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Amy leans forward and clutches at the table. “I can’t believe you eviscerated my novel without even asking me.”
“I didn’t...”
“What am I? Just some researcher?” she interrupts. “Some notetaker for the great artist?” Her face has immediately gone red again, and her eyes are firing BBs at him.
“Give it a chance...”
“I want to read it right now! Tonight.”
“It’s New Year’s Eve. You’ve already drunk a bottle of wine.”
“Tonight!”
Lincoln settles the bill and follows Amy out of the restaurant. She rides in silence back to the motel, her arms folded across her chest, ignoring Lincoln’s efforts to soothe her. At the Lunker, several pickup trucks are clustered around room 8, where there seems to be a small party going on. Amy waits outside Lincoln’s room while he retrieves the twelve chapters that he’s finished. “I really think you should get some sleep and start reading in the morning,” he advises as he hands her the manuscript.
In the harsh light of the motel walkway, Amy glances at the top sheet. “You’ve changed everything!” she cries.
“It’s all negotiable.”
“Everything!” Amy’s fury suddenly dissolves into despair. Tears spray from her eyes. Lincoln watches as the outpouring floods her cheeks and spreads huge dark patches over her ski jacket. She wheels and runs to her room.
He follows, but she’s inside behind a door slammed shut before he can catch her. He’s standing alone, considering whether to knock, when Mrs. Lunker wanders out of room 8, a plastic cup in her hand. “I hope we’re not making too much noise for you,” she says.
Lincoln shakes his head.
“Just a few old friends from town.” She lifts her cup. “Would you like to join us?”
“No, no thanks,” says Lincoln backing away. “I think I’ll just turn in.” Quickly, he heads toward his room.
She calls to his back, “Happy New Year!”
The cold yellow light of the walkway, the soggy whelps of delight coming from room 8, Amy’s heartbreaking expression of betrayal—the scene has opened a crushing epiphany: Lincoln is a delusional fool. Of course Amy will hate what he’s done. It’s her book, and he’s treated her thoughtful words as if they were just a starting point for his brilliance. What was he thinking? He knows how writers feel about their work. How could he be so clumsy, so selfish, trampling on a good-hearted innocent? He imagines Amy sitting at the desk in room 11, her tears splashing on the pages.
Lincoln gets in bed with Grisham. Before, Lincoln had disdained the simple prose as obvious; now, it seems smart, dramatic, economical. At midnight, Mr. and Mrs. Lunker and their townie fraternity pour into the parking lot and whoop up the New Year. Lincoln waits for them to quiet before turning off the light, but it takes him another hour to drop off, and even then he sleeps fitfully.
A rap on his door awakens him. It’s still dark outside. The garish red numbers on the digital clock by the bed say 6:02. Lincoln turns on the light and mopes his way to the door. He opens it just a crack, and Amy pushes past with the manuscript in her arms and drops onto the desk chair. She balances the book in her lap and buries her hands in the pockets of her ski jacket, staring blankly toward the ugly mauve curtains. She’s still wearing the print skirt and tan sweater she wore to dinner last night.
“Well?” Lincoln asks. He feels exposed, standing in the chill room in his underwear.
“I can’t say it’s terrible, and in fact it’s probably better, but it’s not me.”
Her tone is depressive yet resigned, better than Lincoln could possibly have hoped for. “Were you up all night reading it?” he asks, pulling on a pair of jeans.
“Yes.”
“You didn’t sleep at all?”
“I didn’t move from the desk.”
“Jeez, you must be exhausted.” Lincoln sits on the bed across from her.
For the first time since she entered the room, she looks at him. “It isn’t me, John. It’s you. Or some awful hybrid of the two of us. I don’t talk like that. I don’t think like that.”
“But it is you,” Lincoln pleads. “It’s all you. I just tried to fill out some of the spaces and follow your blueprint.”
“I don’t sound like this.” She fumbles with the manuscript, and Lincoln notices that she’s folded down corners, marking things she wants to recall. From a few feet a way, it looks as if half the pages have a dog-ear. “Listen.” She reads: “‘He put his hand over mine, but I insisted that I had to go. I knew I was starting to sound like a nag, and I knew Stephen had a way of doing that, drawing out my shrill, anxious side, a manner of behaving that would only come from a woman. It was a tendency that I hated and that Stephen seemed to enjoy nursing in me.’ ” Amy stares at Lincoln. “I would never write something like that.”
Secretly, Lincoln is relieved. He’d been afraid she would enter into evidence a passage so outrageous that the verdict would be inevitable. The one she chose actually sounds reasonable to him. “But you can change it,” he tells her. “Rewrite it. Get comfortable with it. I just wanted to give the book an injection of energy.”
