Page 49 of 28 Summers
Is this a coincidence? No; Cooper did some investigative work and learned that Stacey is VP of marketing for the Baltimore Aquarium and she’s still single. He called information, got her number, and invited her to meet them here.
Stacey is wearing a red wool coat and a houndstooth miniskirt with high black boots. She looks every bit as beautiful as she did in college. Coop hurries over to greet her; they hug. He shepherds her over to the bar and says, “Let’s get you a drink. What would you like?”
“A glass of merlot, please.”
Cooper isn’t sure merlot is a wise choice at a place like PJ’s, but oh, well. Stacey peers over Coop’s shoulder.
“Is that Jake McCloud?” she says. “I haven’t thought about him inyears.”
“Yes, it is,” Coop says. “He’ll be psyched to see you.”
“Is that his wife he’s dancing with?” Stacey asks.
“No,” Coop says. “That’s my sister, Mallory.”
“Oh,” Stacey says. “Well, they would make a cute couple.”
Cooper turns to watch Jake and Mallory spinning slowly in front of the jukebox; Mallory’s head rests for a second against Jake’s chest.
Theywouldmake a cute couple, Cooper thinks. In another life.
Summer #7: 1999
What are we talking about in 1999? Gun control; Y2K; Kosovo; Napster; John F. Kennedy Jr.; Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, and Miranda; Egypt Air Flight 990; “I try to say goodbye and I choke”; gun control; Brandi Chastain;The Matrix;Tae Bo; Elián González; Amazon; Jack Kevorkian; Hurricane Floyd; the euro; gun control; violent video games; gun control.
Jake’s memories of Mallory and his anticipation of seeing her—in nine months, in nine weeks, in nine days—serve as the emergency reserve of oxygen in his emotional scuba tank.
Jake has had one hell of a year.
Ursula celebrates her seventh anniversary at the SEC by announcing she’s leaving. If you stay any longer than seven years, the saying goes, you’re there for life. She’s courted all over the city and ends up taking an accelerated partner-track position in mergers and acquisitions at Andrews, Hewitt, and Douglas for a mind-blowing salary and the prospect of an even more mind-blowing bonus.
With Ursula making so much money, Jake decides to quit PharmX, a job he has hated in practice and principle since he started. He’s tired of meeting with congressmen and local lawmakers in an attempt to ease regulations and raise drug prices for the pharmaceutical industry. He tells Ursula he’s quitting, she tells him he’s a fool, he tells her he doesn’t care, and she’s too busy to do battle.
Fine,she says.Don’t come crying to me when you’re sitting home in your boxers watching Montel Williams.
Jake gives his notice, then the next day schedules a root canal; he wants to get it done while he still has full dental. Jake’s boss, Warren, swings by his office more than usual, each time dangling some new enticement to get him to stay—a promotion, a raise, two extra weeks of vacation. (Warren can’t believe Jake McCloud lasted as long as he did in the glad-handing, soul-destroying world of pharmaceutical lobbying. Jake somehow managed to keep his personal integrity intact, fighting only for the drugs he believed in. He has been a tremendous asset all these years, and while Warren is sorry to see Jake go, he’s also cheering for him. His talents can be put to better use.)
When Jake clears out his office, he starts with his top center desk drawer, where he keeps the photograph of Mallory eating noodles and a number 10 envelope that holds three sand dollars and seven fortune-cookie fortunes. He throws the photograph away, telling himself it’s outdated—but it pains him nonetheless. He has looked at the photograph every single day the way other people look at pictures of Caribbean beaches—to remember that there is another world out there, one that provides escape, solace, joy.
He slips the envelope holding the sand dollars and fortunes into a manila envelope stampedINTEROFFICEand secures the metal tabs. He tucks this between drug reports in his briefcase. He nearly laughs at himself for taking this precaution. He could wear the sand dollars on a necklace and Ursula wouldn’t notice.
No sooner does Jake leave PharmX than he gets sick. Really sick—a high fever with aches and chills. He sweats, he’s freezing. He sleeps during the day and is awake in a dazed stupor all night. Ursula is sympathetic at first.Poor baby,she says. She rubs his back and places a bowl of ice cubes on his nightstand. She sleeps on the daybed in the living room because she “can’t afford to catch it.” She works even longer hours than she did for the SEC but Jake gets it, she’s in M and A, it’s a twenty-four-hour thing, plus she wants to make partner so that they can eventually have some kind of life. She asks Mrs. Rowley down the hall to do a pharmacy run—Advil, Tylenol—and she finds a deli that delivers soup.
The phone rings and messages pile up—it’s Cooper, it’s Jake’s mother, it’s Ursula’s mother, it’s Jake’s father, it’s Warren from PharmX, it’s his buddy Cody saying he has a lead for a lobbying job at a “big-time” organization. Jake is too sick to answer. The messages from his parents and Lynette are urging him to go to the doctor. (“Otherwise we’ll fly out there,” his father says, only half kidding. They lost a child, so no illness is taken lightly. But Jake also knows his parents are too busy to fly to Washington, just like Ursula is too busy to take half a day off to accompany him to the emergency room.)
On day seven, when there has been no improvement and Jake is lying in bed, weak and shaking, with a fever of 103, barely able to get to the bathroom, Ursula appears in her light gray suit and her sharp stiletto heels and says, “Enough is enough. We’re going to the hospital.”
Turns out he has a staph infection in his bloodstream, probably from the root canal. Did he take all of his antibiotics? He can’t remember. Well, it hardly matters now; he’s earned himself a two-night stay at Georgetown Hospital on intravenous antibiotics. Jake knows the names of these specific drugs only too well, and he also knows these drugs are a hospital’s last line of defense. He is profoundly sick, almost-dying sick. He shudders to think of how close he came to letting the infection rage on. Ursula taking action saved his life.
“You saved my life,” he says.
“You’re going to be fine,” she says, kissing his forehead. “And besides, it wasn’t me. Your mother called.” Liz McCloud is the one woman in the world who intimidates Ursula; this has been true since they were in middle school, back when Jessica was still alive. Apparently, Liz called Ursula’s work and with surgical precision sliced away the layers of paralegals meant to protect her time until she had Ursula herself on the phone, and then Liz McCloud was even more formidable than her usual formidable self.Get my son to the hospital, Ursula. Now. I don’t mean three billable hours from now. I meannow.
Twenty-four hours later, Jake feels much better. By the middle of the second day, he’s sitting up in bed eating a tuna fish sandwich and rice pudding, watchingThe Montel Williams Showwith a nurse named Gloria.
Ursula comes to collect Jake at the end of his stay, but she seems quiet—not distracted, not snippy, just quiet. Jake wonders if maybe his unexpected illness has made her introspective. When he asks her what’s wrong, she shakes her head and fiddles with the new cell phone that the firm insists she carry so they can get hold of her any hour of the day. She flips it up, then snaps it down. Is sheangry?He can’t tell.
At home, she gets him settled into bed—the sheets, he notices, have been changed—and she brings him a glass of ice water with his pills. He still has two weeks of two different antibiotics, neither of which can be taken on an empty stomach, so she’s also brought in the takeout menus from Vapiano’s and I-Thai.
