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 He throws the photograph away, telling himself it’s outdated—but it pains him nonetheless.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 stamped INTEROFFICE and 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 mean now.
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, watching The Montel Williams Show with 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 she angry? 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.
“Unfortunately, I have to go back to the office,” she says.
“Okay,” he says. “Thank you for everything.”
“Warren called and said the person who took over your office found something you left behind. Warren stopped by this morning to drop it off.”
“Whatever it is, I don’t need it,” Jake says, and then suddenly, his gut, which feels like glass anyway, goes into free fall. Oh no. Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
“He dropped off an envelope,” Ursula says. “Looks like pictures. I didn’t open it because…well, because it’s not mine. Warren says the guy found them hidden inside the code-of-conduct pamphlet and thought you’d probably want them back.”
“Pictures?” Jake says. “Hidden? Honestly, I haven’t the foggiest.” He’s just going to deny they’re his, the pictures of Mallory. Mallory driving, Mallory sleeping, Mallory laughing at the TV as Alan Alda bangs on the piano and sings “If I Knew You Were Coming, I’d’ve Baked a Cake.” “I don’t know what those would be, and as I’m sure you’re aware, I never even picked up the code of conduct. Maybe the pictures were left by the guy before me.”
Ursula nods once. “Maybe,” she says.
Jake waits for Ursula to leave the apartment and then he waits half an hour longer, just in case. He climbs out of bed, his legs weak, his gut watery, as he approaches the mail table. Lying on top of a ceramic platter that someone gave them as a wedding gift—mistaking them for people who entertained—is the packet of photos. The envelope says QUIK PIC in clownish red letters and just below that is Jake’s name and his office phone number in his own handwriting. Ursula obviously knows the pictures don’t belong to anyone else.
But did she look at them?
Did she look at them?
Did she?
Jake holds the pictures in one shaking hand. She must have peeked at one or two, right? Just to see what they were? And if she did, she would have seen Mallory. Jake hadn’t taken a picture of anything else—not the beach, not the pond, not the ocean—which means Ursula might not have realized the pictures were taken on Nantucket, and she might not have recognized Mallory.
No, she definitely would’ve recognized Mallory if she’d looked. She had noticed Jake dancing with Mallory at Cooper’s wedding and she’d commented on it, which meant it bothered her. She was jealous, and a jealous woman did not forget. But Mallory had been in full hair and makeup at the wedding, so maybe…
Ursula didn’t look at the photos, he decides. She would have stormed in and demanded an explanation. And what would Jake possibly have said?
The truth. He would have told her the truth. That’s Mallory Blessing, Cooper’s sister. She is my Same Time Next Year.
It’s possible that Ursula didn’t look because she sensed that whatever was inside would be a relationship-ender. After all, Jake doesn’t even own a camera.
He doesn’t look at the pictures himself because it will only make what he has to do more difficult. He opens the apartment door and walks to the far end of the hall, where the incinerator is. He opens the door; he and Ursula call it the mouth of hell because it sounds like there’s a fire-breathing dragon down there. He holds the pictures for a moment and tries to talk himself off the ledge. They’re just photographs, images on paper. It’s not like he’s throwing Mallory herself into the fire. Still, he imagines her beauty curling into itself as it melts, distorting her features, blackening, then turning to smoke and ash. He can’t do it—but a trip to the street to throw them away is beyond him.
He lets the envelope go.
When he gets back to the apartment, he’s sweating and shaking. He should toss the other envelope as well, the one with the sand dollars and the fortunes.
But no, sorry, he can’t do it. He has to hold on to something.
When Jake regains his health, he finds himself at a loss. What has been going on with his job search? Nothing, that’s what, because he’s been so sick, and there’s no denying that quitting his job has left him in no-man’s-land. They have plenty of money, so Jake buys himself a new Gateway computer, sets up his own personal e-mail account, and polishes his résumé. He establishes a routine—he goes for a morning run in East Potomac Park, then buys the Washington Post on his way home and peruses the classifieds. He toys with going back to school, even medical school, but in his heart, he doesn’t want to be a doctor. He thinks again of becoming a teacher, like Mallory. He envisions himself overseeing labs and giving quizzes on the periodic table.
