I Heart New York (14 page)

I was so lost for words and overwhelmed by the need to pee, I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t remember a time anyone had done something so thoughtful. Even Mark’s proposal hadn’t been so well considered and he’d (allegedly) been planning it for months. ‘Will you marry me?’ doesn’t have the same ring to it when you’ve just been arguing the toss with a Sevillian pony and trap driver over five Euros.

‘Honestly, you shouldn’t,’ I murmured, clutching at his arm and feeling very feminine all of a sudden. Maybe they put something in the air conditioning to make you more susceptible to romantic gestures, I thought to myself.

‘But I want to,’ he said, pointing the sale girls towards a delicate silver ballpoint pen. ‘And I’m going to.’ The girl nodded and took the pen away.

I looked away, smiling happily. And slightly tipsily. I could really get used to this kind of treatment quite quickly, but before I did, I really really had to talk to him about slowing things down. It wasn’t fair to accept expensive gifts and lavish dinners when I was still feeling guilty about having slept with him. But I didn’t want to offend him.

‘I just need to nip to the ladies’ room,’ I whispered as the sales girl appeared with my beautifully wrapped parcel. Oh, the white ribbon against the stiff eggshell cardboard bag. It made my heart leap right into my mouth.

Tyler nodded and took the gift bag. ‘I’ll wait outside, I have a couple of calls to make.’

The bathroom was every bit as beautiful as I had expected, but I was so desperate, I would have taken a hole in the ground. Oh the relief. Washing my hands, I took a moment to think about the Tyler situation. I didn’t know if it was the pheromones I was convinced Tiffany were pumping into their store or possibly the champagne that was still raging around my system, but it struck me that I was taking the Tyler/Alex thing altogether too seriously. Jenny was right, we were just having fun, Tyler had bought me a pen, not an engagement ring, and Alex and I had only been on one date! There was no need to say anything to Tyler right now except thank you very much. I would have to be crazy to knock back a generous, thoughtful (rich, hot) man like him for no reason. Besides, he had seemed very comfortable in Tiffany’s, maybe he bought a lot of gifts for his friends. It would be rude of me to make a big deal out of it. After all, it was just a pen. My mind made up to ask Tyler out for dinner for Thursday night, I went back downstairs. It would be totally straight forward, I told myself. I would ask him if he would like to go out, and if he were to ask me if I’m seeing anyone else, I’d say yes. We’re just dating, just a notch above friends really. Friends with benefits in fact, I’d read all about that and it seemed fine.

Resentfully, I left Tiffany’s and looked for Tyler. For some reason, the sun didn’t seem to leave him hot, sweaty and lobster red like everyone else, but glinted off his hair and accentuated his tan. He was the Kentucky Derby racehorse to my Blackpool seafront donkey. Eeyore.

‘There you are,’ he said, handing me the bag and kissing me on the cheek. ‘Real sorry but I’ve got to get back to the office. Something’s come up that I have to deal with.’

‘Oh, I hate when that happens,’ I joked feebly. Now or never, time for me to propose my first ever date. ‘Do you want to go to dinner with me on Thursday?’ I garbled.

‘Sorry?’ he asked, sliding a pair of expensive-looking sunglasses out of his jacket pocket.

‘Thursday night?’ I tried more slowly. ‘Would you like to go for dinner with me?’

‘Oh, I can’t make Thursday,’ he said, looking around for a cab. ‘What about Wednesday?’

‘I can’t make Wednesday,’ I said, really hoping he wasn’t going to ask me why. ‘Tomorrow?’

‘How about Saturday?’ he suggested. ‘My week is pretty crazed. We could do a picnic in the park? It might be a little busy but it’s always fun.’

Before I could really give a yes or no, he pecked me on the cheek (it was definitely only a peck) and jumped into a taxi slowed by traffic, whilst making the universally acknowledged ‘I’ll call you’ sign. I waved goodbye and watched him pull off, already on his phone.

‘I don’t think that’s a bad sign,’ Jenny said through a mouthful of lasagne. I’d demanded we stay in and cook that evening, much to her disgust, but she seemed to be packing away the meal ‘we’ had made fairly quickly. ‘He offered Wednesday, you couldn’t make it. Five days isn’t really that long between dates, especially when you’ve only just started seeing each other. Now make with the pen!’

