Juliana
July is more than half over already, the date of the IPO approaching faster and faster. Not quite three months to go. There
are days when is busy all the time, from dawn to dusk, and Allison basically runs the rest of her life while she works.
Then there are days when she has only one meeting in the morning and nothing in the afternoon. There are days when she needs
to put out three or four fires, and other days when not so much as an ember burns. There is a two-day period where she has
to fly to New York to meet with research analysts. It surprises her, when she comes back, how much returning to the island
feels like coming home. Is she acclimating to the Block? Does she, a woman so long without a country, finally have an island?
The week after she returns, a journalist from Bloomberg Businessweek is coming to the island to do a piece on . Her name is Caitlin O’Donnell, and she’s written profiles on Sara Blakely
of Spanx; on the duo who founded Away suitcases; on Tory Burch; on the founder of a hands-free breast pump.
This isn’t the first journalist who has done a piece on , and in fact not by a long shot is it the biggest publication that’s covered LookBook, but she’s atypically unnerved by the whole thing. The closer she gets to the IPO, the more important it is that everything go well, that all the press be positive, that everything she does casts the company in the very, very best light. She needs the level of excitement about the company to be at its very highest right before the valuation is complete. The most delicate days are ahead of her, and she must tiptoe through them like a maiden through the dew.
No, not like a maiden through the dew. Come on, . She must be much more forceful than a tiptoeing maiden. She must
be like—oh, never mind. The metaphor isn’t important. The end result is.
debates over whether to take the journalist to Joy Bombs, the coffee shop where she and Shelly went that day they
saw each other on Clayhead Trail. Appropriate, or is it too cute, too folksy?
(Later, when people pick over the events of the summer, they might come to think of the Clayhead meetup as “that fateful day.”)
“Meet her at the Joy Bombs,” Allison tells her, full of confidence. “And then bring her back here. You don’t want your photographs
done at a coffee shop. You probably want them by the water.”
“I forgot all about photographs!” recalculates. Will she be able to show anyone around her house without her eyes
darting across the pond to where, when it’s dark, she can always see the green light at the end of the dock? Will she be able
to (will she even need to?) justify her choice of location for a summer home?
“Wear your white jeans with the frayed hem,” instructs Allison. “The Moussy Vintage ones? And your silk tank top in baby blue.
The blue is going to pick up the undertones of your skin.”
“Blazer?” asks .
Allison considers this question. She lets out a little puff of air, and she clicks her tongue on the roof of her mouth. “Yes,”
she says finally. “Also white, but one shade off from the jeans.”
Allison is ’s own personal LookBook. “Got it.”
When the IPO goes through, thinks , Allison is getting a bonus so big it will make her eyes pop. Shelly might get a bonus too! Despite what is beginning to suspect is a Very Messy Personal Life, Shelly is, surprisingly, very good at PR. It was Shelly’s idea to create VIP areas at the parties for meetups and subgroups, and Shelly’s idea to have
gift bags with curated accessories from the website featuring a variety of brands. It was also her idea to have a step and
repeat at the last party, and to create a hashtag to go with it! The step and repeat was a giant hit.
gets to Joy Bombs first and scans it for a potential New York reporter and photographer. She sees a sandy family,
two teenage girls in tiny shirts, one man in a gray T-shirt with a laptop and a worried expression. She chooses a table, considers,
chooses a different table. She opens her laptop, closes it, scrolls through her emails on her phone.
And then. The door to Joy Bombs opens, and who walks in but Taylor and David. ’s heart jackhammers. She’s most likely
going to have a heart attack. She’s never met Taylor, but of course she knows what she looks like from years of online observing,
from the wedding announcements, from frequent visits to the website of Buchanan Enterprises. She’s just as beautiful, just
as elegant, just as tall in person as she is in photos. She’s wearing a pink-and-white embroidered sundress that manages to be both fitted and full-skirted
without looking frumpy, and contemporary while also looking timeless. is too short to pull off a dress of that length.
