Attachments (21 page)

CHAPTER 62

BETH MISSED HIM.

Lincoln thought he’d hit bottom on New Year’s, and it had been a relief. Wasn’t hitting bottom the thing you had to do to knock some sense into yourself? Wasn’t hitting bottom the thing that showed you which way was up?

CHAPTER 63

From: Jennifer Scribner-Snyder
To: Beth Fremont
Sent: Fri, 01/07/2000 2:44 PM
Subject: Are you here?

Distract me.

<>
Distract you? Gladly. Productivity-schmoductivity.

What are you supposed to be working on?

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I don’t know. Writing headlines, I guess. Reading the same stories over and over to make sure some idiot reporter didn’t use “they’re” when he should have used “their.” Changing “which”es to “that”s. Arguing with someone about sequence of tenses.

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What on earth is sequence of tenses?

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It’s top-secret copy editor stuff.

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I didn’t know there was such a thing.

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Are you kidding? Everything about being a copy editor is top secret—by default, really—because no one else cares.

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Can I ask why you need distracting? Are they making you edit the sports section again?

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No, it’s not work.

I’ve been having these strange cramps for the last few days. Not even cramps—they’re more like assertive twinges. I called our midwife and described them to her, and she seemed pretty confident that nothing is wrong. She said that it’s natural to feel your uterus readjusting at the end of the first trimester. “This is your first pregnancy,” she said. “It’s going to feel strange.” She also told me that I might feel better if I talked to the baby.

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What are you supposed to say? Are you supposed to talk out loud? Or are you supposed to reach out for it on the astral plane?

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I’m supposed to talk out loud. “Relax,” she said. “Put on some quiet music. Light a few candles. Tune in to the life within you.” I’m supposed to tell the baby that it’s welcome and wanted and that it doesn’t have to worry about anything right now except getting big and strong.

I’ve tried it a few times, when I’m alone in the car. But I never get past small talk. I feel sort of like I’m invading the baby’s space or like it’s going to wonder, after two months of respectful silence, why I’ve suddenly decided we need to get all personal with each other.

Also, I don’t want to let on that something might be wrong. So I try to keep it light. “I hope you’re comfortable. I hope I’m eating enough iron. Sorry I stopped taking the expensive vitamins, they made me throw up.” I usually end up crying and hoping that the baby isn’t actually paying attention.

<>
I kind of like the idea of you talking to the baby. Even if it doesn’t understand you. There’s something living inside of you. It makes sense to be neighborly.

Maybe I’ll start talking to my eggs. Pep talks. Like William Wallace’s speech in
Braveheart
.

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I think I’ll feel less ridiculous talking to it after it has ears.

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When does it get ears?

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I don’t know. I’d ask Mitch, but I don’t want him to know any of this.

I feel like I’ve known all along that something was bound to go wrong at some point in this pregnancy. It’s all been too easy so far.

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Nothing is bound to go wrong. Nothing is bound, period. And the chances are so much better that everything is going to be all right.

<>
Easy for you to say. Easy for the midwife to say. It’s so easy for someone else to say, “Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be all right.” Why
not
say it? It doesn’t cost anything. It doesn’t mean anything. No one will hold you to it if you’re wrong.

<>
Your midwife says it’s going to be okay because she spends her whole life working with pregnant women. She’s speaking from experience.

And I say it because I trust her, and because I believe that being miserable about some bad thing that might not ever happen won’t do you any good.

<>
I disagree. I believe that worrying about a bad thing prepares you for it when it comes. If you worry, the bad thing doesn’t hit you as hard. You can roll with the punch if you see it coming.

<>
Are you in pain? Maybe you should go home.

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No, it doesn’t hurt. It feels more like a muscle flexing. Besides, if I go home, I will obsess powerfully, with all my might. Even I don’t think that’s a good idea.

So distract me. Tell me more about your cute security guard. Complain about your sister’s wedding. Pick a fight with me about ending a sentence with a preposition.

