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“No problem,” Lincoln messaged back. “I hope he feels better. Get some rest.”

Poor kid. Poor Christine.

This isn’t a big deal, Lincoln told himself. The plan is flexible. He could still go see a movie this weekend. He could pick up his comics. He could call Justin.

There were twenty-three red-flagged messages in the WebFence folder. There might even be something in there that Lincoln should take care of. He opened it, telling himself that he may as well earn an hour of his paycheck tonight.

He opened it, hoping.

CHAPTER 21

From: Beth Fremont
To: Jennifer Scribner-Snyder
Sent: Thurs, 09/30/1999 3:42 PM
Subject: If you were Superman …

…and you could choose any alter ego you wanted, why the hell would you choose to spend your Clark Kent hours—which already suck because you have to wear glasses and you can’t fly—at a newspaper?

Why not pose as a wealthy playboy like Batman? Or the leader of a small but important nation like Black Panther?

Why would you choose to spend your days on deadline, making crap money, dealing with terminally crabby editors?

<>
I thought we agreed not to swear in e-mails.

<>
We agreed that it would probably be a good idea to stop swearing in e-mails.

<>
Still thinking about Lois Lane?

<>
Sort of. I mean, I get why Lois Lane went to journalism school. I know her type. Wants to make a difference, wants to uncover great truths. Nosy. But Clark Kent …why not Clark Kent, sexy TV weatherman? Or Clark Kent, mayor of Cincinnati?

<>
Aren’t you missing the point? Clark Kent doesn’t want to be famous. He doesn’t want people to look at him. If they really look at him, they’d see that he’s just Superman with glasses.

Plus, he needs to be someplace like a newsroom, where he’s the first to hear big news. He can’t afford to read “Joker attacks moon” the next day in the newspaper.

<>
You make an excellent point. Especially for someone who doesn’t know that Superman never fights the Joker.

<>
Especially for someone who doesn’t care. I hope you’re not right about life sucking for everyone who can’t fly and wears glasses. That describes everyone in this room.

What are you working on?

<>
We
do
all wear glasses. Weird.

Another Indian Hills story. I’m not so much working as I am waiting for a phone call.

It turns out, the hospital next door to the theater already bought the land. Months ago. They’re going to make it a parking lot. I’m waiting for the hospital spokesperson to call me back so that she can say, “No comment.” And then I can write, “Hospital officials would not comment on the sale.” And then I can go home.

Do you know how mind-numbing it is to sit around waiting for someone to call you back so that they can officially tell you nothing? I just don’t think Superman would stand for it. He could be out finding lost Boy Scouts and plugging volcanoes with giant boulders.

<>
Superman works at a newspaper because he’s trying to get with Lois Lane.

<>
He probably makes twice as much as she does.

CHAPTER 22

ON FRIDAY MORNING
, Lincoln picked up a spring schedule from the city college. There was a professor in the anthropology department who specialized in Afghan studies. Why not take a few classes? He had plenty of time during the day, and he could always study at work. He’d love to study at work.

“What is this?” his mother asked when she saw the class schedule.

“Something that I thought I’d put in my backpack.” He took the brochure from her hands. “Seriously, Mom, what are you doing in my bag? Are you steaming open my mail, too?”

“You don’t get any mail.” She folded her arms. You could never be offended or dismayed with her—she always beat you to it. “I was checking your bag for dirty dishes,” she said. “Do those papers mean that you’re going back to school?”

“Not immediately.” The fall semester had already started.

“I don’t know how I feel about that, Lincoln. I’m starting to think you might have a problem. With school.”

“I’ve never had a problem with school,” he said, knowing how lame that sounded, knowing that refusing to take part in the conversation wasn’t the same as avoiding it.

“You know what I mean,” she said. She wagged a dirty spoon at him. “A problem. Like those women who get addicted to plastic surgery. They keep going back and going back, trying to look better until there is no more better. Like they can’t look better because they don’t even look like themselves anymore. And then it’s just about looking different, I think. I saw this woman in a magazine who looked just like a cat. Like a cat of prey, a big cat. Have you ever seen her? She has a lot of money. I think she might be from Austria.”

“No,” he said.

“Well, she looks very unhappy.”

“Okay,” he said quietly, shoving the schedule back into his backpack.

“Okay?”

“You don’t want me to go back to school, or have plastic surgery to make myself look like a cat. Okay, I get it. So noted.”

“And you don’t want me to open your backpack …”

“I really don’t.”

“Fine,” she said, walking back to the kitchen. “So noted.”

THE COURIER HAD
begun holding weekly Millennium Preparedness meetings. All the department heads had to attend, including Greg, who was expected to give a readiness report at each one. He usually came back from these meetings looking red-faced and hypertensive.

