I turned and walked self-consciously across the damp front lawn toward the road, my dress shoes sinking into the grass. Just as I reached the asphalt road, Huke said loudly, “Wait a minute. One more question.” I turned and took a few steps back toward him. “The dust mite, it bites, yes?”
“That’s right,” I said.
“Most dust mites don’t bite.”
“Correct.”
“So what happens if you get bit by this particular dust mite, other than the virus?” he asked.
“We’ve been focusing on the virus,” I said.
“Does it itch?” Huke asked.
“The dust-mite bite?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
“For goodness’ sakes, find out!” Huke advised. “Because if this dust mite is a real pest, humans will try to get rid of it. And when that happens, nature always fights back!”
I thought about Huke’s parting comment as I walked back to the Hanover Inn. A taxi was waiting for me; the bellman had already put my duffel in the trunk. As soon as I got in the backseat, I called Tie Guy on his cell phone. “I have a different angle,” I said without exchanging pleasantries. “This dust mite: How do you get rid of it?”
“It’s too late for that,” he said. “People are already infected—”
“No, no, no,” I said. “I just want to know what people have been doing to try to get rid of the dust mite.”
“Okay, I’ll take a look,” he replied, obviously puzzled.
“Because nature always fights back,” I added.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said.
39.
I MET SLOAN AT A STARBUCKS IN BETHESDA. SINCE GRADUATION, we had seen each other infrequently and usually as part of a large group: weddings, reunions, and so on. We had swapped the occasional e-mail, but for all intents and purposes we had fallen out of touch. We never spoke about the night during senior week when we crossed the platonic boundary. Sloan had suggested the Starbucks because it was near her hotel. In hindsight, everything about the meeting was wrong. After I landed at Joint Base Andrews, I had to take a taxi across Washington at rush hour; she walked a block. And why a coffee shop, when we had years to catch up on? I should have at least suggested dinner. I was starving, not having eaten anything since the croissants with Huke. In any case, I had overeagerly accepted Sloan’s invitation, and now here I was accepting all of her terms.
During law school, Sloan had dated a guy a class ahead of her who was the editor of the Harvard Law Review. If the media reports were correct—and I have no reason to believe they were not—she also had a “serious romantic entanglement” with her constitutional law professor in her third year. None of these relationships left Cambridge with her. In New York, she had taken up with a prominent staff writer for The New Yorker, which is highly relevant for all that came next. I took a $65 WeGoNow and arrived at the appointed Starbucks about fifteen minutes early. I lingered near a professional couple sitting opposite one another; both were working their devices frenetically between large sips of coffee. They seemed more likely to get up and leave than the elderly couple a few seats over, whose cups were empty but seemed in no rush to go anywhere. The professional couple soon stood up to leave, and I took their table. (I was right about the elderly couple. They were still sitting there when Sloan and I left.)
Sloan was more or less on time. She spotted me and offered a beaming smile. After waiting in line for a black coffee, she made her way to the table and gave me a big hug. “This is great!” she said. “So how are you?” We did the usual catching up. It was a delightful conversation, diminished only slightly by the fact that Sloan glanced at her watch periodically. I would have stayed there all night, even as I grew ever hungrier. I explained the rudiments of my Ph.D. dissertation and talked about my work in the lab. “But you’re not teaching?” Sloan said. The tone suggested it was a question, but it was more of an observation, and it had layers and layers of significance. This was the first reference either of us had ever made to that starry night during senior week when we had pronounced our life plans.
There was so much implicit in what Sloan had just asked, or said. On that lovely evening, she had predicted that she would go to law school and then enter journalism. And here she was, a Harvard Law grad, checking her watch because she was due back at the New York Times. I had said I wanted to teach at a place like Dartmouth, yet the closest I had been to a classroom on campus since graduation was my meeting with Professor Huke. I knew, even if Sloan did not, that my job talks at various colleges and universities had not gone well. My only offer had been at the University of Nebraska—not even at the main campus in Lincoln, but one of the satellite campuses. My work at the lab was, in the eyes of most academic scientists, significantly less prestigious than a post at a top research university.
“I really like what I’m doing,” I offered, trying hard not to sound defensive.
“That’s great,” she said. The reply felt slightly patronizing, or maybe I just perceived it that way.
“I like applied science,” I explained. “I get to work on real problems, stuff that affects people’s lives.”
Sloan nodded, smiled, and sipped her coffee. “Do people ever move from what you’re doing into teaching posts? Could you still end up at Dartmouth?” she asked.
“I don’t think I’d want to do that,” I answered.
She raised an eyebrow skeptically. “Really?”
“It’s too academic,” I said. I paused, because somewhere in the recesses of my brain there was a safety alert telling me to stop talking. I felt a physical warning from my body, as if I were getting too close to a steep ledge. I kept talking anyway. I felt an overwhelming need for Sloan to appreciate my work, to acknowledge that I had not failed the grand plan that I laid out on that inimitable, sex-charged evening during senior week. “I was with the President yesterday,” I said.
At that point, the dam holding back my urge to say too much had broken.
“Of the United States?” Sloan asked with a quizzical look.
“What other president would it be?” I asked facetiously.
“That’s cool, like a photo op?” she asked.
“The whole day.”
Sloan put down her coffee. She never looked at her watch again. “What were you doing?” she asked.
“I can’t say,” I replied. “I don’t mean to be a jerk about it. All I can tell you is that something is happening and I’m right in the middle of it. I never dreamed that my work would have this kind of significance.” That was all I told her about what was going on. The reality, of course, is that Sloan is smart and ambitious. She could put two and two together, especially with all the resources of The New York Times at her disposal. More important, she was dating a staff writer at The New Yorker, which was where the first piece on “the Outbreak” would run. I was not quoted in that piece, directly or indirectly. When I was asked at the first congressional inquiry whether I had had any contact at any time with any person representing The New Yorker, I answered no—truthfully. To this day, I do not know if the meeting with Sloan was a coincidence or not. The whole journalism community knew that something was afoot at the White House. The cleverer ones realized it was probably something more than a presidential mistress. If Sloan had seen a leaked copy of the White House logs, she would have recognized that I was spending time there. And if I was at the White House, it was probably not to help the President of the United States disentangle himself from a relationship with a Colombian diplomat.