The Hopefuls (7 page)

“But now you're working at the White House,” Matt said. “He must be pretty happy about that.”

Jimmy shrugged, and then said lightly, “Actually, I think he'd rather have me be a lawyer.”

I didn't know at the time who Jimmy's dad was, and you wouldn't have known he was anyone special from the way Jimmy talked about him. Matt told me later that Jimmy's dad was one of the most well-known lawyers in Texas. “Probably the most well known. Famous, really,” Matt said. He was also a huge Democratic supporter, and hosted lots of fund-raisers. When Jimmy talked about the advance people his dad knew, it was campaign staff who had been at his house during fund-raisers in 2000.

When we left the restaurant, we were already making plans for the four of us to go out to dinner the next week. Ash took my number and told me she was going to call me the next day. “I mean it,” she said. “Don't be surprised when I call you first thing tomorrow. I am in desperate need of some girl time.”

Walking home from Fourteenth Street that night, I felt hopeful. It was warm, but not sticky, and there was a nice breeze. It felt good to walk off all the drinks we'd had, and Matt and I were silent for the first few blocks. “I like them,” I finally said. And I remember so clearly, how he put his arm around my shoulders, pulled me toward him, and kissed the side of my head. I could feel him smiling as he said, “I'm so glad there's something in this city that you like.”

T
rue to her word, Ash called me the next day, and while I wasn't totally surprised (she had, after all, been insistent that she was going to do just that), I was pleased. After so many awkward encounters with Alan and the rest of the White House crew, it was a relief to feel like someone actually found me to be pleasant company. I'd started to doubt myself. Sometimes I think if Ash hadn't called me, hadn't pursued a friendship, I would've stopped trying to make new DC friends altogether.

The Dillons had a membership to the pool at the Hilton across the street from us, and Ash and I made plans to meet there the following Monday. I couldn't help but smile as I hung up and relayed the conversation to Matt.

“You have a date,” he said, laughing just a little. But I could tell he was happy for me, that maybe he'd also been worried I wouldn't make any friends in this city.

“I know. Thank God, right?” And then I started laughing, mostly from relief, I guess.

“Just remember,” Matt said, grinning. “Be yourself and don't put out on the first date.”

I was ready early on Monday, and stood on the corner of Florida and T, waiting for Ash, who had texted to tell me she was on her way. It was hot and I could feel sweat sliding down my back as I stood in the sun holding my canvas bag filled with magazines, sunscreen, and a book. I wiped my upper lip, which was already wet with sweat just from standing there. I didn't understand how anyone got used to this humidity, ever.

When I finally saw Ash walking down Florida, I felt suddenly shy and held up my hand in an awkward wave, but she bounced across the street and threw her arms around my neck, giving a little squeal as she did. “I'm so glad you were free,” she said. “Isn't this the most perfect day to go to the pool?”

“It is,” I said. “Because it's about a hundred and twenty degrees out.”

Ash just laughed. “You forget, I grew up in Houston,” she said. “This is nothing to me.”

We found lounge chairs and unpacked our things, laying out our towels and getting settled. The pool wasn't all that crowded—it was Monday, after all—just a few moms with young children who all seemed to know each other, and a random hotel guest or two.

Ash took a dip in the pool right away, piling her hair on top of her head and only going up to her shoulders. I did the same, and then we repositioned ourselves in the sun, the water evaporating off of our bodies almost immediately. We each took out a magazine and began paging through, chatting a little as we did.

Everything was pleasant, but it was hard for me to completely relax—I'd gone back for a third interview at DCLOVE and had a fourth the next day. It was driving me crazy the way they were dragging this out, and even though I'd been ambivalent about the job in the beginning, I now wanted it badly. (Which sometimes I thought was their whole strategy.) It felt funny to be hanging out by a pool on a day that everyone else was in an office, like it was wrong somehow. I said as much to Ash, and she made a sympathetic noise, but it was clear she didn't share my anxiety about it. She mentioned vaguely that she'd probably start looking for a job soon, but I got the feeling that money wasn't a worry, and when I pressed her as to what sort of job she might be looking for, she didn't really answer, just said that she didn't want to take a job unless it was the right fit and then changed the subject.

When I rambled on a little bit about how many résumés I'd sent out, how I wasn't sure what I'd do if I wasn't hired at DCLOVE, she laughed and waved her hand in front of her, like she thought I was being ridiculous. “Girl, you're too stressed out,” she said. “Enjoy this. You'll be fine.” Then she waved down an attendant and ordered us two glasses of white wine. “That'll help,” she said, lying back in her chair and adjusting her sunglasses.