“I don’t know what they expect of me, Lincoln. I’m one man. The publisher thinks I should have seen this Y2K thing coming. Last week, he yelled at me for sending all our old Selectrics to churches in El Salvador. Even though the board gave me a plaque for that three years ago. It’s hanging in my den …I think I just talked them into buying backup generators.”

Lincoln tried to tell Greg, again, that he really didn’t think anything bad was going to happen on New Year’s Eve. Even if the coding failed, Lincoln said, which it probably wouldn’t, the computers wouldn’t get confused and self-destruct. “
Logan’s Run
isn’t real,” he said.

“Then why do I feel too old for this shit?” Greg asked.

That made Lincoln laugh. If he worked days, with Greg, he might not spend so much time thinking about quitting.

CHAPTER 23

From: Jennifer Scribner-Snyder
To: Beth Fremont
Sent: Tues, 10/12/1999 9:27 AM
Subject: Another nice story.

The way you were complaining last week, I had lowered my expectations. But look at you—front page, above the fold. Giant picture, nice lead, nice ending. I especially like the quote from that protester: “If the Taj Mahal had been built on 84th and Dodge, they’d tear it down for parking.”

<>

1. Stop, you’re too nice. You’re like my mother or something.

2. That protester was very cute. Lovely red hair. A pharmacy student, no less. (Now
I
sound like my mother.) We had a very nice conversation about the way this city worships good parking. I said that eventually, we’ll tear down every building of interest and just run shuttles to Des Moines and Denver. We’ll have a parking-based economy. He thought that was very funny, I could tell. And then, when I asked for a follow-up number, in case I had further questions, he asked for
my
number. (!!!!)

<>
What? That happened yesterday? Why are you holding out on me? If cute, redheaded pharmacy students ever gave me the time of day, you’d be the first to know. Not like that would ever happen. Even construction workers don’t whistle at me.

<>
That’s because you ooze preemptive leave-me-alone death rays. Besides, anyone who gets within 10 feet of you spots the giant rock on your finger.

<>
And also, I’m dumpy. What did you tell the cute anti-parking guy?

<>

1. If you keep insisting that you’re dumpy, I’ll stop sharing my romantic misadventures with you. You’ll have to read about them in
Penthouse
Forum like everybody else.

2. I did something weird. I lied to him.

<>
You didn’t tell him you had a boyfriend?

<>
Nope. I told him I had a fiancé.

“Sorry,” I said. “I can’t. I’m engaged.” And then he looked at my hand and blushed. (It was an adorable, redheaded blush.) And I was like, “I left it on the sink.”

I felt like you at the Baby Gap, buying munchkin overalls. Just making up my life. (Actually, it was more pathetic than that—because you don’t even want a baby. I want to be engaged. Somewhat desperately, let’s face it.)

Last night, when Chris came home and climbed into bed, I couldn’t look him in the eye.

One, because part of me really wanted to give that guy my number.

And two, because I’d lied.

<>
Don’t overthink wanting to give out your number. You were flattered. Attracted. That’s natural. I know this from reading
Glamour
and watching
The View
, of course, not from personal experience.

Did Chris notice that you couldn’t face him?

<>
No, there was no face time. He fell asleep before I could ask him how practice went. A long night grinding the ax takes it out of you.

<>
Ew. Is that a euphemism for masturb@tion?

<>
No. I think it’s @ euphemism for pl@ying the electric guit@r. Or @n idiom. I don’t know. Do you really think “masturbation” is one of Tron’s red-flag words?

<>
Well, it doesn’t matter now. If we get fired because you insist on poking the dragon, you’re going to have to support me and my pricey Baby Gap habit.

<>

1. Poking the dragon. Is that another masturbation reference?

2. Baby Gap. Still?

<>

1. Ha.

2. Still. Last weekend, I scored a celery green snowsuit with matching mittens for $3.99!

<>
Green is a smart choice—good for an imaginary girl
or
an imaginary boy. And the season isn’t at all relevant with imaginary children.

<>
Exactly. I don’t even go to the adult Gap anymore. Once you’re an imaginary mother, it’s hard to take time for yourself.

<>
I imagine.

<>
So, what’s tomorrow’s Indian Hills story about?

<>
There isn’t one.

<>
There better be. You’re on the morning budget for 15 inches.

<>
F

CHAPTER 24

SO, THIS WAS
what Lincoln’s romantic life had come to. Reading what women wrote about other men, other
attractive
men. Guitar gods and action heroes and redheads.

That night, after he trashed Beth’s and Jennifer’s messages, after he’d left
The Courier
, Lincoln got onto the freeway. It was laid out in a rough square around the city. Once you were on the freeway, you could drive as long as you wanted to without getting off, without ever really going anywhere.

