Page 7 of Are You Happy Now?

“It’s impossible to stay mad on a night out at Wrigley.”

“You’re right about that!”

For several tedious minutes, the boss goes over the diplomacy of the encounter—the seating at the game, Lincoln’s opening gambit, benign topics of conversation. (Lincoln has mused sometimes that Duddleston may have a touch of obsessive-compulsive disorder—precisely the neurosis that made him a rich trader: he knew how a flood in Kansas would affect September wheat prices before the first raindrop fell.) Lincoln nods robotically, his brain banging against the inside of his skull. The boss concludes with a gentle admonition: “We need to be supportive of our writers. That’s the Pistakee Way.”

When Duddleston finally leaves, Lincoln gulps two Bufferin, slogging them down with the last inch of cold coffee left over from yesterday’s Starbucks.

Lincoln spends the remainder of the morning on Walking Tours of the Windy City. After a couple of hours, his father calls, out of the blue, ostensibly to remind Lincoln to drop a card to his mother, whose birthday is coming up, but probably, Lincoln suspects, to make inquiries about the status of Lincoln’s marriage. “Any developments?” asks the old man. “Mary’s mom told your mom that there were still some issues to deal with.”

“They talked?” Lincoln feels as if his privacy has been violated.

“They’re worried mothers. Nobody’s happy about this.”

“Well, neither are we, and we’re working on it.” (Issues to deal with? What did Mary mean?)

After Lincoln sullenly rebuffs a few more careful probes, his father gives up on the marriage and turns to another sore spot. “How’s the job going? Working on any good books?”

“Let’s see,” Lincoln scrambles. He’d like to escape this conversation with at least a modest show of accomplishment or even just forward motion. “A history of Wrigley Field. A book about walking tours of Chicago.” His father’s silence on the other end leads Lincoln to embellish. “Quite a thoughtful book, actually, the walking book. There’s nothing quite like it on the market now, and the pictures are fantastic.”

“Those sound like little books,” the father points out.

“Well, you know, those Cubs fans—there are millions of them out there, and they’ll go for anything about the team...Wrigley Field. A landmark...”

After they bid farewell, Lincoln is too distracted to return immediately to Walking Tours, so he absently leafs through the latest issue of Publisher’s Weekly, the book-business trade magazine. Arthur Wendt, a prunish Pistakee senior editor and occasional rival of Lincoln’s, has pasted a Post-it on a page featuring a favorable review of one of his books, Chicago’s Richard M. Daley: The Mayor Who Works, by Marcus DeBasio, hagiography from an ancient political hack. That makes four good PWs for Arthur so far this year. Pistakee’s other senior editor, fidgety Hazel Lanier, who handles mostly children?

?s books, has collected three. Lincoln has two—plus two pans and three other books that were entirely ignored by the magazine. Could Duddleston be keeping score?

Glancing through the front of the publication, Lincoln stops at the headline: “Malcolm House Taps Time Vet.” Another cherry bomb goes off in Lincoln’s stomach. He thinks: so this is how you get an ulcer. The brief story explains that Jeff Kessler has just hired Elizabeth Warner, a low-ranking editor at Time magazine. PW calls her a “vet,” yet Lincoln reads that she’s thirty-one, two years younger than he. Kessler didn’t even call Lincoln for an interview.

He goes out alone for lunch and orders an Italian beef sandwich at a little joint on Wells, eating outside at a metal table on a concrete plaza. A handful of taxicabs idle nearby, coughing out noxious fumes. The garbage strike has finally ended, and now a monstrous truck parked in the alley grinds up bulging, black plastic bags of refuse. Something in the truck’s racket, the stained air, the unintelligible chatter of Indian cabbies at a neighboring table, the sweet, brown gravy leaking from Lincoln’s sandwich, messing his hands—the combination brings some solace, calms Lincoln’s troubled insides. The world is foul, confused, cruelly indifferent. Think Don DeLillo, J. M. Coetzee, Cormac McCarthy. Fate only mocks our dreams, our efforts. Jonathan Franzen, David Foster Wallace. Why should Lincoln’s life be any other way? He trudges back to his office, feeling slightly narcotized.

Shortly after he sits at his desk, his phone rings. “Got the date,” Flam tells him from the other end.

“The date?” What’s Flam talking about?

“The date!”

Lincoln’s mind reels. Nothing makes sense anymore. Maybe he should just have the lobotomy and be done with it. Or maybe he’s already had it and the operation has wiped out the memory of itself. Maybe that’s it.

Flam throws a lifeline. “You know, my girlfriend. The girl from Starbucks. We’re going on a date.”

“Jesus Christ,” says Lincoln.

“I got there late today, so the morning rush was over, and we started talking. I finished the entire cup of coffee right there, just gabbing away. She’s really very sweet.”

Lincoln thinks he’s never heard Flam so upbeat, so enthused. “What are you going to do—on your date, I mean?”

“Yet to be determined. She likes the movies, so we might do that. Or maybe just a nice restaurant for dinner. I can afford it, and maybe she’d like that experience—you know, the older suitor, spend some of Daddy Warbucks’s money. What’s a hot spot these days?”

“Let’s see.” Lincoln is ticking down the names of a few popular restaurants, places he and Mary occasionally patronized, when a small, shaggy head peaks around the doorway into Lincoln’s office. The ruffed grouse, clutching a manila file that of course contains her stories. Lincoln forces a smile and waves her in.

“Listen, Flam, I’ve got to run,” Lincoln tells his friend. “Keep me posted.”

Flam can’t let go. He wants to bring flowers. Is that a good idea? “No one brings flowers on a date,” Lincoln warns.

“I need to be different. She’s nineteen.”

“Roses,” Lincoln suggests, and Flam is finally pacified.

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