Chapter 5 #2
“Don’t even start,” Lauren said the next morning when she walked into the office and saw James’s look of surprise.
“Didn’t think we’d see you today,” he said. “I thought you were off celebrating your independence from us by eating pumpkin pie and shooting off fireworks and starting wildfires.”
Lauren had spent most of the previous night shoving all of her dumb purchases into shopping bags and digging through the trash
to find the receipts. And maybe also crying a little bit. “Not today,” she replied. “And you’re confusing Thanksgiving with
the Fourth of July.”
“Both are deeply traitorous holidays, so you’ll have to forgive me for mixing them up.”
Lauren just closed the door to her office. Her sad, lonely, bare little office. She pulled up her Spotify app and went to
her go-to 2000s playlist.
“Oh dear,” Joy said when she came in a few minutes later.
Lauren didn’t look up from where she had rested her head on her desk, but she held up one finger. “Hold on,” she said. “The
chorus is the best part.”
“Why on earth are you listening to Nelly and Kelly? Why are you here? I thought your mum was flying in . . .”
“Well, now I have to restart it because we just missed it,” Lauren said, sitting up and reaching for her phone, but Joy got
there first and cut “Dilemma” off mid-chorus.
“You know I adore you,” Joy said, “but this is pathetic. Spit it out.”
“My mom had to cancel because there was a listeria outbreak in North Carolina.”
Joy paused. “I thought she lived in Atlanta.”
“No, she doesn’t have listeria, she just works for the CDC and sometimes she has to go to outbreak sites.
But I bought all this stuff at TK Maxx to make the apartment look good for her and now I have to return all that stuff back to TK Maxx and also I have no life and no friends. Present company excluded, of course.”
“A true honor, thank you,” Joy said. “Well, we know your dad’s not going to come visit. What about one of your friends from
DC? Maybe you could do your turkey celebration over the weekend?”
Lauren glanced down at her shoes before looking back up at Joy. “My boyfriend cheated on me with my best friend. They both
worked at the White House. That’s kind of why I left DC and came here.”
Joy’s eyes nearly fell out of her head. “What?!” she screeched. “Oh my God, you poor thing. You’re joking, right?”
Lauren shrugged. “I wish I was.”
“Well, that is something that we will definitely be unpacking, but not today. We are going out. Tonight. You and me.”
“The last thing I feel like doing right now is—”
Joy sat down on the edge of Lauren’s desk, cutting her off. “Let me ask you something. When was the last time you went out?”
“Where?”
“Out out,” Joy said, sounding exasperated. “Dancing, a bar, something social that isn’t standing in line waiting to use the bathroom
in your own home.”
Lauren winced. “Probably back in DC,” she admitted.
“Oh dear.” Joy sighed. “We’re fixing that tonight. We are celebrating.”
“Celebrating what?” Lauren said, reaching for her laptop again. Joy moved it farther away.
“Being thankful!” Joy exclaimed. “The fact that it’s Friday tomorrow. Or that my lovely, beautiful Theo is with his dad this
week, thank the Lord. There’s always something to celebrate!”
“I don’t have anything to wear. I hate everything in my closet.”
“I’m sure you can rustle up something,” Joy said cheerily. “You basically work in crisis management, you can’t track down a single outfit? Hmm?”
Lauren thought for a minute. “I think I can figure something out.”
“Stand still,” Una said. “This zipper is tricky.”
Lauren looked at herself in the bathroom mirror as Una, her hair in giant Velcro rollers, struggled to lock the zipper of
her borrowed dress into place. It was a little shorter than Lauren was used to, but the black sequins and color-blocked flowers
down the side were super cute. “Does it look okay?” she asked, turning to see her reflection.
“Better than okay,” Una said. “You should honestly just keep it and wear it every day.”
Lauren suspected that was a jab at her professional work attire, but Una wasn’t entirely wrong. “I’m kidding,” Una added.
“Don’t keep it, I need it next week.”
“Thank you again,” Lauren said. “My friend is taking me out out tonight.”
“Fun!” Una did a little shimmy. “Where are you going? Estelle? Arts Club?”
Lauren looked at her and shrugged. “It’s in Mayfair. A woman’s name?”
Una clapped her hands together. “Annabel’s! Respectable, I like it. Your friend has good taste. This dress is perfect, then.”
“If you say so!”
“Indeed I do.” Una reached for her fruit-scented vape stick and offered a hit to Lauren, who shook her head.
