The Girls' Guide to Love and Supper Clubs

by Dana Bate

  “What do you think of the view?” he asks. He points over my shoulder toward the window, and I turn around to see the Washington Monument looming so close I swear I could touch it.

  “Wow. I mean, wow.” I jump up from my seat, and Jacob trails behind me as I walk over to the window, from which I can see the monument, the Treasury Building, and the East Wing of the White House. I can even see the snipers on the White House roof. “This is insane. I could spy on the treasury secretary from here. Or the president.”

  “Pretty cool, right?” He rests his hand on my shoulder. “What can I get you to drink?”

  I turn around quickly to shake his hand off me because touching, I don’t know what to do with touching yet. “Um, not sure. Let me look at the cocktail menu.”

  We head back to our big red couch, and I scan the menu of overpriced cocktails and choose one involving elderflower liqueur. At fifteen dollars a pop, it’s a good thing he’s buying. Jacob flags the waitress and orders, and soon she returns with thirty dollars’ worth of alcohol, which apparently includes fancy glasses and custom-crafted ice cubes, specially shaped and designed for each cocktail on the menu. Jacob’s ice is fashioned into large cubes, whereas mine is shaped into small spheres.

  “Cheers,” Jacob says as he clinks his glass against mine.

  “Thanks for the drink,” I say as I take a sip. “Do you come here a lot?”

  He shakes his head. “Not really. I’ve been here once, I guess. Maybe twice.”

  “I figured you for more of a U Street guy. Or Columbia Heights. Not so much the downtown scene.”

  “What, I don’t look like a connoisseur of the power lunch?”

  “Not really. No offense.”

  He smiles, his pearlescent teeth shining in the glow from the bar across the room. “None taken. And you’re right. This isn’t my usual scene. But it’s more private here. We can actually talk, instead of being shoved into a corner and having to shout over a crowd.”

  Jacob and I plow through the first-date basics: where he went to college and when he graduated (Tufts, three years ahead of me), where he grew up (Ohio), how long he’s been in DC (three months) and where he lived before this (Brooklyn then Boston). He worked for the Village Voice and then the Boston Globe, but after the Globe went through some “restructuring,” he lost his job. He eventually got an offer from Reason magazine and jumped at it, even though he didn’t want to move to DC. Apparently these days journalists can’t afford to be picky.

  I tell Jacob about my job and my interest in food, and though I catch his eyes wandering every now and again and can’t always tell if he’s actually listening, he keeps finding an excuse to brush up against my leg or touch my arm, so I must not be boring him too much.

  Jacob knocks back the rest of his drink and flags the waitress for another round. How he can afford sixty dollars’ worth of drinks on a journalist’s salary is beyond me.

  “So who was that guy standing with you at CVS a few weeks back?” he asks. “Adam or something?”

  I take a long, slow gulp of my drink as I nod my head. Do we have to talk about Adam? Really?

  “Yep, Adam, that’s right,” I say as I put my empty glass on the table. “My ex-boyfriend.”

  Jacob nods knowingly. “Ah, I thought the vibe was a little off. Got it. Was this a recent thing?”

  “We broke up two and a half months ago. So yeah, pretty recent.”

  “Well he’s the one who lost out,” Jacob says, grabbing his fresh cocktail off the table.

  “It’s never black and white.” I roll the ice cubes around in my glass. “Relationships are complicated.”

  Jacob follows his drink with his eyes as he brings it to his lips. “Tell me about it …”

  “Were you dating someone in Boston?”

  “Something like that,” he says. “It was a long time ago, actually.”

  “Then you know how messy it can get.”

  “That I do.” He stares into the bottom of his glass. “Anyway, enough talk about ex-boyfriends and girlfriends. Kind of a downer.”

  “Agreed.”

  Jacob scans the room and pauses as he lays eyes on someone or something at the bar. I follow his stare, but with all of the up-lighting and down-lighting, I can’t make out who or what he is looking at. “Sorry,” he says. “I can’t get over that bar. The lighting is cool, right?”

