O.K. FINE WE’VE ALREADY BEEN PULLED OVER.

Which is to say that this little speed demon was rocking along to a particularly jolly pop ditty (hé, Hector, trop bonne ta compile) when all of a sudden it seemed that certain notes maybe weren’t part of the melody, and oh, wait, are those flashing lights behind us? Damn. Welcome to Maryland.

Yesterday afternoon, we picked up our Toyota from a Midtown Hertz. Deep blue like the midnight sky, trop classe, and perfect for stealthing by under cover of night. The license plates are from North Carolina, “First in Flight,” because we are about to take off.

After the futuristic neon of the Lincoln Tunnel, we’d raced through New Jersey and Delaware, under grey and rain, electrical towers and smokestacks on either side of us. Maud’d been bitching about the weather, and I’d said, “It’s got to be crappy before it can get good.” Apparently what I should’ve said was, “It’s got to be crappy before we can get pulled over before it can get good.”

So, the cop. Pudgy, brown, barking. I forgot to do all those things girls are supposed to do when they get pulled over. There was no flipping of hair, there was no crying, there was (foreign girls unite!) no pretending I don’t speak English. Et voilà, I have a ticket for seventy-five dollars, which is ten less than I was going in a sixty-five zone.

We were marveling about it later, how he’d appeared out of nowhere, how there’d been nothing and nothing, and then his car right behind us, sirens wailing, lights flashing. “C’était comme le Batmobile,” Yaël said, and maybe if we’d winked and complimented the cop on his irresistible essence of Batman, he’d have let us go with an indulgent smile. Mm. Well. Uh, now we know.

If this were a movie, and who’s to say it’s not, this is the part in “Romy and Michelle” when they’re just about to leave on their roadtrip, and Michelle (unless I mean Romy, in any case I mean the woman who plays Phoebe on “Friends”) goes “Whooo!” and then the car stalls, and then they have to start it up again, and Michelle goes “Whooo!” and then the car stalls, and then they have to start it up again, and then Michelle goes “Whooo!” and then they’re off for good.

The cop waved us off, we pulled away, and we started the music anew. And then the sun was out, and DC just minutes away.

Coming upon the city, a white Cinderella castle loomed in front of us. Except: no pastel flags, and no birds a-twitter. This castle was a pointy affair, from the next century, and quite possibly about to blast off in flames. “It’s like Star Wars,” Yaël said. “I am your father.”

We pulled up outside Aaron’s on Connecticut Avenue and cased the first floor looking for his apartment. When he opened the door, he said, “I heard the giggling coming closer.” We were maybe a couple of hours earlier than we’d thought we’d be, and he said he was sweating from having shoved everything under his bed.



He took us on the three-hour nighttime tour of DC. It was very cold, and the stars were points of ice. And the Washington Monument, the Capitol, the Lincoln Memorial, everything lit up grand and white against the dark sky. And even if you don’t agree with the government, there is something breathtaking about these monuments, an excitement seeing the White House glowing in the distance.

Like private agents we walked through the Crypt, subterranean, silent, walls of pipes leading from a secret somewhere to a secret otherwhere, and Aaron tried to sneak us into the Capitol afterhours, but the guards were immovable. We settled for the office wing, then, while we ooh’d and aah’d and tried not to be tourists. There is a barber in the Capitol, and a bank, and a post office, and an old-timey shoeshine. Down one hallway, Maud popped into the restroom. She poked her head out the door almost immediately to announce, “It’s pink!” so then everyone who was a girl popped into the restroom.



We walked by Tom De Lay’s office, and Chip Pickering’s, and all these names you see in the newspapers, and then we got to Aaron’s office, where he offered us Georgia peanuts and Cherry Cokes and Fanta Grapes, and let us play with a stuffed duck. Big fun on Capitol Hill.



But peanuts and sodas do not a dinner make, and some of us had been noshing on not much more than a Ziploc bag of pecans, pistachios, and dried cranberries for hours, so it was time for some fine dining. Aaron took us downtown and pointed out a big gay gym and a big gay restaurant. In Adams-Morgan, at a twenty-four-hour diner called The Diner, there were burgers and reubens and onion rings and fries. And then, just because one can smoke in DC restaurants, Maud did.

We were yawning like fat sunning seals, then, and we were rounding in on the midnight hour, so there was rumbling home to Aaron’s, and a flurry of toothbrushing, and then tumbling into the pull-out bed, eyes closed and sleep sweet like sweets.