Attachments(34)
Author: Rainbow Rowell

And finally, he said, “I suppose you’re probably still engaged.”

“Actually,” I said, “I’m not.” (Some might say I never was.)

He made a really adorable surprised face, like that answer had taken him totally off his game.

“Oh …I’m sorry, I guess?”

I shook my head. “Don’t be.”

And then he said that he had expected to feel miserable and defeated all night, but that instead he felt like he’d just been on “the nicest first date” of his life.

And then he asked if we could see each other again.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> And you said?

<<Beth to Jennifer>> I said yes!

But I told him we couldn’t have our first official date until I was done covering the Indian Hills stuff. Conflict of interest, etc. He promised there wouldn’t be any more lawsuits or protests or appeals to the Planning Board. “I am suddenly very happy to say that we are out of options,” he said. “The preservation effort is utterly and absolutely over.”

I told him my last story would be about the demolition.

“I’ll be there,” he said.

“Me, too.”

And then he laughed, which made what he was about to say seem happy and nice instead of cheesy and stupid. “It’s a date.”

So there—I have a date!

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Congratulations! You’re happy about this, right?

<<Beth to Jennifer>> I really am. I know it’s soon. But, so far, I really like this guy, and he really likes me. (Really, really—I could tell.) If I said no, who knows when the next nice-guy-who-likes-me will come along? Maybe never.

Plus, as nice as he was and as cute as he is and as much as I was enjoying myself, I didn’t feel like he was casting a voodoo love spell on me (i.e. Chris).

He might even be the anti-Chris. A pharmacy student? A community activist? A guy who owns a navy blue suit? And he’s at least six inches shorter.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Well, I did advise you to carpe cute guy. I guess you had my endorsement.

When are they tearing the theater down?

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Saturday. Those sick people need somewhere to park.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> So, technically, you are going on a date with this guy before you write your last Indian Hills story. You better not try to quote him; that wouldn’t be ethical.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Imagine that quote: “Do you kiss on the first date?” one protester asked.

“Are Trix for kids?” this reporter responded.

CHAPTER 85

LINCOLN DELETED THE messages. Then he dug deep into the WebFence hard drive and started scrubbing.

Slashing and burning through every layer of memory, pouring bleach on every remnant of information.

When he was done, no one would be able to go back and see who WebFence had flagged and how many times and for what reason. He scrubbed his own hard drive, too, cleared his practically nonexistent e-mail history. He wiped the machine clean and reinstalled all the programs.

Then he cleaned out his desk—well, the drawer that Kristi had allotted him. There wasn’t much in there. Gum. Microwave popcorn. A few CDs.

By the time he was done, it was after ten, too late to call Greg. He’d talk to Greg tomorrow. He found Doris in the break room, playing solitaire and eating bright red pistachios.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey, honey. Hey, look at you. I like your haircut. You know, we used to call that a D.A., ’cause it looks just like a duck’s ass.”

He tried to run his hand through his hair, to press it down, but his fingers got caught in the styling wax.

“Have you eaten yet?” She pushed the pistachios toward him.

“No, I guess I forgot. Look, Doris, I came down to tell you that …I think I’m going to quit tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? What happened?”

“Nothing happened,” Lincoln said, and nothing was ever going to happen. “I just really hate this job.”

“You do?” She looked surprised. Hadn’t he ever complained to Doris about work?

“Yeah,” he said. “I hate it. I hate the hours. I hate reading everybody’s e-mail.”

“Why do you read everybody’s e-mail?”

“That’s my job,” he said. “And I hate it. I hate sitting in that office by myself. I hate being up all night. I don’t even like this newspaper. I disagree with the editorials, and they don’t run any of my favorite comics.”

“You don’t like Blondie?” she asked. “And Fox Trot?”

“Fox Trot’s okay,” he said.

“You’re really quitting?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Yes.”

“Well …good for you. No sense staying someplace after you realize you don’t want to be there.