  “Very.”

  He lays his hand on my knee. “Want to go outside and check out the view from the roof deck?”

  “Sure,” I say.

  He grabs his drink and his jacket, and we walk outside together and spend the rest of the night chatting and drinking in the glow of the U.S. Treasury.

  “No,” I say, swatting Jacob’s hand away from his back pocket. “I’ve got this. You paid for the drinks.”

  “Are you sure?”

  An eight-dollar cab ride versus sixty dollars in drinks? “Yeah, I’m sure.”

  I pay the cabdriver and stumble out of the cab onto Seventeenth Street. Jacob grabs my elbow to keep me from falling to the ground. “Easy, girl.”

  I’m still a little tipsy from my fancy elderflower drinks, and whereas earlier I would have rebuffed Jacob’s advances, I now welcome them, the way he holds me up and presses his fingers into my arm. His fingers are slender but strong, like a rock climber’s, and suddenly I want nothing more than to be touched by them, to have them run along my lips and shoulders and the inside of my thigh. I lean into him, rubbing my arm against his as we walk down Church Street.

  I slow my step as we reach the front of Blake’s house. “This is me.”

  “Let me walk you to your door,” he says, rubbing my shoulder.

  Jacob begins walking up Blake’s front steps, but I grab his arm before he reaches the top. “Wait.”

  I contemplate making up some elaborate story as to why we need to enter the house through the basement, but I decide there’s no point. I don’t know where we’re headed, Jacob and I, and I would hate to start a relationship on a lie. And as I’ve established over the past few months, my lies lack both plausibility and common sense.

  “I actually live in the basement,” I say.

  “The basement? My memory is a little fuzzy these days, but I’m pretty sure I ate dinner upstairs about a week and a half ago.”

  “You did.” Jacob rumples his eyebrows together beneath his side-swept bangs. “I borrowed my landlord’s house for the supper club.”

  “Borrowed?”

  “Yes, borrowed.” I look into Jacob’s eyes, hoping this explanation will be enough, praying he doesn’t ask me to what extent my landlord was complicit in this “borrowing.”

  Jacob shrugs. “Okay. Then let me walk you to the basement.”

  Jacob wraps his arm around me and walks me down the steps, and when I get to the bottom, he grabs me by the waist and presses me into the door and kisses me. His mouth tastes like whiskey, and he kisses with intensity and desire, his hands running along my hips and up my back. I feel myself begin to sweat beneath my jacket.

  “Maybe we should take this inside?” he whispers into my ear.

  My initial instinct is to say yes, yes, yes, but then I realize taking things inside will involve making out on my Aerobed, the mechanics of which are far beyond anything I can probably handle.

  I pull away and bite my bottom lip. “I’m not sure that’s the best idea.”

  “What? It’s a great idea,” he says, nibbling at my neck. “A genius idea. The best I’ve had all week.”

  “Right. Except my apartment isn’t exactly … set up for that sort of thing.”

  “You’d rather stay out here?”

  “Well, no, but …”

  “Because that might be kind of kinky. Getting it on in a basement entryway.”

  It might, if I weren’t Hannah Sugarman, the least kinky, most uptight girl in all the land.

  “That’s not what I was thinking …,” I say.

  “Listen, what if I took sex off the table? I just want to
hang out with you a little longer. No strings attached.”

  The intensity in Jacob’s ice blue eyes renders me weak and helpless, as if Jacob’s will has somehow swallowed me whole. And so, despite my misgivings and against my better judgment, I unlock the door and let him inside.

  CHAPTER

  twenty-one

  “Okay, out with it.”

  Rachel holds out a Tall Starbucks coffee and parks herself on the edge of my desk. I grab the coffee from her hands and take a sip and can already feel the caffeine starting to pump through my veins. After last night, I need it.

  “Thanks,” I say, smacking my lips.

  “Blah, blah, blah. You’re welcome. Now tell me about last night. Did you have fun?”

  “I did. He took me to POV, and then we hung out at my place for a while.”