She decides she might have a stroke instead of a heart attack. She looks down at her phone, pretending to be busy, and also
wondering: Can you have a stroke and a heart attack at the same time?
Out of the corner of her eye she sees Taylor get in line to order, and David turns to come over to her.
“Hey,” he says softly, and her heart flips three times, then does a back handspring, then settles enough so that she can say,
“Hey,” right back.
“In a minute, I’m going to introduce you to Taylor,” he says. How is he playing it so cool? is actually dying. She’s
dying. She takes a deep breath. Meeting Taylor is going to be like meeting the sun. She calls upon the reserves of calm and badassery she employs when meeting with investors, when going before the board. “Okay?”
“Okay,” she answers. What else is she supposed to say? She looks down at her hands, and by the time she looks up David is
back at Taylor’s side. She watches as they get their drinks, and as he takes the route from counter to door that leads by
her table. She rolls her eyes a little as he feigns a surprised double take (Robert De Niro he is not) and says, “?”
So she looks up and says, with equally fake surprise, “Hey! David!”
Taylor’s head whips around so fast it looks like it’s on a swizzle stick. She gives David a quizzical look, and he says, “Taylor,
this is George.” To he says, “Nice to see you again,” but he says it so formally that cringes.
“You too,” chokes out .
“Wait,” Taylor says. “‘Again’? You two know each other? You’re the LookBook person, right? With all the parties?” she asks.
nods, suddenly mute. She’s so warm. She’s never regretted a blazer quite this much. She thinks about taking it off, but what if she has sweat through her blue
tank top? Better to keep it on, and to suffer in silence.
“I met in New York, when LookBook was starting to take off.” There’s such a heat coming off David, off both of them.
simply cannot take it. She’s going to melt.
Taylor looks back and forth between them. “You never told me that.”
“I’m sure I did. You were in Europe with your dad. You were in a whole different time zone; you probably forgot.”
Taylor is confused. She shakes her head slowly. “I don’t think so. I think I would have remembered.”
says, “I’m here to meet a reporter. Then we’re going back to my house, for photos.” She feels like she has to explain
the blazer.
Taylor turns from David to and says, “I know your house. It’s just on the other side of Great Salt, right?” nods, not trusting herself to talk any more than she has; she’s sure that if she opens her mouth again her voice will crack like a fault line. Get ahold of yourself, she wants to scream. You have been through so many things harder than this. Has she, though? “We own the cottage right next to it. David’s cousin is living there for the summer.”
“Nicola,” says . “Sure, we’ve become friends. She’s great.”
Taylor narrows her eyes at and says, “I’d love to see your place sometime. My company is investing a lot in island
real estate, and I like to get a look at the comps whenever I can.”
“Of course. Anytime.” resists the urge to put her hand on her heart, to make sure it stays in her chest. Instead,
she reaches into her bag and pulls out a card. “This has the number of my assistant, Allison. Just check in with her before
you come, in case I’m in meetings.” Because you are a badass, she tells herself, you may very well be in meetings. Involuntarily
her eyes flick over to David, but he has put on his sunglasses, so his expression is inscrutable.
“Will do,” says Taylor crisply. “Will definitely do.”
***
Three days after graduation Jade moved to New York City for a paid internship at McKinsey. She lived in a minuscule sublet
that belonged to an actor who had gone on tour with Kinky Boots. All of her itty-bitty paycheck went to paying rent and subway fare to get from West Forty-Fourth Street to Lower Manhattan.
It was the summer of the Ice Bucket Challenge, the World Cup in Brazil, and the death of Eric Garner. Ebola was ravaging Africa.
Cronuts turned one that summer, and the Backstreet Boys toured with Avril Lavigne. Lauren Bacall and Robin Williams died,
and Taylor Swift threw her second Fourth of July party. Blogs were in; the neon of 2013 was out.