Good for you. And good for me that you stayed this long. Do you have another job?”

“Not yet. I’ll find one. I have enough in savings that I don’t have to find one right away.”

“We should celebrate,” Doris said.

“We should?”

“Sure. We should have a going-away party.”

“When?”

“Right now,” she said. “We’ll order a pizza, and we’ll play pinochle until it’s time to clock out.”

He wouldn’t have thought he’d feel like celebrating, but he did. Enough is enough, he thought.

Enough is enough is enough. They ordered pizza from Pizza Hut—one medium Meat Lover’s Pan Pizza each. And Doris won six rounds of pinochle. When it was time to go home, she got a little choked up.

“You’re a good kid,” she said, “and a good friend.”

“We’ll still see each other,” he said. “I’ll take you to dinner when you retire.”

He stopped at Chuck’s desk on the way back to the IT office. “I can’t talk, I’m on deadline,” Chuck said.

“I just want to tell you that I’m quitting.”

“What? You can’t quit,” Chuck said.

“I hate working here.”

“We all hate working here. That doesn’t mean we quit. Only quitters quit.”

“I’m quitting.”

“I guess this is good-bye, then,” Chuck said.

“It’s not good-bye. We can still play golf.”

“Piffle,” Chuck said. “You’ll get a day job. You’ll forget us. There won’t be anybody to help us do math.”

“You might be right,” Lincoln said.

“Bastard.”

“Don’t tell anybody until tomorrow.”

“Bastard defector.”

When he got back to his desk, Lincoln decided he wasn’t coming back tomorrow to quit in person.

He wasn’t ever coming back. He didn’t want to see Beth again. Didn’t want to find himself opening the WebFence folder after he’d promised himself he wasn’t going to for the four-thousandth time.

So he took out a pad of paper and wrote two notes. The first was to Greg. A quick resignation and an apology.

He slipped it into an envelope and stuck it into Greg’s keyboard where Greg would see it first thing the next morning.

The second note he lingered over. He didn’t have to write this one. He probably shouldn’t write it.

But he wanted to walk away from the newspaper tonight (this morning, actually) feeling truly and completely free, with his conscience as clear as he could make it without publicly crucifying himself.

“Beth,” he wrote, then started over. They weren’t exactly on a first-name basis.

Hello, We’ve never met, but I’m the guy whose job it is to enforce the company’s computer policy.

Your e-mail gets flagged. A lot. I should have sent you warnings the same way I do everyone else, but I didn’t—because reading your e-mail made me like you. I didn’t want to tell you that you were breaking the rules because I didn’t want to stop hearing from you and your friend, Jennifer.

This was an egregious invasion of your privacy and hers, and for that, I deeply apologize.

I won’t blame you if you turn me in, but I’m quitting anyway. I never should have taken this job, and I don’t like the person I’ve become here.

I’m writing this note because I owe you an apology—even a cowardly, anonymous one—and because I thought I should warn you to stop using your company computer to send personal e- mails.

I really am sorry.

He folded the note up and sealed the envelope before he could change his mind or think about rewriting it. She didn’t need to know that he was in love with her. There was no point making the note any weirder than it had to be.

Lincoln was giving Beth proof, written proof, that he’d read her e-mail, but he wasn’t sure what could come of that. Greg couldn’t fire him, even if he wanted to. He probably wouldn’t want to.

Reading e-mail was Lincoln’s job. Greg had pretty much given him permission to read whatever he wanted, even the stuff that didn’t get flagged. In Lincoln’s position, Greg probably would have done much worse.

Lincoln wanted to confess. He wanted to apologize. And he wanted to make it impossible for himself to turn back.

The newsroom was dark when he got there. He turned on the lights and walked to Beth’s desk. He set the envelope on her keyboard, then decided to tape it there so that it wouldn’t get knocked off. And then he left.

Enough is enough is enough.

