The Girls' Guide to Love and Supper Clubs (28 page)

Jacob and I work our way through the security line in the vast marble lobby, and as soon as the guard inspects my bag, I spot an old powder blue “Detroit Jewel” stove top in one of the artifacts cases to the right.

“Check it out,” I say, running over to check out why a big blue oven is on display at one of the nation’s preeminent museums.

“Uh-huh,” Jacob says, grinning. “I knew you’d like this. And now you have an idea why I brought you here.”

I wrinkle my eyebrows together. “To look at old cooktops?”

“Exactly. Come on.”

He pulls me into the West Wing, toward the exhibit for Science in American Life, when I suddenly see what he’s talking about.

“Julia Child’s kitchen!”

“Ding, ding, ding!” Jacob laughs. “As Washington’s supper club doyenne, I thought you’d appreciate this.”

We wind our way into the curved alcove housing Julia Child’s kitchen and collection of utensils, the entire kitchen preserved as it appeared in her Cambridge, Massachusetts, home: the blue cupboards, the Peg-Board walls, the central table, now covered by a laminated tablecloth. Along the walls of the exhibit bay, the curators have hung collections of her pots and pans and cooking utensils, everything from her copper saucepans to her meat ten-derizer.

“Don’t tell me you actually know what all this stuff is,” Jacob says, pointing to a pair of poultry shears.

“Of course I do. Most of it, anyway.”

“Okay, then what’s that?” He points to a tapered knife with a funny jagged underbelly.

“Shrimp knife,” I say.

“And what about that?”

“Cherry pitter.”

“And that?” He points to a strange clamp that looks like medical forceps.

“I …” I glance at the explanatory key next to the objects. “A lamb bone holder? Okay, in all fairness, I’ve never seen that one before.”

“Ha! Well at least there’s something you don’t know.”

“Oh, there’s plenty more where that came from. Trust me.”

“I hope so. Otherwise you’re like freaking superwoman. She cooks! She bakes! She writes about quantitative easing and currency valuation! You put me to shame, girl.”

He grabs my hand and pulls me out of the exhibit to the escalator, and as he does, I feel as if I’m flying. No one has ever spoken about me that way. No one has ever called me superwoman. Even in our early days of dating, Adam wasn’t nearly as impressed by my cooking abilities. That’s probably because he was an asshole.

As we land on the second floor of the museum, I see a huge sign for the First Ladies exhibit, which features gowns, accessories, and household trinkets of the nation’s First Ladies.

“Ah, what could have been,” I say, sighing as I gaze at the placard.

“You wanted to be a First Lady?”

I shake my head. “No. But my ex-boyfriend wants to be president someday, I think. I wasn’t exactly the First Lady type.”

“Let’s see about that, shall we?”

We enter the exhibit, and I immediately stumble upon Helen Taft’s inaugural ball gown from 1909, the white silk chiffon glittering with rhinestones and beads and metallic thread. I remember coming across this dress on my first visit with my parents twenty years ago. I gazed at the dress and told my mom I wanted to be a First Lady so that I could wear a dress like that someday. My mom then proceeded to give me a five-minute lecture on how the institution of the First Lady was sexist and dated and how I should want to be the next
president
instead. And so began my years of occupational dysfunction.

We meander through the exhibit until we end up in the room with the inaugural gowns and corresponding archival photos. The first dress I see is the sleeveless off-white dress Jacqueline Kennedy wore to the inaugural ball in 1961, the silk chiffon top encrusted with sparkly stones and glittery thread. Next to the dress is a photo of her walking arm in arm with JFK as they leave the White House, both looking radiant and classy, like two Hollywood stars.

“You don’t think you could’ve handled that role?” Jacob asks, pointing at the photo.

“Poise and grace aren’t exactly my thing.”

“You were totally gracious at the dinner I went to. And anyway, poise and grace are overrated. I’ll take sexiness over poise any day.”

“Jackie Kennedy was incredibly sexy,” I say, nodding toward her photo.

