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CHAPTER 83

LINCOLN GOT A
haircut before work Monday night. The girl at Great Cuts asked him what style he wanted, and he told her that he wanted hair like Morrissey. He’d always wanted hair like Morrissey. She didn’t know who that was. “James Dean?” he asked.

“Let me talk to my supervisor,” she said.

Her supervisor was in her forties. She carried a hot pink comb with a handle as sharp as a dagger. “James Dean … ,” she said, tapping her chin with the comb. “Are you sure you don’t want George Clooney?” He didn’t.

“We’ll give it our best shot,” she said.

Lincoln was embarrassingly pleased with the results. He bought something called styling wax and left a 75-percent tip. (Nine dollars.)

He decided to go home and change before he went to work. He put on a short-sleeved white T-shirt and tried not to flex when he checked his reflection in the mirror. Is this what women felt like when they put on miniskirts?

When he got to
The Courier
, he walked straight to the newsroom, straight to Beth’s desk. He didn’t know exactly what he was going to do when he got there. He wasn’t thinking about that, because if he thought about it—if he thought any of this through—he wouldn’t do it. And he needed to do it. More than he needed to do anything, at this moment, on this day, in this lifetime, in this incarnation, on this Monday afternoon, Lincoln needed to talk to Beth.

And he needed to be the one who started the conversation. He needed to stand at her desk, in daylight, with his shoulders back and his head up, and his hands—God, what would he do with his hands?
Don’t think about it. Don’t think. For once in your godforsaken life, don’t think.

Lincoln walked to Beth’s cubicle, not trying to pretend he was doing something else. Not sneaking. Not furtive. (Not that anyone was probably paying attention.)

He walked right up to her cubicle.

She wasn’t there.

Lincoln hadn’t thought about what he would do if Beth wasn’t there. So he just stood at her cubicle. With his shoulders back and his head up and everything. He looked at her desk. He looked around. He thought about the last time he’d tried to talk to her, on New Year’s Eve, and how he’d run away.
I’m not running away this time
, he thought.

The man in the next cubicle—“Derek Hastings,” his nameplate said—was on the phone, but watching Lincoln. After a few minutes, a conversation about the local zoo and panda bears, Derek hung up the phone.

“Can I help you?” he said.

“Uh, no,” Lincoln said. “I need to talk to Beth, Beth Fremont.”

“She’s not here,” Derek said.

Lincoln nodded.

“Can I give her a message?” Derek asked. “Is there something wrong with her computer?”

So, he knows what I do, who I am
, Lincoln thought.
It’s not a secret.

“No,” Lincoln said, standing his ground. Standing Beth’s ground.

Derek eyed him suspiciously, and slowly unwrapped a Dum Dum sucker, the kind they give to kids in bank drive-throughs. Lincoln could handle the suspicion and the staring, but he couldn’t handle the Dum Dum.

“I’ll come back,” he said, as much to himself as to Derek.
I can’t make myself talk to her if she isn’t even here
, he thought.
This doesn’t count as running away.

CHAPTER 84

From: Beth Fremont
To: Jennifer Scribner-Snyder
Sent: Mon, 03/20/2000 12:22 PM

Subject: Remember when I said it was too soon to date?

Guess I was wrong. I have a date.

<>
With Your Cute Guy?

<>
With
a
cute guy, but not My Cute Guy. Remember last year, when I first wrote about the Indian Hills theater, and I told that cute pharmacy student I interviewed that I was engaged?

Well, I ran into him last night at the big farewell gala.

He came over to talk to me and said that he’d been reading my reviews since I interviewed him, and that my
Titanic
review had made him laugh out loud. And I said that
Titanic
had made me laugh out loud. And then we both laughed at how funny I am, and he asked if it would be a conflict of interest if he bought me a drink.

I thought it probably would be, so I bought him a drink instead. And we ended up sitting next to each other during the showing of the Indian Hill’s very last movie,
How the West Was Won
, one of the last films ever made in Cinerama.