I’d refused to show Jenny the pen until we’d discussed the million different interpretations of Tyler’s actions. The invite to lunch–good. He could have asked anyone but he’d invited me. The trip to Tiffany–very good whichever way you looked at it. The picnic suggestion–sweet, definitely a date thing, not a friend thing. The distracted goodbye–probably just concerned about work, I was reading too much into it.

‘I just thought maybe, I don’t know, he’d want to see me before the weekend,’ I shrugged, stretching the mozzarella between my knife and fork. ‘After last night and everything.’

‘What, you’re so hot in bed you thought he couldn’t wait for a second helping?’ Jenny smiled, shovelling her pasta.

‘Technically it would be his fourth.’ I stuck my tongue out and brought the Tiffany bag out from its hiding place. ‘And no, I don’t think that, I just, I don’t know. Maybe it wasn’t as great as I thought. I suppose I’m really rusty.’

‘You can’t be that freaking rusty!’ Jenny squealed, ripping the tissue paper out of the bag and holding up a gorgeous white gold lariat chain with a diamond-studded star on one end.

‘Where’s my pen?’ I gasped, staring at the chain, not daring to touch it. ‘Did I steal someone else’s bag? I wasn’t that drunk!’

‘The pen’s in here too,’ Jenny said, emptying the bag out onto the counter with a clatter. I winced, watching the pen crash out of its pouch and onto the work surface. ‘There’s a note, read the note, read the note!’

I took the slip of paper and started to read.

‘OUT LOUD!’ Jenny shouted, giving me a drum roll.

‘A shooting star for my shooting star. Tyler,’ I read. It was so romantic. He must have—

‘Stop thinking, start talking!’ Jenny yelled, grabbing the note.

‘He must have gone and bought it when I was in the bathroom,’ I breathed. I had been completely bowled over by the pen, but this? ‘I can’t believe he did this. I should call him.’

‘Text,’ Jenny said, still holding the necklace. I felt that if I took it from her it would melt away into thin air. ‘You don’t want to overdo it, you’re not seeing him until Saturday, you should text. Keep it short and flirty, “Thank you, can’t wait for you to unwrap your present on Saturday”, something like that.’

‘Jenny!’ I said, still transfixed by the sparkles. ‘I can’t say that. It’s too much, I should just say thank you or something.’

Jenny pulled a face.

I pulled a face.

Jenny pulled another face, snatched the phone out of my hands and sprinted into the bathroom.

‘Jenny, you cow, give me my bloody phone,’ I shouted through the door.

Emerging triumphant, Jenny handed me the phone. ‘What would you do without me, doll?’

‘Tell me you didn’t?’

‘Now is so not the time to be coy, honey.’ Jenny sauntered back through to the living room and dropped onto the sofa, dipping into an open bag of Doritos.

I hardly dared look in my sent messages, but since it was done…‘Hey, loved my present, maybe I’ll have a surprise for you to unwrap soon, Angela xox’. I shook my head while Jenny giggled, peeping over the back of the sofa.

‘Honestly, it’s not nearly as slutty as I thought it would be,’ I sighed, setting down the phone and shoving Jenny up the sofa.

Full of food and vicarious romance, she eventually fell asleep in front of the TV. Once I was satisfied she was genuinely asleep, I took the pen, the necklace and the note into my room and spread them out on my bed. It was genuinely the sweetest thing anyone had ever done for me. I tried to think back to some of Mark’s better moments and was saddened to realize that out of ten years, aside from the half-arsed proposal, I couldn’t think of more than a handful. Roses delivered to my lecture on our first valentine’s apart, flowers in every room of the house when we moved in together, planting a giant sunflower in the garden of our flat every year on our anniversary. It didn’t take me long to recognize a theme, and even less time to realize we hadn’t even planted a sunflower for the last three years. Mark was probably too busy planting something else. After fifteen minutes of shamelessly ogling Tyler’s gifts, I wrapped them carefully in their tissue and placed them back into the bag. And then I slipped between the sheets with the same level of care and allowed myself fifteen more minutes’ shameless recollection of some of Tyler’s other gifts.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Officially one day into my blog, it was a bit early for writer’s block. I had so much to go on, yesterday’s lunch with Tyler, making the second date with Alex, finding the necklace, everything, but I didn’t know where to start. Eventually I gave up typing ‘The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog’ and got dressed. I was happier with my make-up, I could even do my eyes without Razor’s crib sheets. I hadn’t stuck the mascara wand in my eye for two days and I hadn’t gone out with stripes of blusher down my cheeks for three. Not to mention the fact that I had put on cropped leggings and a Twenty-Eight Twelve T-shirt dress without even thinking about whether or not you could see my arse. The four walls of the apartment weren’t offering me inspiration, so I picked up my (gorgeous) bag, slid my laptop inside and made for the great outdoors.

