The Girls' Guide to Love and Supper Clubs (13 page)

I glance over her shoulder at the screen. “But you said we only have one more spot available.”

“Exactly. We’re drumming up interest for supper club number two.”

I reach out and slam the laptop cover shut. “Why don’t we see how supper club number one goes before we commit to a number two? I may have burned the house down by then.”

Rachel rolls her eyes. “Whatever. So, let’s go over the menu again. Break it down for me. Tell me a story.”

“I’ll do you one better.” I reach beneath my stack of cookbooks and hand Rachel a sheet of paper.

Rachel drags her eyes down the sheet of paper, studying its contents:

Red and white wine/Manischewitz cocktails

Apple cider challah/homemade date honey

Potato and apple tart with horseradish cream

Old-Fashioned braised brisket with tomatoes and paprika

Tzimmes duo: Honeyed parsnips with currants and saffron,

sweet potatoes with dried pears and prunes

Stuffed cabbage

Mini Jewish apple cakes with honeycomb ice cream

“What’s the difference between ‘Jewish apple cake’ and regular apple cake?” Rachel asks.

I shrug. “Not sure. Maybe the fact that it’s made with oil instead of butter? I think it’s a regional thing. My grandmother used to make it all the time.”

Rachel nods and runs her finger down the menu one more time. “Mind if I hang on to this?”

“Go ahead.”

She jumps to her feet. “Cool. Might be useful for our future Web site.”

Leave it to Rachel to worry about a Web site. She always works ten steps ahead, planning the next supper club or the next vacation or the next ten years of her life. I’m hardly a carpe diem type of gal—my modus operandi tends to involve agonizing over my future with little follow-up action—but Rachel’s groundless optimism over the success and future of this supper club unnerves me.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” I say. “One secret dinner at a time.”

Rachel wraps her arm around my shoulder and walks with me to my front door. “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she says. “I know. But I have a good feeling about this.”

“I’m glad someone around here does.”

“Stop worrying. You’re a fabulous cook, and we’ve been planning like crazy, and there’s no way this dinner will be anything but a success.” She gives my shoulder a squeeze. “You, my dear, are going to be DC’s next big thing.”

I smile nervously and feel my stomach rumble because, if I’m being perfectly honest, I’m not ready to be “DC’s next big thing,” and I’m not sure I ever will be.

The day before the supper club, I rush into work full of energy. We’ve set the menu, we’ve bought all the ingredients, and we’ve cleaned my apartment from top to bottom. I plan to scoot out of work a few hours early to start prepping everything for tomorrow, but as far as I can tell, we’re right on schedule.

As soon as I get into the office, I swing by the top-floor conference room in search of free bagels and coffee, part of my daily routine since I moved to 1774 ½ Church Street. I’ve been on a tight budget, and with all the money I spent at the farmers’ market, I am officially in full-fledged cash preservation mode.

I grab a poppy seed bagel and pot of cream cheese and fill a paper cup with very dark, very strong coffee. For some reason, catering has decided we need to serve caffeinated jet fuel at NIRD conferences. I’m not sure what that says about the events we host, but it isn’t a ringing endorsement.

I quietly slip out of the conference room and head downstairs to my desk, where I see a large yellow Post-it note tacked onto my computer screen. It’s from Mark.

NEED EDITS ASAP!

Last week, Mark sent me a rough sketch of a paper on the future strength of the dollar and asked me to fill in the blanks. Suffice it to say, the paper had more blanks than a toy gun, so I’ve spent the past week frantically researching currency markets. Susan has been on his ass all week to submit this paper to the publishing department for her Economic Outlook series, one of our think tank’s flagship publications, which means he’s already on her shit list. I finished pulling together a decent draft yesterday, so all I need to do is give it a final polish before sending it off to Mark. From what he says, it will be one of his most important papers of the year.

I slather my bagel with cream cheese while I wait for my computer to boot up, but as I take a bite, my computer lets out a long, deep drone like a dying lawn mower. The droning gets louder, building in intensity, and then abruptly stops. The computer screen flickers and turns black.

I press the
POWER
button and nothing happens. I press it again and again, pressing it quickly, then holding it down for ten seconds at a time. Nothing happens. I press every key on my keyboard. Again, nothing. My stomach seizes, contorting violently from the potent mixture of coffee and anxiety.

I don’t know much about computers, but I know this does not bode well.

Poppy seeds fly everywhere as I drop the bagel on my desk and run to find Rachel. I scan her desk for a Starbucks Venti Latte, the telltale sign she is somewhere in the office. The latte isn’t there, and neither is she. Crap.

I scurry back to my desk and along the way encounter Millie typing furiously at her computer. I slow my pace. Was she there the whole time? And, more to the point, do I ask her for help? The thought nauseates me. But so does the thought of losing Mark’s paper. I take a deep breath and sidle up to Millie’s desk.

“Yes?” she says, her eyes fixed on her computer screen.

“My computer won’t start.”

“So call IT,” she says, banging away on her keyboard.

“Sean doesn’t get in until nine-thirty …” I pause. “I was wondering if you might be able to help.”

Millie stops typing and looks up at me. I realize how ridiculous my request sounds. Millie probably knows even less about computers than I do. And, as far as I know, she does not possess magical powers that will somehow restore my computer’s functionality.

“Help you?”

“I figured … maybe this has happened to you before. Maybe you’d know what to do.” I force a smile.

Millie clicks her mouse and looks back at her computer screen, smirking. “That’s never happened to me. And besides, I don’t see what I could do.”

I clench my jaw. “Millie, for once in your life, could you do something to help someone else?”

“What, like join the Peace Corps? Oh, wait. I already did that.”

Oh my god, I’m going to kill her. “Never mind,” I say. “I’m sure you couldn’t fix it anyway.”

