The Washingtonienne (15 page)

Chapter 26

W
hen Marcus and I went back to the office on Monday, I ducked into an empty conference room to call up Fred and confirm our schedule for the week. He surprised me by inviting me out to dinner that night, which could have only meant one of two things: He either wanted to put an end to our arrangement, or else he was just getting careless.

I knew it was the latter when he held my hand across the table at La Colline, the fancy French restaurant on the Hill. It was as if he
wanted
to get caught. I looked around nervously, afraid that someone might see us.

“What’s wrong?” Fred asked. “You look nervous.”

“Aren’t you worried?” I asked.

“Not at all,” he smiled. “I’m just happy to get out of the house and see my pretty little girl tonight.”

I frowned at this.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

I felt like I had to tell him. If Fred could have a wife, I could have a boyfriend, couldn’t I?

“Are you sleeping with him?” he wanted to know.

“
Fred,
” I blushed, “I don’t ask questions about
your
sex life.”

“That’s because
you
are my sex life right now! If you’re sleeping with other people, you have an obligation to tell me.”

“Ha!” I laughed. “I don’t remember taking any vows with you.”

“Jackie, if we’re having unprotected sex, you have a
responsibility
to tell me.”

The people at the next table raised their eyebrows at us.

“Do I?” I asked. “There’s no law that says that I do.”

“Yes, you do, actually! You have a
legal
responsibility. If you give me a disease, I could sue you. There is legal precedent—”

“So sue me!” I chided him. “Do it, I dare you!”

We were officially “making a scene,” so I stood up from the table and walked out of the restaurant.

I did not appreciate being threatened by lawsuits and accused of having STDs. Where was this coming from anyway? Was Fred
jealous
?

I walked home to let off some steam, ruining my Gucci heels. These were shoes meant for stepping in and out of limousines, not walking home alone.

It was only nine o’clock, but I was sick of this day. I went to bed early, thereby putting an end to it.

Of course, I couldn’t fall asleep. I lay awake, wondering if I should call up Marcus.

Then I heard someone at the door and a key turning in the lock. It could only have been Fred. (He was the only other person with a key.)

I pretended to be asleep as he walked into my room.

What was he going to do? Kill me?

Go ahead,
I thought.
Make my day.

I said nothing as he took his clothes off and slipped into my bed. I lay motionless as he climbed on top of me and stuck it in. Apparently, Fred wasn’t as worried about STDs as he pretended to be.

He kissed me goodnight and gave me another envelope before he went home. Fred had given me approximately $20,000 in cash since our arrangement started, but this was the first time I ever really felt like a whore. Up until tonight, I believed that I was just a very lucky girl who happened to be at the right place at the right time.

Yes, I had been walking a very thin line for the last few months, but not for nothing: I had a job, my own apartment, plenty of spending money, and more men than I knew what to do with—one of whom I actually
liked.

Obviously, I was being rewarded for my behavior, and while my life wasn’t perfect, I was getting what I wanted. Maybe I wanted all the wrong things, but I was so busy chasing after all of this shit that sometimes I forgot what the difference between right and wrong was in the first place.

AT WORK, THE SEX RUMORS
had finally subsided, much to my relief. I felt awful for betraying Marcus’s trust so early in our relationship, but he just shrugged it off.

“I knew this would blow over in no time,” he told me. “People on the Hill are too busy obsessing over themselves to pay any attention to whatever we’re doing.”

“So you’re not mad?” I asked.

“Are you kidding? This sort of stuff happens a lot more than you think,” Marcus told me.

“Really? Like what?” I wanted to know.

“If I ever want to start a smear campaign, you’ll be the first person I tell.”

I rolled my eyes and called April on my cell. She wanted to meet Marcus, so I told her to meet up with us at Lounge 201.

This was major. (To me, at least.) I didn’t bring guys around my friends very often. Why force them to talk to some jerk who I was only going to dump anyway?

But dump Marcus? Then I would have to find another job—no thank you!

“I’ve heard so much about you!” April said when I introduced them.

“Yeah, and so has everyone else,” Marcus laughed.

“Oh, you know how us girls like to talk. We’re terrible!”

The waitress came by to take our drink order.

“I’ll have a club soda,” Marcus said after April and I ordered wine.

“A club soda?” April asked. “Oh, right. You don’t drink. Jackie wrote something about that in her blog.”

I kicked her under the table.

“You have a blog?” Marcus asked me. “What do you write about?”

“Um, I don’t really have a blog,” I lied. “April was just kidding.”

I shot April a look that said,
You’d better back me up here.
This slipup of hers could get me into big trouble.

“Yeah, just kidding!” April repeated. “I must have been thinking of someone else. Jackie doesn’t have a blog! She’s not a computer nerd or anything.”

Marcus looked befuddled.

“If you have a blog, I’d love to read it,” he told me.