Murray Hill was the perfect place from which to start an aimless wander around Manhattan. At first I thought maybe I’d just pop out and get more coffee, but as I got further and further downtown, I just couldn’t seem to stop walking down, down, across, down. Sunshine slanted through the narrow channels between the streets and swam across the avenues. Everywhere I turned I saw something mundane, everyday and completely exciting. The office of Dr Jeffrey Walker DDS, the Episcopalian church on Fifth, the Korean deli stocked with Wonder Bread, Milk Duds and Vanilla Coke. Eventually I hit Bleecker Street, but instead of carrying on down to Houston and dipping my toe (and credit cards) in Soho, I carried on walking into the Village. The shops got smaller and more quirky, I paused outside pet shops and lost my heart to every puppy I passed. I browsed in record shops until I was frowned out by the intense-looking guys in Iggy and the Stooges shirts behind the ridiculously high counters. I wandered around Duane Reade drugstores wondering how anyone could need to self-medicate so incredibly heavily. And eventually I found my inspiration.

A Marc by Marc Jacobs standalone store.

My handbag was drawn to the mothership from across the road. I wandered up and down the clothes, stroking them lovingly and wondering how they got so many models to work in their shop. I managed to put a beautiful silk shirtdress back on the rack before my bag pulled me directly to the accessories, practically purring at the matching wallets. Before I knew what I was doing, my old Accessorize purse was emptying itself out on to the counter, prostrating itself in front of what it clearly recognized as its superiors.

Opposite the store was a small playground, full of children and ridiculously chic nannies and cool boho mothers clutching coffees and cupcakes from the Magnolia Bakery. I plopped down on one of the benches and set my laptop up on one of the concrete chessboards. I’d got cupcakes too, but I was determined to save them for girls’ night back at the flat with Vanessa and Jenny. Or maybe I’d just have one. By God it was delicious. I’d never eaten a cake that was more icing than actual sponge before and it turned out that writing the blog on a sugar high was as easy as writing it when I was completely caffeinated. I tapped away merrily, bag tucked on my lap, icing all over my face and eyes completely wired.
The Adventures of Angela
:
Gifting at Tiffany’s

There, that was as good a headline as any…

By the time I’d cabbed it home, emailed the blog to Mary and eaten another cupcake (shamefully, I’d gone back for more after eating two to get me through the blog), it was three-fifty. Jenny and Vanessa were coming home together to watch
America’s Next Top Model
, but not for another few hours, so I happily installed myself on the sofa with a giant box of cookies and the TV for company, only getting up to answer the phone to Jenny’s mother and take a long, unnecessarily detailed message about her father’s trip to his prostate doctor but not to worry, he was fine. Speaking to Jenny’s slightly manic mother made me think about mine. Not that there was anything even vaguely manic about her, she was more than chemically balanced, but she did like to go into detail on her doctor’s appointments. I’d left her a voicemail with my new number, but even if she didn’t need to talk to me, I sort of felt that I wouldn’t mind speaking to her. Just to let her know I was OK. Just get it out of the way. Just tell her I’m fine, that I’m working and that I’ll call her again in a week or so. If I need to.

Or that she can ring me.

Next month or something.

Long pause.

Clicking.

Ringing.

‘Hello?’

My arm shot out and I stared at the phone in front of me.

That wasn’t my mother.

That was Mark.

I scrabbled for the off button and hung up, switched off and threw the phone at the sofa. What the hell was he doing at my mother’s?

I sat on the end of the sofa, rocking lightly, unable to take my eyes off the phone in case it started ringing. I didn’t want to think about this, I told myself, I couldn’t think about this. I could just about stand thinking about him in the past, us in the past, but I didn’t want to have to think about him now, and I definitely didn’t want to think about him in my mother’s house.

