The Girls' Guide to Love and Supper Clubs

by Dana Bate

  Rachel rinses the dishes in the sink, but as she grabs one of the plates with her soapy hand, she loses her grip and sends the plate crashing to the floor. The plate cracks into dozens of irregular hunks and shards, and the dining room erupts into facetious applause at the explosive sound.

  “Jesus, Rachel.”

  She scurries to sweep up the broken plate. “Sorry, sorry, sorry.”

  “My landlord is going to kill me.”

  “I doubt he’ll even notice. One plate out of twelve? He’ll probably figure he broke it himself or misplaced it somewhere. Or we can replace it. No biggie.”

  I shake my head as I give the tzimmes a stir. “Whatever you say, butterfingers.”

  “Hey!”

  “Let’s try to make it through this dinner without shattering any more glass or ceramic objects. That’s all I ask.”

  Rachel dumps the broken plate into the trashcan. “Fine. Point taken.”

  Once I’ve coated the parsnips in a honey-saffron glaze, Rachel helps me plate them alongside the brisket, stuffed cabbage, and sweet potato tzimmes, and we carry the plates out to the dining room together.

  “Let me explain a little about tonight’s dinner,” I say, addressing the softly lit faces around the table, which is covered with flickering votives and tapered candles. I launch into a description of the Jewish New Year and the symbolism behind all of the food: how the honey represents the hope for a sweet new year, how the challah is round instead of braided to represent the circle of life, how my grandmother used to make stuffed cabbage on every possible occasion because it reminded her of her Hungarian mother. I tell them lots of things—about food, about my bubbe, about me—and, to my surprise, they actually pay attention. They hang on my every word and ask intelligent questions and make thought-provoking points of their own. And I realize, hey, these are people who get it, people who love to eat and talk about food and culture as much as I do. Most of them aren’t Jewish, but that doesn’t matter. Every family has its traditions. Every family has a story to share. That’s the point of this dinner—to swap stories and histories and see how food can bring people together.

  “Everything has been awesome,” says a voice from the middle of the table. My eyes land on the source: the same guy who was staring at me earlier, the one with the blue eyes and Old 97’s T-shirt.

  “Thanks,” I say. He grins, revealing a set of shockingly white teeth. His eyes soften, which has the dual effect of raising my heart rate and making me feel as if I might pee my pants. I try to think of something witty to say, something about brisket or the Old 97’s, but my mind goes blank. All I can come up with are platitudes and stupid puns that would make me sound as lame as my swashbuckling landlord. The last thing I need is to sound like a moron, or a pirate.

  So, in the end, I say nothing and retreat into the kitchen.

  At this point, we’re over the hump. One more course to go, and that’s the easy one: cake and ice cream. Guaranteed hits.

  “What’s the deal with that guy out there?” Rachel asks as she scrubs one of Blake’s frying pans.

  “What guy?”

  “Oh, shut up. You know exactly who I’m talking about.”

  But before I can answer, “that guy” walks into the kitchen. He stuffs his hands in his jean pockets and scrunches up his shoulders. “The bathroom …?”

  “Down the hall and to the right,” I say.

  When he shuts the door, Rachel turns to me and raises an eyebrow.

  “Don’t,” I say. “We’ll talk about it later.”

  She purses her lips and continues scrubbing the pan. A few minutes later, Mr. Old 97’s emerges from the bathroom and sidles up to the kitchen island, watching me as I lift the lid off the honeycomb ice cream.

  “Oooh, what’s that?”

  I wipe my hands on my apron without looking up. “Honeycomb ice cream.”

  “Nice.” He raps his hands against the counter, like a timpanist beating on a pair of bongos, and his eyes land on the tray of apple cakes in the corner of the kitchen. “Hey, are those cinnamon buns?”

  “What?” I glance over my shoulder. “Oh, no. Individual apple cakes.”

  “Ah, got it. I must have cinnamon buns on the brain. I visited my family last weekend, and my mom makes a mean recipe for cinnamon buns. The best in the world, as far as I can tell.”

