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On the prompting, Lincoln does a quick check of his systems. No, he’s not feeling all that good. “You bet!” he dissembles.
“How about celebrating over dinner tonight? The champagne’s on me.”
Lincoln has no plans, but he’s not in the mood for an evening with Flam, and he lacks the energy to exult over the move to New York when he can’t extinguish this outburst of melancholy. He begs off dinner and asks for a rain check.
After he hangs up, Lincoln suddenly wonders what Amy is doing tonight. Having dinner with her parents? Going out with friends? Another image slices into Lincoln’s thoughts: Amy rubbing noses with a fat-cheeked baby, both of them laughing, the baby waving its arms, the two of them, in that moment, utterly complete in their love.
New York! Lincoln tells himself. New York, New York, New York—his incantation to get out of this emotional warp and back into his own reality. And it works, for a time. He wants to attach himself to a great publishing house, edit profound writers, maybe even write a book or two himself. Bask in the pride of his parents. Wave those credentials in front of his rivals. Be somebody.
Returning to Vijay Sharma’s manuscript, Lincoln thinks of Peter Falcone. Hah! What would he think of this epic pile of subcontinental swill? Falcone would never even look at it. He’d be wining and dining agents and famous authors. And that is now Lincoln’s destiny. No more Vijay Sharmas! But late that night, after a delivered dinner of spicy Kung Pao chicken washed down by too much vodka, when Lincoln finally comes to the end of Sharma’s book and the eponymous hero rescues the kidnapped young woman from the cult of religious zealots by hiding in the coffin in which the terrorists were planning to bury the poor girl alive for daring to seek a liberal education, Lincoln erupts in sobs. The melodrama! The glory! Teardrops splatter Lincoln’s shirt as the lionhearted private eye machetes his way through swarming fanatics and carries the beautiful, terrified victim to freedom. Lincoln puts his head on his desk and lets the waterworks flow.
When he gets up the next morning, Lincoln goes through his usual Sunday routine: scrambled eggs, English muffin, a pot of coffee, the Tribune, the Times. While glancing over the Times business section, he suddenly thinks: baby cribs. Amy is going to get one today. Haven’t there been stories recently about dangerous cribs—the slats are too far apart or the adjustable rail accidentally drops? After a few minutes on the Internet, he finds that, yes, some older cribs have been blamed for deaths, and even some newer models have been recalled. Does Amy know? He returns to the paper, but over the next half hour, the concern itches until it suddenly erupts in a full-blown panic: he’s got to warn her. He tries to call, but she doesn’t pick up. He sends an e-mail, listing the varieties of cribs that have caused trouble. But what if she doesn’t check her e-mail before her shopping excursion? In his agitated state, Lincoln has little trouble convincing himself that there is only one thing to do: he has to find her and tell her.
He showers and dresses quickly, then hurries outside to catch a cab. The driver, a dark-complected man of some Eastern nationality, soon picks up on Lincoln’s anxiety—the lugubrious sighs when they don’t crash a yellow light, the groans when a lumbering truck pulls in front. “You in a hurry?” the driver asks.
“Yes, I’m afraid so,” says Lincoln.
“What can be the hurry on Sunday morning?”
“It’s a personal thing.”
“Sunday morning is the only time Americans slow down. The rest of the time, always in a rush. In my country, every day is like Sunday morning.”
“Where’s your country?”
“India.”
“India,” Lincoln murmurs. The word jars loose an absurd question: “Do you know of a writer named Vijay Sharma?”
“What does he write?”
“Books. Thrillers.”
“No.” The driver shakes his head. “I mostly read newspapers.”
That ends the conversation until they reach Amy’s block. As Lincoln is paying, the driver says, “Vijay Sharma. I’ll remember that name and look him up.”
“You won’t regret it,” Lincoln says, and he realizes that his mind and his mouth are on two different tracks. He really has to get his bearings. He stands on the sidewalk for a moment. A spot of sunlight flowing down the east-west street warms his face, calming him. Then he walks to the entrance and makes his second siege of Amy’s building. But this time he sits on the buzzer for more than a minute with no response. Too late—she’s already left.
Now what to do? Lincoln walks back to the curb, fumbling with his BlackBerry. She mentioned Land of Nod, but where the hell is that in Chicago? While he waits for Google to come up on his phone, a taxi starts backing toward him from down the street. The cabbie who dropped him off has waited. “Still in a hurry?” he asks in his lilting English.
Lincoln hops in the back and finds Land of Nod on his BlackBerry—900 West North.
The driver knows the place. “Ah, no wonder you’re in a hurry,” he says, laughing. “A baby!”
The trip takes only fifteen minutes on the Sunday morning streets. “Congratulations,” says the driver when he drops Lincoln off in front of the store. It’s a tawny, one-story warehouse of a building in the shopping maze that’s sprouted around North and Clybourn. Lincoln pushes through the doors, and a sparkling new world opens up to him, all pastels on white with accents of stained wood. The atmosphere of cheer even survives the relentless track lighting. The space is divided into alcoves, cubbies, and three-sided rooms, and Lincoln wanders among the furniture and other baby paraphernalia. From a distance, he spots a middle-aged woman reading the tag on a white-slatted crib. She’s small and slight, with short auburn hair and a splash of freckles. Very well kept-up and youthful and wearing a light, beige spring coat. Amy’s mother?
Bracing himself, Lincoln approaches and inquires gently, “Mrs. O’Malley?”
She turns to him pleasantly. “Yes?”
“I’m John Lincoln...Amy’s friend.”
Her soft feat
ures harden, and Lincoln feels her probing gaze—examining, poking, covering all six feet two of him, up and down several times. He thinks of a Louisville horseman evaluating a prospective stallion. (Well, in this case it’s really too late for that.)
“The editor,” she says finally, a trace of Ireland in her voice. “This is a surprise.” Smiling tentatively, she offers a delicate hand, and Lincoln gives it a firm but careful shake. “Is Amy expecting you?” she asks.
