Famous People #34: Ashley makes her pasta with cream cheese
Kaitlyn: If you haven’t heard, Ashley recently moved deeper into Brooklyn than anyone we personally know excepting Michelle Williams and the Mount Eerie guy, who everyone of course still thinks about every single day.
She loves the suburban lifestyle, having lived in Astoria for five years — ever since she moved to New York — and so her new apartment is simultaneously enormous, beautiful, and graced by cross-breezes because it has literally multiple windows per room. I’m happy for her. I’m also bleeding from eyes with jealousy, obviously. Last week, she invited Lizzie and me over for dinner, which we were told would be some sort of pasta dish prepared in an Instant-Pot, and which we would eat outside on her porch — which has a roof, and is larger than my living room.
Lizzie: I actually have another friend who lives about a block and a half from Ashley, but Kaitlyn’s point, that Ashley’s apartment is basically in a very green, quiet habitat of indie musicians, still stands. Every time I walk around Ditmas Park I think, “It would be so easy to get murdered here.”
Kaitlyn: I took the Franklin Avenue shuttle to the Q and drank a deli coffee with about two tablespoons of coffee machine “French Vanilla cappuccino” in it because the deli was out of milk. There was a light rain and Ashley’s apartment is about a 10-minute walk from the subway, so I had plenty of time to sip my disgusting beverage and stare at her gorgeous neighborhood in my new fall coat, with a key lime pie bumping into my hip every step and gradually turning itself into a total disaster. When I got to Ashley’s she was putting hunks of cream cheese into the Instant Pot (which was full of pasta and peas) and saying, “Okay, don’t look.”
Lizzie: I had no idea there was cream cheese in that pasta! When you hear “cream cheese and pasta” you think “something made up by a hungover boy who was too lazy to go to the grocery store,” but the pasta was really delicious.
Kaitlyn: What I love about Ashley’s home is that she has a $300 trash can that responds to voice commands and no way to open a bottle of wine.
Lizzie: You have to address it as something before it opens, like “Dear Trash Can” or “Susan.”
Kaitlyn: Before dinner, I almost had to go to the hospital. I wanted so badly for Ashley to tell Lizzie a secret she’d forced me to keep inside for a full four days, and as soon as I finished lighting the mosquito-repellent incense (Ashley!!) I slapped my own legs as hard as I could and I said “tell her the secret before I die.” I was so distressed, I all but fell off her elegant outdoor furniture, and I all but tossed her decorative yellow throw pillows down onto the street below, and I all but swallowed the mosquito-repellent incense instead of my Perrier. Lizzie guessed what the secret was before Ashley could say a word. You know, she’s so smart she’s basically just biding her time every time she shows up to work anywhere.
Lizzie: I did guess the secret, but my heart started pounding when I first heard there even was a secret. I love secrets. My heart is still pounding now, reliving the sheer thrill of waiting to be told something extremely juicy that will have no negative impact on anyone. At least, I hope it won’t. Everything’s fine!
Kaitlyn: We were so full and so tipsy we couldn’t even walk back out to the porch. We laid on Ashley’s couch and I forced everyone to enable Find My Friends so that I can see where they are at all times. We talked about A Star is Born. We talked about people we used to work with, as if they were high school classmates. We talked about Lizzie’s sweatshirt, which had a metal-ringed hole at her collarbone, shaped like a robot mouth. It felt like finally it was fall, and finally I had used technology for something useful, which was to never lose track of Lizzie or Ashley again.
Lizzie: Kaitlyn made key lime pie. Before she served it, she asked “Are key limes different than normal limes?” I said yes, mostly because I know that key limes are very tiny. According to the internet, the key lime is “smaller and seedier, with a higher acidity, a stronger aroma, and a thinner rind, than that of the Persian lime (Citrus × latifolia). It is valued for its unique flavor compared to other limes.” Even though I guess normal limes are not similarly “valued for their unique flavor,” the pie was very good. It didn’t make me think, “this pie is missing some acidity and aroma,” but that could be because the cream cheese had flattened my palate for the evening.
Kaitlyn: Lizzie and I split a Lyft back to Park Slope and I walked the half-mile home from her apartment, past all the Prospect Heights brownstones, thinking about how wonderful it is to be so full of cream cheese pasta and so empty of secrets.
Lizzie: Ashley gave us each a giant Ziploc bag full of pasta to take home. I was laughing so hard because it was just a lumpy, cheesy plastic bag of pasta. I still ate it.
PARTY REVIEW METRICS:
Did anyone bring a dog?
Kaitlyn: I think it’s miserably irresponsible and selfish for almost anyone who lives in New York to have a dog, but if you insist on pet ownership I guess the suburbs of deep Brooklyn are the place to do it. Unfortunately Ashley’s gorgeous, immaculate apartment full of glass accent pieces, a sculpture shaped like a piece of coral, and a pristine copy of Kim Kardashian’s coffee table book is not the place to do it.
Lizzie: How many times have I asked Ashley’s roommate Colin where he got their glass coffee table? Like 7? I still don’t have one. Does anyone know how to bend acrylic?
Did we hear any good secrets?
Kaitlyn: As I said, we heard a secret that saved my life.
Lizzie: Feels rude that we can’t tell you. I mean, what are you even here for? But still, we can’t.
Did anyone get engaged?
Kaitlyn: I think we talked a lot more about infidelity than we did commitment, although Ashley did say to Lizzie at one point “When is he gonna put a ring on it?” Kind of like she was doing an impression of a 56-year-old insurance salesman named Tim talking to his niece who hates him.*
Lizzie: Is Tim married?
Did anyone get famous?
Kaitlyn: Lady Gaga’s character will get famous over the course of the plot of the upcoming film A Star is Born. Otherwise not a relevant question at this particular party because Ashley is the most famous of the three of us and that’s how it should stay.
Lizzie: There wasn’t enough of an audience to make fame a possibility, but if you think about it, exclusivity is part of celebrity life.
PARTY SCORE:
Kaitlyn: A cut above Cool-Whip and a half-cut above cream cheese.
Lizzie: 10 Citrus × latifolias.
*I love her so much, she can talk however she wants.