“I like Neil Diamond,” Pete says.
I flash Gabe a jubilant smile as he shakes his head at Pete. “You might like Neil Diamond when you’re driving around in your car…but a bar full of cougars belting out ‘Sweet Caroline’ while dirty old men look on with cigars under a disco ball? Not a pretty sight.”
Pete laughs and says, “That sounds like fun, actually.”
Gabe looks at him for a beat, then turns to me and asks in his dry monotone, “And you still want to use his sperm?”
Everyone laughs, except Meredith, who has already asked our waiter for the bill and is glancing impatiently in his direction.
“It’s very fun,” I say. “In a disco throwback-to-the-seventies kind of way.”
“Half the people in there are seventy,” Gabe says. “And one hundred percent of them are cheesy.”
“Not true,” I say, insisting that it’s become a mixed crowd, trendy and cheesy living in harmony.
Meredith pulls her AmEx out of her wallet as she announces, “I’m with Gabe. Johnny’s Hideaway is vile.”
Gabe snaps and points at her and says, “Finally. We agree on something.”
“Well, you two can just head on home. Syd and I are going to Johnny’s,” I say, then ask Shawna, Leslie, and Pete if they want to join us.
“Yep. I’m in,” Shawna says, without hesitating, reminding me of what I used to love so much about her.
“Me, too,” Pete says. “I wanna see this place.”
I smile, then turn to Leslie, expecting her to decline. Instead she nods, then bursts into the first lines of “Sweet Caroline.” Syd and I continue in unison.
“Oh, good grief,” Gabe says.
“C’mon. Please come?” I beg him. “For me?”
“Nope. I don’t do Johnny’s,” Gabe announces in the same tone that someone might say I don’t do drugs. Then he turns to Pete and says, “My man, you’re on your own tonight.”
—
JUST BEFORE MIDNIGHT, Shawna, Sydney, Leslie, Pete, and I join the line outside Johnny’s—which is housed in a nondescript building at the end of a retail strip on Roswell Road. In front of us is a loud, cackling pack of fifty-something women all wearing tight animal prints. After Sydney strikes up a conversation with them, we discover that they are attending a cougar-themed bachelorette party. The bride’s sash announces that this will be her LAST NIGHT ON THE PROWL.
“When’s the big day?” I ask her.
“Next Saturday,” she replies, adjusting her headband, which is actually a leopard-print thong. “Here’s hoping third time’s the charm!”
We all laugh and wish her good luck, then pay the suit-clad doorman our five-dollar cover, making our way into the dimly lit, black and red lounge, pulsing to the rhythm of “Little Red Corvette.” A large disco ball spins, casting glittering light onto the parquet dance floor.
“Wow. This place is awesome,” Pete says, glancing at the walls, adorned with photos of celebrities from Frank Sinatra to Arnold Palmer to Britney Spears to George Clooney (who apparently came by the club one night, as he is posing with our same doorman).
“Told you,” I proudly reply.
Leslie, his fellow Johnny’s virgin, nods in agreement, murmuring that Gabe’s really missing out, as I tell her for about the third time how impressed I am that she came without him. “It’s just so cool of you,” I gush, then admit that I like her more now than I thought I did at first—the sort of confessionary thing you blurt out when you’re drinking.
“Well, thanks,” she says. “Gabe told me how important you are to him…so…”
“Ah, so you’re just being strategic? Like the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. But for Gabe, it’s Josie?” Sydney asks her.
Leslie laughs and says, “Honestly, I just wanted to see this place.”
“Is it everything you hoped it would be?” I say.
“And more,” she says as we sail through a cloud of cigar smoke and sidle up to the bar lined with red upholstered swivel chairs.
“What do you girls want?” Pete asks, pushing a credit card across the bar. “Should we go with a retro cocktail? Harvey Wallbangers? Manhattans? Tequila sunrises?”
I say, “You know what? I’ll take a whiskey sour.”
Shawna makes a face and says, “I forgot how we used to drink those! Make it two.”