Jade worked her ass off at McKinsey. By rights, she should have no backside left at all. She was the only intern who both came in the earliest and stayed the latest. She was definitely the only one who needed a second job to get by. She gathered from context clues that everyone else had parents paying their rent, their cell phone bills, their health insurance premiums, their health club fees , the bills for the credit cards with which they purchased the clothes they wore to the job they didn’t have to work as hard
at because if this didn’t lead to a full-time job, something else would.
If the working world was easier than college in some ways—no projects or papers, no round social structure where she, a square
peg, struggled to fit—it was harder in others. No matter how carefully she observed the other interns or young working women
on the subway, on the street, and tried to put together similar outfits by combing the racks at Marshalls or T.J. Maxx, she
never felt quite right. Something was always a little bit off: the shoes or the belt, the earrings. She was haunted by her
ghosts from that pivotal freshman year.
I thought you put that in the giveaway bin.
She’s like obsessed with my mom.
Her second job was as a receptionist for a therapist in Chelsea who had evening hours three days a week. Fourth floor. There
was an elevator, but sometimes Jade took the stairs—this free workout was her own personal health club. Jade met George Halsey
on a stair day. She was panting when she got to the fourth floor, gently sweating, searching her bag in vain for a tissue
or a napkin. Outside the office, in one of the two swivel barrel chairs where patients who were early waited, was an older
gentleman. Older than what? Older than the hills. He wore a bow tie and bowler hat, which you would think made him look like
Charlie Chaplin but somehow didn’t.
“Well, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes,” said the man. Just as the hat should have made him look like Chaplin but didn’t, this statement should have made him sound pervy but didn’t. Jade smiled and sweated some more. “My children are always telling me I need to stop saying things like this. I suppose I should just say good evening.”
“It’s okay,” said Jade. “Good evening.” She pulled open the door to the office and went inside. Amanda, a dancer who did nighttime
insurance billing for the dentist in the adjoining office—they shared the common space—looked up from her computer and said,
“Did he tell you you’re a sight for sore eyes?”
“He did,” said Jade, only slightly disappointed that the compliment wasn’t unique to her. “Who is he?”
“George Halsey. He owns the building. He stops by sometimes to check on things. Drives Dr. Pratt crazy.”
“Why’s it drive Dr. Pratt crazy? He seems harmless enough.”
Amanda snorted. “That’s just it. Harmless people drive Dr. Pratt crazy.”
“Got it,” said Jade.
“He’s filthy rich,” Amanda offered. “He owns buildings all around here, apparently. I think he’s bored. Once he told me that
his wife is dead and his kids barely talk to him.” Amanda made a fake gun with her thumb and forefinger and pointed it at
her temple. “Shoot me if my life ever gets that sad, okay?”
“Will do,” said Jade.
The second time George Halsey was sitting in one of the barrel chairs, Jade decided to sit down in the other one—she was fifteen
minutes early, so why not?—and talk to him. She told him about her internship, and he told her about how he’d gone to Harvard,
graduating in 1956, and how he’d made his fortune buying distressed properties around the city, fixing them up, and reselling
them. Amanda, she realized, was wrong: George wasn’t a sad, doddering old man. He was a whip-smart success story. He was a
big deal. “I’ll tell you something, Jade,” he said. “Never underestimate the value of something nobody wants. That’s where
the gold is.”
At McKinsey Jade worked on supply chain operations with a few different fashion brands: Ralph Lauren, J.Crew, Banana Repub lic. Looking at these companies from the inside out, she realized how little of their merchandise they sold for full price. The rest got discounted and relegated to the nether regions of the websites, or sold to discount resellers. There, a bargain shopper like Jade might find the clothing, but might just as likely never find it. Or someone like Jade might find a top, but no bottoms to pair it with; a dress, but no jacket or shoes. Because, while full-price apparel was always merchandised together in a look book to see how outfits coordinate, discounted items were often grouped only by category and by price.
