The Girls' Guide to Love and Supper Clubs (6 page)

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 that 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?

“No answer? That’s a first,” she says. She surveys the crowd, half of whom have started dancing again. The rest are either talking or swaying drunkenly from side to side. “Way to ruin everyone’s good time, Hannah.”

“I—I didn’t ruin anything. Everyone is having a great time.” Under the spell of far too many glasses of wine, my lips feel fat and numb, providing a substantial challenge to my attempts at proper diction, and so what I say sounds more like “Ereewon is-saaaving a graytime.”

But everyone
is
having a great time, aren’t they? Everyone except me. I scan the room and spot Sarah a few feet away, rocking back and forth to the music as she grabs a snack off the table. “Look at Sarah getting her groove on,” I shout in Sarah’s direction. “You’re still having a good time, aren’t you, Sarah?”

Sarah looks up from the table and frowns. “My name is Danielle,” she says.

“Oh. Sorry.”

Fantastic.

I look for Adam’s face in the crowd, but I cannot find him anywhere, and so my only option is to retreat gracefully into the bathroom.

Or not so gracefully. Millie’s floor tilts from side to side like the deck of a ship, a circumstance under which grace eludes me. I stagger drunkenly toward the bathroom and slam the door shut behind me, but when I try to fasten the lock, my hands won’t let me. They’re slippery with sweat and tremble uncontrollably. What have I done? Reassuring Adam was my only goal for the evening, and I’ve already blown it.

I reach for Millie’s medicine cabinet, in search of Tums or Maalox to quell the fire burning in my stomach, and catch a glimpse of myself in her mirror. My hair is wet and dark along my hairline, with tiny wisps stuck to my forehead. Red blotches cover my face, and my mascara and eyeliner have leached from my lids and settled along my lower eye sockets, resembling small patches of bicycle grease. I look—and feel—as if I’ve been punched in the face.

Millie’s cabinet is organized alphabetically and by function, and in the antacids section, I have my choice of Gas-X (G), Maalox (M), Rolaids (R), or Tums (T), in various strengths and flavors. I pop four lemon cream Extra Strength Maalox in my mouth, wipe the makeup from under my eyes, and splash some cold water on my face. I close my eyes, take two deep breaths, and put my hand on the door handle, hoping that when I open it I will be transported like Dorothy in
The Wizard of Oz
to a magical, happy place. Everyone will smile when I return, welcoming me like the Lollipop Guild with smiles and treats.

But we are not in Oz, and so instead I am forced to push my way through the crowd, withstanding the occasional raised eyebrow, while everyone bumps and grinds to the music blasting through Millie’s speakers. When I get to the other side of the room, I find Millie and Adam talking in the corner, next to the cup of masticated beef.

As I approach, Millie narrows her dark brown eyes into tiny slits, anger oozing from every pore. Even her hair looks angry, as if a steamy inner rage is unraveling each coil into a frizzled mass.

“What do you want?” she asks.

What I want is for her to disappear—to evaporate into thin air—but since that isn’t going to happen, and since I’m stuck at this damn party, I might as well smooth things over until Adam and I can leave.

“I …” I take a deep breath and force the words to come out. “I’m … sorry.”

My gaze shifts between Millie and Adam, but Adam stares into the distance, his almond-shaped eyes focused on the dancing crowd. He tucks his hands into his pockets, the sleeves of his blue-and-white-striped button-down rolled up around his elbows. No matter what I do to grab his attention, he won’t look at me.

Millie crosses her arms over her chest. “Apology denied,” she says. “We can talk about this Monday. Until then, please leave before you ruin the rest of my party.”

I wait for her to say something more, but she doesn’t and glares at me with her flinty eyes. Normally I would balk at Millie’s histrionics. I would mirror her haughty stance, slowly and dramatically crossing my arms over my chest, and stare at her in silence until she turned fuchsia and stomped off like a three-year-old. Tonight, however, I will gladly accept her invitation to get the hell out of here.

I grab my purse off one of the dining room chairs, but when I turn to walk toward the door, Adam doesn’t move. He remains by Millie’s side, hands tucked into his khakis, staring at the floor.

“Adam?” I lay my hand on his shoulder.

“I’m not leaving yet,” he says, shrugging my hand off his shoulder without looking at me.

For a moment I think he’s sticking up for me—Ha! Take that! We’re not leaving!—but then I realize he said “I” not “we,” and when he moves closer to Millie, I understand. The key, however, is pretending that I don’t.

I scrunch my eyebrows together and play dumb. “So … we’re staying, then.”

“No, I’m staying,” he says.

“Well, if you’re staying, I’m staying.”

“Except Millie asked you to leave.”

“So, what, Millie is the boss of you now?”

The two of them exchange a glance, and then Adam looks back at me. “Don’t make this uglier than it already is.”

I’ve never seen him like this—his voice and demeanor like ice—and even in my drunken state, I know he is angrier with me now than he has ever been. And as much as I want to fight him on this, to make him choose me over Millie, I know there’s no point. He has made up his mind. He wants me to leave.

“Fine,” I say, trying to keep my lip from quivering. “I’ll see you at home.”

I clutch my purse in my hand and walk with purpose toward Millie’s entryway, holding myself together until I’m out of their sight. But when I look over my shoulder, I see it doesn’t matter. Adam isn’t watching. He is staring at the ground, his hands tucked into his pockets, and he doesn’t look up as I walk out the door.