  Like a Siamese fighting fish flaring its gills, I roll back my shoulders and look him in the eye. “I make excellent cinnamon buns.”

  He laughs. “I’m sure you do, but I don’t know—my mom’s are pretty spectacular. I think her recipe won some award.”

  “I use homemade brioche dough. Does your mom do that?” Rachel subtly elbows me in the side because, apparently, I sound like a competitive jerk.

  “I don’t know what she does. Maybe we should have a taste test sometime.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” I hustle over to the corner of the kitchen and grab the tray of cakes, my way of suggesting, Thank you for your time, but in case you hadn’t noticed, I am working my ass off; this conversation is over now.

  “So how long did it take you to pull all this together?” he asks as I dump the tray on the counter. I can see my attempts at subtlety have failed.

  “A while,” I say.

  He stares at me as I begin transferring the cakes to the dessert plates, carefully lifting each one with a wide metal spatula. I pause halfway through and look up at him.

  “I’m sorry—do you need something?”

  “Oh—no. Sorry. I just wanted to say hi. But I guess I’m in your way.”

  Rachel jumps in. “You’re not in our way. We’re—”

  “We’re plating dessert,” I say. “Now isn’t a great time.”

  His smile fades. “Oh. Gotcha. Sorry.”

  It is clear from his expression that, once again, my remarks came out bitchier than I’d intended, and now I feel guilty because … well, this guy is very good-looking. “I promise I’ll be a lot nicer in about thirty minutes,” I say. “When things calm down.”

  “Yeah, okay. That sounds good.” He walks toward the dining room and turns around halfway to the door, flashing a quick smile as he runs his fingers through his hair. “My name is Jacob, by the way.”

  I bite my lip to keep from smiling. “Jacob,” I say. “Reaser, right? I remember your name from the list. Nice to meet you.”

  He bows his head without saying anything, and then he turns around and joins the others in the dining room.

  Dessert is an even bigger hit than I expected, and when Rachel and I finally make it into the dining room from the kitchen, the guests welcome us with a boisterous round of applause.

  “Bravo,” says a blond woman at the end of the table. “I’d do this again in a heartbeat.”

  Rachel casts a sideways glance and smiles, and then she sneaks out of the dining room into Blake’s living room. She returns a minute later, clutching a bottle of Fonseca port in one hand and a bottle of Macallan scotch in the other.

  “Scotch or port, anyone?”

  Ten hands shoot up around the table, and Rachel pulls me into the kitchen to grab some glasses.

  “Where did you get the booze?” I ask.

  “Where do you think? Your landlord’s liquor cabinet.”

  “Have you lost your mind?”

  Rachel shoos me away with her hand. “It’ll be fine. We have plenty of time to replace it.”

  “I thought you were worried about the legality of all this.”

  Rachel shrugs. “Eh. I got over it.”

  We portion out the port and scotch and carry the glasses back into the dining room on a large silver tray. Rachel passes the glasses around to the guests, who are chatting and laughing like old friends, even though most of them never met before this evening. I catch a man and a woman in the corner swapping numbers, and in my mind I imagine they are setting up a future date, which will evolve into a romance that will lead to a fifty-year marriage, and one day they will look back and realize all of it started right he
re at my dining room table. Sorry, Blake’s dining room table. Blake’s.

  By midnight, the party winds down, and the guests start gathering their coats and purses and hats before saying their good-byes. Rachel stands by the door with a large, decorated hatbox, the receptacle for our forty-five-dollar fee—though Rachel emphasizes the guests can give as much or as little as they like. I reemphasize the “as much” part.

  The guests shuffle out the door one by one, each tossing a wad of bills into the hatbox. A lawyer in a pink-and-white-striped Oxford shirt drops fifty-five dollars into the box. “That stuffed cabbage was like Proust’s madeleine,” he says. “Reminded me of my grandmother’s—only better.”

