“Always,” he said. “But not now. Not enough …”

  “If I was meant to be with you,” Sam said, “I wouldn’t have fallen in love with Marlon.”

  Once, when Lincoln was playing croquet with his sister, she’d accidentally cracked him in the temple with a mallet. In the moment before he fell to the ground, he’d thought to himself, I might die now. This might be it. That’s how he felt when Sam told him she was in love with Marlon.

  “You make it sound like it happened to you,” he said. “Like you had nothing to do with it. You make infidelity sound like a hole in the sidewalk. You had a choice.”

  “Infidelity?” She rolled her eyes. “Fine. Then I guess I chose to be unfaithful. Do you still want to be with me, knowing that?”

  “Yes.”

  She threw back her head in disgust.

  Lincoln moved closer to her. There was a cold steel bar between them (exactly the kind you’re not supposed to lick).

  “Why did you want me to come to California with you?” he asked. “If you knew we were going to break up?”

  “I didn’t plan it this way,” she said. Less angry now, and maybe a little ashamed. “I didn’t know when we were going to break up.”

  “I didn’t know we were ever going to break up,” he said. “If you had told me that it was a foregone conclusion, I wouldn’t have followed you across the country …” He stopped talking and looked at her. Even in the dark, even in January, even breaking his heart, she was pink and radiant. She reminded him of a rosebush flowering in stop-motion. “God … ,” he said, “you know what? I probably would have.”

  They were both quiet again. Lincoln couldn’t trust himself to speak. Everything he wanted to say was wrong. Everything he wanted to say would make her want him less.

  “I wanted you to come with me,” Sam finally said, “because I was scared to go by myself. And I told myself that it was okay, letting you follow me …because it was what you wanted. And because you didn’t have any other plans. And …because I guess I wasn’t ready to say good-bye to you.”

  They were quiet for another long while.

  “It’s not like I fell out of love with you,” Sam said. “I’m just not the same person that I was when I fell in love with you.”

  Quiet.

  “People change,” she said.

  “Stop talking to me like that,” he said.

  “Like what?”

  “Like I’m Lord Greystoke, and I need to be educated in the ways of man. I know that people change. I thought …I thought we were going to change together. I thought that’s what it meant to be in love.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  More quiet. Sam watched her breath turned to frost. She leaned back on her elbows and made her face look distant. Then stricken. Then pained. She stuck with pained. Lincoln had seen her do this so many times, try on faces, that it didn’t bother him.

  “Earlier,” Lincoln said. “You said you didn’t plan it this way. How did you plan it?”

  “I didn’t plan it,” she said. “I hoped that we would both just know when it was time …That we’d have one of those moments. Like in the movies, foreign movies, when something small happens, something almost imperceptible, and it changes everything. Like there’s a man and a woman having breakfast …and the man reaches for the jam, and the woman says, ‘I thought you didn’t like jam,’ and the man says, ‘I didn’t. Once.’

  “Or maybe it isn’t even that obvious. Maybe he reaches for the jam, and she just looks at him like she doesn’t know him anymore. Like, in the moment he reached for that jar, she couldn’t recognize him.

  “After breakfast, he’ll go for a walk, and she’ll go to their room and pack a slim brown suitcase. She’ll stop on the sidewalk and wonder whether she should say good-bye, whether she should leave a note. But she won’t. She’ll just get into the taxi and go.

  “He knows as soon as he turns onto their walk that she’s gone. But he doesn’t turn back. He doesn’t regret a single day they spent together, including this one. Maybe he finds one of her ribbons on the stairs …”

  Sam lay back onto the merry-go-round. She’d talked herself into a looser place. Lincoln lay down beside her, so that their heads almost touched in the center.

  “Who’s playing me in your movie?” he asked gently.

  “Daniel Day-Lewis,” she said. She smiled. Lincoln could probably kiss her now if he wanted. Instead he leaned toward her ear so that she could hear him whisper.