Our conversation was all over the place, but in a good way. We talked about our husbands and moving to DC, our families, college,
The Bachelor,
and buying swimsuits. But when I mentioned something about Alan's party, Ash snorted. “He is one of the worst human beings I've ever met,” she said, and I burst out laughing. “Seriously,” she continued. “The first time I met him he told me what the President's favorite snacks were, and what he prefers to eat for lunch. There is something not quite right in that boy's head.”

“He makes me feel so stupid,” I confessed. “When I told him I'd worked in magazines, he basically just walked away. Like it was so boring he couldn't even bother to come up with a response.”

“Oh, don't I know it,” she said. “He asked me if I was worried about my brain becoming weak from not working.”

“Shut up. He did not.”

“He absolutely did,” she said, nodding. “I believe his exact words were ‘Brains are like muscles.' ”

“Ugh. He really is the worst.”

“I know. I have no idea why Jimmy bothers with him.”

“I thought the same thing about Matt. There's no way he can really like someone like that, right?”

“Stranger things happen,” she said. “At least that poor boyfriend of his got away.”

I'd already liked Ash, but this conversation confirmed it, made me think that we would be real friends, that I could trust her. “My thoughts exactly,” I said.

We had a second glass of wine at the pool and then I went home and fell asleep on the couch in the late afternoon. It was the kind of nap where you wake up and have no idea what time or even what day it is. When I opened my eyes, Matt was sitting next to me watching the news and he gave me an amused look as I startled and sat up, confused.

“I take it your date was a success,” he said.

I closed my eyes and tried to gather myself, to wake up a little, and then I stretched my arms over my head and said, “It was. It was a huge success.”

The next day at DCLOVE, I met with Ellie, a lifestyle blogger and one of the founding members of the site. Her section was called “Ellie About Town,” and as far as I could tell it was basically an online diary of the parties and events she went to. There were a lot of selfies involved.

She'd met me at the elevator, wearing a light blue dress that was tied with pink ribbon bows at the shoulders. Her handshake and greeting were businesslike and short, but as she led me back to her office, she rolled her eyes at the Ping-Pong table that was set up outside. “This place is crazy,” she said, but I could tell she got a kick out of it, how informal and funky it all was, that she imagined DCLOVE to be the new Facebook.

“We're sort of a potpourri of information,” Ellie told me. Her pitch sounded well rehearsed. “We cover parties and events but also give great restaurant reviews. We want to be the place where people go for news about the town.”

“It's really great,” I said. “It's entertaining but so informative.”

I could tell I'd said the right thing as Ellie nodded, looking pleased. “We recently got a new investor and we want to take this site to the next level.” She leaned forward and the bow on her right shoulder came partly undone. “This may have started as a labor of love, but now it's a business. There's a need for a site like ours, a hole in the market that we're filling.”

At the end of that meeting, Ellie asked me to write four mock posts for the site. “Use your imagination,” she said. On the way out of the office, I passed Miles, who was the first person I'd interviewed with. He was a food blogger who described what he did as “food porn on steroids,” which brought unpleasant images to mind. That day, he was wearing a pocket square and colorful striped socks that were peeking out of his suit pants. He was part of a breed of guys in DC who dressed in colorful prints, aggressive plaids and checks, Vineyard Vines as far as the eye could see. Sometimes you'd see them walking down the street in groups, usually in Georgetown, all wearing the same shirt in slightly different shades of pastel. The effect was alarming and a little comical—it reminded me of how the gay men at
Vanity Fair
would dress, only louder. But then again, maybe I wasn't their target audience.

Miles was on the phone, so I just waved and smiled and tried to figure out from his expression if they were going to hire me or not, but his face was unreadable as he waved back at me.

Over the next couple of weeks, Ash and I spent almost every day together. She always had a plan of some sort—to go to a museum or take a walking tour of the monuments. She bought so many Groupons that I began to worry she had an addiction, and she dragged me along for half-price margaritas, a cruise on the Potomac, a tour of Lincoln's cottage. Jimmy was still traveling a ton, but when he was home, the four of us went out in search of the best BBQ places, tried Ethiopian restaurants (which were a DC specialty) and new Japanese places. “This city is so international,” Ash would say, sounding like a guidebook. “We need to take advantage of all it has to offer.”

