Lincoln stirred harder. The whole kitchen smelled like ham and onions and something else, something sweet. His stomach was growling. “I told you,” he said, trying to be heard, “somebody has to be there. In case there’s a computer problem, and …I don’t know …”
“What don’t you know?” She turned off the mixer and looked at him.
“I think maybe they want me to work at night so that I don’t get close to anyone else.”
“What?”
“Well, if I got to know people,” he said, “I might …”
“Stir. Talk and stir.”
“If I got to know people”—he stirred—“I might not feel so impartial when I’m enforcing the rules.”
“I still don’t like that you read other people’s mail. Especially at night, in an empty building. That shouldn’t be someone’s job.” She tasted whatever she was mixing with her finger, then held the bowl out to him. “Here, taste this …What kind of world do we live in, where that’s a career?”
He ran his finger around the edge of the bowl and tasted it. Icing.
“Can you taste the maple syrup?”
He nodded. “The building isn’t really empty,” he said. “There are people working up in the newsroom.”
“Do you talk to them?”
“No. But I read their e-mail.”
“It’s not right. How can people express themselves in a place like that? Knowing someone’s lurking in their thoughts.”
“I’m not in their thoughts. I’m in their computers, in the company’s computers. Everyone knows it’s happening …” It was hopeless trying to explain it to her. She’d never even seen e-mail.
“Give me that spoon,” she sighed. “You’ll ruin the whole batch.” He gave her the spoon and sat down at the kitchen table, next to a plate of steaming corn bread. “We had a mailman once,” she said.
“Remember? He’d read our postcards? And he’d always make these knowing comments. ‘Your friend is having a good time in South Carolina, I see.’ Or, ‘I’ve never been to Mount Rushmore myself.’ They must all read postcards, all those mailmen. Mail people. It’s a repetitive job. But this one was almost proud of it—gloaty. I think he told the neighbors that I subscribed to Ms. ”
“It’s not like that,” Lincoln said, rubbing his eyes again. “I only read enough to see if they’re breaking a rule. It’s not like I’m reading their diaries or something.”
His mother wasn’t listening.
“Are you hungry? You look hungry. You look deficient, if you want to know the truth. Here, honey, hand me that plate.” He got up and handed her a plate, and she caught him by the wrist. “Lincoln …
What’s wrong with your hands?”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“Look at your fingers—they’re gray.”
“It’s ink.”
“What?”
“Ink.”
WHEN LINCOLN WORKED at McDonald’s in high school, the cooking oil got into everything. When he came home at night, he felt all over the way your hands feel when you get done eating French fries.
The oil would get into his skin and his hair. The next day, he would sweat it out into his school clothes.
At The Courier, it was ink. A gray film over everything, no matter how much anyone cleaned. A gray stain on the textured walls and the acoustic ceiling tiles.
The night copy editors actually handled the papers, every edition, hot off the presses. They left gray fingerprints on their keyboards and desks. They reminded Lincoln of moles. Serious people with thick glasses and gray skin. That might just be the lighting, he thought. Maybe he wouldn’t recognize them in the sunshine. In full color.
They surely wouldn’t recognize him. Lincoln spent most of his time at work in the information technology office downstairs. It had been a darkroom about five years and two dozen fluorescent lights ago, and with all of the lights and the computer servers, it was like sitting inside a headache.
Lincoln liked getting called up to the newsroom, to reboot a machine or sort out a printer. The newsroom was wide and open, with a long wall of windows, and it was never completely empty. The nightside editors worked as late as he did. They sat in a clump at one end of the room, under a bank of televisions. There were two, who sat together, right next to the printer, who were young and pretty.
(Yes, Lincoln had decided, you could be both pretty and molelike.) He wondered if people who worked nights went on dates during the day.
From: Beth Fremont
To: Jennifer Scribner-Snyder