The Three of Us (15 page)

Neil joins me as I survey the scene of plenty.

‘You know they had a competition once to think up a motto for America,' he says, tugging on his braces.

‘Yeah, and what won?'

‘I don't remember. No one remembers. But I do remember the motto that came second: “America – more of everything.”' His big belly shakes as his baritone laugh booms out again over the water.

Tuesday, 8 September

Joanna

I have been advised by Kelly that the best real estate broker in the city is Feathered Nests. I call them and am put through to Inez, a proficient-sounding woman who claims she has several ‘perfect' properties in our price range or, rather ominously, ‘maybe just above'.

‘OK, OK, I need details,' she says. ‘First, you know we charge a broker's fee which is fifteen per cent of the first year's rent?'

‘Of course,' I say, realizing we probably did know but had forgotten to factor it into our costs.

‘Then you must be ready to fax me bank details, employment details, social security details, two personal references and one professional reference as soon as I tell you. Oh, and bring your passport. Now do you want pre- or postwar?' she asks. ‘Downtown, uptown or midtown? Apartment building or brownstone? Doorman or non-doorman? Pets or no pets? Outside space important? View? Where are you now?'

‘Um, well we're currently in a loft in the Village, but we're having a baby, so we need somewhere with more rooms…'

‘You want to see a selection maybe? I can do you a selection. In fact I have a loft in SoHo which would be perfect for a couple with a baby. Perfect.'

‘I'm not sure we want another…'

‘What, you think I've been a broker for twenty-five years and I don't know what people want?'

‘No no, I…'

‘I think this property would suit your parenting needs,' she says aggressively. ‘But you'll have to make it by first thing tomorrow morning. Eight a.m. Greene Street. Perfect location. Perfect. Lots of cafés, film companies, you can mix with arty people. You're British, right? I thought so. You'll love it, it's a very European scene. Meet me there. Don't be late because I don't know how long it'll stay on the market and then you'll be disappointed and blame
ME
.'

At 3.30 p.m. when Peter phones from the Washington shuttle, I announce to him that I've arranged to view an apartment in SoHo.

‘SoHo? How many rooms has it got?' he asks dubiously.

‘I'm not sure.'

‘Well, didn't you ask?'

‘Um, it's sort of a loft, but the broker says it's definitely OK for a baby,' I say quickly, drawing the conversation to an end.

Tuesday, 8 September

Peter

‘You didn't go
swimming
in Chesapeake Bay?' asks Jeff, interrupting my report of our weekend pig roast.

‘Sure. Why not?'

‘Why not? Because they've discovered a brain-eating microbe that hangs out there. That's why not! It's been chowing down on fishermen's brains.'

It is true that my memory has been even more faulty of late. And Joanna's has almost ceased to function altogether. I had put this down to pregnancy, but maybe … I hurry home to research the deadly lergy.

I log on to the
New York Times
's website in search of the details and sure enough my search delivers a piece from April, alarmingly headlined: ‘Fears of Deadly Organism Cast Shadow on Chesapeake'. But the site will provide me with no further information unless I am a registered subscriber.

Another piece from August is headlined ‘Fish-Killing Microbe Is Found to Cause Serious Harm to People'. ‘A toxic microbe blamed for killing millions of fish in the Chesapeake region', I read, ‘can cause a serious but reversible neurological syndrome in humans, researchers from the University of Maryland say in a new study. The single cell microbe,
Pfiesteria
…'

Then the text runs out. This is all I am allowed to peep at without being a subscriber. I hurriedly register, but at the very end of the tedious process it rejects my English credit card and I am left again to nurse my burgeoning fears.

‘Serious but
reversible…
'

Wednesday, 9 September

Joanna

Inez is waiting outside the apartment as I arrive, full of hope. Perhaps there really are child-friendly lofts and we are not looking down the barrel of suburbia in Brooklyn or Connecticut. Greene Street, like most of central SoHo, is beautiful, a corridor of grey and white six-storey buildings, zig-zagged with fire escapes. Formerly factories, most of them have now been converted to swanky loft apartments with pressed-steel ceilings, central columns and wide wooden floors.

