<<Jennifer to Beth>> If my mother were here, she’d offer to lend Amanda a sweater. And if she said no, my mom would tell her what happened to Queen Jezebel.
<<Beth to Jennifer>> What did happen to Queen Jezebel?
<<Jennifer to Beth>> Godly servants pushed her out a window. For being loose. (And pagan.)
Amanda tried to talk to me a few weeks ago—she was wearing a cardigan sweater with nothing underneath. She started quibbling with me about a headline I’d written, and I deliberately took off my glasses. I can’t even see my own breasts without my glasses.
<<Beth to Jennifer>> I don’t know what she’s trying to say with all that cleavage.
<<Jennifer to Beth>> I think she’s saying, “Look at my chest.”
<<Beth to Jennifer>> Yes, but why?
<<Jennifer to Beth>> Because when people are looking at her chest, they’re not reading her boring leads?
<<Beth to Jennifer>> Heh.
<<Jennifer to Beth>> What’s “heh”?
<<Beth to Jennifer>> It’s like “ha,” but meaner. I’m going back to work now.
<<Jennifer to Beth>> One more thing: I kind of love you for not asking me how I’m feeling.
<<Beth to Jennifer>> Feeling about what?
<<Jennifer to Beth>> Thanks.
HUH.
There they were.
Back.
INSTEAD OF GOING home that night, Lincoln went to his new apartment.
He figured his mom wouldn’t worry, that she wouldn’t think to wait up for him on a Monday night.
He could always tell her tomorrow that he’d crashed at Justin’s house. If he had to tell her something.
Lincoln hauled in an old sleeping bag that he kept in his trunk (it smelled like gym clothes and exhaust) and tried tofall asleep on his new living room floor. Even though it was late, he could hear people moving around the apartment upstairs. Somewhere else, there was a radio. In the apartment below him, maybe, or across the hall. The more Lincoln listened for the music, the closer it seemed, until he could make out every song—all sleepy oldies from the fifties and sixties, slow dances and prom themes.
“Come Go With Me.”
“Some Kind of Wonderful.”
“In the Still of the Night.”
Lincoln tried not to listen. He tried not to think.
What did it mean that Beth and Jennifer were e-mailing again?
Probably nothing, he decided. Probably the last few weeks of silence from them were just a fluke.
Not God’s way of helping Lincoln get on with his life. That had been a dumb thing for him to think.
Dumb and grandiose.
Lincoln listened to the phantom radio long after the people upstairs went to bed. “Only You,”
“Sincerely.” Maybe he’d try to find this station himself tomorrow night. He wondered when he’d learned all the words to “You Send Me” and whether it was supposed to be a sad song. And then he fell asleep.
From: Jennifer Scribner-Snyder
To: Beth Fremont
Sent: Tues, 02/08/2000 12:16 PM
Subject: You wish …
That you worked on the copy desk.
<<Beth to Jennifer>> Uh …No, I don’t.
<<Jennifer to Beth>> Today, you do. Derek wrote a story about how the zoo is artificially inseminating tigers, and Danielle decided he couldn’t use the word p*nis. She says it fails the breakfast test. She’s making him say “male reproductive part” instead.
<<Beth to Jennifer>> What’s the breakfast test?
<<Jennifer to Beth>> Are you sure you went to journalism school? The idea is that you don’t want to write something so gross that people reading the paper over breakfast would be put off their cornflakes.
<<Beth to Jennifer>> I think I’m more likely to be put off my cornflakes by the double homicide on the front page than I am by infertile tigers.
<<Jennifer to Beth>> That’s just what Derek said. He also said that only someone as se><ually repressed as Danielle would find artificial tiger insemination too arousing to share with our readers.
<<Beth to Jennifer>> You make it sound like they’re inseminating artificial tigers. That is pretty kinky.
<<Jennifer to Beth>> He just asked Danielle if she blacks out all the dirty words in her Harlequin romances.
<<Beth to Jennifer>> He’s going to get fired.
THEY WERE ALL like this lately, all of Beth’s and Jennifer’s messages.
They were writing each other again, but something had changed between them. They cracked jokes and complained about work, they checked in—but they didn’t write about anything that mattered.
Why did that frustrate him? Why did that make him feel restless?