This Beautiful Life

Poor Jake had been Jake B. so long and so often, in Ithaca, and now in New York, that some of the kids at Wildwood Upper had taken to calling him Jacoby—like those ambulance-chaser lawyers who, Liz was amazed to find, after all these years still ran their ads in the subways: “Hit by a truck? Call Jacoby and Meyers.” (What if you just felt like you’d been hit by a truck? Liz wondered. What if you just felt like you’d been hit by a truck day after day? Could you call Jacoby and Meyers then?)