Are You Happy Now? (28 page)

Kim is off today and a temp, another young woman, watches from the reception desk as Lincoln and the guard wait for the elevator. They ride down in silence. Out on the street, the guard shows a surprising burst of energy, pushing past Lincoln to hail a cab that happens to be passing. Lincoln puts his box of photographs in the backseat, then slides in beside it. The guard pulls a twenty-dollar bill out of his pocket and hands it to Lincoln. “Mr. Duddleston gave me this for your cab ride home,” the guard says. “I think he thought you’d have more stuff.”

Later, Lincoln wishes he’d refused the money. But his mind is stuck in slow motion, and by the time he thinks of handing the bill back, the guard has disappeared into the building.

What do you do at ten in the morning on the first mild, sunny day in weeks, when everyone else in Chicago is at work and you have just been fired? For an hour or so, Lincoln lies on the sofa in his apartment, holding his right arm. He’s not exactly thinking, although his mind is bombarded by thoughts. It’s as if his head has tuned to an awkward wavelength that, amid static, pulls in fragments of sentences, glancing ideas, memory pictures from throughout his life: Missing a free throw at the end of the Chevy Chase game. “A brilliant editor.” His mom asking, Why don’t you go to work for the
Washington Post
? as if it were that easy. George C. Scott as Patton talking about the monumental triviality of the latest infraction for which he is being punished (why does Lincoln love that old movie? Nixon loved it, for fuck’s sake). “That sounds like a small book,” his father had said. The ultimate position. Duddleston’s cold, gray eyes this morning, as dead as pasteboard. “Connecting to the fantasy reality.”

Finally, Lincoln gets up. He changes into his jogging gear and goes for a long run north along the lake, dodging patches of ice and puddles, exhausting himself. Returning, he walks the last two blocks to recover his breath and finds Amy standing in a splash of sunlight, leaning against the railing on the steps to his building. “I thought you might be jogging,” she says.

Lincoln is soaked in sweat. “What are you doing here?” he asks.

“I came to see how you were doing.”

“I don’t know,” he admits. But then the endorphins from his run kick in, and he regains a touch of bravado. “Oh, I’ll be all right. I’m just pissed.”

Amy ratchets her face into a twisted frown. “Duddleston is a fool. We’ve always known it, and this just proves it.”

In fact, Lincoln doesn’t quite agree. Duddleston’s standards, on everything from business to hanky-panky, have been open and consistent from the start. That’s not the manner of a fool. “I’m mostly pissed at myself,” Lincoln says. “I feel as if I made some basic mistakes early on and they’ve been compounded over the years. This is just the logical culmination. Bad luck, dumb choices, take them step-by-step, and they lead exactly to this point. In Chicago.”

“That’s stupid, John,” Amy says with real anger in her voice.

For a moment, Lincoln considers arguing with her. Isn’t he at least entitled to cultivate bitter self-pity at a time like this? But the February breeze is starting to chill his damp body, and after all, Amy cared enough to come up here to check on him. “Do you want to come in?” he asks. “I can make you a cup of tea.”

Amy hesitates, then shrugs. “Sure.”

She follows him up the flight of stairs, Lincoln leaving little drops of sweat on the wood steps. In the apartment, he directs her to the living room sofa and heads to the kitchen to put on water. “Cinnamon apple spice?” he calls out.

“OK.”

The run has cleared his head somewhat, but he senses a huge, smothering depression hovering just beyond the edges of his consciousness. Worse, somehow, than the cloud that descended after Mary asked for the divorce. Everyone fails at romance. This was his career. “Does all of Pistakee know?” he asks. Keep talking. Use Amy as a diversion.

“Duddleston sent out an e-mail,” she answers from the living room. “It just said you’ve left the company. No explanation. They were already putting your files in boxes when I left.”

Lincoln takes down the teapot and drops in two little pillows of tea. He rewashes two cups, scrubbing to erase the coffee stains on the inside. That’s odd, he thinks—back when he had a job he wouldn’t have taken the time for the extra cleaning. “Where did you tell them you were going just now?” he calls out over
the running water. “It won’t do your career there any good if Duddleston thinks you’re up here giving me solace.”