  “There’s never been a moment,” he barely said, “when I didn’t recognize you.”

  She wiped her eyes. Her mascara smeared. He nudged the merry-go-round into motion. He could kiss her now. If he wanted.

  “I’d know you in the dark,” he said. “From a thousand miles away. There’s nothing you could become that I haven’t already fallen in love with.”

  He could kiss her.

  “I know you,” he said.

  Even as she turned toward him, even as her hand came to his cheek, Lincoln knew that this didn’t mean Sam had changed her mind. She was saying yes to the moment, not to him. He tried to tell himself that this was enough, but he couldn’t. It wasn’t. Now that she was in his arms, he needed her to tell him that everything was going to be okay.

  “Tell me you love me,” he said between kisses.

  “I love you.”

  “Always,” he said. It came out like an order.

  “Always.”

  “Only.”

  She kissed him.

  “Only,” he said again.

  “Don’t,” she said.

  “Sam… ,” he said.

  “I can’t.”

  He sat up. Stepped jaggedly off the merry-go-round.

  “Lincoln,” she said. “Wait.”

  He shook his head. He wanted to cry again, but not in front of her. Not in front of her again. He started walking to his car.

  “I don’t want you to go,” Sam said. She was upset. “I don’t want it to end like this.”

  “You don’t get to choose,” Lincoln said. “It’s just happening.”

  CHAPTER 37

  SHE’D DUMPED HIM. That’s all. It wasn’t that bad. It shouldn’t have been. It’s not like they were married. It’s not like she abandoned him at the altar, or made off with his best friend and their retirement savings.

  People get dumped all the time. Especially in college. They don’t drop out of school. They don’t drop out of life. They don’t spend the next decade thinking about it every time they get a chance.

  If Lincoln’s freshman year had been an episode of Quantum Leap, Scott Bakula would have gotten back on the Greyhound bus after Christmas, finished the school year like a man, and started making calls to the financial aid office at the University of Nebraska. Or maybe he wouldn’t have transferred at all. Maybe Scott Bakula would have stayed in California and asked that pretty girl in Lincoln’s Latin class if she wanted to see a Susan Sarandon movie.

  “DO YOU LIKE basset hounds?”

  Lincoln was sitting in The Courier break room eating homemade potato soup and still thinking about Scott Bakula and Sam when Doris interrupted him. She was loading Diet Pepsi into the machine behind him.

  Lincoln wasn’t exactly sure what Doris’s job was. Whenever he saw her, she was stocking the vending machines, but that didn’t seem like it should be a full-time job. Doris was in her sixties with short, curly gray hair, and she wore a red vest, sort of a uniform, and large eyeglasses.

  “Excuse me?” he asked, hoping he sounded polite, not confused.

  “Basset hounds,” she said, pointing to the open newspaper in front of him. There was a photo of a basset hound sitting on a woman’s lap.

  “I’d never have a basset hound if I lived so close to the ocean,” she said. Lincoln looked at the photo. He didn’t see any ocean. Doris must think he’d already read the story.

  “They can’t swim, you know,” she said. “They’re the only dogs who can’t swim. They’re too fat, and their legs are too short.”

  “Like penguins,” Lincoln said thickly.

  “I’m pretty sure penguins can swim,” Doris said. “But a basset hound will drown in the bathtub. We had one named Jolene. Oh, she was a pretty little girl. I cried all night when we lost her.”

  “Did she drown?” Lincoln asked.

  “No,” Doris said. “Leukemia.”

  “Oh,” he said, “I’m sorry.”

  “We had her cremated. Put her in a nice copper urn. It’s only this big,” Doris said, holding up a can of Wild Cherry Pepsi. “Can you believe it? A full-grown dog like Jolene in a tiny, tiny urn? There’s not much to any of us once you take out all the water. How much is left in a person, do you think?” She waited for an answer.

  “Probably less than a two-liter,” Lincoln said, still feeling like it would be rude to act as if this was anything other than normal conversation.

