know, but my mother has a way of spinning those facts into a bad thing. Her take is that I’m just a late bloomer—that I’m taking forever to ruin my life, and she’s running out of patience.

I remember getting past 18, the age she was when she had me, and thinking, “Whew, I did it. I made it to 19 without getting pregnant.” As if getting pregnant was even an issue. At 19, I hadn’t even
kissed
a guy yet.

<>
Really? How old were you when you had your first kiss?

<>
Twenty. It’s pathetic. Guys don’t want to kiss fat girls.

<>
Not true. There are all those guys on
Jerry Springer
, and there’s President Clinton …

<>
Make that: no one I ever wanted to kiss wanted to kiss a fat girl.

<>
I’ll bet you never gave anyone a chance. Mitch says you practically beat him away with a stick.

<>
I was trying to spare him.

<>
How did he win you over?

<>
He just wouldn’t leave me alone. He kept sitting behind me in our poetry-writing class and asking me if I had plans for lunch. Like I wanted this muscle-bound blond guy to watch me
eat
.

<>
I can just see him. A farm boy with sexy sousaphone shoulders …wearing one of those hats they give out free at the grain co-op and a pair of tight Wranglers. Do you remember those bumper stickers people used to have in college, “Girls go nuts for Wrangler butts”?

<>
Yes. And it’s the sort of memory that makes me wish I’d gone to college out of state. Someplace in Philadelphia. Or New Jersey.

<>
You know, if you had gone to school in New Jersey, you never would have met Mitch. You wouldn’t have taken a job here. You never would have met me.

<>
Mitch says he was destined to meet me. He says I could go back and do my whole life over, and I’d still end up marrying him.

<>
See? He’s nothing like your dad. He’s wonderful. I wish you and I had been friends in college. Why weren’t we friends?

<>
Probably because I was fat.

<>
Don’t be stupid. Probably because I was too busy being Chris’s girlfriend to make friends.

<>
Probably because I was too busy working at the
Daily
. I never met any non-journalism majors until I started hanging out with Mitch’s marching-band friends.

<>
But I
was
a journalism major. That’s another thing I never did because I was so busy being in love: I never worked at the school newspaper.

<>
You didn’t miss anything, trust me. It was a viper pit. A drunken viper pit.

You know …here we are talking about college, I don’t have any stories to edit, you’re basking in the glow of a brilliant front-page scoop …

This would be a great time to complete The Romancing of Beth.

<>
It was more like The Romancing of Chris.

<>
The Romancing of Headphone Boy.

There he was, yellow sweatshirt, paperback. There you were, impure thoughts …

<>
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.”

<>
And then …

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

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

<>
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.

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

<>
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.

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

<>
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.

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

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

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