The Girls' Guide to Love and Supper Clubs (29 page)

“Aw, come on. What’s a few hours on a Friday afternoon? You probably wouldn’t get much work done anyway.”

This coming from the workaholic who allegedly hasn’t taken a day off in six months. “Don’t you have stuff to do on the Hill?”

“My boss is letting me take off early. My deputy will cover for me until close of business, and then I’m off for the weekend.”

I lean back in my chair and sigh. “Okay, fine. Where should we meet?”

“Can you swing by my office around two-thirty? I’m at 327 Cannon.”

“Remind me which building Cannon is again? I always get the three House buildings confused.”

“Easy—it’s the one right across from the Capitol South Metro stop. Can’t miss it.”

“Okay. See you at two-thirty.”

“Great. Oh—before I let you go, what are you wearing today?”

“Excuse me?” This conversation has taken an uncomfortable turn.

“Are you wearing a skirt or pants?”

“Pants. Gray ones.”

“Good. Pants are good.”

“Yes, generally speaking I’d say pants are good. And in case you were wondering, I’m also wearing a cream V-neck sweater and white underwear. Are we done here?”

“We’re done here,” he says, through what I can tell is a smile. “See you soon.”

I hang up the phone and lean back in my chair and wonder where the hell Blake is taking me.

As I’m on my way to meet Blake, Millie accosts me in front of the elevator with her signature blend of nosiness and gall.

“Where are you off to?”

“I haven’t been feeling that great,” I say, faking a cough. “I’m heading home to rest up.”

She looks me up and down. “You seem okay to me.”

“Tell that to my tonsils,” I say.
You nosey biatch
.

“Well, I hope you feel better by tomorrow. It would suck to be sick on Halloween. Speaking of which, if you’re feeling better, give me a call. Adam and I are throwing a Halloween party at my place.”

She and Adam are hosting a party? Together? I refuse to acknowledge what this could mean—that, after all this time, Millie’s wish has come true, and the two of them are actually an item. No, I’d much rather live in denial and believe they are throwing the party together as friends. I will do what I must to forestall a rapidly descending spiral of self-hatred and McFlurries.

“You’re welcome to come,” Millie says.

“I’ll let you know,” I say. Like I’d ever attend that party. I’d rather walk barefoot on a bed of flaming hot coals. Naked. While being stabbed.

“You should come! It’s going to be a blast. Adam is dressing up as the secretary of defense, and I’m going to be a sexy soldier.”

“I’ve never thought of female soldiers as being particularly sexy.”

“They are when they wear camouflage rompers,” Millie says, winking.

“Soldiers wear rompers? Since when?”

Millie scowls. “Since now. God, Hannah, you’re so literal. It’s Halloween. Loosen up a little.”

And it is in this moment, when Millie Roberts—tension personified—is telling me to loosen up, that I realize how dire the situation at NIRD has become, and how desperately I need to leave this place.

The escalator at the Capitol South Metro stop dumps me out directly across from the Cannon House Office Building, where the smooth, white marble and limestone facade towers five stories above the street, the narrow windows arranged in perfect lines, as if someone pricked the side of the building with the tines of a fork. I scurry across the intersection and make my way up the marble steps to the First Street entrance, pushing my way through the double doors and into the security line. I lay my black nylon tote on the conveyor belt and pass through the metal detector, noting the unapologetic prominence of the handgun sitting in the holster of the Capitol Hill police officer in front of me.

I grab my tote and move toward the building map posted on the wall. The map informs me “You Are Here,” which, given my appalling sense of direction, means absolutely nothing to me. All I know is that Blake works in 327, an office I can only assume is on the third floor. I push through the doors to the elevator bay, a cavernous, trapezoidal cove that houses two elevators and a broad staircase with a brass and wrought iron banister. The alcove smells sweet and chalky, like old books and sweet tea, and the cool air makes the hair on my arm stand upright. Men and women wearing suits in varying shades of gray, black, and navy pass in and out of the elevators, carrying stacks of papers and typing furiously on their BlackBerrys.

