The Girls' Guide to Love and Supper Clubs

by Dana Bate

  “Sorry,” I say. “Family emergency.”

  He crosses his arms and sighs. He’s heard it all before. “Well now that you’re finally here, I need you to get going on the preparations for the conference.”

  “The conference?” This is the first I’ve heard of any conference.

  “Yes, the conference. On the economic recovery? And financial risk? In December?”

  Again, this is the first I’ve heard of any of this. “Right,” I say. “The … conference.”

  “I need you to get the ball rolling—contacting the speakers, reserving a room, coordinating with marketing. You know the drill.”

  I pull out a pen and paper, awaiting further instructions on what speakers I am supposed to get in touch with and when, exactly, he wants to hold this conference, but when I look up, Mark has disappeared into his office. This might be more concerning if it didn’t happen at least three times a day.

  Hoping to find guidance in the form of an e-mail or announcement, I log on to my computer and scrub my in-box where I find … nothing. I search through the piles of papers on my desk, mostly old research papers and printouts from Mark, but again I cannot find a single mention of the December conference. I give up.

  I let out a loud groan and look up to see Rachel gliding toward my desk from her perch in the health policy department, carrying a sliver of my coffee cake. She slides up to my desk for one of our daily heart-to-hearts, looking characteristically chic in a sleeveless cream blouse and chocolate pencil skirt, the kind of outfit I could never wear because I actually have hips. Rachel, on the other hand, is built like a willowy nymph. Everything about her is lean and trim, from her narrow face and delicate nose to her boyish hips and long, sleek brown hair. If she were a few inches taller, I bet she could have been a model. I would say she’s the Jackie O. to my Marilyn, but I’m pretty sure Marilyn Monroe never wore fleece.

  “Awesome coffee cake,” she says in her faint Chicago accent, the a in ah-some drawn out like a song. She licks the crumbs off her slender fingers. “Melts in your mouth. What’s in the streusel? Cinnamon?”

  I nod. “And a little cocoa powder.”

  “Nice. So how was dinner last night?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “That bad?”

  “That bad.”

  She comes around to my side of the desk and sits on the edge. “Care to give me the CliffsNotes version?

  “Let’s see. Should I begin with the part where I picked a fight with Adam’s mother, or the part where I told his parents Adam and I are living together?”

  “They didn’t know?”

  “No. As you can imagine, the news went over really well.”

  “I’m sure.” Rachel scrunches up her lips and studies the tip of her brown, snakeskin shoe, admiring its pointy toe. “Hey—in the end, you did everyone a big favor. It’s Adam’s fault for not telling them months ago.”

  Rachel Cohen has never been one for mincing words, particularly when it comes to Adam. Her candor is one of the things I love about her. A graduate of George Washington University, she started at NIRD a few months before I did, and one of the first things she said to me, as I reached for a chicken salad sandwich in the NIRD lunchroom, was, “I wouldn’t do that unless you have a bottle of Pepto in your desk.” I didn’t have many friends in Washington before I met Rachel, but with her by my side, I never had to worry about eating alone at lunch or enduring an afternoon of gastrointestinal distress.

  Over the past three years, in what is as much a surprise to me as anyone else, she has become, in addition to my best friend at work, my best friend in all of DC. Had we met at a different stage of life, I’m not sure that would be true. My college friends and I were kindred spirits, homebodies who preferred sweatpants to high fashion, a night watching old movies to a night on the town. But those friends are spread across the country, in Boston and Seattle and New York, and now Rachel is the one who knows the intimate details of my daily life—Rachel, the woman everyone notices when she walks into a room, who can make sweatpants look like high fashion, in a way I never could. In addition to writing about domestic health care policy for her boss at NIRD, she runs a wildly successful fashion and design blog called Milk Glass—further proof she is beauty and brains personified. None of my other friends are like her, and yet some days I feel closer to her than I do to them, for the simple reason that she’s here and they’re not.

