Read Online The Washingtonienne by Jessica Cutler - Free Book Online Page B

carrying his love child.)
    Fred had everything to lose, but maybe he
wanted
to lose it all. It was possible to be suicidal without actually wanting to kill yourself. You just got so sick and tired of your life that you brought on your own self-destruction in hopes of starting all over again.
    I understood because I had been there myself. And like Fred, I wanted to believe that it was possible to make your life better this way. I had to believe it, or why go on?
    When the time came for Fred to go home, he gave me my envelope and tucked me into bed. Could he trust me? Maybe, maybe not. But I was no extortionist.
    After he left, I ordered a $300 bottle of Left Bank Bordeaux from the wine list and drank until I couldn’t move. I vomited purple sludge into the bushes on the way to my interview the next morning, but I still made it on time, looking damn near perfect.
    It’s scary how well some people can put themselves together despite their messed-up personal lives.

Chapter 11
    M y interview was with Janet, the office manager. She was no softie. She kept cutting me off and tapping her pencil impatiently on her clipboard while I spoke, as if she couldn’t wait to get rid of me.
    So I was taken by surprise when she offered me the job on the spot. I was to start the following Monday.
    I guess Phillip had put in a good word for me, so she didn’t need to check my references or anything. Then again it’s not as if I needed a college degree to open the mail and answer the phone.
    It was a shitty mailroom job, but a step in the right direction. I could call home and tell Dad that he had one less thing to worry about.
    There was no answer, so I left a message. I was sure that my parents would be happy, possibly even proud that I was working for a senator, albeit one they had probably never heard of. But no one called back. I forgot all about it when April took me to Saki that night to celebrate.
    WEDNESDAY WAS MY favorite night of the week for going out. You might think that nobody in Washington would want to party hard on a weeknight, but there was always a line to get in to Saki on Wednesdays. Not many Hill people showed up, which was a good thing: We could get crazy and not have to worry about it coming up at work. The crowd was a good mix of rich kids who didn’t have to work for a living and party people who didn’t give a fuck about their jobs and planned to call in sick the next day.
    Laura met us just in time for “White Lines (Don’t Do It).” The deejay played the Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel song at approximately the same time every night. It was a good song to writhe around and look sexy to.
    A boy who looked like Ad-Rock from the Beastie Boys circa 1985 put a glass in my hand and filled it with Grey Goose. He and his friends had bottle service at a nearby table, so we gravitated in that direction.
    Seconds later, we each had a drink in our hands and a boy’s lap to sit on. I had really just come here to dance tonight, but the Ad-Rock boy kept asking me questions like “Where are you from?” and “What do you do?” The crowd and the music were far too loud to carry on a conversation, so I was forced to lean closer to him so I could hear what he was saying. Then I caught a whiff of his breath, jumped up, and started dancing away from the table.
    Just my luck. I found the cutest boy in the club and he smelled like he’d been smoking weed and eating Doritos all day long. Dammit.
    Laura followed me to the ladies’ room, while April made out with one of Ad-Rock’s friends, some dude in a suit who had a bodyguard.
    “What time is it?” Laura asked, blotting the sweat from her face.
    “It’s almost three in the morning,” I told her, checking my phone for messages.
    “Did you get any calls?”
    I shook my head no.
    “Loser,” she said, snorting a line off the mirror in her Chanel compact.
    She had pried out the pressed powder that came inside of it for this sole purpose.
    “Are you going to the office