  “Hung out?” Rachel pinches my chin between her thumb and index finger and examines my face. “You look tired. Your undereye circles are bigger than normal. And … is that a hickey on your neck?”

  I smack her hand away. “No. Okay, maybe.”

  “What are you, twelve?”

  I didn’t even kiss a boy until I was sixteen, so this question confuses me. “You were getting hickeys when you were twelve?”

  “Yeah, so?” Rachel shakes her head and sighs. “Anyway, what happened? Did you have sex with him?”

  “No!”

  “Thou doth protest too much …”

  “No, seriously, Rachel. We didn’t have sex. Honest.”

  This is true. Jacob and I did not have sex. What is also true is that the not having sex was more Clintonian in nature than something that might please the pope. I didn’t intend for events to go in that direction, but Jacob was a superlative kisser—smooth, passionate, strong—and under the influence of two strong cocktails, I couldn’t help but surrender.

  “You obviously fooled around at least a little bit.” Rachel points to the spot my upturned collar is now covering. “That thing didn’t come from nowhere.”

  “We messed around for a few hours. No big deal.”

  “On your air mattress?” She laughs as I nod my head. “How’d that work out?”

  “Not as bad as I thought. A little wobbly, but nothing I couldn’t handle.” I take another sip of my coffee and shrug. “I don’t know, Rach. I like this guy.”

  Rachel rests her coffee cup on my desk and rubs her hands together. “How do you feel about a little Facebook stalking?”

  “I’m not going to stalk him.”

  “Come on. A little stalking never hurt anyone.”

  Under pressure from Rachel, I pull up Jacob’s Facebook page. His profile picture is a black-and-white photo of him sitting pensively in front of his laptop as he scratches his chin. Other than that, there isn’t much to see. All of his information is private.

  “I’m not adding him as a friend,” I say. “It’s too soon.”

  “No it’s not. You’ve made out on an air mattress. It’s not too soon.”

  I let out a huff. “Am I to assume you ‘friend’ each of your many suitors?”

  She blushes. “Not all of them. The ones with potential.”

  “Potential for what? More than two dates?”

  “Hey, that’s not fair.”

  I sigh and lean back in my chair. “Sorry.”

  “That’s okay.” She fidgets with the chunky gray beads on her necklace. “Actually, I’ve been meaning to talk to you …”

  “Do you really think I should add him?”

  Rachel stares at me, her expression unexpectedly serious, and then she nods her head and smiles. “Yes. I think you should add him.”

  I look back at my computer screen and hover my mouse over the words ADD FRIEND on Jacob’s profile. “Okay, fine. I will. But I still think this could be a big mistake.”

  Rachel glances over her shoulder as I click the button. “I should get back to work,” she says, her voice soft and a little distant.

  I meet her eyes and scrunch my eyebrows together. “You okay?”

  She opens her mouth to say something, but as she does, she spots her boss, Ruth, heading down the hallway in our direction.

  “Never mind,” she says. “I’ll talk to you later.”

  Then she spins around and heads back to her desk without saying anything more.

  Five minutes later Mark comes barreling into the office, zigzagging through the labyrinth of bookshelves at high speed with his wheely briefcase. As long as I have worked here, Mark has used this suitcaselike apparatus to haul his scholarly belongings, never once having thought that in addition to the rumpled blazer, tortoiseshell glasses, and occasional bow tie, perhaps a briefcase on wheels would be overkill.

  “Good morning, Hannah!” he says as he approaches my desk. Someone’s in a good mood this morning.

  “Good morning, Mark.”

  “I had a bit of a breakthrough last night.”

  “Oh …?” This is never good. The last time Mark had a breakthrough, I needed to read through fifty pages of footnotes in search of an obscure Swedish research paper.

  “Yes. I am going to e-mail you some links, and I want to see what you can do with them.”

  “What project would these links pertain to?”

  He yanks off his glasses and massages the bridge of his nose. “My research paper on IMF intervention?”

  Mark speaks as if this is obvious—as if an IMF research paper is the only thing he could possibly be referring to.