He likes people, he likes talking to people, he likes advocating for the things he believes in. He should go into development, fund-raising. He has no qualms about calling people up and asking for money. He contacts the alumni office at Johns Hopkins. They invite him down for an interview and offer him a job on the spot. They’re no dummies; Jake was a popular, well-liked, and successful student at Hopkins, president of the Interfraternity Council and a member of Blue Key, giving tours to prospective students. Who better to represent Johns Hopkins than Jake McCloud?
But the job is in Baltimore; it would be a commute, and presently he and Ursula have no car. He could take the train up each day, he supposes, but something about the job doesn’t feel quite right. It doesn’t feel like he’s stretching himself enough. He wants to grow.
Ursula is patient and encouraging but the bubble over her head says: Just figure it out, already! It also says: I am too busy to get into the foxhole with you. (The bubble over her head always says this, no matter which foxhole it is.) Jake can sense her interest in him waning. She is so immersed in work—big companies gobbling up little companies like a corporate game of Pac-Man—that he can tell she has to remind herself to ask about his day. She’s careful not to offer too many hard opinions. You want to work at Hopkins, then work at Hopkins—although when he turned the job down, he could see she was relieved. Or maybe she was disappointed? Maybe she wanted to be able to tell people that her husband “works at Johns Hopkins” (she wouldn’t have to say “in the development office” and she wouldn’t have to mention it was his alma mater). Maybe she wanted him to have a long commute so they would never see each other.
In June, Ursula gets assigned to a merger in Las Vegas.
She flies out there for a week. The firm puts her and her team up at the Bellagio; Ursula has a suite. She flies home for the weekend, then flies back, then does the same the following week. But then one Friday she calls to say her meetings ran late, she missed her flight, and she’s just going to stay in Vegas for the weekend. “In fact, it doesn’t make sense for me to keep going back and forth,” she says. “I should just stay out here until the deal is finished.”
“Okay?” Jake says. “Is that what Anders is doing?”
“Anders?” Ursula says. “I mean, yeah, that’s what the whole team has been doing. I’m the only one going back and forth. Well, except for Silver, but he has kids.”
“The team” is only four people—Ursula, Anders Jorgensen, a colleague named Mark something, and Hank Silver, Ursula’s boss. Anders is single, Mark is single and gay, Hank is married with five kids, all of whom play squash and have tournaments literally every weekend. Hank goes home because his wife insists on it; it’s just not possible to have five kids playing squash and only one parent present. Anders was once a linebacker at USC, which gives him a non-work-related rapport with Ursula because of the famous USC–Notre Dame rivalry. Ursula can talk college football like no other woman Jake or Anders has ever met.
Is Jake jealous of Anders? Well… “Oh, okay,” Jake says. He is jealous, but he won’t succumb to this base emotion, he’s hardly innocent himself—and besides, to act jealous of Anders will only make Anders appear bigger and Jake smaller. “Enjoy. Get some sleep.”
“Why don’t you come here next weekend?” Ursula says. “I think you’d actually like it.”
When Jake lands in Vegas, it’s 111 degrees. He flew coach because he didn’t feel right using Ursula’s miles to upgrade to first class when he was contributing exactly zero to their household income. He arrives tired and foul-tempered and therefore finds nothing to appreciate in either the desert landscape or the skyline, which looks, from a distance, like some kid forgot to pick up his toys. Jake’s taxi cruises past the iconic WELCOME TO LAS VEGAS sign and within moments they are on the Strip. Jake’s taxi driver, Merlin, takes it upon himself to act as Jake’s personal tour guide. (Merlin can tell that this particular fellow will be difficult to impress. Merlin concedes that Vegas isn’t for everyone, but that doesn’t stop him from flexing his powers of persuasion. He points out the Stratosphere with the roller coaster at the top; Circus Circus; the Mirage, where the white tigers live; Treasure Island, with a pirate show out front every hour on the hour; the Venetian, which has canals winding through it and singing gondoliers; Caesars Palace; Paris; New York–New York, with a Krispy Kreme doughnut shop inside; Excalibur; Luxor; and Mandalay Bay, which has a Four Seasons Hotel in one of its towers. Merlin pulls up to the Bellagio. “This is the jewel in the crown,” Merlin says, and he believes it. Sometimes he smokes a joint and watches the dancing fountain show out front three, four times in a row.