  “Don’t worry,” Rachel says. “The Prescotts will get over it.”

  “I hope so.”

  “You hope what?” Millie’s voice pierces through the low hum of the fluorescent lights and computers peppering the eighth floor. She stalks up to my desk and inserts herself into the discussion, as is her wont.

  “Nothing,” I say.

  Millie lets out a frustrated sigh. “Whatever. Why haven’t you hoes responded to my birthday Evite? The party is this weekend.”

  “I’m still trying to move a few things around,” Rachel says.

  Millie places a hand on her hip and turns to face me. “You’ll be there, Hannah. I know you don’t have plans.”

  I choose to assume she has already spoken to Adam about this, rather than interpret her remark as a commentary on my lack of a social life. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” I say.

  “Good,” Millie says. “And keep your weekend open. I’m trying to put together a brunch on Sunday followed by an afternoon at the movies.”

  Millie stalks back to her desk, and Rachel sighs, twirling one of her long, chestnut locks around her finger. “A weekend of Millie,” she says. “Good luck with that.”

  “You’re not coming?”

  “I have a date.”

  “Shocker,” I say. Rachel always has a date. How she manages to find so many datable men in DC is a mystery to me.

  “I don’t want to traumatize this guy by introducing him to Millie on our first date.”

  “True, but come on. You can’t send me out there alone.”

  “You’ll have Adam,” she says. This provides surprisingly little consolation. “I’m sure it’ll be fun.”

  But as she says the words, she can’t help but snicker, because although Millie’s party may be many things—loud, smelly, unbearable—the one thing it won’t be, for me at least, is fun.

  CHAPTER

  four

  I look forward to Millie’s party as much as I look forward to a Pap smear or a tooth extraction. Which is to say, not at all.

  But before I know it, Saturday is already here, and my anxiety gives way to resigned acceptance. Adam and I are going to this party together, and that’s the end of it. Adam and I haven’t talked about the party—we haven’t talked about much of anything all week—but I know that as painful as tonight may be, it is also an opportunity for me to remind Adam why he fell in love with me in the first place—how he used to love my quirks and how they don’t always spell disaster. There was a moment two nights ago, after I made a crack about Mark’s mammoth eyebrows and how it is only a matter of time before I grab a pair of scissors and trim them myself, when I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a smirk cross Adam’s lips. In that moment, I knew there was still hope for us. I can still make him laugh. I can still make him smile. All I need to do is sail through this party with grace and dignity, and then I can finally stop having anxiety dreams about being single, lonely, and homeless.

  As I stand in front of the bathroom mirror, tugging at my unruly hair, Adam shouts from the living room, filling the apartment with the sound of his voice. “Jesus, Hannah, you’re going to make us late—again!”

  “Coming!”

  What I leave out is the “will be”—as in she will be coming round the mountain when she comes. And I will be coming out of the bathroom … as soon as I throw my hair into a ponytail and give my eyelashes one more coat of mascara. And try on another color of lipstick. Before checking my ass in the mirror. Twice.

  “One sec!” I tear into the bedroom and shove my wallet, phon
e, and keys inside my purse, grab a bottle of Vouvray for Millie, and hurry into the living room. “Okay,” I say. “Let’s go.”

  A few months ago, Adam would have said something about my new white maxidress or given me a kiss or at least done something to validate the effort I put into pulling myself together. That’s part of what I fell in love with, I think—how good he made me feel about myself. I was curves, brains, and snark all in one, a loveable mishmash of Christina Hendricks and Maureen Dowd and Kathy Griffin. Or at least that’s what he led me to believe. He always found something to compliment: my eyes, a paper I’d written, the softness of the skin along my doughy belly. The night we met at Millie’s party, he told me I had an infectious laugh. It was one of the first things he said to me. I turned to goo and made a terrible joke about infections and swine flu—with, as I recall, some bizarre reference to Batman and the Joker—but Adam chuckled anyway, saying he’d be happy to catch anything I’d give him. And, for the first time, I didn’t worry I’d made a total fool of myself in front of an attractive member of the opposite sex. He put me at ease. He always knew the right thing to say.

