My Fair Lazy - Jen Lancaster [108]
“Then they’ve got ’em.”
I don’t even hesitate to answer. “Consider it a date.”
“Dance! You dance! Dance, girl!”
In the darkened theater, I reach for Joanna’s wrist and squeeze it. She pokes me in the side in return while a ballet dancer grand jetés across the stage.
“Dance! Uh-huh! Dancin’! You’re dancin’! Woo!”
Joanna and I are attending a fund-raising dance performance, and we’re seated not only in the nosebleed section, but also apparently right next to a woman who has so much joy in her heart for dance that she can’t help but let it out in quick Tourette’s-like bursts. On my neighbor’s last “Woo!” she shakes her head so enthusiastically that she pelts me in the face with a couple of her hip-length dreadlocks. Fortunately, it’s not one of the beaded strands.
However, I’m fairly mellow about the whole thing, as Joanna and I had dinner at a Russian place beforehand, where we discovered the joy of flavored flights of vodka.
Traffic was obscene getting downtown, so I was almost half an hour late to meet her. While Fletch did his best to weave in and out of lanes to get me there quicker, Joanna sent me updates on her iPhone, telling me there’s a damn good reason that Russia never became a superpower in regard to wine. “Imagine cherry cough syrup,” she wrote, “only thicker.” Given that description, how would we then not opt for vodka?
Some details of our dinner escape me211 but I remember being first served a sampler platter heaped with colorful scoops of salads made of simple ingredients, like carrots and beets and mushrooms. This was followed later by another platter filled with hearty fare, such as stuffed cabbage and meatballs and Stroganoff. Our entrées were much heavier than German food, but also much more flavorful.
By the time we finished, we’d eaten ourselves sober again and were so stuffed that we could barely walk the few blocks to the theater. Okay, no offense, Russia, but if this is how you fueled up prior to battle, no wonder you couldn’t beat Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, back in the nosebleed balcony, my neighbor is banging her armrest and screaming, “Spin, spin, spin!” while a ballet dancer performs a fouetté en tournant.
Yes. Shouting will absolutely help him spin.
Joanna’s husband is with their kids, so we’re not under any kind of time constraints. And, as this is the first time just the two of us have been on the town together in something like fourteen years, we’re going to take advantage of the situation. We could stay out all night if we want. We won’t, but I love having this as an option.
When the show’s over, Joanna and I make a beeline for the nearest cab, heading directly to the most magical place in the city. On Friday and Saturday nights, the lobby of the Peninsula Hotel turns into something more akin to Willy Wonka’s factory. Tiered tables fill the center of the room, and each of them is heaped with dozens of chocolate treats, like chocolate crème brûlées, chocolate truffles, chocolate cookies, chocolate cakes, chocolate tarts, chocolate-covered strawberries, chocolate donuts, and chocolate mousses, all served alongside melted chocolate for fondue and various flavors of hot chocolate. The spread is nothing short of obscene.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Joanna says, eyes wide. “My girls would lose their minds.”
Once seated, and after we select our treats and sparkling champagne- vodka cocktails, we begin our postmortem on the performance.
“Did the Happiest Woman in the Entire World wreck everything for you?” I ask.
“She didn’t bother me. Judging from how muscular her arms were and her carriage, she had to be a dancer, too. She was probably just excited to see her friends onstage,” Joanna replies. It’s rare to get Joanna to ever say anything bad about people, despite having lived under my terrible influence on two separate occasions.212 “How’d you like the performances?”
“Honestly?” I admit. “I didn’t really understand most of them.” The element of storytelling was seriously lacking in some of the pieces. Although I loved watching the movement, I couldn’t always figure