He hands the fellow a card. “Fifty percent off Cirque du Soleil,” Merlin says. “Call me.”
“Thanks,” the fellow says. His voice is flat but that doesn’t mean he won’t call, Merlin thinks. It can take time for Vegas to grow on you.)
At check-in, it’s discovered that Ursula has forgotten to put Jake’s name on the room, so the front-desk clerk, Kwasi, can’t give him a key.
“But I’m her husband,” Jake says.
“I understand your position,” Kwasi says. “And I hope you understand mine.” (Kwasi’s position is that maybe this guy is Ursula de Gournsey’s husband, maybe he’s not—but even if he is her husband, she might not want him in her room.) Kwasi slides a ten-dollar poker chip across the desk, which Jake accepts before he even realizes what it is.
He says, “What am I supposed to do with this?”
(Kwasi thinks, If you have to ask …) He smiles. “I recommend the roulette wheel.”
Jake finds a pay phone and calls Ursula’s cell. He gets her voicemail and hangs up. The point of her cell phone, he thought, was so that people could reach her night and day. But likely she’s cloistered with her team in meetings—except that it’s six o’clock and Ursula told him that morning, which now feels like three days ago, that she would wrap up at four because Silver needed to catch a flight back to his family.
Jake decides to sit on the banquette by the main elevators and wait. He has a book with him—Plainsong, by Kent Haruf, which is spare, haunting, and precisely the opposite of what he should be reading when he’s already feeling abandoned. To pull it out and read amid the exuberant go-for-broke atmosphere of the lobby, with its lights and sound of raining coins, its smoky haze and smell of rye whiskey, would make him seem hopelessly square. He has a ten-dollar chip. He should use it.
He doesn’t know the first thing about gambling and he’s worried about making an ass of himself if he sits down to blackjack or tries to throw craps. The slots don’t interest him in the slightest. What did Kwasi say? The roulette wheel.
It’s as easy as placing the chip on a number, right? He watches the ball drop and wheel spin three times—twenty-three, four, thirty-five. What number should he pick? He thinks about Mallory’s birthday, March 11, but he’s never been with her on her birthday or, per their arrangement, even called her on it.
He chooses nine for their month, September; he sets his chip down on the red nine and thinks, All or nothing. It was free money, anyway.
And guess what.
Nine wins.
It wins.
Jake lets out a whoop as his one chip turns into a pile of chips. That was incredible, right? Ha! His very first try, he won!
“I won!” he says to the woman next to him. She’s older, smoking a cigarillo. Her lipstick has bled into the lines around her mouth. “And that was the first time I ever gambled!”
(The woman’s name is Glynnis. She wants to tell this kid that beginner’s luck isn’t just a Santa Claus myth. It’s more predictable than death.) “Do yourself a favor,” she says. “Cash out.”
But Jake doesn’t cash out. Instead, he takes half his chips and places them on five, for May, which is the month of Ursula’s birth, and twenty, which is the day.
The number that wins is, again, nine.
Jake blinks. Nine again? His money is swept away.
Glynnis exhales a stream of cigarillo smoke and says, “This town runs on fools like you.”
It has taken Jake less than five minutes to experience the highs and lows that Vegas has to offer. He returns to the pay phone, tries Ursula’s cell again—voicemail. He supposes the natural next step is to go to the bar and wait. The Bellagio is actually quite lovely. There’s a Dale Chihuly glass ceiling, Fiori di Como, that he could be very happy staring at as he sips a bourbon.
But his present state of mind is one of exasperation. He came all the way here to see his wife and not only is she not answering her phone but she neglected to add his name to the room. Her consideration for him is nonexistent. It has always been nonexistent. Why has he tolerated it for so long?
Well, no matter now. He’s leaving. He’ll catch the redeye home.
But he can’t find the exit. He can’t even find the front desk to ask where the exit is. He must have made a wrong turn and now he has been engulfed by the casino proper—rows and rows of slot machines, acres of blackjack and Texas Hold’em and craps and the now-dreaded roulette wheels. There are cocktail waitresses wearing black satin bustiers gliding around like they’re on skates. Three of them ask what he’s drinking. He says he’s looking for the nearest exit and they turn and glide away.
I give up, Jake thinks. How about a bar, then, just a good old-fashioned bar? But in this part of the hotel, those seem to have disappeared as well.