“What I wouldn’t do,” she muttered to herself one day, perusing the companies’ websites for a report she was working on, “for
someone to put together all of this sales stuff from all these different places and make me an outfit, like they do with their
full-price products.” Somehow Expedia had done this for travel; Expedia didn’t buy and sell plane tickets and hotel rooms,
they simply scraped the web for them, put them all in one place, and collected a fee from their sale. Why couldn’t this be
done for fashion? And why couldn’t she develop the technology to merchandise outfits by occasion or price? Why couldn’t Jade
create a fully customizable online look book?
I’ll tell you something, Jade. Never underestimate the value of something nobody wants.
She hurried to Chelsea that night, hoping George was there, hoping he had time to listen. He was; he did. He listened, and
she talked, and the more she talked the more she realized she was onto something real. If she could create a company that
pulled together, say, a top from one brand, a bottom from another, shoes from yet another, she could collect a fee from the
companies because she’d be getting volume on pieces they were hardly selling. Customers, in turn, could purchase a complete
outfit at the same discount they’d get cobbling together individual pieces—without the work, and the uncertainty.
“This is brilliant, Jade. This is really brilliant.”
She took maybe the deepest breath she’d taken in her life, then let it out. “Thanks for letting me talk it out,” she said. “It’s good practice. I’m thinking of taking it to my bosses.”
“Don’t take it to them.” He shook his head. “No. Definitely not.”
“Don’t?” Her face felt warm: stupid idea, Jade.
“ You need to build this business,” he said. “All on your own, you need to do this. Do you have a name?”
“LookBook,” she said. It slid out of her mouth like it had always been there, waiting.
“LookBook,” he repeated. “Yes. Yes, Jade. LookBook.” And it seemed almost possible.
“What was that all about?” asked Amanda when Jade entered the office.
“He’s just lonely.” Let Amanda think George was a has-been in a bowler hat. Jade saw him now as a secret weapon.
Amanda snorted. “Yeah. Lonely for your tits.” She turned back to her computer.
The next time Jade saw George Halsey he wasn’t wearing a bowler hat, and she was lying on the sidewalk on West Nineteenth
Street, right outside the building. George was bending over her, holding out a hand.
“My dear. You just took quite a spill. I saw the whole thing. Your feet went right out from under you. I’m afraid you hit
your head.”
“I’m okay,” said Jade immediately, even though she wasn’t, because she was used to telling people she was okay when she wasn’t.
She didn’t remember falling. In fact, she didn’t know if she was coming from the office or going to it—she’d lost time. She
was probably hungry: without the college dining hall, she was often hungry. When she sat up, she heard a ringing in her ears.
She allowed George Halsey to help her. He pointed to an uneven part of the sidewalk, a lip she’d caught her foot on.
“Do you have someone to call?” George said. “You really whacked your head.”
“Yes,” said Jade.
He looked at her closely and called her bluff: “Do you really have someone to call?”
Softly, truthfully: “No.”
“Well, then. You’re coming home with me. My driver is just around the corner.”
Later, days later, when her head was clear enough to wonder this, she wondered, Was it weird that she went with him so willingly?
Was it another symptom of the disease of growing up without anyone caring for her the way children should be cared for that
she accepted any kindness without question, slurped it up greedily in case it disappeared?
She’s like obsessed with my mom.
Was there something particular about George that allowed her to trust him, or would she have gone with anyone who showed her
kindness, the way a baby duck imprints on a human if no duck is available?
It might have just been because of the concussion—because as it turned out, she had a concussion.
The first day, she sent a message to one of the other interns, Olivia, to ask her to pass the message on to the appropriate
channels.
OMG , Olivia texted back. THAT’S INSANE. FEEL BETTER, OK?
I’LL TRY.
