The Girls' Guide to Love and Supper Clubs (22 page)

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.

“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.

Then I see the towering stack of two-inch-thick fudge brownies sitting behind the glass pastry case, and I’m a goner. I’ll wait in this line as long as it takes. And I do.

When I get back to the office, it’s already three-fifteen—fifteen minutes until Mark appears on CNBC. I return to my desk, licking the fudgy crumbs off my fingers, and find the red light on my phone flashing furiously. My voice mail.

As I pick up my phone to listen to my messages, I notice I also have five missed calls and two voice mails on my cell phone, which I left on my desk while I popped down to Firehook.

“You have three new messages,” the automated voice on my office phone tells me. Five voice mails on two different phones? Weird.

The first message on my office voice mail is from Mark. “Hannah, I am in the car reading through this folder you left for me, and none of this is what I asked for. Salted caramel popcorn?
Lasagna
?? Where is the information I asked for? Please call me back right away.”

Uh-oh.

As I press on to the next message, I spot a manila folder on my desk. I open it. The Treasury report. The
Wall Street Journal
. The Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung
. It’s all right here. I gave him the wrong folder. The one with my recipes. The one that has nothing whatsoever to do with the work I’m being paid to do.

The second message is also from Mark. His tone is sharper this time. “Hannah, it’s Mark again. I also left you a message on your cell phone, but for some inexplicable reason you still have not called me back. I’m at the studio now. I need the language in that report. Call me immediately!”

Message three. Also Mark. “Hannah! Where the hell are you? I’m live in twenty minutes! This is unacceptable! CALL ME IMMEDIATELY!”

I call my cell phone voice mail. More of the same. In one message I swear I can hear steam pumping out his ears. The gist: Hannah, you fuckup, where the fuck are you and why the fuck am I looking at a recipe for pistachio cake?

I’m screwed.

I look at my watch: 3:23. I still have seven minutes until Mark is live on the air. I pick up the phone and call Mark. Straight to voice mail. Shit.

I rummage through the papers on my desk until I find the number for the CNBC producer I talked to earlier. Joanne Gerber. I call. Straight to voice mail for her, too. Crap! Crap, crap, crap!

I scroll through my in-box and find our e-mail exchange from earlier. Mark doesn’t have a BlackBerry, but a producer for CNBC would. Maybe she could even print these documents for him. Or tell him to call me.

I shoot off a quick e-mail:

Joanne—could you print these documents out for Mark Henderson? Had a problem with our printer.

And then I wait. And wait. And wait. Until it is 3:29, and I realize there’s no point in waiting anymore.

I am officially 1,000 percent screwed.