Reunion Beach by Elin Hilderbrand (best ebook reader under 100 .TXT) 📗

him the empty plastic cup. “Another.”

“Another?” Tiger says. “Seriously?”

“Please?” she says. “I want to get drunk.”

“You . . . ?” Tiger can’t believe this. “Are you sure?”

“Your grandmother is dead,” Magee says. “And do you know what advice she gave me?”

Tiger is afraid to ask. “What?”

She said, “When you don’t know what else to do, have a good, stiff drink.”

Yes, Tiger thinks, that does sound like Exalta.

“And I don’t know what else to do,” Magee says. “We’ve tried everything.”

“But you’ve been so careful with your health . . .”

“It’s not working!” Magee says. “So I’m going to try the opposite.”

“Okay?” Tiger says. He’s skeptical but he fetches Magee another cold beer and when she finishes that, another. That’s three beers, but Magee isn’t finished. She wants something more, something stronger.

“Something stronger?” Tiger says. “There isn’t anything stronger at this party.”

“The flask,” she says. “In your glove compartment.”

“Ha!” Tiger says. Guess he should have known he couldn’t keep a secret from his wife. There’s a flask of Wild Turkey that Tiger keeps in the glove box of the Trans Am. Tiger offers the flask to any Vietnam Vet he happens to meet.

Magee is a veteran of sorts, he supposes. She put in all those hours of service to Exalta.

“All right,” Tiger says. “I’ll get the flask.” He grabs it from the car and he and Magee both take a pull. Magee doesn’t cough or sputter; she doesn’t even grimace. She is tougher than half the guys in the Fourth Infantry.

LATER, TIGER AND MAGEE dance in the sand. The song is the Bee Gees, “Tragedy.” But instead of a tragedy, the night feels like a miracle. Magee is joyfully, ecstatically blotto. She raises her hands in the air, she twirls around, sings along. It takes no convincing for Tiger to lead Magee down the beach with one of the kilim rugs rolled under his arm. They lay the rug out in a secluded spot in the dunes and they make love in a way that they never have before. Magee is uninhibited, carefree, wild. She leaves scratch marks down his back, bites his ear, thrusts right along with him until she screams. Screams!

Tiger falls back on the rug, breathless.

Best of my life, he thinks.

“Did that feel . . . different to you?” he asks.

“Oh, yes,” she says. She props herself up on her elbow and grins at him. “Mark my words, Tiger Foley: nine months from now, you’re going to be a father.”

9

Reunited

Jessie didn’t learn what she knows about love from being with Theo Feigelbaum. No—Jessie’s first teacher in lessons of the heart is the man with the shorn head who is now sitting next to her: Pickford Crimmins. Pick.

Jessie jumps to her feet. “Pick?” she says. “I thought you were in . . . Africa?”

“I was,” Pick says. “I got home to Cali last week. And then I called Bill and he told me about Exalta, so I hitched a ride with a buddy who was going to Philadelphia and I took a bus the rest of the way.”

“I can’t . . . I don’t . . . wow.” Jessie needs to get a grip. “So . . . how was the Peace Corps? You were in . . . ?”

“Kenya,” he says. “I worked in Nairobi for a while, digging wells. Then I was sent out to the Mara, the Kenyan savannah. It was incredible, Jess. It was like an episode of Wild Kingdom every day. We saw a giraffe give birth, a cheetah kill, prides of lions, baby elephants, the black rhino. For six weeks, I lived with the Maasai villagers. I learned how to shoot a bow and arrow, I drank cow’s blood, I learned the tribal dances.”

Jessie nods dumbly. She thought it was amazing that she got an A in her Torts class and managed to successfully transport two pastrami sandwiches on the subway.

“I’m sorry I didn’t have any time to write letters home,” Pick says. “I’m sure Bill thought I dropped off the face of the earth.”

“He’s proud of you,” Jessie says, which she’s sure is true though Mr. Crimmins never says much about his own family—probably because his daughter, Lorraine, who lives on a commune in California, has caused so much anxiety and confusion to the Foley-Levins. Jessie knew Pick went to Africa with the Peace Corps and she’d been glad to hear that, hadn’t she? Partly because she liked knowing that Pick was contributing in a positive way to the world and partly because Africa was so remote that Jessie’s lingering feelings for Pick became a moot point.

Pick settles back in the sand and Jessie follows suit. The party rages behind them but Jessie doesn’t care. Pick is here.

“So,” he says. “Tell me about everyone. Actually, forget everyone. Tell me about you.”

“I live in Greenwich Village,” Jessie says. “I’m a second-year law student at NYU.”

“Law school,” Pick says. “Like your dad.”

“I guess,” Jessie says. The law that David practices—corporate litigation—is last on Jessie’s list of interests. “I want to practice immigration law. Or maybe work for the ACLU. I want to help people.”

“That’s my girl,” Pick says.

Jessie wonders if she’s trying to make herself sound altruistic in order to impress Pick. She has never before mentioned immigration or civil rights law out loud. If she’d said this to Theo, he would have gone on a diatribe about Jessie’s “privilege.” She could afford to practice immigration law, hell, she could become a public defender—because she had a trust fund. But as for Theo, he was looking at a big firm, big money future. He wanted to be in-house counsel at a Wall Street bank.

“I made Bill promise to tell me if you got married,” Pick says, “so I could come home and disrupt the wedding like Benjamin in The Graduate.”

Jessie smiles. “You did not.”

“I did.”

“Well, I’m not married.”

“Boyfriend?”

“Theo,” she says, and even though Pick is sitting a foot away from her, she can feel him tense up. “But we broke up. He cheated on me.”

“What an idiot,” Pick says.

Jessie nudges him with her elbow. “You’re one to talk.”

“What?”

“That summer you lived with us, you left me in the dust