In some ways, Jade reflected, she had never felt this good in her life. For four days and four nights she lay in the bed in George Halsey’s guest room. In this room she felt cocooned, cared for, safe. Outside, Manhattan was in the middle of a heat wave—the sidewalks were burning, the subways were hell on Earth, the garbage began to smell the instant it was placed outside. But Jade was in George Halsey’s guest room, air-conditioned to a perfect sixty-seven degrees, under the weight of an unbelievable comforter, and the sheets were so thick and at the same time so soft, and who would have thought that such thickness and such softness could coexist? But they did. And Jade, who sometimes felt like she had never rested a day in her life, rested. She wore a pair of cotton pajamas that had been laid out for her in the attached marble bathroom on the first day, along with a new toothbrush and a basket of toiletries, all brand-new, all quietly luxurious.
She drifted in and out of sleep; with the heavy blinds closed against the sun, day was nearly indistinguishable from night.
Three times a day George Halsey’s housekeeper, Mrs. Sanchez, came into the room with a tray of food for Jade—homemade breads
or muffins, sometimes, or chicken noodle soup from Zabar’s, or soft pillows of ravioli with a homemade marinara sauce. Mrs.
Sanchez was mostly hurried, seemingly consumed with many other tasks (What tasks? wondered Jade), but every so often she lingered
by the side of the bed and asked Jade how she felt.
“Better than yesterday,” Jade said, even on the first full day there, when it wasn’t really true, because she didn’t want
to be a bother, and once her head cleared she began to realize what a very odd situation she was in. “A little better every
day,” she said, hopefully, optimistically. By the third day this was the case.
“Do you need me to call someone for you?” Mrs. Sanchez asked. “Let someone know where you are?”
“No,” said Jade, and that vicious, sneaking shame returned. “Thank you. You don’t need to call anyone.”
Mrs. Sanchez laid the back of her hand against Jade’s forehead. Jade knew from books and movies that this was a gesture indicative of care, even, in some circumstances, though obviously not this one, of love. Don’t read too much into this, she told herself. This housekeeper doesn’t love you; she doesn’t even know you. She’s probably wondering why you’re in her house, making extra work for her. When Jade got up to take a shower in the attached bathroom she hung her towel carefully back up, just as she’d found it, to indi cate she could use it again and again and again, but each day Mrs. Sanchez swept in with a clean one and whisked the used one away.
Sometimes, in her haze, she imagined Mrs. Sanchez to be like a nurse from old photos of World War II, with a loving bedside
manner and a jaunty striped cap.
She’s like obsessed with my mom . Snorts of laughter.
Twice a day, once in the midmorning and once in the midafternoon, George Halsey himself would knock softly at the door, and
after Jade called out, yes? he’d enter and inquire whether he might sit with her, always leaving the door open “to avoid the appearance of impropriety,”
as he put it. Of course she always said that he could. For one thing, how strange it would have been to deny him this permission,
in his very own guest room, but for another, she was really beginning to enjoy his company.
At last, on the morning of the fifth day, the blinds were raised, and Jade got up, still wobbly, but much less wobbly. She
saw that she was not, as she guessed, near the park, but actually on the park, high up on Fifth Avenue, where, out the window, she could see the Egypt-inspired play structures at the Ancient
Playground, Manhattan’s finest coming and going and going, parents and children and nannies.
Now, she knew, it was time to return to her own life. She dressed in the clothes she’d been wearing on the day she fell (these
had been professionally dry-cleaned, an embarrassment, considering the tags that made it clear they had come from Zara).
“I’m not sure how to pay you back for all of this,” she told George. “For this kindness and generosity.”
The courteous little nod again. “I didn’t do it so you’d pay me back,” he said. “I did it because I’ve been fortunate in my
life and I want to help where I can help.”
“But there must be something—?”
He cleared his throat and said, “There’s one thing.”
She waited.
“I wonder if you’d consider having lunch with me once a week for the remainder of the summer. My treat. I’d like to act as
a sort of mentor to you, as you develop your business idea. I’ve been thinking more about LookBook. I think this idea has
real potential. I’d like you to talk out your plans with me, as they develop. I’d like to be of assistance.”