‘Joanner? I knew it was you already, even as I saw you turn the corner, I said to myself, “That's Joanner.” Come,
come,
' Inez cries, pressing the apartment number and pushing the heavy grey security door as the buzzer sounds.

She's about forty-five, skinny as a starling's rib with dyed tufts of black hair, a short black suit, flat black pumps and tired, pale-blue eyes. I follow her into the industrial-style elevator, sliding the grille behind me as she grapples with the old-fashioned handle, which has to be eased slowly to the side as if pulling a pint of Tetley's.

I try to grin optimistically as we wheeze up the three floors. ‘Great location huh? Isn't it?
Isn't it?
' insists Inez. I feel exhausted by her manner already. ‘And I have two more for you to look at nearby, straight after this.' I nod as we judder to a halt. The door slides open directly on to the apartment, but before we can release the grille a woman of about fifty has pressed her face and wild shaggy hair against it.

‘Are you a lawyer?' the woman demands suspiciously.

‘Er, no,' I reply.

‘No lawyers, OK?'

‘I'm British,' I volunteer, hoping this detail will divert her from asking my occupation, journalism rarely scoring higher than the law in most people's estimation.

‘Oh, British?' She seems momentarily nonplussed and nods permission to Inez, who slides open the grille. We find ourselves standing in the quintessential Manhattan loft: bare brick walls, hardwood floors, Sixties tie-dye wall prints and one massive window at either end.

‘It's beautiful,' I murmur, briefly forgetting that it is even less practical than our present place on Horatio Street.

‘Yes and we have some famous people living in this building,' the woman says proudly, ‘though I can't give you their names for security reasons. How-do-you-do,' she adds formally in a mock British accent. ‘I'm Renée.'

‘Joanna,' I say, extending my hand, which she takes and, instead of shaking it, squeezes wetly. ‘I love your apartment,' I say politely.

‘Oh, everyone loves this apartment,' says Renée waving her arms expansively and laughing in a strange way. ‘The trouble is, I don't like everyone.' Inez makes a little snorting noise and goes off to investigate the bathroom.

‘What sign are you?' asks Renée.

‘Sign?'

‘Star sign. Durr. You know, zodiac, astrology, the cosmos.'

‘Oh, sorry. Aries.'

‘Aries is good,' says Renée, clapping her chapped hands. ‘Aries is very good. And your husband?'

‘Sagittarius.'

‘Very compatible, very compatible, if you'd said Scorpio I'd have said no way. Rent my apartment to a Scorpio? Get out of here! Now what about your actual birth date?'

‘April 20th,' I mutter, hoping that her birth sign expertise stops short of the knowledge that I share this birth date with Adolf Hitler.

‘Oh, you're on the cusp with Taurus, also good,' she says. ‘Very good. Now what about your moon?'

‘My moon?'

‘I have to know where your moon rises.'

*   *   *

‘How did it go?' asks Peter, who is back at his desk when I return.

‘Hopeless. The loft was nice but even less practical than this place and the woman who owns it was a nutter. I looked at two other places and both were completely unsuitable. I'm exhausted and I'm never going to use that broker again. I don't know, maybe we should stay here until the baby's born at least.'

Wednesday, 9 September

Peter

Over lunch today, at Vong on East 54th Street, my friend Alan Charlton announces that after ten years in Manhattan media he's finally decided to move back to London.

I know I should be telling him how we'll miss him, but he and his family live in a lovely pre-war ‘classic six' on the Upper West Side, overlooking Riverside Park, and I find myself blurting, ‘What's happening to your apartment?'

‘Yeah, I'll miss you too,' he says sarcastically. ‘Why is that all anyone wants to know? You're like a bunch of vultures circling overhead.'

When I get home I mention to Joanna that the Charltons are going home.

‘So what's happening to their apartment?' she asks quickly.

Thursday, 10 September

Joanna

I am poking hungrily around the kitchen to make myself a snack when I discover a loaf of bread with the sell-by date of 24 August – seventeen days ago – which we have forgotten to throw out. But when I come to examine it, it appears to be perfectly fresh and surprisingly springy to the touch.