I hadn't expected to make a friend like Ash, someone who I clicked with so completely and quickly. I'd just been hoping for someone I could hang out with, had thought that I was past the point in my life where I'd make a friend who would eat Thai food on my couch with her shoes off, drinking wine and watching a movie while our husbands were at a work party that we didn't want to go to. But from the moment I met her we texted or talked almost every single day, and soon, I couldn't remember not knowing her. I never felt like I had to pretend to be anything else in front of her and got the feeling she felt the same way. At one point, early on in our friendship, she convinced me to do a juice cleanse, and we went together to buy all eighteen juices for the next three days. I was starving after the first few hours, unsure how I was going to last the whole time, but I felt like I couldn't give in so easily since it was something we were doing together. Then, at 10:00 p.m. on the first night, she sent me a text that said,
I just ate four pieces of bread,
and I laughed and wrote her back that I was just about to do the same.

One of the posts that I did for the website was “DC's Guide for the Homesick New Yorker.” I listed the one decent bagel place we'd found, a good deli, and a New York sports bar called the 51st State.

“I love it,” Ellie said. “It's so sassy. Exactly what we're looking for here.” She liked the other articles I'd written as well, which was a huge relief. I'd worked on them for two days straight, convinced this was my one last shot at a job. Matt found me at my computer at 3:00 a.m., and when he suggested I should get some sleep, I told him I was afraid that if I didn't get this job, I would end up working at the Pink Penguin. He just rubbed my back and went back to bed.

I accepted the job as soon as it was offered to me. Maybe I was supposed to negotiate, or at least pretend to think about it, but I was sure my desperation would give me away if I tried.

The weekend before I started at DCLOVE, I told Matt we should have a party. We were in bed, both reading, although I'd been daydreaming mostly, my book lying open on my lap. Matt looked up from his issue of
The Atlantic
and raised his eyebrows at me, probably wondering who I was imagining inviting to this party. “A dinner party,” I clarified, and he nodded.

“That could be fun,” he said. “We can celebrate your new job.”

“No, no. No need to celebrate. But I want something to plan. I feel restless.”

“Are you nervous about starting there?” Matt turned onto his side to face me.

“Not nervous exactly. More unsure.”

I'd gone to one of the pitch meetings at DCLOVE to meet the rest of the staff. Afterward, one of the writers, Maria, asked if I wanted to get coffee. We went to the Starbucks on the corner for iced coffees and I watched as she put eight packets of sugar into her cup.

“The thing to remember,” she told me, “is to always come to the meetings with like thirty ideas to pitch. That way, you'll get to write about something you have some sort of interest in. If you don't, they'll start assigning things to you. Last year, I had to write about the pandas at the zoo for months. Months! Just once, I went to a meeting without a list of ideas and I ended up on the panda beat. Panda baby watch, panda birthdays, Panda Cam, pandas getting deported.” She shuddered and took a long sip of her coffee. I could hear the sugar crunch between her teeth. “It's the kind of thing that will make you lose all hope in journalism. Sometimes I still have nightmares about Bao Bao.”

“So who are you going to invite to this dinner party?” Matt asked that night.

“Maybe just Ash and Jimmy and Colleen and Bruce?”

“That sounds good.”

“Is that weird though? Do you think they'll get along?”

“A couple of Texans and a loud Long Island girl with her elderly husband? I think they'll be great friends.”

“Very funny,” I said. “Beggars can't be choosers.”

“You should include that in your invitation,” Matt said. “You'll charm the pants right off of them.”

“Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer dinner parties where everyone wears pants.”

Matt laughed and then turned to me. Put his arms around my waist and rested his chin on my chest. “You are such a liar,” he said. “Because I happen to know that you like it best when no one's wearing pants.”

“Really?” I asked.

“Really.” He kept looking right at me as he took his boxers off, then gave me a little grin before hooking his fingers in the elastic of my pajama shorts and pulling them down.

“I don't know where you'd hear such a thing,” I said, as he climbed on top of me.

“Believe me,” he said, kissing my neck. “I have it on good authority.”

For the dinner, I decided to make Parmesan chicken over arugula with roasted tomatoes. I knew it was a mistake about ten minutes into prepping, when I realized I'd have to cook the chicken right before we were supposed to sit down. I'd spent most of the day cleaning, thinking that the dinner was so simple it would take no time at all. But before my cheese puffs even came out of the oven, the doorbell rang and all four of our guests were standing outside our door, holding bottles of wine.