Giant Men and Violent Women

Huh?

PRESLEY ANN

Ashley leans over into the passenger-side window and gives the cabbie a hundred-dollar bill. "Congratulations on your bell-ringing anniversary," he says to the congressman and his wife.

Bell-ringing is the New Hampshire way to say 'wedding', a day in which the church bells will ring for you.

The congressman and Angie sit in the back of the cab, bundled up and smiling merrily.

"You're one of a kind," the congressman says to Ashley.

Ashley just paid for the cabbie to take them anywhere else in the city they wish to go. As for Ashley and me, we'll be going our way and bidding the congressman and his wife adieu.

"Make sure you call me!" Angie screams to me out the backseat window as the cab pulls away from the curb.

"Will do!" I say to her. I have no intention of calling her.

I learned a lot during the ice cream double date with my two new friends, the first thing being that the congressman was a state senator, not a federal one. Not only that, but he's not a member of the New Hampshire Senate, also called the upper house. He's a member of New Hampshire's House of Representatives, also known as the lower house. The congressman serves alongside doctors, little league football coaches, janitors, and just about anyone else who feels like running for the House of Representatives. The congressman is a nobody.

But, as Ashley assumed, the congressman was so pleased by someone referring to him as, well, a congressman, he fawned over us as if he was a somebody. His status as a member of New Hampshire's lower house is why I've never heard of him. Also, he didn't run for office in my district, so why would I care about him? Presumably, my mother endorsed him because he belongs to a political base that she's trying to court for her next election. However, my mother doesn't bring work home, especially something so small as to woo the head of a tiny political sect that would probably garner her a few hundred votes. Though every vote counts.

Even though I discovered that the congressman was a New Hampshire boy to the bone who loved his land, his ancestors, and his guns, I still don't know his name. Angie never said it. Not once. She called him babe. Ashley referred to him by the elevated title of congressman throughout the ice cream date to stroke his ego.

But the most important thing that I learned about the congressman and his wife was not who they are, but what they knew about Ashley and me.

"We'll do lunch!" Angie screams out to me.

"Perfect!" Not a chance.

That would be a meal that would benefit Angie and Congressman only. Boston Society would write of the luncheon and mention my mother's name dozens of times-Angie would make sure of it-even though my mother wouldn't have even been there.

Ashley turns to me as the cab pulls away and lifts his eyebrows as if to say, We've made it.

"Balls full of energy," he says to me, using a phrase my grandmother would use when referring to preschoolers who came to her home and tore it apart.

I laugh. He and I were thinking the exact same thing. What was probably supposed to be a sweet, nostalgic night where Ashley showed me how it could have been had we been college kids. But the night was turned into a raucous evening spent with a New Hampshire good ol' boy, his beauty-pageant wife, and plenty of stares from those around us.

Secretly, I'm exhausted. I take my arm and wrap it within Ashley's. He gladly accepts it and leads me down the sidewalk in an attempt to find our own cab. There's this old-timey 1940s feel to this moment. Here we are, transported into our own Cambridge dream, with bar lights flashing like old-style movie-theater lights and black Mercedes-Benzes traveling down the street as if they were black Fords. Women in black dresses and high heels replace smart-looking women in pencil skirts and hats. Men, dressed appropriately for the weather, are in jeans and coats and travel in packs, replacing suited men in fedoras. The sounds of B.B. King replace the sounds of jazz from a nearby bar. A bar playing Coldplay and another playing Lana Del Rey replaces each other, one by one. Picketers, holding protest signs, telling everyone to join New Hampshire replace posters with Uncle Sam telling men to join the Army. Close the prisons, let the enslaved work their time away. This is the new '40s-the World War II '40s-and Ashley and I are in the new Cambridge.