The Hopefuls(21)

—

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.