28 Summers: The gripping, emotional page turner of summer 2020 by 'the Queen of the Summer Novel' (People) (19 page)

She swats his arm. “I knew that, yes—but did
you
know that?”

Cooper reclaims his seat and Mallory and Jake look up—startled? He’s interrupting their little tête-à-tête? “What book are you guys talking about?”

Mallory stands up. “I’m going to pick some songs.”

Jake clears his throat. “It’s called
The Hours,
by Michael Cunningham. Have you read it?”

“No, I haven’t
read
it,” Coop says. “I don’t read anything for pleasure. I do too much reading for work. So, what, you sent the book to Mal? You two have…a little book group?” Coop laughs at his own joke—but maybe it’s not funny. Maybe Coop should start reading and join a book group. What a great way to meet smart women.

“What do you guys want to hear?” Mallory asks. She’s standing at the jukebox. “They don’t have any Cat Stevens.”

“Thank God,” Coop says.

“No Rick Springfield either.”

“Even better,” Coop says.

“Surprise us,” Jake says.

“Yeah,” Coop says. “If you pick something I don’t hate, I’ll be surprised.”

Mallory drops in quarters and starts punching buttons. A second later, there are piano chords, then Paul McCartney’s voice: “Maybe I’m Amazed.” Coop approves, and apparently, so does Jake. He gets to his feet and says, “Dance with me.”

“No,” Mallory says.

“There’s no dancing at PJ’s,” Coop says.

“Just dance with me to this one song,” Jake says.

“No,” Mallory says, but Jake wins her over and they start slow-dancing in front of the jukebox, which is strange, but whatever, they’re all getting drunk and Cooper is distracted anyway because at that moment, his old girlfriend from Goucher, Stacey Patterson, walks into the bar.

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 in
years
.”

“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.

They
would
make a cute couple, Cooper thinks. In another life.

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.

J
ake’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.