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When they clink one another’s glasses, Mallory notices that Leland’s and Fray’s arms cross, which Kitty always claimed was bad luck.
    “No crossing!” Mallory says, but nobody hears her.
    Lenny Kravitz is on the stereo, “Are You Gonna Go My Way.”

    After dinner, things are still okay. Leland wants to change before they go out. Frazier goes into the bathroom holding a razor—seeing Leland has clearly inspired him to shave that thing off his lip—and Cooper picks up the phone and takes it into his bedroom. Mallory washes the dishes; Jake offers to dry.
    Jake says, “I feel like I’m out of the loop.”
    “Leland and Fray were an item in high school.”
    “Ah,” Jake says.
    “They’ve always had a thing,” Mallory says. “A thing that refuses to die.”
    “I can relate,” Jake says.
    “Can you?” Mallory says. She’s seized by jealousy. Obviously, Jake is too terrific not to have a girlfriend, or many girlfriends. But she’d hoped she’d caught him on the in-between. “Where did you grow up? I don’t think you told me.”
    “South Bend,” Jake says. “Indiana.”
    She knows nothing about the place except that Notre Dame is there. “Are you still hung up on a girl from South Bend?”
    “ Hung up is too strong a phrase,” he says. “We just…I’m not sure. It’s been one of those things. Complicated.”
    “What’s her name?” Mallory asks. She can’t believe she’s being so bold.
    “Ursula,” he says. “Ursula de Gournsey.”
    “She sounds like a supermodel,” Mallory says.
    He laughs. “Yeah…no. She’s not. She’s…”
    “Back in Indiana?” Mallory asks hopefully.
    “In DC,” he says. “She graduated from Georgetown Law and now she’s an attorney with the SEC. She goes after insider trading and corporations who aren’t following the rules, that kind of thing. She got recruited right out of law school.”
    “Slacker,” Mallory says. She grins at him, which is heroic of her because the night has turned into a puddle of mud at her feet. Jake has a complicated relationship with a legal eagle named Ursula de Gournsey. Mallory is a lunch waitress. Jake’s flirtation with her is a distraction for him, a game. She’s the little sister. He doesn’t take her seriously. She isn’t…substantial enough. She is a line drawing of a woman that has been only partially colored in.
    Mallory grabs the bottle of Jim Beam—it’s nearly half gone already—and takes a swig, then she hands it to Jake and he takes a swig, and she says, “Let’s gather the troops. We’re going out.”

    Everything is fine, everyone is game. Leland has changed into white jeans; Fray, now clean-shaven, has put on a Nirvana T-shirt, and they’re all piling into the Blazer when they hear the phone ringing inside.
    “Let it go,” Mallory says to Cooper. “It’s probably Kitty making sure you arrived safely.”
    “No, it’s… ” Cooper races back inside, leaving the four of them to sit in the idling truck.
    “The wife,” Fray says.
    “Well, I’m taking shotgun, then,” Jake says, and he moves up next to Mallory.
    They sit in silence waiting for Cooper to reappear. Then Mallory hears the faintest noise behind her and checks her rearview mirror to see Leland and Frazier making out.
    Well, this is awkward, she thinks. She closes her eyes and waits for them to stop, but of course they don’t and Mallory is afraid to look at Jake, but Cooper is taking so long that finally she says, “Will you check on him?”
    “Yep,” Jake says. He seems grateful for a reason to escape the car. He runs into the cottage and Mallory turns up the radio. Counting Crows, “Mr. Jones.” She wishes for a blizzard or a plague of locusts—anything that will make Leland and Frazier stop.
    Ursula de Gournsey. Working for the SEC in Washington, which is where Jake lives too. He ended up taking a job as a lobbyist for Big Pharma, a company called PharmX, he told them at dinner. They aren’t exactly the good guys,