“I do
not
have a blog!” I insisted. “If I had one, I would tell you about it, wouldn’t I? It’s not as if I have anything interesting to write about anyway.”

I was such a fucking liar. But Marcus bought it. I kicked April under the table again when he went to men’s room, extra hard this time.

“You bitch!” I hissed across the table. “Just what were you thinking?”

“Sorry! It just slipped!” she winced.

“He just forgave me for starting the spanking rumor! I don’t want to push my luck!”

“Oh, don’t worry, Jackie! You should see the way he looks at you. He just feels lucky that he found you.”

“Lucky,” I snorted. “Yeah, right.”

Marcus was probably the unluckiest guy in the world. I was a vain, arrogant, selfish girl who lied and cheated her way through life—a train wreck of a person.

But he didn’t have to know about any of that. He suspected that I was trouble, but he saw something in me and believed I was worth the risk.

I wanted to show him that he was right. Because I
was
worth it.

I LEFT THE BAR WITH
Marcus, holding his hand as we walked up to the Capitol to watch the sunset. All the regular people had to be satisfied with their view from the ground, but we were special: We had ID.

This is where we work,
I thought.
This is where we met.

From the Capitol steps, we could see everything: the monuments, the memorials, the cherry blossom trees by the Tidal Basin.

God, what a beautiful city we lived in. You could really believe all that “shining city upon a hill” bullshit when you had special badges that allowed you to see things like this.

Every Capitol Hill couple needs to have that first kiss on the steps. Nothing could ever top that.
I will never have a romantic moment as perfect as this one for the rest of my life. I may as well shoot myself now,
I thought.

Sure, I could go back up there with some other guy and try to re-create the experience, but it just wouldn’t be the same. There could only be one first time, and this was it.

What was I doing, standing up there with Marcus, holding his hand? Suddenly, I felt like the dorkiest dork in the USA. I had to get down from there ASAP.

“Jackie, what’s wrong?” Marcus asked, running down the steps behind me.

“I have to pee,” I lied.

“Hey, wait a minute!” he called after me.

I stopped and turned around to look at him.

“That is amazing!” he said.

“What’s amazing?” I asked.

“How do you run so fast in those heels? I’m impressed!”

He was serious, and I don’t know why, but I was flattered that he had noticed my prowess on high heels. It was probably the most sincere compliment that I had received in a long time.

I didn’t know why it was so hard for me to like somebody. It wasn’t so bad after all.

We started sleeping together every night after that. A week went by, and I realized that was the longest time I had been monogamous since my engagement to Mike.

I knew that seven days wasn’t such a long time, but to me, it meant something: I was ready for this, and everything in my past, I wanted to let it go.

I stopped going out with my friends, telling them I was busy with Marcus whenever they called me up on my cell.

“Your friends are going to hate me,” he said on our eighth night in a row. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather go out tonight? You’re probably sick and tired of hanging around my boring house.”

“Are you kidding?” I asked. “You’ve got HBO. Besides, I’d much rather hang out with you than get drunk and make out with some random DC date-raper.”

“Is that what you do? In that case, you’re never going out with your friends again.”

“Well, my best friend, Naomi, is coming into town this week, and I’m taking her out whether you like it or not. She’s staying with me, so I might not see you for a few days.”

“I’ll see you at the office, won’t I?”

“I might call in sick while Naomi is here. Promise you won’t tell Janet?” I begged.

“Unlike you, I can keep a secret,” Marcus teased. “Just be careful when you go out.”

“I’ve been taking care of myself for some time now, Marcus. Don’t you worry about me.”

Chapter 27

T
hat Wednesday, I took Naomi to Saki. She just had to see how ridiculous this place was, and by now, I had line privileges here, which meant only one thing: I had been spending way too much time in cheesy DC nightclubs.

It was April, Laura, Naomi, and me. And a couple of Laura’s clients, two middle-aged men who looked totally psyched to be there. April was keeping them entertained by feeding them cocktail cherries.

“The deejay here totally sucks,” Naomi complained as “Smells Like Teen Spirit” came on over the sound system. “Does anybody ever do drugs here or what? It looks like everybody here just likes to drink.”

“I think we might be the only people doing drugs here,” Laura told her. “Nobody’s ever holding except us.”

“What do you have?” Naomi wanted to know.

“All we have right now is coke,” Laura replied.

“Wow. That is pathetic. Here, take a Vicodin,” she said as she doled them out on the table indiscreetly. “That’s the problem with you lame fucks in Washington. Not enough drugs!”

Laura looked horrified as her clients examined the white oblong-shaped pills. April smiled and popped one into her mouth, and they did the same.

“Shit,”
Laura muttered. “I am so fired.”

“Don’t worry, dear,” Naomi told her, “they are going to love it!”