Instead of waiting for the elevator, I ascend the two flights of stairs to the third floor and meander in the direction of room 327. The hallway ceiling rises twenty feet, dotted with textured globe lights, and the stark white walls are peppered on either side with American and state flags. After passing an office for a congressman from New Jersey and a congresswoman from California, I come upon room 327, which bears a plaque for Congressman Jay Holmes. An American flag hangs to the left of the door, and the white-and-red Florida state flag hangs to the right, beside a sign that says
WELCOME, PLEASE COME IN.

I open the door to the office, which is lined with plush blue carpet, and find myself standing right next to a young woman’s shiny mahogany desk, which takes up most of the space in the cramped office reception area.

“Hi,” she says as she finishes jotting a message onto a pad of paper. “Can I help you?”

“I’m here to see Blake Fischer?”

“And you are?”

“Hannah Sugarman.”

She gestures toward a small seating area to my right. “Have a seat.”

I sink into the blue-and-gold-striped couch, which is nestled in the corner of the room, in front of a small windowed office at the back of the reception area. The woman watches as I hug my tote against my side and offers a faint smile. At least she didn’t ask why I’m here because, quite frankly, I have no idea why I’m here. To help my landlord with his grocery shopping? To let him torture me with inane Halloween tasks? Not exactly the kind of thing I want to share with some congressional receptionist.

As I pick a piece of black fuzz off my cream sweater, a camera crew and a woman dressed in a red suit emerge from the door behind the receptionist’s desk. A strikingly tall man with salt-and-pepper hair follows behind them. He wears a gray pinstripe suit, an American flag pin, and a navy tie with small red polka dots.

“Thank you so much for your time, Congressman,” the woman says, shaking the man’s hand. “The story will air on
The Situation Room
tonight.”

“My pleasure,” the congressman says. “This issue isn’t going away anytime soon.”

Blake emerges from behind the congressman and beams when he sees me sitting in the waiting area.

“Hannah—hey,” he says, coming toward me. “Sorry, we just wrapped up an interview with CNN. Do you mind waiting one sec while I hand stuff off to my deputy?”

“No problem.”

He waves me up from my seat. “Come here a sec.”

I fumble with my bag and cautiously follow Blake across the room.

“Jay, this is Hannah Sugarman,” he says, pushing me forward by the small of my back. “Hannah, Congressman Holmes.”

Congressman Holmes breaks into a smile and reaches out his hand. “Pleasure to meet you, Hannah.”

I shake his hand, my palms slick with sweat. “Nice to meet you, too.”

“Hannah works over at the Institute for Research and Discourse,” Blake says.

“Wonderful, wonderful,” the congressman says. “They do good work over there. Who do you work for?”

“Mark Henderson.”

“Sure, sure, sure. Mark Henderson. Monetary policy, right? And isn’t his daughter Emma getting a PhD in American history from Yale?”

“I—yes. Wow. Good memory.”

Congressman Holmes smiles. Then he turns to Blake. “Hey, make sure you get Susie up to speed before you take off. Jim will take over once I get to Tampa.”

“Will do,” Blake says.

The congressman heads back into his office, and Blake slips into the windowed minioffice behind me. He leans over the desk of a young blonde, whose straight hair is pulled into a tight ponytail. They gesture back and forth at each other, nodding their heads and exchanging stacks of paper. Finally Blake emerges from his office and sighs.

“Okay,” he says, loosening his bright blue tie. “Let’s go.”

He escorts me down the long, marble hallway and out the same entrance I used earlier, and as we walk down First Street, he shimmies out of his jacket and throws it over his shoulder.

“So you and the congressman are on a first-name basis, huh?” I ask as we saunter across C Street.

He grins. “We keep it pretty casual.”

“And how does he feel about your ANC run?”

