“Maybe?” Link said. The thought was, frankly, absurd.
Link won’t lie: He’s psyched to have his uncle’s place in Georgetown to himself for the weekend. It’s a bachelor’s paradise. The townhouse on Q Street is three stories tall with a finished media room in the basement, and it’s decorated like something out of a design magazine. The whole house is done in black and white with pops of color—in the living room, there’s a curvy flame-orange sofa and two electric-lime-green cup chairs. There’s a sweeping staircase with a curved black banister. Coop has huge abstract paintings and modern sculpture on pedestals—it’s real art, he goes to the galleries and gets into complicated negotiations with the owners. And then there are antiques scattered throughout—some of the pieces are from Link’s grandparents’ house in Baltimore and some are from the far-flung countries Coop has visited. There’s a chess set from India that resides permanently in the sunny breakfast nook with windows that overlook the back courtyard, and every morning when there’s time, Coop and Link play. Link has gotten pretty good.
Link is thinking about having a party—just some of the other interns from Brookings and his fraternity brother, Woj, from USC, who’s working on Capitol Hill this summer and who knows a crazy amount of smart and beautiful women. It won’t be a full-blown banger—the last thing he wants is to trash Coop’s space—but he’s thinking about some good people and good whiskey （Coop has a wine and whiskey cellar tucked behind the home gym in the basement） out back in the courtyard. He’ll pick up some tacos and banh mi and play some music and generally flex like the place is his own.
Before Coop leaves on Friday morning, he hands Link three hundred bucks—because that’s the kind of awesome uncle he is. Link spends his entire walk to work reminding himself that he has to be a responsible adult and not act like a kid in a movie whose parents are away for the weekend. He’ll cut the party off at fifty people, sixty max.
But when Link gets to the office and starts firing off texts—Party at my house tonight, 8pm—he gets a rude awakening. It’s a holiday weekend, the last before people go back to college, graduate school, etc., and everyone is leaving town. Woj is going to Fenwick Island, the other interns are heading to Dewey, Ocean City, Cape May.
His buddy, Oliver, is going home to his parents’ house on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and asks if Link wants to go with him. “My dad has a sailboat,” Oliver says. “And my parents are having a cocktail party on Sunday with a tent and a Dixieland band. It’ll be fun.”
Sailing, cocktails, a Dixieland band. It does sound kind of fun, but it’s not what Link had in mind. If he wanted to be on the water, at the beach, he would have gone with his uncle. He wants city life.
“I think I’ll stay put, thanks, man,” Link says.
His idea for the weekend instantly changes. He’ll just hang out at the house, playing loud music on Coop’s state-of-the-art sound system, he’ll watch movies in the home theater, he’ll sip the whiskey and cognac alone. He was raised an only child; he can entertain himself.
But once Link gets home from work and takes a shower—the city is a smoking griddle, why did he not go to the beach?—he can’t settle down. He feels like a friendless loser, sitting home alone. He should go out. He will go out. He remembers his mother’s story about going to Nantucket when she was his age without knowing a soul.
Honestly? she said. It was liberating. I was in control of my future.
He heads to a place he and Woj sometimes went called Roofers Union in Adams Morgan, and he finds it pumping—there are people his age drinking and laughing at the tables on the street and there’s a line of young, beautiful people snaking out the door. He waits his turn, presents his ID to the bouncer, and heads inside. He goes to the upstairs bar; it’s normally a little less crazy than the one downstairs.
There are three free seats at the far end and beyond those sits a girl with dark hair and glasses, absorbed in her phone. She has a glass of wine in front of her. Is she alone? Link gives her a couple seats as a buffer, orders a Stoli tonic with a twist of lemon, and after his drink arrives and he’s had a sip, he glances over. At the same time, she looks up at him.
He knows her. It’s…
“Oh my God,” she says. “You’re…”
“Yeah!” he says. “Wait, this is weird. I was just thinking about you.” It’s Bess McCloud. This is surreal—although Link has just learned that this phenomenon has a name, where you think about someone and then, out of the blue, they appear.