  A trade analyst from New Zealand nods her head. “For me it was the honeycomb ice cream. We called it ‘hokey pokey’ back home, except with vanilla ice cream instead of honey. I would pay you to make that for me every week.”

  The praise continues, each person highlighting a favorite part of the experience, from the food to the relaxed atmosphere to the lack of pretense. Eleven guests pass through the front door, and finally Jacob makes his way through the foyer, sauntering toward me with his hands tucked into his jean pockets. He stops when he reaches the box and looks inside. He looks back up at me and grins.

  “Maybe if you leave them alone tonight, they’ll make lots of baby dollars,” he says. He tosses a hundred-dollar bill into the box. “That should help.”

  “Oh—no, Jacob, that’s way too much. Really. You don’t have to do that.”

  “I insist.”

  I grab the box from Rachel and shove it toward Jacob. “Seriously, take back some change. Forty, fifty, sixty—whatever you want.”

  He stares at me for a few seconds, curling his lips to the side in a mischievous grin. His eyes twinkle in the light from Blake’s foyer, and only now do I notice the flecks of sapphire in both of his irises and the tiny sesame-seed-shaped scar along his left temple. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a business card and drops it into the box. “Why don’t you bake me a batch of cinnamon buns sometime, and we’ll call it even.”

  Then he winks and walks out the door.

  CHAPTER

  fifteen

  I awake the next morning at the ripe hour of 11:00 A.M., at which point I realize I spent the night sleeping on my landlord’s leather couch, fully clothed in my jeans, T-shirt, and apron, minus one shoe. At the moment, an explanation for this behavior escapes me.

  Rachel and I spent two hours cleaning up last night, and I vaguely remember the involvement of Blake’s Fonseca port, which we drank in celebration of The Dupont Circle Supper Club’s success. Thanks to some generous tipping by our guests, we took in $750 last night, and after expenses, we cleared about $400. I suggested we split the $400 down the middle, but since I did most of the cooking, planning, and shopping, Rachel insisted we split the proceeds 75/25. As I recall, Rachel poured us each a generous glass of port after we tallied up the cash and then possibly poured another glass (or two?) after that, and at some point I ended up on this couch and decided to stay here.

  As I pull myself upright, I hear the muffled sound of my phone ringing from somewhere in the kitchen—where, exactly, I could not say. I scour every surface, every drawer and cabinet, but although I hear the low hum of the Knight Rider theme song, the source evades me. I eventually find it in the refrigerator, on top of a plate of chopped liver toasts.

  “Rach, hey, what’s up?” I say as I pull the leftover canapés from the refrigerator.

  “Are you near your computer?”

  “Not really. I’m still in my landlord’s house.” I nibble on one of the toasts. “Apparently I slept here.”

  “Oh. That’s weird.”

  “Really? I hadn’t realized.”

  Rachel clicks her tongue. “Always with the sarcasm. Anyway, when I woke up this morning, I checked the e-mail account I set up for The Dupont Circle Supper Club, and guess what? I had ten new e-mails asking about future dates and reservations.”

  “Already? Seriously?”

  “Yep. Word gets around. I guess one of our guests writes a local food blog, and she already posted a review: ‘The food managed to both comfort and surprise, with complex flavors, artful preparation, and beautiful plating.’ She threw in a few photos, too.”

  I yank the piece of toast from my mouth. “Photos?”

  “Of the food and stuff, yeah.”

  “Crap.”

  “Who cares? It’s good publicity.”

  “Not when we’ve used my landlord’s house without his permission. What if he sees the photos online and recognizes his house?”

  Rachel sighs into the phone. “You really think Long John Silver reads some obscure DC food blog?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Exactly,” she says. “We’re fine. How much longer is he away?”

  I lick a blob of date puree off my finger. “He gets back tomorrow morning. But he’s away again next weekend, and then again over Columbus Day. He’s on the town hall circuit thanks to the immigration debate.”

  “Perfect. We can hold another dinner in his house next weekend, and another one in October.”

  “In his house?”

  “It’s bigger and nicer than yours,” she says. “Smells better, too.”