CHAPTER 86

THE PHONE WOKE Lincoln up at seven forty-five the next morning. It was Greg. He was pissed, but he also really wanted Lincoln to change his mind.

“I’m not going to change my mind,” Lincoln said, not even opening his eyes.

Greg offered him more money, a lot more money, making Lincoln wish he would have tried to quit his job a few months before he was actually ready to leave.

“You didn’t even give me two weeks,” Greg said.

“That was crappy of me. I’m genuinely sorry.”

“Give me two weeks.”

“I can’t,” Lincoln said. “I’m sorry.”

“Do you already have another job?”

“No.”

Greg yelled at him for a few minutes, then apologized and said that Lincoln could use him as a reference if he ever wanted to.

“What are you going to say I’m good at,” Lincoln asked, “sitting around?”

“You weren’t just sitting around,” Greg said. “How many times do I have to tell you? You were keeping the home fires burning. Somebody has to answer the phone and say, ‘Help desk.’”

“I’m sure you’ll be able to find someone else who can handle it.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Greg sighed, “only whack jobs apply for the night shift.”

Lincoln wondered if Beth had read his note—probably not yet—and whether she would file some sort of complaint against him. That threat still didn’t seem substantial enough to worry about. He hoped his note hadn’t scared her; he hadn’t meant to scare her. Maybe he should have thought more about that.

ON SATURDAY MORNING , Lincoln drove to Eighty-fourth Street and West Dodge Road to watch a demolition crew tear down the Indian Hills theater. They’d stripped the place the day before. All that was left was the screen and the building. There was a good-size crowd gathered in the parking lot, but Lincoln didn’t get close enough to see any faces; he watched from the parking lot outside the doughnut shop across the street. After about an hour, he went inside and bought two crullers, a carton of milk, and a newspaper. He threw every section but the Classifieds away before he sat down.

Then he took out an old spiral notebook and opened it to the middle. To his list. He copied four entries in the margin of the Classifieds: “No. 19. Unfreezing computers/Untangling necklaces.

“No. 23. Being helpful.”

“No. 5. Not worrying about things he really shouldn’t worry about.”

And finally, “No. 36. Being GOOD.”

The ads were full of computer jobs. He crossed out any listings that seemed vague or sneaky and anything that said, “Great people skills a must.”

He circled one. “Senior computer technician needed. St. James University, Department of Nursing.

Full-time. Tuition + benefits.”

CHAPTER 87

EVE TEASED HIM about working on campus and taking almost a full load of classes. “It’s like you went back to school through a loophole,” she said after his first semester. “What is it with you and school?

Are you addicted to the smell of musty auditoriums?”

Maybe he was. Musty auditoriums. Creaky library chairs. Wide green lawns.

Lincoln had his own desk in the Dean of Nursing’s Office. He was the only man on the administrative staff and the only person younger than forty-five. His computer skills awed the office ladies. They treated him like Gandalf. He had a desk, but he didn’t have to sit there. He could go to class or do whatever he needed to do to keep everything humming.

Part of his job was Internet security—but it was little more than updating antiviral programs and reminding people not to open suspicious attachments. His supervisor in the central IT office said that there had never been a pornography incident in the Nursing College and that, besides p*rn and gambling, people were free to go and do whatever they wanted online.

“Is there an e-mail filter?” Lincoln asked.

“Are you kidding?” the guy said. “The faculty senate would flip.”

LINCOLN STILL THOUGHT about Beth. All the time, at first.

He subscribed to the newspaper so that he could read her reviews at breakfast and again at lunch. He tried to figure out how she was doing through her writing. Did she seem happy? Was she being too hard on romantic comedies? Or too generous?

Reading her reviews kept his memory of her alive in a way he probably shouldn’t want. Like a pilot light inside of him. It made him ache sometimes, when she was especially funny or insightful, or when he could read past her words to something true that he knew about her. But the aching faded, too.