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“Thank you,” says Lincoln. “Thank you.”
“I hope you find her. Do you want to publish her?”
“We’ll see, perhaps. We’ll see.”
With a little Internet scouting, Lincoln narrows the likely spot to Mika Sushi at George near Seminary, a restaurant he’s never patronized. That night, a Thursday, he takes a cab there. The restaurant is bright and modest, one large room with unadorned white walls and a sushi bar on one side. It’s doing a good business this evening. Lincoln gets a small table in front. Moments later, Amy emerges from the kitchen carrying two platters of sushi, her face gripped in fierce concentration as she maneuvers her load through the swinging doors. Lincoln is jolted by a shot of nostalgia—or some resounding emotion. He remembers that intense look from the Lunker Motel when they were locked together on the rewrite, and he feels an overwhelming impulse to run up and throw his arms around her. In fact, the urge hits him so powerfully that he’s afraid if he actually did it he’d squeeze hard enough to crack one of her ribs. What’s that about? When Amy spots him, he beckons her with a nod and a smile, but she throws him a look of exasperation and hurries to a table in the back. Feeling slightly embarrassed, Lincoln orders a beer from his waitress and pretends to study the menu. A few minutes later, he senses Amy standing beside him.
“I can’t talk to you, John,” she says. “We’re busy tonight.”
“No problem. Just checking in.” He smiles again but can’t penetrate her hostility.
“You’re never that innocent,” she tells him.
“Hey, I just wanted to catch up. We’ve been through a lot together.”
“And I’ve worked hard to put it all behind me.”
Lincoln’s waitress comes up. She’s a stunning young Japanese woman dressed, like Amy, in Mika’s uniform of a white blouse and black skirt. She seems to think that Amy wants to steal a customer because she positions herself between Amy and Lincoln and pulls out her notepad. “You order,” she says to Lincoln in accented English. Amy wheels and disappears into the kitchen.
Lincoln eats his sushi dinner while reading an old paperback of William Kennedy’s Ironweed. (“Riding up the winding road of Saint Agnes Cemetery in the back of the rattling old truck, Francis Phelan became aware that the dead, even more than the living, settled down in neighborhoods.” Now, there’s a classy opening, Lincoln thinks.) At one point, Amy approaches his table. “
This is stupid,” she says.
“Why?”
“You’re going to get me fired again.”
“You quit, remember?”
She retreats once more to the kitchen.
Lincoln can’t parse her anger, but he knows Amy well enough, has felt the heat of her ambition at close enough hand, to be fairly confident that he’ll win her over eventually—if not tonight, then another night or another. As he’s paying his bill, she comes by yet again. “I get off in an hour,” she tells him tartly. “Meet me at the Golden Nugget on Clark.” She walks away before he can respond.
At the Golden Nugget, an overbright and characterless twenty-four-hour diner, Lincoln nurses a coffee and his Kennedy at a booth near a window. Despite the iciness from Amy, he worries that when he sees her, he’ll get hit by another nostalgic thunderbolt, or whatever it was, so he keeps an eye on the street to prep himself for her arrival. Assortments of noisy young people wander in and out, refugees of the bars in the neighborhood. Amy shows up just after an hour. She hangs her coat on a hook and slides into the booth opposite Lincoln. Again, something inside explodes, and he worries that she can hear his heart drumming against his chest. He’d forgotten—or, at least, shelved in his memory—Amy’s physical allure. The trim blouse and skirt of the waitress uniform emphasize her gentle curves, and she’s cut her hair and combed it behind her ears in a sleek style that seems very Japanese to Lincoln. This is business, he reminds himself. Stay on message.
“I know why you’re here,” she says, sounding world-weary.
“You do?”
“You want to publish my book on your stupid website.”
This sets Lincoln back momentarily. “How did you know where I was working?”
“Word gets around. Nothing escapes Google.”
“Well...” he starts.
She interrupts. “Can I get something here?”
Lincoln calls over the waitress, and Amy orders tea. Waiting for it to arrive, she delivers her speech. “I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about my career, my plans, what I want to do. And I’ve decided I want to help people. I’ve got this sympathy that I want to exercise. That’s what makes me happy. That’s my calling. This whole writing thing—it was a fantasy that was never really me. I mean, everyone writes short stories in college, and the smart ones move on to the real world. All I needed was a little taste of the publishing business to come to my senses. God, John—the egos, the selfishness, the failure rate. Who needs it?”
“You have talent,” Lincoln urges.
“I was clueless when I met you. So naïve. I’ve grown up.”
“That was six months ago.”
“Disappointing my parents, the whole disaster at Pistakee—you can learn an incredible amount from trauma.”