  “That’s because mine flooded.”

  “My point exactly.”

  “Weren’t you the one warning me about trespassing and all that?”

  Another sigh. “Let’s just say it worked out better than I expected. I really don’t think it’s a problem.”

  “That’s probably because you’re not the one who would face eviction.”

  “You’re not going to get evicted,” she says. “Face it—you’re a hit. People are clamoring for a seat at your table. Why would you want to pass that up?”

  Of course I wouldn’t want to pass that up. Who would? Last night was like a dream, where I could finally immerse myself in the sort of career I’ve always wanted to pursue—running my own kitchen, letting my imagination run wild, satisfying a group of patrons I could call my own. I spent the night fearing I would wake up and realize none of it was real, that I’d been hit on the head, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, and all of these people were figments of my imagination. But it was real, and I want to relive the thrill of last night again and again, if only to prove to myself that I can.

  There is, however, the issue of my landlord’s house, the main issue being … it isn’t mine. To be fair, we cleaned his place from top to bottom and left it in even better condition than when we arrived. And, when you think about it, he invested so much time and money and effort into renovating his kitchen, it’s almost like we’re doing him a favor. If he isn’t around, someone should be using his kitchen. Letting a Viking range sit around like a piece of art? That doesn’t even make sense.

  Besides, now that I’ve actually hosted a supper club, I see Friday’s flood was a blessing in disguise. There’s no way I could have pulled off last night’s dinner in my tiny apartment. No way. And now that I know what’s involved in making The Dupont Circle Supper Club a success, I can’t imagine ever hosting one of these dinners in my apartment—which, no doubt, still smells like a bat cave.

  “Fine,” I say. “Let’s meet for coffee and discuss the details. If we’re really careful, we can probably make this work.”

  Rachel squeals into the phone. “Awesome. I’ll meet you at Kramerbooks in, what, an hour?”

  “Make it two,” I say. “First I need to hit CVS and deal with the mess in my apartment.”

  The line at CVS stretches down aisle three, and I am forced to wait as two clerks with no sense of urgency ring up one customer after the next. As I inch my way forward, I suddenly hear the whine of an unmistakable voice.

  “Ugh, could this line be any longer?”

  I whip my head around and see Millie standing right behind me. And standing next to her is Adam.

  His dark brown eyes spring open. “Hannah! Hi!”

&n
bsp; My stomach flip-flops. It’s been two months since Adam and I spoke. Two months since the breakup. I’ve tried not to think about him since then, but I haven’t been very successful. As much as I want to erase him from my memory, I can’t, and I find myself thinking about him at the oddest times, like when I roll over on my air mattress and find myself lying on a chilled strip of cotton, the side of the bed where he used to sleep. Some days the thought of him sneaks up on me when I walk by our old apartment, or when I hear a song by Maroon 5, a group Adam always pretended he didn’t like but would listen to at home all the time. Other days I think I hear his laugh or see his face, and when that happens I think about what I would say if I ran into him. But of all the scenarios I’ve run through in my head, none of them have adequately prepared me for seeing him in person—for being so close I could touch him. Seeing his face and hearing his voice knock the wind right out of me.

  Adam scratches his jaw with one hand as he awkwardly sticks the other into the pocket of his Diesel jeans; I could swear he had been touching the small of Millie’s back.

  “Hi,” I say, trying to seem as relaxed as possible. “What brings you all the way to Seventeenth Street?”

  This is a lame attempt at a joke. Neither of them lives far away. Adam’s apartment—my old apartment—is about three blocks from here.

  “We were having brunch in the neighborhood,” Millie says. “What about you?”

  “I live a block away.”

  Millie eyes my basket, which is filled with bleach, carpet cleaner, air freshener, and a pair of rubber gloves. “Growing pains in the new apartment?” she asks.

  “Something like that.”

  I look down at the items in Millie’s basket: antibacterial hand wipes, three protein bars, a jug of Listerine, and a box of condoms. Adam catches my glance and shifts his weight from one foot to the other.