FOUR HOURS LATER, I
was sitting on the filthy, disgusting sidewalk in front of Pizza Mart. My friends were sitting inside, eating big nasty slices of pizza. Even Naomi, who usually refused to eat any pizza that wasn’t hand-tossed in the outer boroughs, had succumbed to the post-Saki craving for a Jumbo Slice.

The only thing more disgusting than eating one of these things yourself was watching
other
people eat them, especially the drunk ones. I sat there in my Marc Jacobs tank top and miniskirt, staring as people crammed oily wedges into their mouths.

Then I noticed a crowd forming around me.

What were they all looking at?

I realized that my underwear must be showing, but I didn’t care.

Then I remembered that I wasn’t wearing underwear.

Whatever. I still didn’t care.

My friends collected me and put me in a cab.

“Capitol Hill,” I told the driver. “Pennsylvania and Fifth Street, Southeast.”

“Shit!” he cursed at me.

You would think that he would be happy that I lived so far away. Then he could charge me a higher fare, right? But I had no idea how these things worked.

DC had some crazy “zone system” for determining cab fares. I never bothered to figure it out. It sounded like total bullshit to me. Like, the zones seemed so arbitrary. I mean, how could you even tell what zone you were in? I thought that there should be signs all over the city to let people know, “YOU ARE NOW LEAVING ZONE 6. WELCOME TO ZONE 7.”

I was telling the driver all this, but he didn’t seem to appreciate my effort at making conversation, so I gave up. I leaned back into the stinky leather seat and closed my eyes.

“Don’t fall asleep in here!” the driver yelled at me.

Startled, I apologized, “Sorry! Sorry!” and sat there, not talking, not sleeping.

I listened to some of the Nation of Islam radio show that he had playing on his radio and looked out the car window. We were driving through the “bad” part of town that no white people seemed to live in, a part of Washington that I had only driven through. It didn’t look so bad, except there was no Starbucks.

“Have you ever been in this neighborhood before?” the driver asked me.

“No,” I told him, wondering why he would ask.

“Do you know where you are?”

“Not really.”

“Does
anybody
know where you are?”

Why was he asking me these totally fucked-up questions?

I noticed that the doors were locked, but then I felt like I was being racist for assuming that this guy meant me some kind of harm. Maybe he was just trying to make conversation?

I found my cell phone and called April, but she wasn’t picking up. And neither was Naomi.

“No talking on the phone, damn it!” he yelled at me.

“Are you serious?” I asked.

He pulled over and got out of the car. What the hell was he doing?

I looked around for some kind of identification so I could get his name or something. When this was over, I planned to report this to the District of Columbia Taxicab Commission ASAP.

But there wasn’t anything indicating that this was even a taxi at all. This was just some crazy dude’s car!

“You and your cracker bitch friends think every brown face driving a car is your own personal limo service?” he asked, pulling me out of his car, which I realized was not a cab after all.

I thought about it. Had my friends just run up to his car, opened the back door, and thrown me in the backseat? And had I just barked out a destination when I got in? I guess that I had. But why had he not kicked me out of his car right then and there? Was he trying to teach me some sort of a lesson?

I was afraid to even look at him.

“I’m sorry,” I said as my phone started to ring.

He frowned at me as he listened to my “Push It” ringtone. “Don’t you dare answer that phone!”

“Sorry! Sorry!”

“You think you’re so cute, don’t you, in that ho outfit, walking around at four o’clock in the morning. Do your parents know where you are right now? You should be ashamed of yourself!”

I was stunned. Nobody—not even my parents—had ever spoken to me that way before in my life. My parents never disapproved of anything I had ever done because they loved me. But even so, I was grown: I could do whatever I wanted.

I looked down at what I was wearing. In total, my outfit must have cost upwards of a thousand dollars. But I had to admit, I did sort of look like a ho.

I was twenty-five years old, but I looked and sounded like one of those “out-of-control teens” on
The Jerry Springer Show.
Perhaps I still had some growing up to do.

Jesus, what a buzz kill. The man sped away in his car, ditching me in a neighborhood I didn’t know. The streets were dark and empty, but not scary. I’d seen worse. Try the Marcy Projects at four in the morning. (Don’t ask.)

I checked my voice mail, and a shrieking girl (Naomi) informed me that she was at the Grand Hyatt with some hockey players.

Why was I always the odd man out? People must have thought that I
liked
being alienated. Maybe they thought that it made me feel special or something.

Fuck those sluts, they almost got me killed.

Not knowing what else to do, I called Marcus.

Of course, he came to rescue me.

“Jesus Christ! What happened?” he asked as I climbed into the Jeep. “Are you high right now?”

“No!” I lied.

Marcus sighed.

“I won’t tell Janet,” he said. “Now tell me the truth. What are you on right now?”

“Vicodin,” I admitted. “Have you ever tried it?”

“I don’t do drugs, Jacqueline.”

“What?
You’re lying!”