American food lasts much longer than British food. I am suspicious of this, but as long as you don't make a habit of studying the sell-by dates, it can be rather useful. A neighbour in Horatio Street once told me that she was convinced the reason so many Americans get colon cancer is because the food here is bursting with preservatives, which the stomach is unable to break down properly.

Dismissing this theory, I spread the antique bread with marmalade and find that it tastes really rather good.

Thursday, 10 September

Peter

The discount electrical store, The Wiz, has, I notice today, unveiled a new slogan. The old one was: ‘
NOBODY BEATS THE WIZ
!', but since going into chapter 11 voluntary insolvency, to obtain protection from its creditors, that slogan has become inappropriate, it seems. Now its windows are populated with huge red letters which demand: ‘
ARE WE HAVING FUN YET
?' The question immediately begins to haunt me. It pops back into my mind unbidden throughout the day, as I walk down the street in a state of some melancholy.
ARE WE HAVING FUN YET
? Well,
are
we?

I think that this would have made as good a national motto as ‘America – more of everything'.

Friday, 11 September

Joanna

‘Uh oh, bad news for Sean Puffy Combs,' says Peter, scanning Page Six, the
New York Post's
gossip column. ‘He's been dropped from the new Oliver Stone baseball movie.'

‘Oh, why? Did he have a row with Stone?'

‘No, says here it's because he “threw like a girl”.'

Friday, 11 September

Peter

I have been nagged into accompanying Joanna to the first session of her Maternal Fitness course at the New York Sports Club on 34th and Fifth Avenue. Our instructor, a sporty, twenty-something blonde in a grey Kansas University sweatshirt and white Lycra shorts, points to the self-conscious men: ‘You', she yells, ‘are the foetus police. It's your job to ensure that your wives do their daily exercises. It's like training for the New York marathon – the marathon of labour!

‘The main point of all these exercises', she continues, ‘is to keep your recti muscle – the one down your belly short. Now remember a
short
muscle is a
good
muscle! I've seen some women whose recti muscles have separated so badly that I can fit my fist in the space between them. Their bellies have gotten so flabby and pendulous, that there are pockets in there and their bowels can bulge into that space. But not you, right?' The women look aghast.

‘You'll be told later by your Lamaze labour coaches to bear down as though you're having a bowel movement. So everyone bear down now like you're going to the toilet.'

Fifteen people sitting against the wall all strain. I sit there, refusing to participate.

‘Now, it's time to do those kegels. I want you all to
squeeeze
your vaginal sphincters.' She eyes the mutinous men. ‘You have pelvic floor muscles too – come on, everyone,
squeeeeeze!
'

I decide this is to be the last time I attend Maternal Fitness. Empathy can only go so far.

Saturday, 12 September

Joanna

Though we are keen on inheriting Alan and Sophie's rambling apartment with its extra room for a baby, we have only ever been there at night and have reservations about the area. Do we really want to swap our trendy West Village location for the Upper West Side?

‘Darling, the Upper West Side is so over,' proclaims Meredith in alarm, when I mention our plans.

She, of course, is safely installed in a rent-stabilized, child-free, TriBeCa loft across the block from JFK Jr, his wife and their mongrel, Friday.

‘Oh, no way,' I say defensively.

‘Way.'

The truth is that neither Peter nor I have ventured much beyond Café Luxembourg on West 70th Street. And Alan's apartment is another thirty streets further north.

‘It looks OK,' I say, unfolding my laminated
Streetwise Manhattan
map. ‘I mean, how bad can it be? It's got Riverside Park right next door, and Central Park ten minutes east, and the Columbia campus is just up the road on 115th.'

‘Why don't we take the C train to 96th and do a recce of the neighbourhood?' says Peter. ‘And look, we can walk through here.' He jabs his finger on a grey square bordering Central Park, called Park West Village. ‘That sounds pleasantly bucolic. Maybe we could grab a latte there.'