Frontline (40 page)

ADJUSTING TO NEW YORK LIFESTYLE DIFFICULT FOR NEWCOMERS

NO WELCOME MAT FOR NEW NEW YORKERS

BIG APPLE TAKES A BITE OF NEWCOMERS, SPITS IT OUT

OLD NEWS FOR NEW ARRIVALS IN NEW YORK

“I like the last one,” Denim Jacobson says from the couch, as she flips another page of her
Retro Fashion Now
magazine.

Kelly Sheridan rolls her eyes.
“I was joking with that one. I just wanted to see how many times I could use ‘new’ in the same headline.”

“Oh. Well, I like it. The repetition totally underlines your main point.”

Kelly reads all four headlines again out loud, studying each line’s rhythm, determining how they flow. She sighs and slumps against the back of her computer chair. “I hate it. I hate all of them.”

She clicks the left mouse button and drags the cursor over each line, flooding the screen with a fluorescent blue highlight, and presses
Delete
.

The clock in the top left corner of her screen reads 11:39 am. The assignment is due in her professor’s email inbox by five o’clock today, but choosing the right headline is just the beginning. Kelly needs an entire interview with someone who recently relocated to New York City, detailing the daily difficulties they faced trying to settle into their new life. It must be fully transcribed, proofed, and contextualized with her journalistic flair by that time, too.

“I told you, just make it up,” Denim says.

“We have to include the audio recording of the conversation with our report. She wants to hear the actual interview. How do I fake that?”

Denim lays the magazine flat in her lap. She spreads her arms and offers Kelly a smile big enough for a grand entrance on stage before a packed Broadway theater. “Interview me, silly!”

Kelly thought of this as a potential solution earlier, but Denim’s offer solidifies its impossibility. Her ‘er’ pronunciation is non-existent (
inta-view
) and her flat, drawn-out ‘ee’ sound lengthens
silly
into
sillaaay
. Kelly’s professor, a native of Denver, Colorado, would pick it up in the first seconds of the recording. An “F” beside
Storied New York
would look fantastic on her transcript.

“Try an accent. Give me Pacific Northwest.”

Denim taps a finger against her chin while she decides how to channel her inner west coast. “Duuuude,” she says gruffly, “the 90s were, like, so hip.”

“Okay, that was terrible,” Kelly says.

“Coming to New York was hard for my family, y’all.”

“What is that now?”

Denim shrugs. “Kinda Texan . . . I think? Turn on the television and let me see the guide. I bet there’s a
Real Housewives of Dallas
now. Gimme a full day’s marathon and I’ll have that accent down.”

Kelly closes her eyes and massages her temples. “I . . . am . . . so . . . fucked.”

“Well, I tried.” Denim returns to her magazine.

11:46.

Five hours and fourteen minutes until deadline with no ideas in mind. Kelly usually thrives under pressure, but this assignment feels suffocating.

She thinks about her course assignment breakdown from the syllabus: Thirty percent midterm, thirty percent final paper, forty percent blog postings, writing exercises, and class participation.

Her blogs have been “sporadic and unfocused” as her professor so kindly commented the previous week. Kelly frowned when she read it. She thought seriously about pitching her latest post to the
New York
Times
as an op-ed piece: How to take the knockoff handbag industry mainstream and milk its potential to reverse the city’s floundering retail sales trends. By the end, the piece had evolved into more of a detailed comparison between two bags she totally loved and ended up buying. But what real journalist has time to focus? That’s what editors are for.

The midterm didn’t go so great either. Kelly misread the instructions and thought she could pick two of the three essay questions. It turned out all were mandatory. She complained and accused the TA of losing parts of her exam, but when the professor told her to open a formal case with the Dean, she backed off. Thirty-three percent of her potential score disappeared before marking even began.

Kelly rises from her computer chair and slams her laptop closed. “Let’s get some air.”

“But I thought you had to work,” Denim says. “I thought this paper was make or break.”

“It is, but I need to clear my head.” Kelly pulls on her knockoff Burberry coat and taps the right pocket to make sure her keys are inside. “The underpinnings of this article are emotional. I need to get inside a newbie’s head, see this city in a way I haven’t in years, maybe ever. Also, motion creates emotion, so let’s get moving.”

Denim closes her magazine and stands, getting ready to follow Kelly out of the cozy apartment into the winter chill.

Denim is one of the most loyal people Kelly has ever met. Loyalty is difficult enough to find in a female friend, but especially rare in men. If Kelly could list her preferences of what would comprise the perfect mate, it would probably fill a magazine thicker than Denim’s latest
Retro
issue, but this is New York and a lady has to prioritize. Loyalty, Kelly decides, is what’s most important in a future husband. And just enough personality and backbone, but not so set in his ways that he can’t be gradually molded to hers.

Kelly opens the apartment door and Denim scampers through like an excited puppy. She sneers when Denim wraps a tie-dyed shawl around her shoulders and pulls a matching hat over her auburn curls.

“Tie-dye? Seriously?”

Denim giggles. “Don’t hate. This city needs some color, especially during the drab winter months.”

Kelly never mentions it but she’s proud of Denim. The girl won’t be dissuaded from wearing what she feels best announces her true self to the rest of the world, even if it falls way short of even retro cool. There’s something to be said for people who live out loud the way Denim does. Kelly knows it’s cost her a few opportunities, especially in the search for a significant other, but she sympathizes with Denim during those instances, too. Why tone down who you are just to attract someone who probably won’t live up? New York is sad for that—a harsh, judgmental place, sometimes as cruel to its own as it is to its new arrivals.

“This elevator is taking forever.” Denim sighs. “It’s as bad as in the summer when everyone is moving.”