He shook his head no.

“You’re thirty-five years old and you’ve never had a Vicodin?” I asked incredulously. “Get with it!”

“Good night, Jacqueline,” Marcus said as he pulled up in front of my building.

“Aren’t you coming in?” I asked. “I’m nice and relaxed from the drugs. You know what
that
means!”

He gave me a look that resembled pity.

“Get some sleep, Jackie. Call me when you’re feeling better.”

I got out of the car and watched him drive away, kicking myself for being such a slutted-out pill-head. That’s what I was, wasn’t I? No wonder he didn’t want to come in.

THE GIRLS AND I WERE
too tired to do anything later that day, so we parked ourselves at a table outside Signatures and watched the nightly dork parade march by on Pennsylvania Avenue.

The warm weather brought out the shirtless (male) joggers who shamelessly put their bods on display under the guise of cardiovascular fitness.

“This is amazing!” Naomi remarked. “Washington is, like, the gayest city ever. Look at them!”

A pack of shirtless men in brightly hued, high-cut running shorts bounded by the restaurant, panting and sweating.

“Hey, put some clothes on!” Naomi yelled after them.

“Naomi!” April admonished her. “You’re embarrassing us!”

“So what? Do those guys really think that it’s appropriate to run all over the city like that? It’s disgusting.”

“Exercise is just so
vulgar,
” I agreed
.
“All that huffing and puffing. I can’t believe people actually do it in
public.
”

“I know what we should do! We should walk over to L’Enfant Plaza and look at the cute skater boys,” April suggested.

We all agreed that this was the perfect low-energy way to spend our evening.

“These sidewalks!” Naomi complained as we started walking. “They’re tearing up the soles of my new Loubous! Can we get a cab or something?”

“Let’s just take the Metro,” April suggested, pointing to the entrance of the National Archives-Navy Memorial station.

I forgot to tell Naomi the procedure for riding escalators in Washington. If you were lazy bitches like us, you were to stand on the right side of the escalator. But if you were a Type A asshole, you preferred climbing the stairs on the left.

One such busy and important person hit Naomi with his laptop case as he shoved her out of his way.

“Watch it, dicklick!” she shouted after him as he walked down the escalator.

“Stand on the right next time!” he yelled back.

“Like I give a fuck you’re in a hurry! I’ll fucking push you down the stairs, motherfucker!”

Didn’t he know that you should never talk back to a New Yorker? Everybody in the Metro station stopped and stared at us: the people riding the escalator going up, the people buying farecards at the vending machines, and the Metro Police officer waiting for us at the bottom of the stairs.

He gave Naomi a citation for disturbing the peace.

“I’m never coming back here again!” she declared. “Fuck this fucking town and everyone in it!”

I WENT TO CHINATOWN
with Naomi to keep her company while she waited for her bus to arrive that night.

“I wish you were coming back to New York with me,” she said. “We could be roomies again, like that summer in Williamsburg. Wasn’t that fun?”

“You know, Marcus is from Williamsburg,” I told her.

She could tell by the wistful look on my face that I might be falling in love.

“Oh, my God,” she said. “You
like
him!”

“Yeah, I think I do,” I admitted.

“What are you, desperate? Isn’t he a weirdo or something? I mean, you thought he was
gay
at one point, didn’t you?”

“So what if he’s a little strange? He’s from New York.”

“Can’t you see what’s going on here?” Naomi asked as the bus pulled up in front of us. “You’re lonely in DC, so you fall for the first guy who treats you with even a scrap of respect in this town. Jesus, I thought you were smarter than that!”

She climbed on the bus, leaving me to wonder if she was right. Maybe I
was
desperate. How could I possibly be in love with Marcus? At best, I was merely infatuated and soon, the fascination would wear off. Then I would have to start all over again with a new boyfriend
and
a new job.

I went back to my apartment and lay in the bed, not knowing what to do with myself. I could imagine spending my entire life like this, lying alone in bed. It wouldn’t be so bad. I could turn on the TV, watch whatever shows I wanted. I wouldn’t have to listen to anybody snore, smell their stank breath, or listen to them complain about their boring job.

I could get a dog. As Harry Truman had put it, “If you want to have a friend in Washington, you should buy a dog.”

And I could always masturbate whenever I wanted. That’s one thing I had always really enjoyed, and I was good at it, too.

Nope, nobody cared about me, and I didn’t care about them. Fuck everyone.

Then my phone rang. It was Marcus.

“Hey, where are you?” he asked.

“I’m running errands,” I lied.

“Isn’t it getting late? It’s almost midnight.”

Thank God. Another day closer to death.

“Do you want me to come over?” he asked.

Without hesitating, I said yes.

It must have been some irresistible biological urge to form a pair bond. Either that, or I really just liked the guy, and didn’t want to end up alone, watching TV with my dog, masturbating.