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Page 36

Tonight, Lincoln put on a thick turtleneck sweater and his jean jacket over a pair of olive green pants. He checked his hair in the mirror he’d hung inside his entryway. He’d kept the Morrissey hair— even though Eve said it made him look like Luke Perry. Or like he was trying to look like Luke Perry.
“You need that?” she’d asked. “You’re not tall enough already?”
“I don’t need it,” he said. “I like it.”
Eve had invited him over tonight, but he’d passed. He was supposed to meet up with the copy deskers later, at some bar in Iowa that served tomato beer. Maybe he’d go …Maybe.
It was already dark outside at six thirty. That felt right. The cold felt right.
Lincoln could see people eating dinner inside the big houses on his way to the theater. It was the kind of neighborhood where people never closed the curtains on their picture windows. “You know why those old houses have big windows up front?” his mother had asked him once. “Because it used to be, when somebody in your family died, you had the wake right in your house. You needed a window big enough for the casket.” Lincoln had decided to go on believing that the windows were there so that people could show off their Christmas trees.
When he got to the Dundee, an employee was changing the marquee from Dancer in the Dark to Billy Elliott.
Lincoln ducked into the small lobby to buy his ticket, an RC, and a box of buttered popcorn. The theater was nearly empty, and he took a seat near the front. A red velvet seat. This must be the only place left, now that the Indian Hills was gone, that didn’t have plastic recliners or “love seats” with adjustable armrests. There were still curtains hanging in front of the movie screen that would draw back just as the previews started. Lincoln used to think that was pointless. Now it was the thing he waited for.
Just then, while he was waiting, someone at the back of the theater spilled a box of candy, something hard and loud, M&M’S or Everlasting Gobstoppers, that clattered down the sloped concrete floor. Lincoln turned around without thinking. That’s when he saw her, sitting a few rows behind him and a few seats over.
Dark hair. Heart face. Freckles.
So pretty.
Beth.
Lincoln looked away as soon as he realized it was her—but she’d already recognized him. She’d looked right at him. She’d looked …How had she looked?
Surprised. Just surprised.
You’d think that he would have thought about this moment, as much as he’d thought about her over the last few months. It’s not like they lived in Tokyo or Mumbai or a place where people could ever really lose each other. This was a small city. A small city with relatively few places you’d want to go, especially if you were a movie reviewer. Lincoln had thought of the Dundee as his theater, but, really, it was like he’d shown up at Beth’s office.
And now he had to leave. She’d want him to, right? Especially if she’d put it all together by now.
That’s another thing he’d gone out of his way not to think about. Did Beth still think about him as her Cute Guy? Or had she figured out that he was the creep who read her e-mail?
He had to leave. Immediately. No. As soon as the lights went down. He couldn’t bear to think of her eyes on him again.
Lincoln leaned forward in his seat, covered his face with one hand, and willed the lights to dim.
After a few painful minutes, they did. The lights fell, the projector squeaked to life, the ancient curtains parted, and Lincoln started putting on his jacket.
Just as Beth sat down beside him.
He froze, one arm still in his jacket. He didn’t speak. Or move. Only his autonomic nervous system chugged on.
He couldn’t leave, not with her sitting next to him—why was she sitting next to him?—and he couldn’t look at her. So he sat back slowly in his seat, careful not to touch her. He sat back and he waited.
But Beth didn’t say anything.
And didn’t say anything. And didn’t move. And didn’t say anything.
Through the coming attractions, through the opening credits.
Finally, Lincoln couldn’t keep from looking at her. He glanced over. Beth was staring at the screen like she was awaiting instructions from the Holy Spirit, eyes too wide, holding on to her ballpoint pen with both hands. Some T. Rex song was playing on the soundtrack. “Cosmic Dancer.”
Lincoln looked away. He told himself to be patient, to wait for her to do something or to say something. But the wait was suffocating. Or maybe it was the sitting so close to her that was suffocating. The wanting to look at her again. More. And again.