I threw myself back onto the sofa, turned up the TV and finished the rest of my cupcake, staring at the screen and refusing to think about anything but
Super Sweet Sixteens
,
Cribs
and whether or not I might have a shot at love with
Tila Tequila
until Vanessa and Jenny came cackling through the door.

Even with the music from my iPod drowning out any thoughts of Mark overnight, I really didn’t sleep well, and the next morning, it showed. Even the Touche Éclat didn’t shift the dark shadows I’d picked up overnight. Great, some literal baggage to go with the emotional stuff. Looking like crap or not, I was excited about going to MoMA (since Jenny had sighed and explained it was an art gallery). One of my favourite weekend treats, when Mark had to ‘work’, was to lose myself in the Tate Modern for hours. Taking in the galleries, checking out new exhibitions, sometimes just sitting outside or in the turbine hall, people watching for hours. I was even more excited when I saw Alex hovering outside the entrance. He looked just as cute as last time with added Brownie points for apparently having thought about combing his hair.

‘Hey,’ he gave me his trademark slow smile as I approached. Without an ounce of concern for public opinion, he scooped me up into a long, lazy kiss. It was delicious.

‘So what you been up to?’ he asked, swinging my hand as we rode the escalators up to the galleries. ‘Anything I should know about?’

‘I had my meeting at
The Look
,’ I said, glossing over my Tyler incidents. I filed them safely under things he did not need to know about
right now
, which meant I wasn’t lying, just not oversharing. ‘I’ve got another meeting on Friday and then hopefully it’ll go online. The editor said she really liked my stuff.’

‘Really? That’s amazing. I’m sure it’s going to be really great.’

‘Yeah, hopefully,’ I said, squeezing back. ‘What about you, have you reached any life-changing decisions?’

He shook his head, pulling me around to the next escalator. ‘Nope. Band rehearsal tomorrow though and we have a gig on Friday. There might not be many more, you want to come?’

‘I’d love to,’ I said, terrified at the idea of being a groupie and thrilled at the idea of, well, being a groupie. ‘Where is it?’

‘Music Hall of Williamsburg,’ Another escalator. ‘You should bring your roommate, it’ll be fun.’

‘Sounds good,’ I replied. Another escalator. ‘I don’t think she’s doing anything.’ I had no idea what she was doing, but as far as I was concerned, she was now coming to Alex’s gig. ‘Are we actually going to get off the escalators or is this some sort of new performance art I should know about?’ I asked as we finally stepped onto solid ground.

‘There’s something I really want to show you.’ Alex walked around the corner, to a painting hanging just inside the corridor, more or less on its own. ‘This is my favourite picture in the entire world,’ he said, standing a respectful distance back from the painting.

It was small, showing the back of a girl staring at a wooden farmhouse in the near distance. Even from behind, I felt as though I could see she was crying, unable to escape her situation. Unable to tear herself away, even though she wanted to. Needed to. There was nowhere else for her to go.

‘
Christina’s World
, Andrew Wyeth,’ I read out quietly. The fifth floor was almost empty and the silence was eerie. I clutched at Alex’s hand, still gazing at the painting. I wanted look away but I couldn’t. Before I knew what was happening, tears were streaming down my cheeks.

‘It’s…’ I started, not knowing where to go. I dropped Alex’s hand and took a half-step closer. ‘It’s just…’

‘I know,’ he said, putting his hands on my shoulders. ‘When I feel trapped or confused or I just forget myself I come here and remind myself. I’m sorry, I thought you would like it. The woman in the painting is paralysed and crawling back to the house but I don’t know. Always seems to me like she’s wanting to get away from the house rather than back to it.’

‘Maybe she doesn’t know what she wants,’ I said, staring through the girl into the farmhouse. ‘Running to, running from, same difference.’

We stood looking at the picture together for what felt like for ever. Eventually, and only when I’d committed every inch of it to memory, we walked away in silence and wandered around the rest of the gallery.

It took me a while to loosen up, but Alex was the perfect art buddy. He knew so much about the place I was sure he must actually live in the basement and the museum happily swallowed up our afternoon without even a whisper of a ticking clock. We saw everything there was to see, Monet, Pollock, Picasso, Gaugin, Van Gogh. It was like the whole New York experience encapsulated in one space. By the time I realized how long we’d been aimlessly ambling, I was dying of thirst.