It’s what he and Sam used to do on nights when they didn’t feel like being around their parents or sitting in some diner. Lincoln would drive, and Sam would roll down her window and lean her head against the door, singing along with the radio.

She liked to listen to a show called “Pillow Talk” on the light-rock station. It was a request show. People would call in and dedicate songs on the air. They always requested sappy songs that were ten or fifteen years old even back then, songs by Air Supply, Elton John, and Bread. Sam liked to mock their on-air dedications, but she rarely changed the station.

She’d sing along, and they’d talk. The talking came easily to him when he was driving, maybe because he didn’t have to make eye contact, maybe because it gave him something to do with his hands. Because it was dark and the freeway was empty. Because of the love songs. And the wind.

“Lincoln,” Sam had asked him on one of those nights, the summer before their senior year, “do you think we’ll get married some day?”

“I hope so,” he’d whispered. He didn’t usually think about it like that, like “married.” He thought about how he never wanted to be without her. About how happy she made him and how he wanted to go on being that happy for the rest of his life. If a wedding could promise him that, he definitely wanted to get married.

“Wouldn’t it be romantic,” she said, “to marry your high school sweetheart? When people ask us how we met I’ll say, ‘We met in high school. I saw him, and I just knew.’ And they’ll say, ‘Didn’t you ever wonder what it would be like to be with someone else?’ And you’ll say …Lincoln, what will you say?”

“I’ll say, ‘No.’”

“That’s not very romantic.”

“It’s none of their business.”

“Tell
me,
then,” she said, unbuckling her seat belt and putting her arm around his waist. “Tell me now, won’t you ever wonder what it would have been like to be with someone else?”

“First, buckle up,” he said. She did. “I won’t wonder that because I already know what it would be like to be with someone else.”

“How do you know?” she said.

“I just do.”

“Then, what would it be like?”

“It would be less,” he said.

“Less?”

He looked over at her, just for a second, sitting sideways in her bucket seat, and squeezed the steering wheel. “It would have to be. I already love you so much. I already feel like something in my chest is going to pop when I see you. I couldn’t love anyone more than I do you, it would kill me. And I couldn’t love anyone less because it would always feel like less. Even if I loved some other girl, that’s all I would ever think about, the difference between loving her and loving you.”

Sam squirmed out of the top half of her seat belt and laid her head on his shoulder. “That is
such
a good answer.”

“It’s a true answer.”

“What if”—her voice was soft and girlish now—“someday, someone asks whether you ever wonder what it would be like to …
be
with somebody else.”

“Who would ask that?”

“This entire scenario is hypothetical.”

“I don’t even know what it’s like to
be
with you.” Lincoln said this quietly and without resentment.

“Yet.”

“Yet,” he said, focusing on the road and the gas pedal and breathing.

“So …won’t you look at other girls and wonder what you’re missing?”

“No,” he said.

“No?”

“I know you want more than a one-word answer. Let me think about this for a minute, I don’t want it to sound stupid or desperate.”

“Do you feel desperate?” She was kissing his neck now and leaning hard against him.

“I’m feeling …yes. Desperate. And like I might kill us both. I can’t …I can’t keep my eyes open when you’re doing that, it’s like sneezing. We’re almost to the next exit. Let me drive, just for a few more minutes. Please.”

She sat back in her seat. “No, don’t get off at this exit. Keep driving.”

“Why?”

“I want you to keep talking. I want you to answer my question.”

“No,” he said. “
No
, I’ll never wonder what it would be like to
have sex
with someone else for the same reason I don’t want to kiss anyone else. You’re the only girl I’ve ever touched. And I feel like it was supposed to be that way. I touch you and my whole body …rings. Like a bell or something. And I could touch other girls, and maybe there would be something, you know, like maybe there would be noise. But not like with you. And what would happen if I kept touching and touching them, and then …and then, I tried to touch you again? I might not be able to hear us anymore. I might not ring true.”

“I love you, Lincoln,” Sam said.

“I love you,” he said.

“And I love you.”

“I love you,” he said, “
I love you
.”

“Stop driving now, okay?”

It didn’t happen that night, the being with each other. But it happened that summer. And it happened in the car. It was awkward and uncomfortable and wonderful.

“Only you,” he’d promised. “Only you ever.”

“
PILLOW TALK
”
WASN’T
on the air anymore. There was another show in its place, a syndicated show, where people called in with their love stories, and the host, a woman named Alexis, chose the song for them. No matter what the situation was, Alexis always prescribed a current adult contemporary hit. Something by Mariah Carey or Céline Dion.

After a few minutes of Alexis, Lincoln turned off the radio and rolled down the window. He leaned his hand into the wind and his head against the door, and drove around the city until his fingers were cold and numb.