“Fair enough. Okay, babe, you look gorge, have fun tonight, don’t accept drinks from strangers, even the cute finance boys—especially the cute finance boys—be safe, and if anyone spills booze on that dress, find club soda immediately. ”
Lauren glanced at herself in the mirror before taking a photo on her phone. She admitted she looked great, and the strappy
black Rossi heels were even better. Past Lauren had definitely made the right choice by buying them as a “Yay, me!” present
when she got promoted at the White House two summers ago, even if they had mostly lived in their shoebox ever since.
In the Uber on the way to meet Joy, though, Lauren felt some of her enthusiasm sour a little bit. The last time she had gotten
dressed up for a night out with a girlfriend, the friend had been Brooke. They had spent many Friday and Saturday nights going
out, flirting with everyone at the bar to get free drinks, giggling the whole time. When Lauren looked back on that time of
her life, it seemed like a movie: sparkling lights, noise and voices and laughter, her best friend by her side, but none of
it had been real.
Had Brooke been sleeping with Brian then? Had they already started flirting, texting? Those nights when Lauren would come
home from a night out and Brian would still be working late, had Brooke just dropped her off and then gone to his office?
Thinking about it made Lauren so angry, the kind of anger that makes you cry, which were the sort of tears that she preferred.
To be sad would just make her feel pathetic, a sad sack, a third wheel who didn’t even know there had been three wheels in
the first place. Anger was good. Anger pushed her forward, moved her to London, put her back on her feet to try again.
Lauren dabbed at a single tear before it could fall. Una would absolutely kill her if she smudged her perfect winged eyeliner.
Joy, in a corset top, flared pants, and the sexiest heels, was on the steps outside of Annabel’s when Lauren’s Uber pulled up to the curb, chatting and laughing with one of the sharply dressed doormen.
With Christmas around the corner, the private members-only club had already put up its famous festive facade on the front of the building, which illuminated the entire section of the street with its bright lights and colorful sculptures.
“Well, hello there!” Joy cried when Lauren stepped out of the car.
“Look at you! Can’t get this at TK Maxx, can you?
Serge, this is Lauren, and she absolutely demands to be let in.
She used to work at the White House, you know.
” Joy stage-whispered that last sentence, then gave him a wink.
“Well, guess we’ll let her in anyway,” the man said, pulling at the large brass doorknob, the number “46” above the image
of a crown. The numbers reminded Lauren of the house where she grew up, one of them always slightly crooked due to the fact
that her mom could never hammer them quite—
“Oh, no no no,” Joy said, taking her by the arm and pulling her into a hug. “No getting all sentimental and mopey tonight.
We are here tonight to be thankful and”—she pulled Lauren away from her and held her out at arm’s length—“to have F-U-N.”
Lauren took a deep breath. “How did you know I was getting all sentimental?!” she said.
“Your face does a thing when you get in your head like that.”
“My face does a thing?”
“Lauren . . .”
“Okay yes, you’re right. Let’s have fun.”
The place was stunning. There were sculptures everywhere, including a winged unicorn attached to a hot-air balloon manning
the large staircase at the center of the Palladian building. Each room had its own theme, and florals bloomed in all of them—live
ones in giant vases and decorative ones on wallpapers, carpets, and the silk furniture.
“So are you a member here?” Lauren said, yelling to be heard over the music. It wasn’t clubby or jazzy, sort of a mix between the two, and Lauren liked it a lot.
“Are you asking if I’m an actual member? Because, at those prices? No. But do I belong? Oh sweetie, of course I do,” Joy purred, slipping her arm into Lauren’s as they walked through the room and toward the back
bar. “Just have a lot of—hey, you!—friends here, and some who like to repay me for favors I did back at Scotland—oh my God,
hi! You look amazing!—Yard.”
“Favors?” Lauren asked.
“Best not to ask too many questions,” Joy said faux sternly.
Stopping at one of the club’s many rooms, Lauren marveled at the giant pink quartz bar that was seemingly lit from within
and cast the most flattering glow on anyone who stood by it. Plush fabric chairs and booths nestled against dark corners,
and every single one of them seemed to have someone either very beautiful, very famous, or both tucked into them. It almost
seemed like the first day of a ritzy, glamorous summer camp: people crying out across the room before rushing to hug one another;
others deep in conversation at the bar, making points while poking each other in the shoulders; women going off in twos and
threes to the bathroom, heads together as they whispered on their way there. There was a camaraderie that Lauren hadn’t felt
in a long time, not at the White House and certainly not at the Palace.
She had missed this so much.