<>
Okay, here’s something distracting: I’ve gone to a tanning salon twice this week. My brother’s wife said it would make my arms look thinner. I think it will probably just make them look tanner—but big tan arms do seem more appealing than big pale arms, so I’m doing it.

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I hate to say this, because it’s advice I could never follow myself—in fact, this is probably the exact opposite of how I’d behave in your situation: But maybe the best thing for you to do is to let the arm thing go. Yes, somebody might notice that your upper arms are somewhat out of proportion with the rest of your body, but let’s be honest, almost nobody looks good in a strapless dress.

<>
So why has it become the dominant dress of our time? Do you know that they don’t even make wedding dresses with sleeves anymore? Everyone—regardless of weight, chest size, back acne, stretch marks, hunched shoulders, or over-prominent clavicle—is forced to wear one. Why? The whole point of clothing is to hide your shame. (Genesis 3:7)

<>
Did you seriously just consult a Bible?

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Derek has one on his desk, it wasn’t that big of a deal.

Hey, I have to go now. I’m taking off early to get ready for the rehearsal dinner. Call me this weekend if you still need distracting, okay?

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You’ll be caught up in wedding stuff.

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And grateful for the interruption, I’m sure.

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I’ll bet you’re going to have a really nice time at the wedding and feel bad for having dreaded it for months.

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It could happen, I guess. There is an open bar.

CHAPTER 64

LINCOLN DIDN’T FEEL
like going home that night after work. He kept thinking about Beth in a strapless dress. Creamy white shoulders. Freckles. Maybe he should go out with one of the girls Justin was always trying to hook him up with. Or with one of his sister’s Lutherans. Or with that girl who works at the gym, Becca. She’d been spotting for Lincoln lately on the bench press, and it seemed like she touched his arms a lot when she didn’t really have to. Maybe she was still impressed with his elbows.

Lincoln ended up at the Village Inn, alone. When the waitress came, he ordered two pieces of French silk pie. She brought them on separate plates, which was embarrassing for some reason.

He had a copy of the next day’s paper, one of the perks of working at
The Courier
, but he was so agitated, he couldn’t read it.

He was so agitated, so at loose ends, he didn’t notice until his second piece of pie that Chris was sitting at the next booth. Beth’s Chris. He was actually facing Lincoln, both of them sitting alone at their tables.

Lincoln remembered the last time he’d seen Chris, on New Year’s Eve, and considered leaping across the table to follow up on smashing his face. But he’d lost the urge.

Chris looked different. Cleaned up. He was wearing a dress shirt, rakishly unbuttoned of course, and a jacket, and his hair looked smooth and shiny.
Like a fucking Breck commercial
, Lincoln thought. And then,
Right
,
for the rehearsal dinner
. And then Lincoln started to laugh. A little. Mostly on the inside.

Because he shouldn’t know that, but he did. And he should hate this guy, but he didn’t. He didn’t want to kill Chris. He wanted to trade places with him. No, he didn’t even want that. If Lincoln had been Beth’s date to the rehearsal dinner tonight, he’d be home with her now. If he were her date to the wedding tomorrow, he’d be counting down the hours until she put on that dress. Until she took it off again.

He laughed again. On the outside.

Chris looked up at Lincoln then, and seemed to recognize him.

“Hey,” Chris said.

Lincoln stopped laughing. Until this moment, he’d believed somehow that he was invisible to Chris. The way he was invisible to Beth. (Except that he wasn’t.) “Hey,” Lincoln said.

“Hey, uh, you wouldn’t have a cigarette, would you?” Chris asked.

Lincoln shook his head. “Sorry.”

Chris nodded and smiled. “I’m unprepared tonight. Nothing to smoke. Nothing to read.” He seemed agitated, too, but he wore it better than Lincoln.

“You can have a section of my paper,” Lincoln said.

“Thanks,” Chris said. He got up and walked over to Lincoln’s booth, leaned against it, and picked up the Entertainment section.

“I missed today’s movie review,” Chris said.

“Movie fan?” Lincoln said dumbly.