  “I’ll bet you’re right,” Doris said sadly.

  “When did she pass?” he asked.

  “Well, it was when Paul was alive, let’s see, sixteen years ago. We got two more basset hounds after that one, but they weren’t as sweet …Honey, do you need any change while I’ve got this thing open?”

  “No,” Lincoln said. “Thank you.”

  Doris locked up the Pepsi machine. They talked a bit more about Jolene and about Doris’s late husband, Paul, whom Doris missed but didn’t get all choked up about the way she did Jolene. Paul had smoked and drank and refused to eat vegetables. Not even corn.

  By the time she got to Dolly, her first basset, and Al, her first husband, Lincoln had forgotten that he was talking to Doris just to be polite.

  HE STAYED HOME from work the next day. He went to his sister’s house instead and helped her bring Christmas decorations down from the attic. “Why aren’t you at work?” she asked, untangling a chain of plastic cranberries. “Did you just feel like taking a break?”

  He shrugged and reached for another box. “Yeah. A break from taking a break.”

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  He’d come to Eve’s house because he knew she’d ask him that. And he’d hoped that when she did ask, he’d have an answer. Things tended to come into focus when she was around.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I just feel like I have to do something.”

  “Do what?”

  “I don’t know. That’s what’s wrong. Or part of what’s wrong. I feel like I’m sleepwalking.”

  “You look like you’re sleepwalking,” she said.

  “And I don’t know how to wake up.”

  “Do something,” she said.

  “Do what?”

  “Change something.”

  “I have,” Lincoln said. “I moved back. I got a job.”

  “You must not have changed the right thing yet.”

  “If I were in a movie,” he said, “I’d fix this by volunteering with special-needs kids or the elderly. Or maybe I’d get a job in a greenhouse …or move to Japan to teach English.”

  “Yeah? So are you going to try any of those things?”

  “No. I don’t know. Maybe.”

  Eve looked at him coolly.

  “Maybe you should join a gym,” she said.

  CHAPTER 38

  From: Beth Fremont

  To: Jennifer Scribner-Snyder

  Sent: Tues, 11/16/1999 2:16 PM

  Subject: My Cute Guy.

  We’re not calling him My Cute Guy anymore.

  <> I don’t think I ever called him that.

  <> We’re calling him My Very Cute Guy. Or maybe My Very Cute, Kind, and Compassionate—and Also Sort of Funny—Guy.

  <> Not very catchy. Does this mean you have new cute-guy information to share?

  <> Duh. Yes. I worked kind of late last night, and when I went to the break room around 9 for a delicious packet of Cheez-Its, guess who was sitting right there for all the world to see? My Cute Guy. He was eating his dinner and talking to Doris.

  <> Doris, the vending machine lady?

  <> None other. She was talking to him about her dog. Her dead dog, I think. Actually, there’s a chance she was talking about a dead child, but I don’t think so. Anyway. Doris was talking about her dog, and My Cute Guy was listening attentively and asking follow-up questions, nodding his head. (It was very involved. I don’t think they even noticed me ogling.) He could not have been nicer.

  <> Maybe he just likes to talk about dead dogs.

  <> Or cuter. He could not have been cuter.

  <> And funny? How was he funny?

  <> It’s hard to explain. Doris was asking him if a dead body would fit into a can of Pepsi, and he said it would probably fit better into a two-liter.

  <> That sounds gruesome. Has anyone seen Doris today?

  <> In context, it wasn’t gruesome. I think she was talking about cremating her dog. I was eavesdropping, not taking notes. The important thing is, he was nice—really, really nice.

  <> And really, really cute.

  <> Oh my God, yes. You have got to see this guy. You know how I said he looked like Harrison Ford? I’ve had a better look now. He’s Harrison Ford plus the Brawny paper towel guy. He’s just massive.

  <> Like Mr. Universe massive?

