Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld Page B

liquid was gone, she returned the glass to the counter. “Problem solved.”

    “That glass was mine,” Darcy said.
    “Oops,” Liz said. “Are you worried about my B-minus Cincinnati germs?”
    After Darcy refilled the same glass, he looked at her, took a sip, and said, without smiling, “I have confidence in my immune system.” As he poured from the other bottle into Caroline’s glass, he said, “You might recall that it was you yourself, not I, who assigned you a grade of B-minus.”
    “I was empathizing with your plight—looking at the world from your perspective.”
    “I see.” Everything about him—every inflection of his voice, every expression he made—oozed superciliousness.
    “For what it’s worth, my sisters aren’t representative of all people from Cincinnati,” Liz said. “Lydia and Kitty happen to have exceptionally bad manners.”
    “I’m well aware that your sisters have exceptionally bad manners,” Darcy said, and Liz immediately regretted her quasi-apology.
    She said, “So where are you from that’s so superior to here?”
    “I grew up outside San Francisco. Though again, you’re putting words in my mouth—I never said superior .”
    “Close enough,” Liz said. “And, you know, just for the record, whatever it is you think about the people here, your opinion says more about you than the city. Because I’m not sure what you think other places have that we don’t, but fifteen-dollar cocktails made with locally grown ingredients? We’ve got them. Indie bands? Got them. Reiki healers? We’ve got those, too. Maybe you have to search a little harder, but all that’s here, and so is lots of other stuff, like beautiful old houses that are completely affordable and an awesome riverfront park and nationally ranked sports teams and easy commutes and a mix of races and ethnicities. You can have a really high quality of life in Cincinnati.”
    This was without question the most passionate paean to her hometown Liz had ever delivered—in fact, she wasn’t certain she believed all of it—but Darcy simply said, “You’re lucky to be so enthusiastic about the place you live.”

    “Oh, I don’t live here,” Liz said. “I live in New York.”
    At this, Darcy did something she hadn’t previously seen: He smiled.
    “It’s not that I wouldn’t live here,” she said quickly, though she wasn’t sure this was true, either. “It’s just that it doesn’t make sense with my job. I’m a writer for Mascara magazine, but I came back because my dad had heart surgery.”
    “A bypass?”
    Liz nodded. “He’s doing well.” Reflexively, she knocked on a wooden cabinet.
    “Did he have it done at Christ?” Liz nodded again, and Darcy said, “Their cardiothoracic department is good.”
    “Are you fermenting the grapes yourself?” someone said then, and both Liz and Darcy turned to see Caroline. “You’ve seriously been in here for twenty minutes,” Caroline said, and beneath her breezy tone, Liz heard an unmistakable territoriality. How convenient, Liz thought, that Caroline’s managerial obligations had brought her to Cincinnati.
    “Liz was just telling me that she’s a writer for a magazine,” Darcy said. “ Mascara, you said?”
    “Oh, that’s funny,” Caroline said. “Do you write articles like ‘Twenty Tips to Be a Tiger in the Sack’?”
    “That’s not Mascara, ” Liz said.
    “I’m over Charades,” Caroline said to Darcy. “Want to get out of here?”
    More loudly, Liz said, “I know what magazine you’re thinking of, and it’s not Mascara. We write about sex, of course, but not in a cheesy way.”
    Caroline glanced at Liz. “You what?”
    “ Mascara focuses on serious issues,” Liz said. “I went to Saudi Arabia last year for a feature on gender relations in the Middle East.”
    There was something challenging, or weirdly accusatory, in Caroline’s tone as she said, “Did you have to cover your hair?”
    “I wore an abaya and a head scarf in