<<Jennifer to Beth>> Wait a minute, the kids?
<<Beth to Jennifer>> You bet. A boy and a girl. Twins maybe. With his curly hair and my grade point average.
<<Jennifer to Beth>> What about your job?
<<Beth to Jennifer>> Are you kidding? I’m married to a dentist.
<<Jennifer to Beth>> Does this dental fantasy of yours take place in, like, 1973?
<<Beth to Jennifer>> I’ve always thought I would stay home when my kids were young. If I have kids. If I can afford it. My mom stayed home with us, and we turned out all right. I think I could handle being a stay-at-home mom for a few years.
<<Jennifer to Beth>> Hmmm …I think I’d like to be a stay-at-home mom with no kids.
<<Beth to Jennifer>> You mean, you just want to stay home?
<<Jennifer to Beth>> And do stay-at-home-mom stuff. Bake. Do crafts.
<<Beth to Jennifer>> What kind of crafts?
<<Jennifer to Beth>> I could crochet sweaters and make elaborate scrapbooks. I could buy one of those hot-glue guns.
<<Beth to Jennifer>> If our foremothers could hear us, they would regret winning the sexual revolution.
<<Jennifer to Beth>> My mother didn’t fight in the sexual revolution. She’s not even aware it happened. My dad left 20 years ago, and she still goes on and on about The Man being the head of the household.
<<Beth to Jennifer>> So you grew up in a headless household?
<<Jennifer to Beth>> Exactly. With my mother, the housewife without a husband.
<<Beth to Jennifer>> Your mother is depressing. I’m going back to my dentist fantasy.
<<Jennifer to Beth>> And I’m going back to work.
<<Beth to Jennifer>> Killjoy.
BETH AND JENNIFER seemed to have forgotten all about the rules and restrictions. They didn’t censor themselves anymore. Beth was so careless, some of her e-mails to other coworkers ended up in the WebFence folder, too.
Beth.
Lincoln couldn’t explain, even to himself, why she mattered to him. She and Jennifer were both funny, both caring, both smart as whips. But Beth’s whip always caught him by the ankle.
He felt like he could hear her talking when he read her mail, like he could see her even though he still didn’t know what she looked like. He felt like he could hear her laughing.
He loved the way she put on kid gloves when Jennifer talked about her marriage and Mitch. He loved the way she riffed on her siblings and her bosses and herself. He tried not to love that she could recite scenes from Ghostbusters, that she liked kung fu movies and could name all of the original X- Men—because those seemed like reasons a guy would fall for a girl in a Kevin Smith movie.
Falling …Was he falling? Or was he just bored?
Sometimes, when his shift was over, maybe once or twice a week, Lincoln would walk through the newsroom, by Beth’s desk, just to see the jumble of coffee cups and notebooks. Just to see the proof of her. By 1:00 a.m., even the copy editors were usually gone, and the room was lit by streetlights. If Lincoln felt a pang of conscience on his way to the newsroom, he told himself that it wasn’t very wrong what he was doing. As long as he didn’t try to see Beth herself. He told himself it was like having a crush on a girl in a soap opera, a radio soap opera. Not anything to be proud of, but harmless.
Something to make the nights go faster.
On some nights, like tonight, he’d let himself stop a moment at her desk.
A coffee cup. A half-eaten Toblerone. A puddle of spilled paper clips. And something new, a concert flyer, pinned above her monitor. It was hot pink with a picture of a cartoon guitar—Sacajawea at the Ranch Bowl, Saturday night. This Saturday night.
Huh.
JUSTIN WAS UP for a concert. Justin was up for anything, always. He offered to drive, but Lincoln said they should probably just meet at the bar.
“Dude, I get it, you’re a rambling man. I won’t tie you down.”
They met at the Ranch Bowl about a half hour before Sacajawea took the stage. Justin was clearly disappointed with the place. It was dirty and cramped, there were no tables or shot specials, and you had to squeeze behind the stage just to get to the bar. The crowd was mostly men, and the band onstage—Razorwine, according to their drum kit—sounded like somebody playing a Beastie Boys album over a table saw. Lincoln and Justin found a spot along the wall to lean against, and Justin immediately started talking about leaving. He was too discouraged even to buy a drink.
“Lincoln, come on, this place is depressing. It’s a graveyard. Worse. A fucking pet cemetery.
Lincoln. Dude. Let’s go. Come on. Drinks on me for the rest of the night.”