It didn’t matter if the idea had potential. She had no way to get from here to there. She couldn’t afford the loans to get
an MBA; she couldn’t stop working long enough to pitch her idea to VCs, never mind develop the technology. She’d gotten a
great education for free and had already come further than she’d ever thought she would. When she was done with her internship
she could apply for a permanent job, at a regular company.
But she said that she would like that, she would like to have lunch with George.
He said, “I’ll leave you to your packing. Give Mrs. Sanchez a fifteen-minute warning, and the driver will be ready.”
What packing? She had nothing to pack. Could she take all of the partially used toiletries?
“He asked me to have lunch with him once a week,” she told Mrs. Sanchez, who was folding towels in the laundry room. (This
was Jade’s first look at the laundry room, in which she would have happily lived for the rest of the summer. It was so big,
and so bright, and so airy and well organized.) “That’s not weird, right?” She watched Mrs. Sanchez’s long, capable fingers
at work, mesmerized by the perfect rectangles she was creating from the towels.
“His wife is gone. His children are assholes,” she said. She looked up briefly, locked eyes with Jade for a second. “Pardon
my French. If a dying man wants to have lunch with you and you can spare the time, I say do it.”
Jade thought, How does such a nice man have assholes for children?
Then her mind snagged on the last thing Mrs. Sanchez had said. Dying?
There was always something off about Jade, when people were nice to her. She had enough self-awareness to know this but not
enough wherewithal to do anything about it.
She attached herself to people who showed her the smallest acts of kindness—Ms. Morin the guidance counselor, her roommate’s
mother, and now a gentle old man. There were other people too. There was the lady in the registrar’s office at college, who
had also come from Lawrence but who had married a man from Newton and had two kids at Newton North High School. There was
her high school basketball coach, who, the one season she played (she hated it and was terrible, too small to score, too clumsy
to bob and weave), waived the cost of the uniform and, knew, must have paid her team fees out of his own pocket.
There had been nothing reciprocal about these situations, nothing she could give back. These people had helped Jade out of
a general bigheartedness or a well-developed charitable muscle or maybe something as basic as old-fashioned pity. All Jade
could offer in return was her gratitude, and even that she had to be careful with. She was constantly calculating and recalculating
the doses in which the gratitude should be meted out so she didn’t come off as too grateful, which in turn came off as needy.
Not grateful enough, and she wouldn’t be eligible for anything more. It was a tightrope walk, and she was constantly teetering,
worried about falling off. It was exhausting .
But here was George, who actively sought her company! They had four lunches over four Wednesdays, from the beginning of July through the beginning of August, while Jade completed her intern ship. They always ate at the same restaurant, the Landmark Tavern on Eleventh Ave., which had been around for billions of years. It was dark wood and brick, with an old-fashioned cash register behind the bar and signs written in Gaelic. George always got the shepherd’s pie; Jade, the chicken Caesar salad. Neither of them saw anyone they knew there.
Each lunch George started out by asking how things were going at work and then by asking her more about LookBook. They talked
about funding: “You’ve got to reach out to the VCs, Jade. This is the kind of thing they’d eat up.” And they talked about
the development of the technology: “I know a guy who can find the right people to help you with that.” They talked about George’s
children—“I know they mean well but they just get so busy”—and about his beloved wife, dead now ten years: “Absolute love
of my life.”
After the fourth lunch, George asked, “Would you consider dining at my home? Monday? My housekeeper is away, and I suppose
I get lonely.” Would she? Sure. What else was she doing on a Monday evening? “I’ll send my driver.”
“Oh, you don’t have to do that! I’ll take the subway.”
“He’ll be there at seven.”
When she arrived at George’s building, when she disembarked from the car, when she glided past the doorman and through the
door, she imagined she was someone else entirely.
“Mr. Halsey is expecting me,” she said to the concierge, who had cornrows wound into a bun, a furrow between her brows.
“Let me call up,” she said. Her expression conveyed skepticism.
“He’s definitely expecting me,” Jade said.