Miraculously, he finds his way back to the main elevator bank and that’s it, he’s staying put. He pulls out his book, wondering exactly what Ursula thought he would like about this place.
“Jake?”
It’s his wife, standing before him, wearing a pale pink suit and nude patent-leather pumps. Her hair is down; it’s longer than he remembers, or maybe that’s because she blew it out today, and it’s parted on the side. She is so stunning that there can’t possibly be a man on this earth worthy of her, himself included.
“Hey,” he says. He stands to kiss her and tastes tequila on her lips. “Have you been…drinking?”
“Yeah,” she says. “Mark, Anders, and I went to Lily Bar after we finished today. It’s our Friday tradition.”
“So just now…you were at a bar?” Jake says. “Having a drink with Mark and Anders when you knew my flight landed an hour ago? I’ve been sitting here waiting for you, Ursula, because you forgot to put my name on the room. I tried calling.”
“Yes,” she says. “I saw that.”
“If you saw that, why didn’t you answer?”
“I was finishing up my workweek,” Ursula says. “And I figured I’d see you in the room. I made us reservations at the Eiffel Tower for tonight.”
“I couldn’t get into the room,” Jake says. “Because you forgot to add my name.”
“I heard you, Jake,” she says. “I’m sorry but I’ve been busy. It’s not a big deal, is it? You survived, right?”
Her tone is chiding. She knows she was negligent but she wants him to shake it off, just as he’s shaken off all her self-absorption the past nineteen years.
“Not a big deal at all,” he says. “But, Ursula?”
“What?”
“I’m leaving,” he says. He hoists his bag over his shoulder and heads in what he now knows is the opposite direction of the infernal casino. In a few seconds, he sees the unmistakable beacon of natural light beckoning him like the entrance to the afterlife. He steps out the front door into the baking sun.
Back at the Las Vegas airport, Jake hears his name being called. It’s a man’s voice, not Ursula’s. Ursula has undoubtedly gone up to the room, poured herself a glass of wine, and drawn herself a bath, where she will wait for Jake to return.
But this time, Jake isn’t running back. Ursula can stay in Vegas the rest of her life if she wants. He’s going home.
“Jake! Jake McCloud!”
There’s a man slicing through the crowds of people who are trying to make their redeyes. It’s Cody Mattis, an acquaintance from DC, and Jake feels uneasy because he listened to Cody’s voice message weeks ago when he was sick but never got back to him.
Jake gives Cody his best effort under the circumstances. Hey, Cody, how you doing, what brings you to Sin City? The answer is a bachelor party, the Spearmint Rhino, never seen women like that before in my life, blah-blah-blah. Jake blocks this last part out. He doesn’t want to think about women.
“Sorry I never returned your call, man,” Jake says. “I’ve been busy…”
“Oh yeah? Did you find a job?”
“No, not yet, still looking.”
Cody hands Jake a business card. “You know I’m working as a lobbyist for the NRA, right? When I mentioned to my boss that you left PharmX, he basically issued me a mandate to bring you in for a meeting.”
“He did?” Jake says, taking the card. NRA—the National Rifle Association. “This is Charlton Heston’s gig, right?”
“Protecting the good old Second Amendment,” Cody says. “We’d love to have you on board.”
Jake must be angry, because for the entire six-hour flight back to Washington—out of spite, he upgraded himself to first class—he turns over the possibility of lobbying for the NRA in his mind.
“Protecting the good old Second Amendment”: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. The amendment was ratified in 1791, back when a person might have had any number of reasons to own a gun. Now, however, with the new millennium on the horizon, Jake believes there are too many guns, and a lot of them are in the wrong hands.
But then Jake plays devil’s advocate. He spent enough time in Michigan growing up to know that a lot of good people, his friends’ fathers, for example, hunt, and they shouldn’t have a hard time getting rifles or ammunition, should they? And what about keeping a gun around for self-defense? If Jake were the one traveling for work all the time and Ursula were home in the apartment by herself, wouldn’t he want her to have a gun, just in case? Maybe, he thinks, although if she had a gun, she might be tempted to use it in a situation that didn’t warrant it, and if she used it, someone would get hurt or maybe even die.
He’s not going to work for the NRA.