How the West Was Won
is 162 minutes long, almost three hours, plus there was an intermission. I see so many movies by myself, I’d forgotten what it’s like to sit next to a guy in the theater, a guy who keeps looking up at you every few minutes, just as you’re looking up at him. I’d forgotten about the shoulder touching and the whispering and the leaning in.

Sean—that’s right, he has a name, a real name, there will be no “Hot Protester Guy” or “Little Red-Haired Pharmacy Student”—and I stayed in our seats during the intermission, and talked about how we like Henry Fonda better than John Wayne, and Karl Malden best of all.

And when the movie was over, we sat all the way through the credits, then lingered in the lobby. And finally, he said, “I suppose you’re probably still engaged.”

“Actually,” I said, “I’m not.” (Some might say I never was.)

He made a really adorable surprised face, like that answer had taken him totally off his game. “Oh …I’m sorry, I guess?”

I shook my head. “Don’t be.”

And then he said that he had expected to feel miserable and defeated all night, but that instead he felt like he’d just been on “the nicest first date” of his life.

And
then
he asked if we could see each other again.

<>
And you said?

<>
I said
yes
!

But I told him we couldn’t have our first official date until I was done covering the Indian Hills stuff. Conflict of interest, etc. He promised there wouldn’t be any more lawsuits or protests or appeals to the Planning Board. “I am suddenly very happy to say that we are out of options,” he said. “The preservation effort is utterly and absolutely over.”

I told him my last story would be about the demolition.

“I’ll be there,” he said.

“Me, too.”

And then he laughed, which made what he was about to say seem happy and nice instead of cheesy and stupid. “It’s a date.”

So there—I have a date!

<>
Congratulations! You’re happy about this, right?

<>
I really am. I know it’s soon. But, so far, I really like this guy, and he really likes me. (Really, really—I could tell.) If I said no, who knows when the next nice-guy-who-likes-me will come along? Maybe never.

Plus, as nice as he was and as cute as he is and as much as I was enjoying myself, I didn’t feel like he was casting a voodoo love spell on me (i.e. Chris).

He might even be the anti-Chris. A pharmacy student? A community activist? A guy who owns a navy blue suit? And he’s at least six inches shorter.

<>
Well, I did advise you to carpe cute guy. I guess you had my endorsement. When are they tearing the theater down?

<>
Saturday. Those sick people need somewhere to park.

<>
So,
technically
, you
are
going on a date with this guy before you write your last Indian Hills story. You better not try to quote him; that wouldn’t be ethical.

<>
Imagine that quote:

“Do you kiss on the first date?” one protester asked.

“Are Trix for kids?” this reporter responded.

CHAPTER 85

LINCOLN DELETED THE
messages. Then he dug deep into the WebFence hard drive and started scrubbing. Slashing and burning through every layer of memory, pouring bleach on every remnant of information.

When he was done, no one would be able to go back and see who WebFence had flagged and how many times and for what reason. He scrubbed his own hard drive, too, cleared his practically nonexistent e-mail history. He wiped the machine clean and reinstalled all the programs.

Then he cleaned out his desk—well, the drawer that Kristi had allotted him. There wasn’t much in there. Gum. Microwave popcorn. A few CDs.

By the time he was done, it was after ten, too late to call Greg. He’d talk to Greg tomorrow. He found Doris in the break room, playing solitaire and eating bright red pistachios.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey, honey. Hey, look at you. I like your haircut. You know, we used to call that a D.A., ’cause it looks just like a duck’s ass.”

He tried to run his hand through his hair, to press it down, but his fingers got caught in the styling wax.

“Have you eaten yet?” She pushed the pistachios toward him.

“No, I guess I forgot. Look, Doris, I came down to tell you that …I think I’m going to quit tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? What happened?”

“Nothing happened,” Lincoln said, and nothing was ever going to happen. “I just really hate this job.”

“You do?” She looked surprised. Hadn’t he ever complained to Doris about work?

“Yeah,” he said. “I hate it. I hate the hours. I hate reading everybody’s e-mail.”

“Why do you read everybody’s e-mail?”

“That’s my job,” he said. “And I hate it. I hate sitting in that office by myself. I hate being up all night. I don’t even like this newspaper. I disagree with the editorials, and they don’t run any of my favorite comics.”