“I didn’t tell them anything,” Amy says from the living room. “I didn’t have to because I quit.”

Lincoln shuts off the faucet and goes to the living room. “You’re shitting me,” he says.

Amy has shed her jacket and kicked off her shoes, and she’s sitting in a corner of the sofa, her legs pulled up beneath her. “What else could I do?” she says calmly. “It was as much my fault as yours.”

“Yeah, but you still had a job.”

“I couldn’t stay under those circumstances.” Her chin thrusts out; her eyes spark. Lincoln has come to recognize that look of defiance. “Sexual harassment?” she says. “What kind of an opportunistic cynic do you think I am?”

He sinks into the nubby chair. “Not at all...” he starts, then falters. What exactly did he expect? That she’d know that life constantly serves up injustices to others, but that it rarely avails anything to sacrifice yourself, at least beyond a few expressions of pity, perhaps a message of condolence? In other words, that she’d react as he likely would in her place? “What did Duddleston say when you quit?”

“He said I was making a mistake. That it wasn’t my responsibility, which of course is bullshit.”

“And your book?”

“Canceled. Which is stupid, too. As if the fact that we fucked has anything to do with the merits of the book.”

“Yeah,” Lincoln says, echoing her disgust, though in fact it had occurred to him that the fucking—or, more accurately, the anticipation of it—had been the antecedent of some of their best writing/editing sessions.

“I think the water is boiling,” Amy tells him.

When he returns with the tea, Amy explains how they were found out: Matt Breeson, that tedious suburban pop who likes
trying to outsmart a good mystery, happened to notice that both Lincoln and Amy had submitted credit-card statements that contained simultaneous charges from the Lunker Motel in Lac du Flambeau, Wisconsin. Neither employee had claimed reimbursement for the expense, but the match was there to see, listed on the bills, along with a handful of expenses (highlighted by yellow Magic Marker, as per company policy) that indeed belonged to Pistakee. Was this disaster foreseeable? Lincoln’s MasterCard bill had been three pages long, with scores of charges (he was still adjusting economically to the separation from Mary). Amy had never before put in for expenses, but in an emergency a few months ago, she’d used her Visa card to buy ink for the printer in Duddleston’s office. Neither Lincoln nor Amy had given a thought to the risk before turning in the documents. When Breeson saw the contemporaneous charges, he called Mrs. Lunker, who was happy to acknowledge the attractive young couple who had spent every night in Lincoln’s room.

“How does Matt get off pawing through our credit card bills?” Amy asks indignantly. “There’s a privacy issue there.”

“We were idiots,” Lincoln tells her, and Amy can’t really argue with that.

As they talk and finish the tea, the midday sun fills the living room with a dense, sweet light. Lincoln’s perspiration has dried, and even though he knows he probably smells bad, he has that salty, baked feeling—satisfying in a languid way—you get after swimming in the ocean and drying yourself in the warm sea air. Amy’s blue jeans show off the taut curve of her hip, and several layers of T-shirts emphasize her breasts. Her short, brown hair is slightly tussled, and her low-maintenance makeup regimen has left her face fresh and vibrant. Lincoln realizes that the events of the morning have flummoxed his perceptions, but he thinks she’s never looked more alluring.

“What are you going to do now?” he asks.

“Who knows?” Amy says. “Duddleston said I could keep the advance, so I’ve got a little cushion. I can always be a waitress for a while. I suppose I’ll go back to school eventually.”

“In English?”

She frowns. “I’m sort of down on books right now.”

“Maybe you should send your manuscript to an agent,” Lincoln suggests halfheartedly.

“No,” she declares simply. “This is enough.”

Lincoln rises and moves toward the sofa. Some impulse, exposed by trauma, pushes him to her. “Do you realize what we have been through together over the last six months?” he asks.