Still, it’s nice to be wanted and he does need a job and the pay is probably excellent, which would be good for his self-esteem. Something’s got to give.
On Monday, Jake calls Cody’s boss, a man named Dwayne Peters, and sets up a meeting for the next day. Even over the phone, Dwayne Peters is a good salesman—“The NRA gets a bad rap here in the East, we need a public relations overhaul, Jake, and that’s where you come in. We need these mommies and daddies and the intelligentsia who wouldn’t know a forty-five from a thirty-aught-six to understand that we are the ones keeping America safe. Don’t you want to help keep America safe, Jake?”
Jake nearly responds, Yes, sir, I do—that’s how persuasive Dwayne Peters is. The Second Amendment is as ironclad as the right to free speech or freedom of religion. The nation’s forefathers weren’t wrong. But they were wrong, Ursula would point out. Because back then, only white men had the right to vote.
So instead, Jake says, “I’ll see you tomorrow, sir. I look forward to learning more about the NRA.”
That night, Jake is sitting at the coffee table eating a bologna sandwich—even with the AC running, it’s too hot to cook anything—when Ursula walks in. She’s in her travel clothes—linen pants and crisp white shirt.
“Hey,” she says. She drops her suitcase and her briefcase and drapes her garment bag over the railing. She looks sad. Or maybe just defeated. The bubble over her head is…empty.
Jake doesn’t care. He returns to his sandwich, cracks open the beer that’s sweating in front of him. He’s sitting around in his boxers just like she predicted he would be. He resents Ursula showing up without warning; if he’d known she was coming home, he would have put on pants.
“I’m not going to apologize for leaving,” he says. “And I’m not going to apologize for making you leave Vegas, because that was your choice.”
“You didn’t make me leave,” she says. “The deal is done. We closed.”
“Oh,” Jake says. He knows he should feel happy about this but he wants to believe that Ursula left Las Vegas because she’s putting their marriage first. “Well, you’ll be pleased to know I have a job interview tomorrow. With the NRA.”
“The NRA?” Ursula says, and she makes a noise that sounds like a cough or a laugh. Her expression is incredulous. “You might want to cancel that. Haven’t you seen the news?”
That very afternoon, in the town of Mulligan, Ohio, a seventeen-year-old boy whose name was being withheld walked into his summer-school class with an AK-47 and killed twelve students, his teacher, and himself. It’s all over the news. The boy purchased the gun at a Walmart. No one asked him for ID. He paid in cash, walked out of the store with the gun and thirty rounds of ammo, and drove to his high school to show everyone just how much he hated summer school.
“Don’t worry,” Ursula says. “Something else will turn up.”
Jake’s only worry is that he even considered working for the NRA. He remembers the long-ago phone conversation he had with Mallory while they were both still in college. I’m one of the good guys, Mallory. He’s going to make sure that’s true.
Ursula gets no downtime. The week following the shooting, she’s assigned as the lead attorney—a tremendous honor—on a case in Lubbock, Texas. Lubbock is closer than Las Vegas, but it takes longer to get there because there aren’t any direct flights. Commuting home on the weekends won’t be feasible, though staying in Lubbock is no treat; they’ll have her at a Hyatt Place near the Texas Tech campus. Ursula can’t see any reason for Jake to visit. There is nothing to do but work.
“I hope Anders is on your team?” Jake says when she tells him about the assignment, though he doesn’t.
“Oh, he is,” Ursula says. “We do well together. He gets me. They assigned Mark to a different case, so it’s me, Anders, a first-year associate named AJ, and two paralegals.” She pauses. “AJ looks like a supermodel. I bet she and Anders will be engaged by the time we finish.”
Jake knows Ursula far too well for him to relax at this statement. She never, ever comments on other women’s looks; to Ursula, the value of a woman is how smart she is, how competent, how interesting, so she is saying this simply to put Jake’s mind at ease. But why?
“I feel bad leaving you alone for the rest of the summer,” she says. “We didn’t get a chance to go away.”
“It’s fine,” Jake says. “Your career comes first.”
Ursula wraps her arms around him. “Will you go to Nantucket?” she asks. “On Labor Day weekend?”
“Yes,” Jake says.
He arrives on Nantucket on Friday and Mallory is there to pick him up at the airport in the Blazer. However, instead of driving down the no-name road toward the cottage, she heads into town.