He wraps his arm around my waist and gently squeezes my side. “Not as sexy as some people I know …”

I pull away slightly and gently nudge him with my elbow. “Well, well, well. Don’t you know all the right things to say, Mr. Smooth Talker?”

Jacob pokes me in the side with his finger and flashes a wry smile. “How did you manage to turn a compliment around and make me look like a bad guy? You really are superwoman.”

“I guess I am.”

He laughs and pushes me along by the small of my back. “Come on, then, superwoman,” he says. “Time to fuel your superpowers. Let’s grab something to eat.”

Jacob and I manage to snag a bar seat at Central, the local bistro run by renowned chef Michel Richard, and given our early six o’clock arrival, there are only about six other people at the bar. We each order a burger and fries, and as we wash the juicy burgers down with a hearty zinfandel, we talk about his career—how he started writing for newspapers in high school and how he hopes to launch his own digital news outlet someday. He tells me about the band he toured and played with in college and his thoughts on the current music scene. When I try to get more personal, asking about his family and his past relationships, he clams up, and I notice he keeps things a little close to the vest, not wanting to open up or expose too much. But the more he talks, the more I want to know about him and the more willing I am to wait until he’s ready to tell me everything.

“So what about you?” he asks. “What’s your game plan?”

“In terms of …?”

“Life. Career. Yada yada.”

I shrug. “Not exactly sure. I’m waiting to see what happens with this supper club. If it continues along this trajectory, I might give the cooking thing a try for real.”

“You’d quit your job?”

“With any luck, yeah.”

He presses his eyebrows together. “Why would you do that?”

“So I could cook full-time.”

“Can’t you do both? I mean the supper club is awesome, but so is working for someone like Mark Henderson.”

I feel the burger churning in my stomach. Why does everyone think my work is so great? My parents, Adam, Jacob—they all value my career a thousand times more than I ever have. Maybe I’m missing something. If this many people support what I do, maybe I’m the one who has it all wrong.

“We’ll see,” I say. I fiddle with my napkin. “I signed up for the GREs. I’m taking them in three weeks.”

“Right on. See, I thought you had a game plan. You can be the chef-scholar-baker-economist. It’ll be awesome.”

I force a smile as Jacob signals for the check. I wish the idea sounded half as awesome to me as it does to him.

Jacob pays the bill, and we wander back toward the Federal Triangle Metro stop, strolling beneath the arches and lanterns, which now light the dusky walkway of the EPA building. When we turn around a bend, Jacob pulls me by the arm and ducks behind a hidden archway and presses me against a cool, limestone column. He runs his hand down the front of my cardigan and brings his face close to mine.

“Hey there, superwoman,” he says. He kisses me, softly at first, then more forcefully, pushing against me with desire as he moves his lips down my neck. When he pulls away briefly, his eyes glittering in the light of the lanterns, he smiles in a way that turns me into a puddle of goo.

“There are a dozen fresh cinnamon buns waiting back at my apartment,” I say.

He grins. “There’s only one set of buns I’m interested in tonight.”

I start shaking with laughter, unsure how to respond to a comment that is both totally sincere and totally cheesy. Truthfully, the buns I’m interested in tonight don’t involve cinnamon either.

Jacob plants another kiss on my lips and then grabs my elbow and pulls me toward the escalator.

“Come on,” he says, nibbling at my ear as we approach the escalator steps. “Let’s give that air mattress another try.”

I am not the kind of girl who sleeps with men on the first date. I’m not even the type of girl who sleeps with men on the second date. But since I met Jacob at the first Dupont Circle Supper Club, the museum night is almost like our third date, and so sleeping with him isn’t so bad. At least that’s what I tell myself.

