Page 75 of 28 Summers
“I’m proud of you,” Starr says. “You stepped out of your comfort zone. You opened up to strangers about something very personal. And you made ahellof a lot of money. So here’s my question: Would you be willing to do it again?”
Jake speaks in Cleveland and Raleigh in May. He speaks in Minneapolis and Omaha in June. He speaks in La Jolla, Jackson Hole, and Easthampton in July.
Event-based donations to CFRF are up more than 30 percent.
Does Jake brag about this to Ursula? Yes, a little bit. She’s the superstar of the couple, no one is disputing that. But Jake has come a long way from watching Montel Williams in his boxer shorts.
Before Congress adjourns for the summer, Ursula and Vincent Stengel get their welfare-reform bill passed in the Houseandin the Senate, a tremendous coup. The bill is a brilliant one. It manages to empower single working mothers while also saving the government a hundred and sixty million dollars.
Ursula is riding high. She and Jake rent a house on Lake Michigan, and Ursula relaxes a little. They grill on the sand; they take Bess on the dune buggies and to the water park; they attend the blueberry festival in South Haven and eat ice cream at Sherman’s.
In the middle of August, Ursula gets a phone call from Vincent Stengel. He invites her and Jake to Newport over Labor Day weekend. There’s a potential donor, amajordonor, who would write checks not only to Vincent but to Ursula as well. This guy—Bayer Burkhart is his name—liked what he saw with the welfare-reform bill. He sees potential for an emerging centrist position, a perfect cocktail of the Left and the Right that he wants to foster. He wants to have a conversation, or a series of conversations, over the course of the long weekend. And in addition to all this, he has a 110-foot yacht with three staterooms, a pool, a gym, and a movie theater.
“This could be big for me,” Ursula says. “Plus it seems like fun, right? A long weekend away? You like New England.”
Jake knows he should only be surprised this hasn’t happened earlier. “Sounds great,” he says, thinking,Keep it light! Keep it light!“But Labor Day weekend doesn’t work for me.”
“Tell the CFRF to find someone else to speak, Jake, please,” Ursula says. She gives him an imploring look. “I know you’re good at it and I’m proud of you. But take a pass this once, for me?”
She thinks his conflict is work. He has been going to Nantucket every year for thirteen years and Ursula never remembers. Jake knows he should be grateful it’s not on her emotional calendar. Could he get away with telling Ursula that itisa work thing? No—he’ll be caught. “It’s not work,” he says. “It’s my trip to Nantucket.”
“Nantucket?” Ursula says. “You’ve got to be kidding me. You can skip Nantucket, Jake, come on.”
“Sorry, darling,” Jake says. “Any other weekend works, just not that one.”
“We were the ones who wereinvited,Jake,” Ursula says. “With Vince, who serves on the Senate Judiciary Committee, where I would eventually like to earn a seat. This guy Burkhart hasbillions. I need to cultivate him.”
“No one is stopping you from cultivating him,” Jake says. “But I can’t go.”
“You’re being unreasonable,” Ursula says. “Why don’t you askCoopto switch weekends?”
“I don’t want to ask Coop,” Jake says. “I want to go to Nantucket like I always do.”
“What if I call Coop?” Ursula says.
Jake takes a breath. Is she bluffing? “Go ahead,” Jake says. “Please be the one to explain that your political career takes precedence over a tradition that I’ve maintained for thirteen years. You show Coop just how compromise in a marriage works.”
“You going to Nantucket a different weekendisa compromise,” Ursula says. “What you’re offering is…nothing.”
“I’m sorry, Ursula,” Jake says. They lock eyes and he feels certain the truth is there, written on his face: there’s another woman.
“I hope you’re happy with yourself,” Ursula says. “Robbing me of this opportunity. Robbing me of the money that could launch me to certain victory.”
“It might be better if you went alone,” Jake says. “Maybe this Bayer Burkhart is single with a penchant for powerful women.”
“He’s happily married,” Ursula says. “To a woman named DeeDee, whose father was the political mastermind behind Buddy…” Jake tunes her out. He doesn’t care how rich and connected these people are. “Anyway,” she finishes, “I won’t go alone.”
But you will,Jake thinks.
And she does.
Summer #15: 2007
What are we talking about in 2007? The iPhone; Nancy Pelosi; Halo 3; Oprah’s school for girls in South Africa; Barry Bonds;Juno;Paris Hilton; the Burj Dubai, Lindsay Lohan; Whoopi onThe View;Gordon Brown; Virginia Tech; McLovin; acai bowls; Anna Nicole Smith; Don Imus; Serena van der Woodsen and Blair Waldorf; “If you ain’t got no money, take yo’ broke ass home.”
Cooper is getting married again and this time, he’s doing it right. Tish—Letitia Morgan—comes from an old Philadelphia family. She grew up in Radnor on the Main Line, went to Agnes Irwin and then Vassar, where she majored in art history, and now serves as the director of the Phillips Collection in Dupont Circle. Cooper noticed Tish at the Metro stop—once, then twice. He decided that if their paths crossed again he would ask her out. He had to wait a long time, so long that he feared she’d taken a different job or maybe left DC altogether. But then, one Friday morning, there she was. She was carrying an armful of cut flowers wrapped in brown paper in addition to her leather bucket purse and a tray of something that appeared to be artichoke bruschetta. As she ascended the escalator at the Dupont Circle stop with Cooper in hot pursuit, something shifted in her balance, and when she stepped off the escalator, her purse overturned and everything in it dumped to the ground.
This was bad news for Tish (the station floor was filthy) but good news for Cooper, who was able to come to her rescue and help pick up everything—her wallet, her cell phone, pens, loose change, a packet of tissues, a trial-size bottle of skin lotion, a cherry ChapStick, her checkbook, a few loose shopping lists and receipts, and a flat disk that Cooper held in his hands probably a second or two longer than he should have because he was trying to figure out what it was.