  But tonight he says nothing. He hasn’t commented on anything I’ve said or done for the past week, ever since our argument last Sunday. I bet I could go out wearing nothing but a bra and pajama bottoms, and he wouldn’t even notice.

  We walk side by side from our apartment in Logan Circle to Millie’s place in Kalorama, a hilly neighborhood just north of Dupont Circle, peppered with grand Victorian and Art Deco buildings, elegant prewar condos, and tree-lined streets. Millie frequently reminds us that the neighborhood has been home to everyone from Woodrow Wilson to Betty Friedan and, in more recent history, people like Ted Kennedy and Christopher Hitchens. So, by Millie’s way of thinking, she fits right in. That I dislike this woman should come as a surprise to no one.

  As Adam and I make our way up Eighteenth Street in the thick, sticky heat, charged silence swirls around us like electricity. Our shoulders are only three inches apart, but we might as well be walking on opposite sides of the street.

  One of Millie’s college friends buzzes us into her Beaux Arts lobby, a grand foyer lined by grand plaster columns, richly upholstered furniture, and wrought iron banisters. We walk through the cavernous marble hallway toward her first-floor apartment, located at the end of a long hallway. When we reach her apartment, we bang on her door, which shakes and rattles to the rhythm of Lady Gaga.

  “Hey!” Millie shouts above the music as she opens the door. She smoothes her hands down the sides of her skintight strapless black dress and welcomes us into her darkened apartment, a large one-bedroom with an open floor plan and exposed brickwork along the back wall. I make as much money as Millie and could never afford this place, but unlike me, Millie gets a cushy stipend each month from her parents, both of whom are successful K Street lawyers.

  My eyes take a minute to adjust to the dimmed lighting, but I can already see the place is packed. People are drinking and eating, and a few guests have started dancing in the middle of the living room, bumping and grinding to the deafening music. The apartment smells, as it does at all of Millie’s parties, like sweat and desperation.

  Millie wraps her arms around Adam’s neck and gives him a peck on the cheek, letting her taught, dark curls brush against his face. I clench my jaw and hand Millie the bottle of wine. She releases Adam from her grip and studies the bottle. “It’s too warm,” she says, scrunching up her nose. “I can’t put this out. I’ll have to refrigerate it.”

  She marches into the kitchen with the wine, and Adam grabs my shoulder. “Listen—I know she can be difficult, but please. Behave yourself. She’s my friend.”

  “And I’m your girlfriend and barely know anyone here.”

  “So?”

  “So don’t leave me to fend for myself.”

  “Why don’t you worry a little less about my behavior and worry a little more about your own?”

  Why don’t you stop being such a prick? I think. But I can’t say that—not when I’ve made some bullshit promise to be on my best behavior. So instead, I say, “Then help me. Stick by me tonight. Don’t ditch me for a bunch of people I’ve never met.”

  Adam rolls his eyes, and for a moment I almost forget he is my boyfriend. He is acting like my boss. Or my father. Or a teacher, even. But definitely not a person with whom I share an apartment and a bed and supposedly a life. Something in our relationship has permanently shifted, like a doorway that has warped from the cold, preventing the door from closing flush with the frame, and I am beginning to think there’s nothing I can do to smooth us back into place.

  It takes me all of ten minutes to discover there is no one I want to talk to at this party, which consists of a bunch of think tank wonks, uptight lawyers, and Millie’s running buddies, who only want to talk about their next race and latest training regimen. One guy named Tim (or Tom, or Bill) pounced on me as soon as I put down my purse and launched into a lengthy and detailed description of his work on ERISA law, which was almost as interesting as it sounds, but not quite. I now know far more than I ever wanted to know about the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation.

