“Your machine,” Jones said.
“You know that device Thomas Jefferson invented, to duplicate the motions his hand made in writing, so he could make copies of his letters? Our machine works on the same principle.”
“His machine didn’t work.”
“Ours didn’t either, at first. But now we have magic computers and space age materials, and sensors that can feel a gnat’s eyelash. Roscoe isn’t alive. But you are. So how about it, hotshot? How good are you?”
It was a gray morning in Charlottesville when Jones stepped out of the cab onto the airport tarmac and carried his overnight bag to the Blair jet. A slender young woman in a white shirt with epaulets waited at the ladder. “Dr. Jones, I’m Angelica, your pilot,” she said. “Since you’re the only passenger you can fly in the cockpit if you’d prefer.” She turned and led the way up the steps into the jet.
Jones smiled. This is gonna be fun, he thought.
Two minutes later he had buckled himself into the seat beside Angelica, and they were taxiing on the runway. She pushed the throttles forward and the plane accelerated with a suddenness Jones had never experienced in an aircraft. “Where’d you learn to fly, Angelica?” he asked, not with the greatest of ease.
“The navy,” she said, pulling her radio headset off one ear so she could hear him better. “I flew fighters off carriers—’til I got bored.” She pulled back on the controls and the plane took off, shooting almost straight up.” Then she looked at Jones and grinned. “Just kidding,” she said. “I used to be a receptionist.” Angelica threw back her head and laughed. Jones, the doctor with the broad shoulders, gripped the leather of his armrests with hands that had turned utterly pale.
Instead of a cab waiting at the private airport where they landed, it was a limo, long, sleek and black, stopped precisely beside the spot where the plane taxied to a halt. As the plane door opened Jones staggered out, held up by a grinning Angelica. “Thanks, Angelica,” he said. “Anytime I don’t like what I had for breakfast, I’ll be sure to call you.” He even managed a smile.
The limo driver opened its rear door for him, and as he stepped from the daylight into the softly lit passenger compartment, he found Lara. Her legs were crossed; she was wearing high heels and a cashmere overcoat. She looked more than beautiful; she looked happy. “Thank you for coming,” she said.
Jones settled into the seat beside her and shrugged. “I wanted to try your jet. I’ve been in the market for a new one.”
“When you fix Roscoe you’ll be able to afford one.”
“You’re mighty optimistic.”
“And you’re mighty confident.”
“I’m operating on a dummy.”
“Oh, but he’s a very smart dummy,” Lara said, her voice musical as the limo rolled smoothly out the gate of the private airfield and the driver pointed its polished nose toward the highrise cluster of downtown Chicago. And it was not only Jones who recognized how newly happy Lara seemed; Lara herself noticed it too.
On the way into the city they chatted easily. She asked about the clinic in the mountains, and he told her about Sam. She probed for the specifics of his condition, her questions perceptive and incisive. Jones had known already that she was extremely intelligent but he had assumed her approach to medicine would be mostly theoretical since she worked in the field of research and inventions; now he saw that her knowledge was deeply practical as well.
Once again, something about all this reminded him of someone else he had known, someone he had loved more than he loved life. When he realized that he was thinking of Faith, he grew quiet and had trouble looking directly at Lara.
The limo stopped in front of a majestic hotel. Lara said, “I picked this one for you because it’s elegant and full of great history; I assumed you’d like that.” As the limo driver stepped out quickly to open the door for Jones, she added, “We’ll let you freshen up for a while, even work out if you want to—there’s a great health club down the street. At four George will pick you up for dinner. Just you and me and two hundred of my closest friends.”
Jones stepped out, then glanced at the overnight satchel he had brought and turned back to her. “All I brought was a sport coat,” he said.
“You’ll find a tux hanging in the closet of your hotel room,” she said. She watched him as the surprise soaked into his eyes.
“You didn’t ask for my sizes,” he said, biting his lower lip so he wouldn’t grin too broadly.
“I assumed those too.”
“You assumed a lot of things.”
“Yes, I suppose I did.” Then Lara spoke softly to the driver and the limo pulled away, leaving Jones smiling on the sidewalk.
In his hotel suite—it was not a room, as Lara had so casually designated it, but more of an apartment, with a sitting room complete with a wood-burning fireplace, and a bedroom attached to that—Jones found the closet, and the new tuxedo hanging there. Its fabric felt buttery against his fingers, and when he slipped the jacket on, it draped perfectly on his shoulders. He checked the labeclass="underline" a famous brand, made in Italy. And it had been altered to taper at his waist; he knew this for certain because no off-the-rack size had ever matched the span of his shoulders to the narrowness of his waist. Lara had not called his office to ask Janet for his sizes; Jones knew this too for certain because Janet did not know Jones’s sizes; she had never seen him in anything except workout clothes and surgical gowns. Lara had appraised him, exactly, at a glance.
Hanging beside the tux was a formal shirt; on the closet floor were new shoes. Jones didn’t need to try them on; he was already sure they would fit perfectly.
Two hours later Jones, feeling somewhat more elegant and significantly more awkward than he had ever felt in his life, rode alone in the back of the limo. George had been waiting for him when he had stepped from the hotel and had told him they would be going to “The Cottage.” George said nothing more after that; but as the limo rolled north along the Chicago freeways and then turned into the rolling countryside of the North Shore, along the edge of Lake Michigan, Jones saw that the driver kept glancing into the rearview mirror at him, and smiling.
Jones looked out the side window and saw that they had turned into a security entrance with a yellow drop bar that had been blocking the way, now swinging vertical and open, where a guard was waving them through. Jones looked ahead, past George through the windshield, and his eyes went wide: at the end of the long, tree-lined lane stood a three-story mansion. Its front door sat in perfect alignment with the lane, and between the lane and the door rose a pair of twin pinnacles supporting wrought iron gates permanently open to the outside; spanning the top were iron letters with the name of the estate: Open Gates. “So this is the Cottage, George?” Jones called, and he saw George grinning in the mirror. Parked in the circle surrounding the fountain that rose in front of the main door were dozens of elegant cars, mostly German. Flowers spilled from stone sconces on either side of the door. But what Jones liked best was the candles blazing in all the windows.
Car valets—young men and women in black vests with red bow ties—were parking the other cars, and one of them hurried up and opened the limo door for Jones, greeting him with, “Welcome to The Cottage.” So the understatement was not only George’s private joke. Jones stepped from the limousine and moved with the other arriving guests through the front door and into rooms of sixteen-foot ceilings and antique furniture pieces that rose almost high enough to touch them. He passed servants, with trays of delicacies and flutes of champagne, and gowned ladies who looked him over; he followed the flow of the crowd out into the rear of the estate, where he found the grounds set with tables and a dance floor and orchestra arranged between the mansion and its gardens. He felt a growing discomfort, even as the novelty and excitement of the experience rose inside him.