Blake shrugs. “He gets it. He knows you have to get your start in politics somewhere. But he’s also glad being a neighborhood commissioner wouldn’t require a lot of my time. It’s a pretty lowkey commitment.”

I head for the Metro entrance, but Blake grabs me gently by the shoulder and steers me toward a parking lot across from Cannon. “Easy, there,” he says. “I drove today.”

“Oh.” I grab my sunglasses from inside my tote. “Where are we heading?”

Blake scrunches his lips together and wiggles them from side to side. “Not sure yet, actually. Haven’t made up my mind. I think I’ll make the decision on the fly.” He grins. “We’ll see what inspires me.”

Great. That’s just the answer I was hoping for.

Somewhere past the Air and Space Museum we have a change in course. As we zipped down Independence Avenue, I figured he was heading back to Dupont Circle so that we could shop at Whole Foods or one of the stores in our neighborhood. But then, suddenly, Blake veered into the left lane at the corner of Seventh Street, indicating he planned to head south instead of north, and that’s when I knew the plan had changed. To what, exactly, I could not say.

“Uh, so Blake. Care to tell me where we’re going?”

He turns to me and grins. “You’ll see.”

Blake rounds the corner onto Seventh Street and chugs past the Federal Aviation Administration in his shiny white Volkswagen SUV. I’ve always thought this was one of the least attractive parts of the city. Most of the federal agencies hover around Independence Avenue between Second and Fourteenth streets, and it looks as if God shit huge cement blocks from the sky, and this is where they landed. Each building takes up an entire city block, and there is little else around them. I cannot imagine why Blake is taking me this way.

We continue through the agency wasteland, where we pass the sweeping, concave curvature of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which, with its pale concrete facade and repetitive rows of dark square windows, looks like a cross between the Watergate and the Starship
Enterprise
. I don’t think I’ve ever driven past this building before, and I officially have no idea where we are—not in some sort of metaphysical “where is anyone in this world?” way, but in the very physical sense of “I cannot, for the life of me, figure out where we are in the context of this city.”

“Blake. Seriously. Where the hell are we going?”

Blake smiles and says nothing. We ride across the overpass above I-395 and follow the curve of Seventh Street around a bend until we reach the intersection with Maine Avenue, at which point I can see a series of small boats in the distance and a sign for the Southwest Waterfront. A pale blue roof looms just above the tree line, with
Zanzibar Nightclub
scrawled across the top in bright red cursive letters.

Blake speeds across Maine Avenue and turns right onto a small road called Water Street, which is sandwiched between Maine Avenue to the right and the city’s southwestern waterfront to the left. As we crawl along Water Street, we pass a ramshackle series of run-down restaurants and shuttered buildings, none of which seems to be open, and I cannot help but feel as if I’m starring in some mobster movie, where Blake is taking me down to the waterfront to put a bullet in my head before tying me in chains and dumping me in the river. It is clear I need to watch fewer
Sopranos
reruns online.

We bump along the narrow road until we reach a bottleneck surrounded by more run-down buildings and shacks, and my confusion is supplanted by the unnerving sentiment that something is very, very wrong. The small hovel to my left looks as if someone constructed it from warped baking sheets and jungle gym pieces, and I have seen a total of two people since we turned onto Water Street. Unless these passing minutes are meant to be my last, this strikes me as an unfortunate way to spend a Friday afternoon.

Blake maneuvers the car through the narrowed opening at the end of Water Street and pulls into a small parking lot, which opens up to a series of shops, with people milling along the sidewalk. I am relieved to see signs of life. I am also thoroughly confused.

As Blake rolls his car into a parking spot, I peer through the front windshield and spot a vast sign for
CAPTAIN WHITE’S SEAFOOD CITY
perched atop a steep turquoise roof, the white block letters punctuated by metal replicas of crabs and lobsters and shrimp, each of which is approximately the size of Blake’s car. Smack in the middle of the sign sits an enormous image of a bearded sailor gripping an old-fashioned spoke steering wheel.