Amy stiffens and puts her feet on the floor. “Don’t sit down,” she tells him.

“Why?”

“Just don’t, John. I know where it’s heading.” She hops up from the sofa and grabs her coat from the closet.

“But what difference does it make now?” he pleads, aware of how pathetic he sounds.

Amy talks while she slips into her coat. “Look, John, this has been an incredible experience. But one thing that is abundantly clear is that we are terrible for each other. The combination brings trouble. Bad chemistry, or something. I can see that clear as day, even if you can’t.”

“Ahh.” Lincoln is wholly unprepared to argue on behalf of their romance, and anyway, how much rejection can one man take in a day, a
half
day?

Amy pauses to smooth her hair in the reflection of a framed photograph of the Chicago skyline at night, a wall hanging that came with the apartment. Then she hurries to the door. She glances back at Lincoln, standing listlessly in the middle of the room. “Stop rubbing your arm!” she orders. He obeys. And then she is gone.

25

T
ELLING HIS PARENTS
is the worst. After two hermetic days and nearly sleepless nights, Lincoln slugs back a shot of vodka and calls home. By then, the weather has returned to the winter norm, and as he waits on the phone for someone to pick up, Lincoln stares out his living room window at a world with the color and hospitality of concrete. His father’s first reaction, after a long, heartbreaking silence, is to ask if Lincoln wants to sue. For a moment, Lincoln is cheered—his father believes in his essential innocence! But as they talk, Lincoln realizes that no, that’s not it—in his father’s eyes, Lincoln has finally sunk to the bottom. Now he’s just another blundering client who needs to be rescued from his own stupidity.

Beyond that, his father’s clipped advice turns practical: hurry up and get another job, anything, anywhere, so you can close this embarrassing gap in your résumé and avoid questions by future employers.

His mother wants to know about the young woman who was Lincoln’s partner in this disaster. Was it a serious relationship? So soon after his break-up? (Lincoln sees past the questions: Before, his mother only worried about his career. Now, with the divorce and this colossal misjudgment, she has to worry about
his personal life. Where did she fail?) Her ultimate advice is practical, too: squelch the romantic activities until you get the rest of your life in order.

Afterward, Lincoln sits in near catatonia in the nubby chair. He’s thirty-three years old, fifteen years out of the house, and still ravaged by the unspoken disappointment in the voices of his parents. Shouldn’t he have anticipated this years ago? Couldn’t he have arranged some kind of psychological inoculation?

Two days later, Mary calls. She’s heard. (How? From her parents, via his. Tracing back the game of telephone makes Lincoln feel even more desperate—like a hospital patient, someone who’s lost control of his life.) “What’ll you do now?” she asks.

“Find something else. I’ve got to have a job.”

“But what? What’s your strategy, your plan?”

“My strategy?”

“You should use this as an opportunity, Linc—take the time to assess your career, evaluate your strengths and your weaknesses. Turn this to your advantage.”

Lincoln knows she means well, but he feels so beaten down he can’t fight petulance. “You’re going to fit right in at business school,” he says sullenly. “You’re already talking like a careerist.”

“Don’t be like that. You’ve got to fight this.”

“Right.”

“Look.” Mary’s tone is clipped, impatient. She asks nothing about the details of his offense, doesn’t seem to care whether he was carrying on an affair while they were still together. “Why don’t you move to New York? That’s where you’ve always wanted to be. You hate Chicago. Why not just pick up and go? What better time?”

So it’s not enough to divorce him; she wants him to leave town, too. “Maybe I will,” Lincoln tells her. But how? With no place to live, no job, thousands of journalists and editors out looking for work, and now, a badly stained résumé. Plus, no money, at least, until they sell the apartment—and given the economy, that’s not
going to happen soon. Mary still lives there in exchange for paying the hefty mortgage, and recently she warned him that sales are dead in the immediate neighborhood. Even Lincoln’s divorce lawyer has advised him to stick around until all the papers are signed. “So what are
your
plans?” he asks Mary, dodging.