“Uh-oh,” he says. “Are we changing up the program?”
“’Fraid so,” she says. She pulls into one of the reserved spots in front of the A and P and Jake feels a heightened sense of concern. Town means people and people means a greater chance of bumping into someone he knows. The past couple of summers they have frequently seen Mallory’s students or former students or parents of students while they were out and about. Mallory always introduces him as “our family friend Jake,” which makes their relationship sound platonic and innocent while also being true. But even so, Jake is uncomfortable. He feels like he’s wearing a T-shirt that says I’M CHEATING ON MY WIFE.
He lost all his chips in one fell swoop in Vegas, but the real gamble he takes is coming to Nantucket every year like this. He wonders what the odds are that they’ll never be discovered. A thousand to one?
“Where are we going?” Even across the parking lot, he can hear the end-of-summer revelry over at the Gazebo. He imagines that crowd peppered with people from Hopkins, Notre Dame, Georgetown, all waiting for him like land mines.
“I bought a boat,” she says. “We’re going to Tuckernuck!”
The back of the Blazer is packed with grocery bags and Mallory’s monogrammed duffel. They carry all the supplies down the dock to a slip where a sleek sailboat awaits. It’s called Greta, and it has one 250-horsepower Yamaha motor hanging off the back. The hull is painted teal blue and there’s a small cabin below. Jake can’t believe it.
“This is yours?”
“Meet my Contessa Twenty-Six,” Mallory says. She goes on to say that she got the sailboat the same way she got her bike and the Blazer—someone wanted to get rid of it. “When I broke up with the Newport guy, I realized that the thing I missed most about him was spending time on the water. So I took sailing lessons. I just finished the advanced course last week.”
Yes, Jake remembers her mentioning the sailing lessons the year before. He also recalls being jealous of her instructor, Christopher, until she let it slip that Christopher was nearly eighty years old. “Is this Christopher’s boat?” Jake asks. “Did Christopher die?”
“He’s still alive,” Mallory says. “But he can’t sail anymore, his wife made him stop. So he basically gave me his boat. All I had to do was hire his friend Sergei to do the overhaul.” She climbs aboard in bare feet and Jake sheds his shoes and follows. “And I bought a new motor. Not cheap, but completely worth it.”
“Good job, Mal,” Jake says. “I’m so proud of you.” He pops downstairs to the cabin, which is simple but cozy; there’s a galley kitchen, a navigation table, a V-shaped berth, and a head. “So where did you say we were going again?”
They’re going to Tuckernuck, which is a completely separate island within spitting distance of the west coast of Nantucket but a world apart. Tuckernuck is private; only the people who own property there and their guests are allowed. There are twenty-two homes serviced by generators and wells. There are no public buildings on Tuckernuck, not even a general store. There is no internet, no cable TV, and limited cell service.
This describes Ursula’s idea of hell, Jake thinks. And his own idea of heaven.
Mallory anchors Greta off Whale Island and they wade ashore with their luggage and provisions. Mallory sets off alone on foot to the house, which is three-quarters of a mile away. Jake stays behind with the things. He feels like a pioneer. What do you need to create a life, after all? Food, clothing, shelter, a person to love. Jake marvels at the sheer beauty around him. Whale Island isn’t an island at all but rather a ribbon of white sand that is the only place boats can anchor. Beyond lie green acres crisscrossed with sandy paths and, here and there, a glimpse of gray-shingled rooftops. Across a narrow channel lies Smith Point and the island of Nantucket, which seems like a metropolis in comparison.
Jake hears someone calling his name and sees Mallory sitting behind the wheel of a battered red Jeep with no top and no doors.
They’re off!
The house belongs to the family of Dr. Major’s wife and was built in 1922. It’s a simple saltbox upside-down house with a great room upstairs that has enormous plate-glass windows all the way around for 360-degree views of the island and the water beyond. Mrs. Major’s niece recently redecorated, so the place feels like a graciously appointed Robinson Crusoe hideaway. There’s a rattan sofa and papasan chairs with ivory cushions; there are funky rope hammocks in the corners, and the plywood floor is painted with wide lemon-yellow and white stripes. Jake is surprised to see a small TV with a shelf of videos, across which lies a hand-painted sign: Rainy Day Only.