Then Lincoln found himself saying the thing he always said to women, the thing he actually needed to say to Beth.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, looking over his shoulder.
“Don’t,” she said.
She was looking up at him now, direct and determined. Her jaw was set. She must know, he thought, his heart sinking into the concrete floor. She must know that he was the creep. Maybe she was even going to yell at him. Or slap him. He found himself counting the inches between them. Fifteen, sixteen tops. He’d never been close enough to see her ears before. They were perfect.
Beth raised her right hand then, still holding the pen, to his face. To his chin.
Lincoln closed his eyes. It seemed like the right thing to do, no matter what happened next. He closed his eyes and felt her fingertips touching his cheek, then his forehead, then his eyelids. He took a breath—ink and hand soap.
“I”—he heard her whisper, closer than he expected, and shaky and strange—“think I might be a very stupid girl.”
He shook his head no. Just barely. So that only someone who was holding his cheek and his neck would notice.
“Yes,” she said, sounding closer. He didn’t move, didn’t open his eyes. What if he opened his eyes and she saw what she was doing?
She kissed his cheek, and he let his head tip forward into her hands. She kissed his other cheek. And his chin. The groove below his bottom lip. “Stupid girl,” she said near the corner of his mouth, sounding incredulous, “what could you possibly be thinking?”
Lincoln found his mouth. “Perfect girl,” he said so quietly that only someone with her hands in his hair and her lips all but touching his could possibly hear. “Pretty girl.” He found her mouth. “Perfect.”
Kiss. “Magic.” Kiss. “Only girl.”
There are moments when you can’t believe something wonderful is happening. And there are moments when your entire consciousness is filled with knowing absolutely that something wonderful is happening. Lincoln felt like he’d dunked his head into a sink full of Pop Rocks and turned on the water.
He shook his jacket onto the floor and put his arms around her.
All he could think was Beth. All he could do was let this dream come true.
HE DIDN’T HEAR the movie end. Didn’t hear anything for two hours above the thunder of his heartbeat and the occasional click of her teeth against his. But Beth jumped when the lights came up. She jumped, sat up, pulled away from him. It felt like getting up from the warmest bed on the coldest morning. Lincoln pushed forward, not wanting to lose the nearness of her. Afraid that something horrible was happening, that somewhere a clock was striking midnight.
“I’m on deadline,” Beth said. She touched her mouth and then her hair, her falling-down ponytail.
“I …have to go, I have to …” She turned to the empty screen as if there might be something up there still that she could use. The curtains were sliding closed.
She crouched on the floor, looking for something. “My glasses,” she said, “was I wearing glasses?”
They were shoved back into her hair. Lincoln carefully pulled them free.
“Thank you,” she said. He helped her stand, and tried to hold her for a moment, but she broke away as soon as she was upright and started hurrying out of the aisle. “I’ve never done this before,” she said.
She didn’t mean him. She was looking at the screen. “Did you watch any of it? There was dancing, right? I’m sure there was dancing.” Then she looked around, afraid someone had heard her. She touched her mouth again, with her palm and all four fingers, like she was checking to make sure it was still there.
And then she ran—almost ran—toward the exit, walking backward at first to watch him, then eventually turning away.
LINCOLN COULDN’T REMEMBER walking home to his apartment, and when he got there, he didn’t want to go in. He didn’t want to break the spell. So he sat on his front steps and kept reliving the last two hours. Bearing witness to himself— yes and Beth and that just happened.
“What could you possibly be thinking?” she’d asked herself.
What could she possibly have been thinking? She didn’t even know Lincoln. Not like he knew her.
He knew why he wanted to kiss her. Because she was beautiful. And before that, because she was kind.
And before that, because she was smart and funny. Because she was exactly the right kind of smart and funny. Because he could imagine taking a long road trip with her without ever getting bored.