  <> No …he’s more like the guy they would have cast as the Hulk if they’d made a live-action Hulk movie in the forties or fifties, back when powerful didn’t mean chiseled. Like if you saw John Wayne with his shirt off, he wouldn’t have had a six-pack, he’d just look like the kind of guy you’d want on your side during a fight. Like maybe this guy, My Cute Guy, lifts weights. Dumbbells in his garage or something. But he’d never touch a protein shake.

  You know what? We might have to start calling him My Handsome Guy. He’s a little deeper than cute.

  <> Okay, I can see him now. Harrison Ford plus John Wayne plus the Hulk plus the Brawny guy.

  <> Plus Jason Bateman.

  <> Who’s Jason Bateman?

  Also, why were you still here last night at nine o’clock?

  <>

  1. Jason Bateman was the best friend on Silver Spoons.

  2. You know I like to work late.

  <>

  1. The guy from Fresh Prince?

  2. I just can’t understand why you wouldn’t rather be home.

  <>

  1. The other best friend. The white guy. With the crinkly eyes and the interesting nose. His sister was on Family Ties.

  2. I like to work late because I don’t like to work early—and I have to work sometime.

  If I get here first thing in the morning, I feel like I have to iron my clothes. But by 2 o’clock, nobody cares. And by 7, nobody’s here. (Well, except copy editors, and they only half count.) Besides, it’s kind of cool, being here at night. It’s like being in the mall after it closes. Or at school on a Saturday. Plus, sometimes I legitimately have to work late. Like, if I have to write a review on opening night or something.

  <> I guess I just don’t like being here that late. The year I worked on the nightside desk was the loneliest year of my life.

  And I guess I know who Jason Bateman is. I’ve just never thought of him as cute.

  <> Well, think again. And My Cute Guy is even cuter.

  CHAPTER 39

  NO, NO, NO, Lincoln thought.

  CHAPTER 40

  NO.

  It couldn’t be …

  She couldn’t mean …

  He stood up from his desk, walked around the empty information technology office. Sat back down. Reread the e-mail. Cute, she’d said. Massive, she’d said. Oh my God, she’d said.

  Handsome.

  No. It must be a mistake, she couldn’t have meant …No.

  He stood up again. Sat down. Stood up. Started walking toward the men’s bathroom. Was there a mirror in there? What did he need to look at, anyway? To see if he still looked like himself? There was a mirror. Full-length. He looked at his reflection. Massive, he asked himself. Really? Massive?

  Definitely big. In high school, the football coach was always trying to recruit him, but Lincoln’s mother had forbidden it. “No, you’re not joining the head-injury team,” she’d say. He laid his hand on his stomach. You’d call it a beer gut if Lincoln drank beer more often than once a month. Massive.

  But cute, she’d said. Handsome, she’d said. Crinkly eyes.

  He leaned his forehead against the mirror and closed his eyes. It was embarrassing to see himself smile like that.

  CHAPTER 41

  THE NEXT MORNING, Lincoln joined a gym. The person on the treadmill next to him was already watching Quantum Leap on one of the big televisions. It felt like a sign.

  On his way home he stopped by the bank where Eve worked. She had one of those offices in the lobby with the glass cubicle walls.

  “Hey,” she said, “do you need to open a savings account? Yuck. Why are you all sweaty?”

  “I joined a gym.”

  “You did? Well, good for you. Does that mean you’re listening to my advice now? I wish I would have told you to get your own apartment. Get your own apartment!”

  “Can I ask you a weird question?”

  “If you make it quick,” she said. “All those people sitting over there on the couches actually do want to open savings accounts.”

  “Do I look like Jason Bateman?”

  “Who’s Jason Bateman?”

  “The actor. He was on Silver Spoons and The Hogan Family.”

  “The guy who played Teen Wolf?”

  “That’s Michael J. Fox,” Lincoln said. “Never mind. This wasn’t supposed to be a whole conversation.”

  “The guy who played Teen Wolf in Teen Wolf Too?”