northeast regional

On the fridge in Abbey’s house is a giant bumper sticker that says f*ck cancer, and the invitation to the memorial they held for her dad. Just walking in the door is like getting shot up with girl power: there’s pizza and wine and Food Network, a screened-in porch where we curl under blankets and read the paper while it rains. We keep asking if we can help and her mom keeps saying, sit, sit.

We sit.

*

Our intentions are very lofty; there is art to see and national culture to absorb. Pioneer Woman is at the Book Festival and I want to go meet her so I can ask what in the hell was up with her chicken spaghetti, but after a breakfast of candied bacon lollipops and a long walk in the heat we are absolutely too close to a swoon to do anything but charge into the first air-conditioned building we pass, which happens to be the train station, and sit in a bar all afternoon. We drink beer, debate the politics of infidelity, and contemplate the Island Oasis machine.  I make Lisa tell me every boyfriend she ever had. “Can you believe we’ve all only known each other a year?” she asks me later, at the airport. Lisa has the bluest eyes of anyone I’ve ever met.

“Is that right?” I ask her. “That can’t be right.”

*

I like DC a lot. I think I could live there, in a brownstone  or something, in that alternate version of my life where I wear Banana Republic suits all the time and go for runs along the Potomac. I indulge in the fantasy for a little while, imagine myself writing speeches for a Congresswoman, heels clicking down the hall.

*

At Cafe Atlantico we share ceviche and guacamole and all kinds of delicious business, lamb and scallops and a bottle of wine. We linger. Our waiter is bearded and bespectacled, a horticulture student and amateur vintner. He asks if we have any questions and Sophie cocks her head to the side, smiles. “What’s your favorite vegetable?”

He’s thoughtful, takes a moment. “I mean,” he says eventually. “Vegetable is really more of a grocery term.”

Sophie gazes back at him, deadpan. “Good to know,” she says.

We order dessert.

*

We go to the Smithsonian to see Julia’s enormous kitchen, wander the cases of Inaugural gowns. We consider ice cream. We find a guy to take our picture in front of the Washington Monument but when he hands the camera over the shot is backlit and all you can see is shadow and sunshine, heads tilted against a blue sky.