“You don’t like
Blondie
?” she asked. “And
Fox Trot
?”

“
Fox Trot
’s okay,” he said.

“You’re really quitting?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Yes.”

“Well …good for you. No sense staying someplace after you realize you don’t want to be there. Good for you. And good for me that you stayed this long. Do you have another job?”

“Not yet. I’ll find one. I have enough in savings that I don’t have to find one right away.”

“We should celebrate,” Doris said.

“We should?”

“Sure. We should have a going-away party.”

“When?”

“Right now,” she said. “We’ll order a pizza, and we’ll play pinochle until it’s time to clock out.”

He wouldn’t have thought he’d feel like celebrating, but he did.
Enough is enough
, he thought.
Enough is enough is enough.
They ordered pizza from Pizza Hut—one medium Meat Lover’s Pan Pizza each. And Doris won six rounds of pinochle. When it was time to go home, she got a little choked up.

“You’re a good kid,” she said, “and a good friend.”

“We’ll still see each other,” he said. “I’ll take you to dinner when you retire.”

He stopped at Chuck’s desk on the way back to the IT office. “I can’t talk, I’m on deadline,” Chuck said.

“I just want to tell you that I’m quitting.”

“What? You can’t quit,” Chuck said.

“I hate working here.”

“We all hate working here. That doesn’t mean we quit. Only quitters quit.”

“I’m quitting.”

“I guess this is good-bye, then,” Chuck said.

“It’s not good-bye. We can still play golf.”

“Piffle,” Chuck said. “You’ll get a day job. You’ll forget us. There won’t be anybody to help us do math.”

“You might be right,” Lincoln said.

“Bastard.”

“Don’t tell anybody until tomorrow.”

“Bastard defector.”

When he got back to his desk, Lincoln decided he wasn’t coming back tomorrow to quit in person. He wasn’t ever coming back. He didn’t want to see Beth again. Didn’t want to find himself opening the WebFence folder after he’d promised himself he wasn’t going to for the four-thousandth time.

So he took out a pad of paper and wrote two notes. The first was to Greg. A quick resignation and an apology.

He slipped it into an envelope and stuck it into Greg’s keyboard where Greg would see it first thing the next morning.

The second note he lingered over. He didn’t have to write this one. He probably
shouldn’t
write it. But he wanted to walk away from the newspaper tonight (this morning, actually) feeling truly and completely free, with his conscience as clear as he could make it without publicly crucifying himself.

“Beth,” he wrote, then started over. They weren’t exactly on a first-name basis.

Hello,

We’ve never met, but I’m the guy whose job it is to enforce the company’s computer policy. Your e-mail gets flagged. A lot. I should have sent you warnings the same way I do everyone else, but I didn’t—because reading your e-mail made me like you. I didn’t want to tell you that you were breaking the rules because I didn’t want to stop hearing from you and your friend, Jennifer.

This was an egregious invasion of your privacy and hers, and for that, I deeply apologize.

I won’t blame you if you turn me in, but I’m quitting anyway. I never should have taken this job, and I don’t like the person I’ve become here.

I’m writing this note because I owe you an apology—even a cowardly, anonymous one—and because I thought I should warn you to stop using your company computer to send personal e-mails.

I really am sorry.

He folded the note up and sealed the envelope before he could change his mind or think about rewriting it. She didn’t need to know that he was in love with her. There was no point making the note any weirder than it had to be.

Lincoln was giving Beth proof, written proof, that he’d read her e-mail, but he wasn’t sure what could come of that. Greg couldn’t fire him, even if he wanted to. He probably wouldn’t want to. Reading e-mail was Lincoln’s job. Greg had pretty much given him permission to read whatever he wanted, even the stuff that didn’t get flagged. In Lincoln’s position, Greg probably would have done much worse.

Lincoln wanted to confess. He wanted to apologize. And he wanted to make it impossible for himself to turn back.

The newsroom was dark when he got there. He turned on the lights and walked to Beth’s desk. He set the envelope on her keyboard, then decided to tape it there so that it wouldn’t get knocked off. And then he left.

Enough is enough is enough.