Because whenever he saw something new and interesting, or new and ridiculous, he always wondered what she’d have to say about it—how many stars she’d give it and why.
He knew why he’d wanted to kiss her. Why he still did. He could still feel her on his lips, on his lap.
In his head like fog, like honey that buzzed. Is this what it had felt like to kiss Sam? (He couldn’t remember just now, he didn’t want to.) If it had been like this, maybe nine years wasn’t such a long time to get over Sam, after all.
In all the time Lincoln was working at The Courier, reading Beth’s mail, thinking about her, he’d never really believed that there was a course of events, a path ahead of him or a route through the space-time continuum that would lead to this.
Yes. Beth. That just happened.
And maybe …maybe it was still happening.
Lincoln jerked to his feet and checked his pocket for his car keys. How long had it been since she’d left? Thirty minutes? Forty-five? Beth would still be at The Courier. And Lincoln didn’t have to keep a respectable distance anymore. He didn’t have to wish and pine and feel guilty. He didn’t have to do the honorable thing. Or maybe it was that the honorable thing had changed the moment Beth sat down next to him. Everything had changed.
Lincoln parked behind The Courier, by the loading dock. Half a dozen trucks were already waiting there, idling, while crews packed them with stacks of first editions. He ran in through a garage door, bypassing the employee turnstile—the guard on duty recognized him and waved—then bolted up the stairs to the newsroom like he was running for his life, like he was on deadline. Like if he stopped, he might settle into his old self, get trapped in his old loop.
Chuck looked up when Lincoln rushed past the copy desk. Lincoln nodded and kept rushing. He looked over at the city desk—no Beth. The back of the newsroom, the Entertainment section, was dark, but Lincoln kept going, trying not to think about all the nights he’d walked this path after he was sure she was gone.
She was there, on the phone. Sitting in her dark cubicle, the monitor lighting her face like a candle.
“No, I know,” she said into the phone. Her hair was all-the-way down, she wasn’t wearing her glasses. She still looked half dazed and overkissed. “I know,” she said, rubbing her forehead. “Look, this won’t ever …”
Lincoln stopped at the cubicle next to hers and tried not to breathe like a quarter horse. Beth glanced up, saw him, and lost the rest of her sentence.
He didn’t know what to do then, so he smiled, hopefully, biting his lip.
“Thank you,” she said into the phone. “I know. Thank you …Okay.” She hung up and gaped at him.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I can leave,” he said, taking a step back.
“No,” she said, standing. “No. I …”
“I thought we should talk,” he said.
“Okay,” she said.
“Okay.” Lincoln nodded.
There were maybe two feet and a cubicle wall between them.
“Or maybe we shouldn’t,” Beth said, folding her arms.
“What?”
“I just feel like, if we talk about this, it could go horribly wrong. But if we leave it like it is, maybe it can go on feeling, I don’t know, somehow horribly right.”
“Like it is?” he asked.
“Sure,” she said, talking too fast. “We can meet in dark theaters …and if I need to tell you something, I’ll send it to someone else in an e-mail.”
Lincoln stepped away from her, like she’d hit him.
She scrunched up her face and closed her eyes. “Sorry,” she said. “Sorry. I warned you. I’m no good at talking. I’m better on paper.”
She knows, was all Lincoln could think. That I’m the creep. Not the cute guy. She knows …And she still sat next to me.
“Are you done?” he asked.
“Embarrassing myself? Probably not.”
“With your review.”
“Such as it is.”
“Then come with me.”
Lincoln held out his hand to her and felt like he’d won something when, after another dazed moment, she took it. He started walking out of the newsroom, wishing he knew where to take her. It’s not like The Courier had a romantic courtyard hidden away. Or a balcony. Or a corner booth.
They ended up at the break room.
“Wait,” Beth said, as he pushed open the door. The room was dark. The tables were gone. The vending machines were still there, still lit and humming, but they were empty.