LITMIR.BIZ

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to Fukku Rain to Shinka¯,’ he said, looking us both up and down and frowning at my choice of shoe. I was correct. ‘You have a reservation?’

      ‘Lopez, for two,’ Jenny said. ‘Riverside.’

      ‘Riverside?’ I whispered as the man nodded once and held open the door. ‘Is that some sort of password?’

      ‘Not quite,’ she whispered back. ‘Relax, this is going to be a night you will never forget.’

      I immediately tensed up from head to toe. When Jenny promised an unforgettable evening, someone either usually ended up at karaoke until three a.m., face first in the bottom of the Bellagio fountains, or moving to Los Angeles. And given that the last thing I’d done before leaving the house was apply calendula cream to my cracked boobs while Alex quietly sulked about me going out, none of those options seemed particularly favourable.

      ‘Not to be a Debbie Downer but I can’t be out super late,’ I said. Managing expectations was key with Jenny. ‘Alex is exhausted from being at home with Alice all week.’

      ‘Angie, it’s Wednesday,’ she whispered as we followed the host through a heavy black velvet curtain and into a tunnel so dark I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. ‘And Monday was a holiday so you weren’t even at work.’

      ‘Well, he’s tired and I don’t want to take the piss,’ I said, stumbling over something unseen. ‘Are you sure about this?’

      ‘Positive,’ her voice confirmed somewhere in the darkness ahead of me. ‘You’re gonna flip.’

      ‘Only if I don’t fall first,’ I corrected. ‘I’ve got a bag full of Ikea tealights at home, I’d have brought some if I’d have known.’

      ‘We have arrived.’

      The darkness was split by a sliver of something like daylight as the host pulled back another black curtain at the end of the tunnel.

      ‘Please, choose your vessel.’

      I blinked as my eyes adjusted to the light and then again to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. As far as I could tell, we’d only walked a few feet but somehow we had been transported to another world. I took a step forward onto a rickety wooden dock that jutted out over an actual river. Flowing water ran all the way around the room, surrounding a miniature island that was covered with full-size cherry trees, and dotted between the trees were a number of tiny tables, glowing with the light of a dozen candles. So, they didn’t need my Ikea tealights after all.

      ‘Well?’ Jenny said, nudging me towards three little wooden rowing boats tied up to what looked like an ancient dock in front of us. ‘Choose your freaking vessel.’

      ‘We have to row to dinner?’ I asked, as a tiny bird flew past my head. They had birds? Inside? Inside birds on purpose did not seem like the kind of thing that would get you a good grade from the New York department of health and safety. ‘Jenny, is this the actual Gowanus Canal? Because you know that water has gonorrhoea, right? I mean, they tested it and everything—’

      ‘Roberto will row the boat,’ the host explained with a small bow, gesturing towards what was quite clearly a male model, wearing nothing but a pair of gold swimming trunks. Either someone’s encyclopaedia had its pages stuck together or they’d been doing far too much coke when they came up with the idea of this place.

      ‘We’ll take this one.’ Jenny pushed me down the dock and hopped into the boat, spreading her gorgeous scarf-print dress around her on her seat. ‘Angie, can you take a picture?’

      She leaned forward to hand me her phone before positioning herself in the boat, lifting her chin and reclining seductively.

      ‘I’m real sorry but we don’t allow photos inside the forest,’ Roberto explained in a thick Texan drawl. Holding my breath, I waited for Jenny to scratch his eyes out but, instead, she simply sat up straight and nodded, her face a study in seriousness.

      ‘Of course,’ she said, snatching back her phone and shoving it deep into her quilted Gucci camera bag. ‘Totally get it.’

      What was going on? Jenny was OK with being told she couldn’t take photos? Everyone had officially gone insane. I looked down at the water and saw something dart underneath the boat.

      ‘I’m sorry I don’t want to panic anybody but I think I just saw something in the water.’ Most likely gonorrhoea, I thought to myself. ‘It looked like a fish?’

      ‘Most surely was, Ma’am,’ Roberto replied as he nonchalantly adjusted his package. ‘How else are you gonna fish for your supper?’

      ‘Jenny.’

      ‘Angie?’

      My heels were already starting to hurt, my stomach was howling with hunger and I was almost certain one of the tiny birds had already shat in my hair.

      ‘Have you brought me to a restaurant where I have to catch my own fish before I can eat?’

      ‘Technically, only if that’s what you order,’ she replied, hitting me with her biggest, brightest smile. ‘But I ordered ahead so that is what you’re going to do, yes.’

      ‘I am going to die,’ I muttered, gripping Roberto’s arm tightly as I boarded. ‘I cannot believe you brought me here.’

      ‘You’re so welcome,’ Jenny said happily, taking my hand and completely missing my point. ‘It was not easy to get a reservation, believe me. But nothing’s too good for girls’ night, not for my Angie.’

      I eyed her suspiciously. She was definitely up to something.

      ‘I’ll bet you one hundred dollars that one of us falls in the water before the night is over,’ I replied, entirely unamused as we rowed across the moat. ‘There’s no way we’re getting in and out of a place that serves booze and has a moat without one of us ending the evening piss-wet through.’

      ‘Jeez, would you relax?’ she huffed. ‘This is the hottest restaurant in the world right now, it’s booked up for months. Someone at work offered to get me into the Met Gala if I gave them our slot tonight.’

      ‘Are you serious?’ I asked. ‘You passed up tickets to the Met Gala so we could fish for our dinner in Gowanus?’

      Jenny shook out her lion’s mane of chocolate-brown curls as the boat completed its brief journey and hit dry land. ‘It isn’t what it used to be,’ she muttered as Roberto the golden-trunked gondolier helped her out of the boat. ‘It’s all Kardashian-Jenners these days. At best, you get Rihanna. Who tried to get a reservation here and couldn’t, by the way.’

      ‘Here we go again,’ I replied, wobbling up and out. ‘When will you stop the one-upmanship with Rihanna?’

      ‘When she admits I gave her the idea for Fenty Beauty,’ Jenny snapped. ‘You were there, you know it’s true.’

      ‘If you’re talking about the time you were so wasted you lunged at her when she was leaving Philippe Chow and told her she was really hot and she should “do something with makeup”, then, yes, I was there.’

      With a dismissive huff, Jenny turned on her heel and walked off up the dock and into the forest.

      The restaurant whose name I had already forgotten was beyond. There was lush green grass beneath my feet, a dusky sky complete with fluffy clouds above my head. I didn’t understand it and I didn’t care to. Now I was out the murder tunnel and on dry land, the only thing I could think about was food. I ducked to avoid a head-on collision with a passing butterfly as a beautiful redhead in full Geisha get-up tiptoed through the cherry trees towards us.

      ‘Good evening, ladies,’ the woman said, bowing her head slightly. ‘We are so pleased you could join us on the island. I have you at one of our riverside tables this evening. Please follow me.’

      At least the ‘Riverside’ bit made sense now.

      I

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