When we return to my apartment, Jacob and I have sex twice on my Aerobed—sweaty, aggressive sex, the kind Adam and I used to have after having a big fight or after he spoke on the phone to his parents. Jacob kisses my shoulders and rubs my thighs and whispers in my ear that I am hot and sexy and wild. I’m tempted to inform him that, deep down, I’m not any of those things, but if I learned anything from my past relationship, it’s that showing my hand too soon will ruin everything. And so I pretend I am hot and sexy and wild, or at least as wild as my self-conscious, uptight personality will allow.

Around 4:00
A.M.,
Jacob rouses me awake with a kiss on my shoulder. “Hey,” he whispers. “I’m going to head out.”

I glance at my alarm clock. “It’s four in the morning. You really have to go now?”

He nuzzles me with his chin. “Busy day ahead of me. I have to file a story for Monday.”

“Oh. Okay.”

He kisses my shoulder again and then looks into my eyes, which crinkle at the edges as he smiles. “I’ll call you next week, okay?”

I smile back. “Okay.”

“I had a great time tonight,” he says, grabbing for his clothes.

“Me, too.”

He smirks. “Sounded that way.” I throw his boxers in his face, and he laughs. “I’ll talk to you soon, superwoman,” he says.

Then he throws on his clothes, runs his fingers through his hair, and gives me one last kiss before he heads out the door.

Jacob does not call all week. Correction: Jacob does not call for two weeks. I consider sending him a text or calling him instead, but he specifically said he would call me, so I don’t. I tell myself I am taking the high road. Consequently, I have no contact with Jacob for two full weeks and am plagued by feelings of self-doubt and insecurity. Apparently the high road is for losers.

I hate that he hasn’t called me. What I hate even more is how much I care—how much I want him to call me and kiss me and shower me with displays of affection. After dating Adam, I feel as if I’ve opened some sort of Pandora’s box. I’m Relationship Sensitized, and now when a man so much as buys me dinner I’m ready to hop into bed with him and make him my boyfriend. This is why I never dated anyone seriously before Adam. I was protecting myself. But now I’m ruined, and so instead of spending the past two weeks finding a better location for our next supper club or studying for the GREs, I’ve spent nearly every waking hour obsessing over Jacob and why he hasn’t called me. Well, that and helping Blake with his stupid costume party.

The Friday before Halloween, my phone rings as I flick through some documents for Mark, and I quickly grab the phone before the call goes to voice mail. Much to my dismay, it isn’t Jacob. It’s Blake.

“Hey—what are you up to right now?” he asks.

“Immersing myself in the life and times of Nelson Aldrich,” I say, leafing through a stack of papers festooned with neon yellow Post-its.

“Who?”

“Republican Senator in the early 1900s. He wrote up a plan that became the basis for the Federal Reserve Act.”

“Wow, that sounds …”

“Mind numbing?”

“I was going to say specific.”

“Yeah, that, too.” I stop flipping through my papers and click the cap back on my highlighter. “So what’s up? Why are you calling me at work?”

“I was wondering if you could get out of work early today. Maybe leave after lunch or something?”

“Not sure. Why?”

“I need some help picking up stuff for the party.”

Here we go again. I’ve spent all week getting ready for his Halloween party—making blood orange sorbet, baking and freezing dozens and dozens of cupcakes—and yet Blake continues to interrupt my flow by coming to me with his inane requests. Tuesday he wanted to discuss serving pieces and paper goods, a conversation that should have taken fifteen minutes, tops, but that Blake managed to stretch out to a full hour. Wednesday night he asked me to come along to pick up a bunch of cases of wine and beer and hard liquor, which involved mainly moral support on my part, since I neither own a car nor possess the strength to carry cases of booze more than a few feet. All I did was sit in Blake’s passenger seat and talk to him for a while. Then yesterday, he asked me to help him hang decorations, an activity I actually enjoyed, but one that, again, Blake managed to draw out for an extensive period of time. All of this togetherness would be only mildly annoying if Blake weren’t Enemy Number 1 of The Dupont Circle Supper Club. By spending time with him, I am forced to continue lying to his face.

“Yeah … I don’t know, Blake. My boss needs me to get going on this book research.”