—
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.”