They ate sushi, and they drank white wine. George wanted to look at her numbers, to help her figure out how much of an investment
she’d need to get started. He scribbled some figures on a pad of paper with a fountain pen (a fountain pen!). Half a million
dollars, he decided. With half a million, she could build out the website, nail the algorithm, hire two people, rent office
space.
“Well, forget that,” she said. “I don’t have half a million dollars.”
“That’s what investors are there for, my dear. That’s what they do.”
“I don’t know how to find an investor. I’m not ready yet.”
He put his hand over hers, there at the table: hers palm up, his palm down. “It’s not as hard as it seems,” he said. “There
are people all over this city with money to burn. You’re ready.”
Was she ready? She whispered, “Thank you.”
“It is I who should thank you, my dear,” he said. His voice caught. “I who should thank you.”
Jade looked at George; she looked into his watery brown eyes. She looked down and studied their hands together on the table,
his spotted one over her open palm. George, who looked at her like she was an angel sent straight from heaven, just for him.
Nobody had ever looked at Jade like that, not once, not ever. Everybody thought she needed to be saved, never that she could
do the saving.
When the end came it came quickly, but the dying had happened more slowly, under the surface, the way much dying does. After
the sushi night they resumed their weekly lunches, and Jade watched George carefully for signs that he wasn’t feeling well.
What she observed was mostly subtle. Partway through the month George began to stand up more slowly from the table, gripping
the edges of it. By the end of the month she noted a decrease in his appetite. His had never been enormous, especially not
compared to hers (she had read somewhere that a person who grew up without enough food would forever approach each meal as
though it were their last one on Earth), but the ratio of what he ate compared to what he left behind shifted in the wrong
direction.
After their last meal together (she didn’t know it would be their last), he took her hand as they left the restaurant. She couldn’t tell if he meant anything by it, but she didn’t pull away. Who was she to school a dying man—a kind, courteous, sad, generous dying man—in the rules of modern-day civility? Let him take her hand! She wrapped her fingers around his, held them tight.
A week after that, George failed to show up at the Landmark. She sat for twenty-two minutes at the table, not ordering, feeling
a knot of dread develop. The knot grew larger and warmer in her gut until it took up so much space it was hard to breathe.
She kept her eyes fixed on the entrance of the restaurant in the same way a dog tied to a lamppost outside a store into which
his owner has disappeared might keep his gaze, unwavering, on the door.
When her phone buzzed she turned it over, hoping for it to be George with an apology, an excuse, a request to reschedule.
His kids were in town! His driver was ill! And old Harvard friend had shown up out of the blue! But it was a number not associated
with a contact.
THIS IS VALENTINA SANCHEZ. (Mrs. Sanchez had a first name?) PLEASE CALL ME AT THIS NUMBER.
Fingers trembling, Jade dialed. “I saw in his calendar that he had lunch with you. He asked that I see if you could come to
him.”
“Is he... okay?”
“No.”
“No, like—how much not okay?”
“His children are on the way. But he wants to see you, as soon as possible.”
“I’ll come now.”
Jade never took cabs. She couldn’t spare the money; she barely knew how to hail one. But she was worried that the subway would
take too long.
Mrs. Sanchez was waiting for Jade in the lobby. Mrs. Sanchez in the lobby was as unexpected as the revelation of a first name.
Jade had never seen Mrs. Sanchez outside the apartment.
“I wanted to ride up with you,” she explained, nodding at the concierge as they passed. “To tell you a couple of important things.” She pressed the button, and the elevator doors yawned open. They stepped inside. “First. He’s on a low dose of morphine, for the pain. So if he seems not quite like himself, that’s why. Second, his daughter will be here in twenty minutes. If I were you, I’d be gone before she arrives. Say your goodbyes, and be on your way.”
“Morphine,” said Jade. “Daughter. Got it.” Then she said, “I knew he was dying. But I thought he was dying slowly.”
“We’re all dying slowly,” said Mrs. Sanchez.