‘Want to get a drink?’ I asked, pulling Alex out of his reverie in front of a collection of design classics.

‘Shit, what time is it?’ he asked, himself rather than me. ‘We have to go or we’re going to miss it!’

‘Where are we going?’ I asked, allowing myself to be dragged mercilessly down Sixth Avenue, trying not to run into meandering tourists or the weaving and dodging commuters. ‘Seriously, I really need a drink, just, can we just stop for a second?’

‘Let’s get in a cab,’ he said, not even listening to me. ‘It’ll probably be quicker in a cab.’ He flagged a taxi down and threw me in as it pulled to a stop.

But the traffic was moving almost as slowly as the people on the street and as we inched along, Alex was getting more and more frustrated.

West 50
^th
, 49
^th
, 48
^th
…

‘Alex,’ I said, not too politely. ‘Will you tell me where we’re bloody going?’ ‘Bloody? How cute is that?’ he said, smiling for the first time since we left the museum. ‘Sorry, I wanted to surprise you, but we have to get there before sunset.’

‘It’s only seven-thirty,’ I said, looking at my watch. And it was still broad daylight outside. ‘Why are we rushing?’

‘Because we have to queue,’ he said, sticking his head out of the window to check the traffic.

45
^th
, 44
^th
, 43
^rd
…

‘Queue for what?’ I was trying not to be incredibly irritating but I had a mouth like Ghandi’s flip-flop. ‘Please can we just stop and get a drink?’ ‘It’s a surprise,’ he said, squeezing my leg and still looking out of the window as though he could will the traffic to move more quickly. ‘Trust me, I’ll get you a dozen drinks once we’re there.’

37
^th
, 36
^th
, 35
^th
, 34
^th
…

‘Thanks, man,’ Alex tossed some cash at the driver. ‘Just let us out here.’ He pulled me out onto the street and checked his watch. ‘Perfect. Now, you wanted a drink?’

I nodded. This wasn’t quite the princess treatment I’d been getting used to from Tyler. Alex pointed at a cart on the corner, selling pretzels and, thank God, freezing cold cans of Pepsi. I wrestled a dollar out of my jeans pocket, too busy trying to get my sugary caffeine fix to realize where we were.

‘You want to go inside now?’ Alex asked, a bemused look on his face while he watched me neck the entire can in less than a minute. I had to admit, it was more to prove a point than anything else, drinking fizzy stuff that quickly just makes me feel sick. I didn’t care how cute he looked, standing grinning at me with his arms folded, while I guzzled my Pepsi.

‘Inside where?’ I asked, draining the can and giving a dramatic, satisfied sigh.

Alex shook his head and pointed upwards. ‘Honestly, you try and do something romantic…’

I craned my neck up and stared into the skyline. We were at the foot of the tallest building I’d ever seen.

It was the Empire State Building.

I grabbed onto Alex’s arm to stop myself falling over. ‘We’re going up there?’ I asked, breaking into a huge grin.

‘We are,’ he nodded. ‘If you still want to. I know you said you wanted to, but I didn’t know if you’d managed it yet.’

‘No,’ I shook my head and steadied myself for another look up into the cloudless sky, ‘I still haven’t been. And it’s all I’ve wanted to do.’

‘You said.’ He smiled and let me stand staring, even though we were clearly in everyone’s way. I didn’t care, it was amazing. I’d only been in New York for a week and a half and I’d already become oblivious to anything that wasn’t directly in front of me. The city was the opposite of an iceberg. What you saw on the surface, what was right in your face every day, that was only a third of it, the rest was up in the sky.

‘And we have to be up there for sunset,’ Alex said, finally pulling me away from the street corner and towards the entrance.

We queued slowly, moving up and down the lines with hundreds of tourists. It was weird, I really didn’t consider myself to be one. Not while I could feel Alex squeezing my hand every time I went silent to stare out of the windows. And queuing is hardly a chore when you have a super hot man kissing your neck and telling you how gorgeous you are for half an hour. By the time we got up to the top, I was pretty much desperate for some air and had forgotten what I was there for entirely. Alex pulled me straight through the racks and racks of wonderfully crappy souvenirs in the gift shop and out to the south side of the observation deck.