Millie snaps her head around. A challenge. “Or maybe I could,” she says. “Let’s have a look, shall we?” She lifts herself from her desk. “By the way, you have poppy seeds in your teeth.”

The two of us walk over to my desk, and Millie presses the
POWER
button.

“I already tried that,” I say. “For some reason it won’t turn on, no matter what I do.”

Undeterred, she presses a few more buttons on the computer tower and keyboard, grimacing as she observes the mess of papers and poppy seeds on my desk. Nothing happens.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with this thing,” she says. “You’ll have to call Sean and have him fix it.” I let out a frustrated sigh. “What, is there something you need on there right away?”

“Mark’s paper,” I say as I bury my head in my hands. “The one for Susan.”

“You backed it up somewhere, right?” I stare at her blankly. “Right? You must have saved the paper on a flash drive or the server or something. You wouldn’t forget to back up all your work.”

“Well, actually …” I trail off.

Millie’s eyes widen. “How could you
not
back up your work? Haven’t you seen the
Sex and the City
where Carrie forgets to back up her computer? That was, like, a
decade
ago!” Her voice echoes down the hallway.

“Shhh,” I say, motioning with my hand to keep her voice down. “Yes, I’ve seen that episode. I’ll … I’ll figure something out. We still have a week.”

“Yeah, but Susan wants that paper
now
. Yesterday, actually. How am I supposed to do my job if you won’t do yours?” Millie sighs and stomps off, her mop of curls bouncing off her shoulders.

Fantastic.

I press the
POWER
button on my computer one last time. Nothing. I look at the clock: 9:29. I pick up the phone and dial Sean’s extension, hoping he has arrived. He has not. Why am I surprised? Sean never shows up on time and consistently lacks a sense of urgency. Part of me thinks he enjoys the control. We’re all at the mercy of the IT guy.

I leave Sean a frantic voice mail and run upstairs to scout the ninth and tenth floors, hoping to find someone—anyone—who can help me. But the only people I encounter are the ones even more technologically incompetent than I am.

I run back downstairs. “Please, please, please,” I mutter to myself. “Please let Sean be there.”

But, of course, he is not. Why is this happening? Maybe it’s a sign. Maybe the universe is telling me I never should have taken this job to begin with, and this is my punishment for doing so. Or maybe it’s a sign that this supper club is a terrible idea, and I should cancel the whole thing. What was I thinking, trying to juggle my work with an underground supper club? I’m not Rachel. I can’t shift seamlessly between two demanding ventures. I let out a whimper and collapse into my chair.

“What seems to be the problem?” I whip my head around. It’s Mark. And, once again, he isn’t wearing any socks or shoes.

“My computer—it died. Or at least I can’t turn it on.”

“Did you call Sean?”

“Yes,” I say. “He’s not in yet.”

“Hmm. Let me take a quick look.”

At the moment, I’m willing to believe almost anything if it means my computer will start working again. The existence of unicorns or vampires, for example. But believing Mark possesses the competence to fix my computer? That’s a bridge too far. He can’t even create his own PowerPoint slides.

“Oh, Mark, you don’t have to …” He starts banging at my computer tower and keyboard, his arms flailing as he randomly pushes buttons. He looks as if he has cerebral palsy. If anything, he is making things worse.

“Hmm,” he says, “I’m not sure what the—”

“Maybe we should wait for Sean,” I say. He kicks my computer tower with his bare foot. Oh, god. Someone make him stop.

As Mark kicks my computer, I see Sean at the end of the hall-way, meandering slowly toward my desk in his blue-and-white paisley shirt and dark-wash jeans.

“Sean!” I run to meet him halfway down the hall. “Oh, thank god. I have major computer problems. I need your help.”

“Dude, what is Mark doing over there?” I look up to see Mark lifting my computer screen over his head, like Moses at Mount Sinai.

“Who the hell knows. Please … help me.”

Sean walks to my desk and pushes Mark out of the way. Like Mark, Millie, and I, he presses the
POWER
button and nothing happens. Does he think we haven’t tried that? Do we look like idiots? I look up at Mark, who is wringing his hands and has broken into a sweat. Okay, never mind. The
POWER
button is fair game.

Sean tries a few more combinations of buttons, but nothing works. He scrunches up his face and sighs.

“There’s a problem with your hard drive,” he says. “I’ll need to send out for a replacement.”

“A replacement?” I ask in horror. “But … what about all the stuff I saved on there?”

“You mean you didn’t back it up?” Mark and Sean ask in unison. Apparently I am the big asshole who, in the twenty-first century, forgets to back up her work.

“I backed up … most stuff. But not everything.” Mark doesn’t need to know the truth. Not yet. I still have time to fix this.

“There are ways to retrieve the data, but it could take a while,” Sean says.

“A while as in …?” Please say a few days. Please say a few days.

“A couple of weeks, at least,” Sean says. “In the meantime, I can hook you up with a spare computer so you can get online and stuff.”

“Good, because I’m going to need that paper by noon,” Mark says, turning to face me. “Oh, and I also need you to type up a summary of the latest IMF reports on Greece, Latvia, and Spain before you leave as well. I’d like that by five, please.”

That gives me two hours to rewrite a fifteen-page paper on currency markets, and then five hours to read and summarize three IMF reports. No way. No way I can make that happen. And now, it has become abundantly clear, there is also no way I can leave early to start working on the supper club. Which means all of my carefully constructed plans are about to fall apart.

I grab my keys and rush over to Rachel’s desk. Her eyes widen as she spots me charging down the hall.

“Whoa, slow down, lady,” she says, leaning back in her chair. “What’s going on?”

I slam my keys on her desk. “Can you sneak out early today?”

“I guess? I don’t know. Why?”