  But I’m playing the role of Adam’s gracious partner, and so far I’m doing a pretty good job—though it is becoming increasingly clear this is not a role I enjoy playing. If I have to listen to one more person erupt in a frenzy over “regulatory arbitrage” or “inverted yield curves,” I might actually try to take my own life.

  Adam has been working the room since we arrived, abandoning me in precisely the way I asked him not to, and by the time I extricate myself from a series of dull conversations, I’ve lost track of him. I am now standing in the corner of the living room by myself, the only sober person among the throng of gyrating wonks, a distinction I feel compelled to eliminate. At this point, alcohol is a means for survival.

  I push my way to the bar, elbowing my way through a crowd that has now started dancing aggressively to Justin Bieber. The bar is in total disarray, littered with half-empty bottles and dirty cups. I grab a half-decent bottle of Cabernet and fill a clear plastic cup to the rim. As I sip my wine, I spot Adam across the room, whispering into Millie’s ear as he cups her shoulder. I empty my glass in a single gulp and fill it up with another varietal, followed by another, and another. Pretty soon I’ve lost track of Adam and Millie, and I’m not sure how many glasses of wine I’ve drunk, but what I do know is that if I don’t get something solid in my stomach soon, very bad things will happen.

  Stumbling through the crowd, I make my way to the dining room table, whose offerings have been pillaged by a crowd almost as inebriated as I am. Millie always makes all the food at her parties, and it’s never any good. A few months ago she made a bowl of vegan chocolate mousse that tasted like burnt chalk, and Adam went on and on about how delicious it was, which made me want to throttle him—mostly because the mousse was inedible, but also because it had been months since he’d spoken of anything I’d made with such effusive praise.

  At this point, though, I’m willing to eat anything, so I scan the table for a decent snack and grab a skewer from what appears to be a large platter of beef satay.

  It is not beef satay.

  I’m sure it’s supposed to be beef satay, but what I put in my mouth tastes like armpits and sweaty feet, and as I chew, I feel as if I am eating a pair of wet socks. I search around for a receptacle in which I can spit this culinary atrocity, but all I can find is the empty cup I’m holding in my hand. So, without a better alternative, I cough up the beef into my cup.

  Tim/Tom/Bill shuffles over to my position along the table, disgust painted all over his pasty, pock-marked face. “What was that?” he shouts, his nasal voice piercing through the music.

  “What?” I shout back.

  He points to my cup. “What the hell is that?”

  I look down at the mangled piece of meat and back up at Tim/Tom/Bill, of whom there now appears to be two. “It tastes like rancid possum,” I say, as if th
at will make what I’m holding in my hand any less disgusting.

  He cups his hand to his ear. “Sorry, it tastes like what?”

  “RANCID POSSUM. It tastes like something crawled in my mouth and died!”

  It is at this moment that Millie’s friend Sarah decides to change songs on Millie’s iPod. And it is at this exact moment, in the brief five seconds of silence between “Rock Your Body” and “Poker Face,” that the room is filled with the slurred, strained sounds of my drunken voice.

  The crowd momentarily stops dancing and turns in my direction, wondering, most likely, what the hell is going on and why someone is shrieking like a lunatic about rancid possums. Sarah clutches her chest, embarrassed at being partially responsible for bringing the party to a crashing halt, though she and I might disagree about the extent of her role here.

  Not knowing what to do in the face of my screeching, Sarah adjusts the volume on Millie’s iPod and waves her arms at the group, encouraging everyone to go on, go on, keep dancing, which some of them do and some of them don’t. Millie pushes her way through the crowd until she is standing in front of me with her hands on her hips, looking as if she might rip out my eyeballs.

  “I beg your pardon?” she asks, her voice competing with Lady Gaga’s p-p-poker face for the crowd’s attention. “What, my food isn’t good enough for you?”

  I stand in silence and bite my lip. What am I supposed to say? That her beef satay tastes like a jockstrap?