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The fans are already streaming out of the ballpark. The Pistakee gang falls into the pack and works its way toward the exit. Duddleston edges close to Lincoln. “Nice job tonight, Abe” he says. “I think you smoothed it right over. Bill’s eager to get going again.”
Outside in the mob on Clark Street, the group scatters. As Duddleston disappears into the crowd, Lincoln asks Amy if she wants to get a nightcap so they can continue their discussion. Of course, she does.
They join the crowd flowing south. The neighborhood is a riot of milling and shouting fans, lumbering buses, angry car drivers caught in the mess. An oblivious scrum of teenage boys barrels past, and Lincoln grabs Amy around the waist to pull her out of the way. His hand lingers on the taut muscles on the side of her stomach, then slides along her smooth back. Even though he’s spent several days thinking on and off about her panties, her trim figure, her seeming makeover, for the first time a thought pushes into his head: Wouldn’t it be lovely to sleep with her? He immediately processes one of those internal debates, the sort in which the pros and cons sound somehow familiar and now are laid out in a babble of overlapping contradiction: He’s still married, and he hopes to get back again with his wife. (Well, they are separated for now, and the rules under those circumstances are muddy at best; and who knows if Mary remains faithful?) Amy’s just an exuberant, ambitious kid—sleeping with a grumpy married man twelve years her senior is probably the farthest thing from her mind. (But hasn’t she dolled herself up since he showed an interest, and isn’t there a flirtatious glint to her manner?) She’s a Pistakee employee, for fuck’s sake; he’s an executive, and this is 2009, when every accidental bump at the copying machine turns into a workplace sexual-harassment suit. (On the other hand, he doesn’t supervise her—they’re more like colleagues, and the law doesn’t want to meddle with genuine office romances.) Put it out of your mind, Lincoln tells himself.
“Do you want to come back to my place?” Amy asks.
Lincoln stares at her, stupefied.
“Oh, no, no, no,” she says, laughing, putting her hand on his chest and pushing him away. “I didn’t mean it like that. I mean all the bars around here are going to be packed and noisy. We’ll never be able to hear each other talk.”
“I think I know a place,” Lincoln says.
At a little round table in the Northern Lights Tap, Lincoln orders a Scotch on the rocks. Amy tells the waitress she’ll have the same thing, but when it comes, she takes a sip and makes a face, so Lincoln orders two beers, too. He continues to compliment her on her stories, pointing out scenes he likes, characters that show promise. He discusses her work, in fact, until he starts to bore himself, though Lincoln has spent enough time with writers to know that they posse
ss the endurance of Indian mystics—those fellows with towels wrapped around their loins who walk on coals—capable of withstanding unimaginable tedium and discomfort, as long as someone is talking about their prose.
Lincoln orders another round of Scotch and beer (I’ll pay tomorrow, he thinks; on the other hand, Amy’s eyes look as clear and bright as ever). He works his way back to the sex survey. “How much material did you leave on the cutting-room floor, so to speak?”
“One semester while I was working there, I was taking a writing course and the professor made us keep a diary.” Amy touches Lincoln’s arm. “I’ve got pages of the stuff.”
“Hmmmm.” Lincoln sips his Scotch, deep in contemplation. The bar is decorated to suggest a hunting lodge, with dark pine paneling, moose heads sprouting from the walls, fishing gear tacked everywhere. Lincoln wonders if the décor is pumping up his testosterone, because he has to fight an urge to nuzzle aside Amy’s dangly earring and kiss her on the neck.
“Do you think I could turn the material into a novel?” she asks.
“A novel,” repeats Lincoln, as if considering a fresh and intriguing idea.
“Oh, that’s stupid,” Amy chides herself. She sips her Scotch, then quickly follows with a gulp of beer. “I couldn’t write a novel. I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”
Now it’s Lincoln’s turn to touch Amy’s arm. “Wait a second. You may be onto something there.” He lets his gaze wander the bar, seemingly searching for inspiration from the moose head, the decaying trout basket, the warped and nicked canoe paddle. “A novel. A young girl just discovering her sexuality who’s thrust into an intense project to explore other people’s sex lives. The experience is supposed to be clinical, anonymous, she’s put off by it all, but then, slowly, she’s drawn into the life of one of the subjects.”
Amy is on fire. “I can write that!” she cries. “I can sit down and write that!”
“She enters a world that’s dark, slightly shrouded.” Lincoln speaks slowly. “Maybe there’s the hint of a crime, a mystery unfolding.”
Amy pulls away from his grasp. “Of course, it was nothing like that in real life.”
“Who cares? It’s a fucking novel! Anything can happen.”
“And I do have pages and pages of notes.”
“Exactly.”
Amy looks at him with shining eyes. “Will you help me?” she asks.
“Well, I’d be happy to look the stuff over.”
She leans forward. “You don’t think Pistakee would publish a book like that, do you?”
Lincoln sits back and considers, the hoary old master. “Maybe. Who can say. We’ve done fiction before, though not for a while.” Then, after a pause: “But let’s not mention it to Byron just yet. This will be our own little project.”
“Right!”
It’s almost midnight by the time they leave the bar. The Wrigley crowd has disappeared, the leafy streets are quiet. Amy’s apartment on Seminary Avenue is on the way home for Lincoln, so he walks her the handful of blocks. They are both a little unsteady on their feet and bump occasionally. The soft summer air coats Lincoln’s feeling of accomplishment. After all the gabbing, they don’t talk much. Lincoln wonders what she’s thinking. Outside her building, Amy takes his hand. “Now I really do want you to come up,” she says.
He follows without hesitation. It flits through his mind that Mary had said there was no one else. Hah! She’s probably with her lover right now. In the elevator, Amy leans against him, and Lincoln rests his cheek on the top of her head. She’s tiny, he thinks, she fits right under my arm.
They step into her apartment, and she flips on the light. Lincoln has only a moment to take in bright swatches of color, a collection of dainty bottles, other girly essences before they stumble to the sofa, bounce back to their feet, stagger entangled to the narrow bedroom, and fall onto the bed. Lincoln’s head swims. He’s on his back, naked, an overhead fixture making him blink, and Amy is in a white, frilly bra and panties, the cloth gorgeous against her tan skin. Lincoln closes his eyes, and he imagines a large cat, a panther, maybe, walking up and down his body, its soft, padded feet pressing gently into his flesh. With impeccable timing, the panther nibbles, then squeezes, and Lincoln feels as if he has let go of days, years of tension, his entire life in the Midwest, the flatness, the brown suits, the overweight children, the featureless gossip columns with the birthday greetings at the bottom, the stubborn plainness—all of it, washed away.