  “Okay. Send me the links and I’ll have a look.”

  “Great.”

  “Oh, and Mark,” I say, stopping him as he wheels his briefcase into his office. “CNBC called and wants to interview you this afternoon. You don’t have anything on your calendar, but I wanted to see what you think, since you have a lot on your plate right now.”

  “What do they want to discuss?”

  “Something about the Treasury’s currency report that came out today? The producer I spoke with mentioned ‘the dollar,’ so I thought you might be interested. They’ll send a car.”

  Mark holds his chin in his hand. “Okay, fine, but I haven’t read the report, so you’ll have to print it out for me, along with any related articles. I won’t have time to read it until I’m heading to the studio. What time is the interview?”

  “They’re aiming for a live shot at three-thirty.”

  “All right, set it up,” he says. “Good thing I wore a clean tie today.”

  Before he turns around, I take a look at his tie. It’s navy with a bright green pattern that, upon further inspection, involves a series of economic equations using the Greek letters ∑ and ∏ and Δ.

  The man is nothing if not consistent.

  A half hour before the car is supposed to come for Mark, I print out the currency report, along with articles from the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Times, and Financial Times. I even print out a Google-translated version of a piece in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung to add a little international perspective. I’m still using the temporary computer Sean gave me two weeks ago, though he assures me I’ll have my computer back and in working form by Monday. I’m not holding my breath.

  The printer next to my desk whines like a wounded cat, cranking out page after page of text, reminding me that I sit in the absolute armpit of the Economic Policy department. While I wait for the documents to finish printing, I check my e-mail no fewer than six times to see if Jacob has accepted my friend request on Facebook. He hasn’t.

  Instead of continuing to obsess over Jacob and the status of our social networking relationship, I decide to click on my Google Reader to see if any of my favorite food blogs have updated over the past two hours.

  Jackpot.

  I find ten new recipes I want to try and print all of them out: pistachio cake, meatball lasagna, salted caramel popcorn, caramel mousse, deep-fried potato croquettes, and on and on. If I am honest with myself, there is no way I will end up making all of these dishes, but I keep printing anyway. At the
very least, the recipes will provide inspiration for our next supper club.

  I grab my dedicated recipe folder off my desk and pull out a fresh folder for Mark from the supply cupboard. I hustle over to the printer and stick the recipes in my folder and the Treasury articles in Mark’s, and when I return to my desk I place the folders next to my computer and see Jacob still hasn’t accepted my friend request. Which shouldn’t bother me, because I vowed not to let myself get swept away by this. But it does bother me. And that, in turn, bothers me more.

  To put Jacob and his twinkly blue eyes out of my mind, I turn to the Food & Wine Web site to peruse the latest recipes. But before I manage to read even one entry, Mark comes flying out of his office, carrying his wheely briefcase by the handle.

  “The CNBC car is here! Where is the currency report?”

  “Oh!” I jump up from my desk. “I—they’re early.”

  “Yes, Hannah, I know they’re early!”

  “I was just—”

  “Where is the report?”

  “It’s—”

  “The report, Hannah!”

  “Here!” I throw Mark’s folder at him, and he shoves it into his briefcase, extends the briefcase handle in one swift motion, drops the wheels to the floor, and flies down the hall.

  My chest heaves as I grip the edge of my desk and try to catch my breath. I can feel my heart pounding in my chest, racing wildly in the wake of Mark’s panicky fit, and I fear I am moments away from undergoing a major cardiac episode—all of which raises the question, how is this my life?

  Between reading about food for half an hour and burning a thousand calories out of sheer stress, I’m starving. Mark won’t be on air for another forty minutes, so I grab my wallet and head to Fire-hook Bakery for a quick snack before the interview, figuring I’ll be ten minutes, tops.

  At least that’s what I think before I see the line. A hungry and impatient queue snakes around the store, and there is one borderline comatose woman working behind the counter. I rock back and forth on my kitten heels, debating whether or not I should forget it and go back to the office.