Jake whistles. He feels like they’ve stepped into another world. No one will find them here.
It’s their seventh weekend together, lucky seven, maybe, because it’s the best yet. On Friday night, Mallory grills burgers, as usual, and although there’s a small cookstove, she grills the corn as well. On Saturday, they pull two bikes out of the shed and explore the island. They visit both ponds—North Pond, which they swim in, and smaller and murkier East Pond, which they don’t. They lie on three different sections of golden-sand beach. They see other people from afar and simply wave; there’s no reason to exchange any words. It would feel like talking in church.
On Sunday, they hike through the middle of the island. Mallory shows Jake the old firehouse and the old school. Most of the other houses are shuttered now that the summer is drawing to a close. Jake is captivated by a small cottage that has clearly seen better days. Its windows are clouded and cracked, the paint on the trim is peeling, and the gutter on the front appears to be hanging on by one rusted screw. It has a deep porch that is oddly reminiscent of Out of Africa, Jake thinks, and though he isn’t prone to adopting strays, he can’t help but imagine what it would be like to buy the place and fix it up. He says as much to Mallory, who scrunches up her eyes behind her sunglasses. “You have crummy taste.”
“It’s off the grid,” he says.
“Put mildly,” she says.
“We could grow old together here,” he says. It’s always on their Sundays that he starts to feel this way—like he won’t survive if he leaves her.
“How’s Ursula?” Mallory hasn’t asked until now, and he knows her timing is no accident. When he talks about growing old together, Mallory gently reminds him that he’s already vowed to grow old with someone else.
“Things are tough,” he says.
“Good,” Mallory says. She squeezes his hand. “I’m kidding. What’s going on? Can you tell me?”
“I know the person I married,” he says. “But I’m still shocked by the way she is sometimes.” He then regales Mallory with the story of his trip to Vegas.
“Ouch,” Mallory says. “Have you considered that maybe what draws you to Ursula is that she makes herself unavailable? And I’m too available.”
“You’re not available at all,” Jake says.
“Too emotionally available,” Mallory says. “You know how I feel about you.”
“Do I?” Jake says. He turns away from the house to face her. A red-tailed hawk circles overhead, but there’s no one else in sight. It feels like they’re the last two people on the planet. He realizes that every single year he has been waiting for Mallory to cry uncle and say, That’s it, I give up, please leave Ursula and move to Nantucket, or I’ll come to you, or we’ll make it work long distance. But she never says this, and so what can Jake think but that Mallory likes the arrangement the way it is? She prefers it to a bigger commitment. She has him…and she has her freedom, which, in years past, has meant other men. “I’m going to be honest here, Mal. I’m not sure how you feel about me.”
“Jake,” she says. “I love you.”
She said it.
I love you.
Jake has said the words to her thousands of times in his mind, whether Mallory was lying in bed next to him or six hundred miles away.
He doesn’t want to mess up this moment. He wants it to be unforgettable. He’s going to make this a moment Mallory thinks about not only for the next 362 days, but for the rest of her life.
“I love you too, Mallory Blessing,” he says. “I. Love. You. Too.”
It works; tears are standing in her eyes. She hears him—and, more important, she believes him.
When he kisses her, however, she pushes him away. “We have to go,” she says. “We have to be at Whale Island by six. I have a surprise.”
The surprise is a strapping, incredibly handsome man who pulls up to Whale Island in a thirty-six-foot Contender. Jake squares his shoulders and tries to sit up straighter in the wonky seat of the old Jeep while Mallory runs over to greet their visitor. Jake isn’t sure how he feels about this particular surprise.
Mallory and Mr. America talk for what seems like an awfully long time—yes, Jake is jealous—then Mr. America hands Mallory a paper shopping bag and she gives him a kiss on the cheek and waves goodbye. Mr. America revs his engines, expertly sweeps the boat around, and heads back in the direction of Nantucket.
“Who was that?” Jake asks.
“Barrett Lee,” Mallory says. “He caretakes all the homes out here, and in the summertime, he brings provisions.”
“Did we need provisions?” Jake asks.
Mallory opens the bag. Jake sees familiar white cartons and catches a whiff of fried dumplings.
“He brought our Chinese food,” she says. “Now let’s go home. We have a movie to watch.”