Kelly folds her arms and stares at the digital display above the elevator door. It rises to the seventh floor, drops to the fifth, drops to the lobby, and stays put for another minute.

She presses the down arrow for the elevator on the opposite side of the hallway. The arrow doesn’t illuminate no matter how many times she pounds it and the display stays locked on “L”. It must be out of order.

“This is the most ridiculous thing ever. My assignment will be due by the time we get out of here!”

“Wanna take the stairs?”

Kelly scoffs. “I stand corrected.
That
is the most ridiculous thing ever.”

When Kelly and Denim finally step into the apartment lobby, they find the reason for the elevator traffic jam standing next to four tall stacks of UPS boxes: a petite young woman in black boots, blue jeans, and a navy fleece sweater. Her cheeks are flushed bright red, and frayed ends of chestnut brown hair peek from beneath a tie-dyed hat.

“Again with the tie-dye?” Kelly whispers to herself.

“Hey, nice hat!” Denim calls to the girl, who looks about their age.

“Oh, thanks.” The girl gives Denim an eager smile and slight wave. Her eyes linger on Kelly and Denim for just a touch too long for Kelly’s liking. Whether silently pleading with them for help moving her mountain of boxes, or sizing them up as potential friends, Kelly doesn’t know, but she’s not interested in either. She has a whole semester to save with this afternoon’s final paper and no time for small talk.

“She seems nice,” Denim says as they step outside into the freezing air.

Kelly yanks her collar up around her neck and removes a pair of earmuffs from her jacket pocket.

“Sure,” she answers, not entirely hearing Denim. She’s busy silently cursing herself for not choosing an assignment that could’ve been written without any kind of research.

100 Things To Do in New York in the Winter

How To Properly Hail a New York Taxi During Winter Without Getting Covered in Slush

Central Park’s Greatest Winter Attractions

All of her fluff ideas are limitless, of course, ever since she finalized her essay topic with her professor during office hours weeks ago. She originally pitched the story for her final paper as a bold, investigative look into current urbanization trends: a factual analysis of human migration patterns, a dramatic examination of the hopes and dreams of the twenty-first century migrant worker coming to New York to discover his/her untapped potential, crammed full of cutting edge research, primary source interviews and pinpoint commentary.

Her professor seemed excited. She urged Kelly to commit to the idea. “If it’s half as good as your pitch, I think you’ll do very well.” She scratched a checkmark in the box at the top of Kelly’s proposal sheet, clearing her to begin researching and writing. If only she’d started back then.

“The thing you must remember, Denim, is that New Yorkers aren’t nice people. We can be pleasant, certainly, but not nice. It’s not our style.”

“I disagree,” Denim says, her breath steaming in tiny wisps. “I think New York has had a bad rap for so many years, it’s been hard to shake. But I see people doing nice things for each other every day.”

“That’s only in your little fantasy world. New York is a cold, cruel place. It’s how we weed out the crybabies and lazy people and build a city of winners.”

Kelly’s boots crunch against a thick layer of salt crystals sprinkled over the sidewalk. She thinks of the white crust they’ll leave all over the black leather once they dry. She’ll have to scrub them all off with a toothbrush before she wears them out again.

Why a New York Winter is So Damn High Maintenance

The warm air of her favorite coffee shop greets her, along with the jingle of the bell above the door and the rich aroma of roasting coffee beans. Marco, an Italian barista with short black hair, deep dimples, and biceps that threaten to tear through his shirt sleeves beams at her.

“Kelly, my beauty!” He places a quick kiss on the back of her hand, which she’s only too happy to offer him as the rest of the shop patrons look on. “Come in, warm up. Will you have your usual?”

Marco greets Kelly as if she’s been a regular for years, which is funny considering she just discovered this place two months ago and has visited only a handful of times since. She felt Marco’s eyes all over her the first time she waltzed through the door and revels in the special treatment he offers her.

Marco always insists that she sit down while he makes her drink personally and brings it to her table, while the rest of the customers wait in line at the other end of the counter. His brashness has intensified; by her third visit Marco told her the coffee in America was garbage compared to what he drank back in Italy, and he tossed out the idea in a not-so-subtle fashion that maybe she’d like to vacation with him there someday.

“Yes, please, Marco, for both of us. I’d like you to meet my best friend, Denim.”

“A pleasure.” Marco reaches over the register and shakes Denim’s hand. “Tell me, why in America do beautiful women always travel together?”

“For protection against studs like you,” Kelly says, with a little more breathiness than she intended.

Marco’s eyes race up and down Kelly’s body while his forehead glistens. Bright pink blush ignites behind his dimples. “You would be very lucky to have the protection of a strong man like me.”

Kelly bats her eyelashes. “My, what a captivating thought.”

“Marco! What’s the order?” A short girl wearing thick eyeliner, bright pink lipstick, and coal black hair streaked with lime green, cut in sharp angles around her face, scowls at the three of them. She taps the side of an empty coffee cup against the metal cappuccino machine.

Marco waves her off and hisses something in Italian. He motions to a nearby table. “Please, Kelly, Denim, have a seat and I will be right with you.”

“Thank you, Marco,” Kelly says. She notices Denim opening her wallet, grabs her by the arm before she can pull any money from it, and whisks her over to a window seat.

“What are you doing? We haven’t paid,” Denim says.

“Marco told me my money’s no good here. By association, neither is yours.”

Denim shakes her head as they pull the wooden stools from beneath the table. “I can tell you’re not into him, so that means you’re using him. That’s not nice.”

“Oh, please. He insists.” Kelly lowers her voice to a whisper. “You have to respect an Italian man’s wishes when he does you a favor. They get crazy insulted if you don’t.”