Attach ments(16)

And actually, you don’t talk about college. I don’t even know how you and Chris met.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Amen on the Yoko issues. It’s because he likes to think he’s Paul McCartney. But Paul McCartney is a gentle soul. And a monogamist.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> And a knight.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> And an animal rights activist! The closest Stef gets to Sir Paul McCartney is by being a pothead.

You know how I met Chris. At the Student union  .

<<Jennifer to Beth>> “At the Student union  .” That’s not how you met, that’s where you met. I want to know whether it was love at first sight. Who noticed whom first. The whole deal.

And you didn’t answer my question: Doesn’t he miss you at the shows?

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Honestly, I think it’s easier for him if I don’t come to watch him play. The rest of the guys in the band are wild-and-crazy single guys. I don’t drink much, and I don’t smoke at all, and I can’t resist commenting on their totally immature and sexist behavior. I cramp their style.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> You would think that a band called Sacajawea would be more supportive of free-thinking women.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> You always say that.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> I do not, I’ve said it only once before, but it’s so pithy, I couldn’t resist repeating myself. (“Pithy,” that’s what I would call my band.)

<<Beth to Jennifer>> I would call your band “Pithetic.”

Anyway. Thanks for the invite to the game, but I think I’m going to see a movie tonight. (More high school guys for you.) The Matrix is at the dollar theater. And I actually like going to movies on my night off. It’s relaxing. I don’t feel like I have to think critically, or even pay attention.

Maybe I’ll even stop in to see Sacajawea after the movie. You’re making me feel like a bad girlfriend.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> You should put on lots of eyeliner and stand up front.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> I don’t know, maybe.





LINCOLN FELT LIKE going out that weekend. Really out.

Usually, on Saturday nights, he played Dungeons & Dragons. He’d been playing with the same five or six people since college. This was another thing Eve thought was holding him back.

“It’s almost like you’re trying not to meet girls,” she’d said.

“There are girls there,” he’d argued. One, anyway. Christine had always been the only girl in their group. Right after college, she’d married Dave, a burly guy who liked to be Dungeon Master, and the game had permanently moved to their living room.

“Couldn’t you and your Dungeons & Dragons friends do something else together,” Eve had suggested. “Like, go somewhere where you could all meet girls?”

“I don’t think so,” Lincoln said. “All the other guys are married.”

Well, except for Troy. And even Lincoln could tell that Troy wasn’t the kind of guy you took to meet girls. Troy thought that everyone—really, everyone—wanted to talk about Babylon 5. He had a bushy yellow beard and metal-framed, math-teacher eyeglasses, and he liked to wear leather vests.

Maybe Eve was right. Maybe Lincoln needed to branch out.

He called Troy on Friday to tell him that he’d have to find another ride to this week’s D&D game.

(Troy didn’t believe in owning a car.) And then Lincoln called Justin.

Justin was exactly the kind of guy you took to meet girls.

Lincoln and Justin had gone to high school together. They’d both played varsity golf and were chemistry lab partners, and when Lincoln transferred to Nebraska his sophomore year of college—or for what would have been his sophomore year—they’d ended up in the same dormitory.

Justin immediately welcomed Lincoln into his pack of college friends. They used to hang out in each other’s rooms, playing Sega Genesis and ordering terrible pizza. Sometimes, they’d go to women’s gymnastics meets. Sometimes, somebody would score a case of beer.

Justin’s friends probably weren’t the kind of guys Lincoln would have sought out on his own. But they accepted him without question, and he was grateful. He started wearing a baseball cap every day and got really good at “Sonic the Hedgehog.”

The next year, the rest of the guys got an apartment together off campus. Lincoln stayed in the dorm because hisscholarship covered it. He didn’t see them as much after that …He hadn’t talked to Justin for at least two years, which was also how long it had been since he’d been in a bar.

“Legend of Linc! Dude. What is up, you evil-fucking-genius?”