“Movie reviewer fan,” Chris said. “My girl, she’s the film critic …Hey, this is tomorrow’s paper.”

“It’s today’s technically … ,” Lincoln said. “I work at
The Courier
.”

“Maybe you know her, then.”

“I don’t know many people,” Lincoln said. He felt so stiff, he couldn’t believe his mouth was moving. He felt like, if he said the wrong word, he might actually turn to stone. Like he might anyway. “I work nights.”

“You’d know,” Chris said, nodding and looking out the window, agitated again, “you’d know if you knew her. She’s a force. A force to be reckoned with. An act of God, you know?”

“Like a tornado?” Lincoln asked.

Chris laughed. “Sort of,” he said. “I was thinking more … I don’t know what I was thinking, but yeah. She’s …” He patted his chest pocket nervously, then ran his hand through his hair. “You’re single, right? I mean, I never see you at our shows with anyone.”

“Right,” Lincoln said.
Not only am I not invisible, I’m visibly alone.

Chris laughed again. It was sharp. Sarcastic. It undid some of the charm of his smile.

“I can’t even remember what that’s like …” He shook his head ruefully, touched his hair again. “It’s this jacket,” Chris said. “I had to take my cigarettes out because you could see them poking out of the pocket. Classy, right? I can’t remember when I’ve gone this long without …You ever smoked?”

“No,” Lincoln said. “Never picked it up.”

“No cigarettes, no girl, you’re living an unencumbered life, my friend.”

“That’s one way to look at it,” Lincoln said, looking hard at the man across from him and wishing for some sort of
Freaky Friday
miracle right there, right then.

“Oh,” Chris said, abashed. He was pretty enough for that word. “Right,” he said. “I didn’t mean …” He looked down and held out the Entertainment section. “Thanks. For this. I’ll let you go back …Normally, I wouldn’t have bothered …It’s the jacket, you know? I’m not myself.”

Lincoln mustered a smile. Chris stood up.

“I’ll see you,” Chris said, walking back to his booth and dropping a few dollars on the table. “We’re playing Sokol next week, you should say hey if you’re there.”

Lincoln watched Chris walk away and felt himself hoping—really and truly hoping, with the best parts of his heart—that the other man was going home to her.

CHAPTER 65

THERE WAS LESS
work than ever in the IT office. The International Strike Force was long gone. Nothing left of them but a stack of blank CDs and a few cigarette burns on the table. “When the fuck did that happen?” Greg asked. Lincoln shrugged. Greg wanted Lincoln to change all the system passwords and shore up the firewalls; he was even issuing new security badges to the whole department.

“Those guys always creeped me out,” Greg said. “Especially the Millard South kid …There’s such a thing as knowing too much about computers.”

Lincoln’s shifts felt decades long.

There was nothing from Beth in the WebFence folder Monday night. Nothing about the wedding. Nothing at all. It was empty Tuesday night, too. And Wednesday.

Lincoln watched for her in the hallways and took long dinner breaks. He saw her byline in the paper, so he knew she was coming to work. He checked the WebFence folder every night, every few hours.

Thursday, empty. Friday, empty. Monday, nothing.

On Monday night, Lincoln walked by Beth’s desk at six o’clock and then again at eight. He brought chicken-leek pie to share with Doris and sat in the break room with her for two hours, talking. Waiting. Doris told him she was going to teach him how to play pinochle. She said she and Paul used to play, and it was a real kick. “I’ve always wanted to learn,” Lincoln said.

On Tuesday, when Beth and Jennifer still hadn’t turned up, he checked the e-discipline file to see if somebody else in IT had sent them a warning. He wondered for a moment if one of the Y2K kids might be responsible. But there wasn’t any sign of it. There were fresh coffee cups on Beth’s desk—she hadn’t disappeared completely.

On Wednesday, when the WebFence folder was empty again, Lincoln felt strangely light. Maybe this was how it was going to end. Not with a humiliating, painful confrontation. Not with self-control and discipline. Maybe he wouldn’t have to make himself stop reading her e-mail. Maybe it would just stop itself.