The Three of Us (19 page)

‘Seventy-five bucks, that's half my normal rate, plus breakfast, well, coffee and cake downstairs,' she offers. We take it.

Thursday, 1 October

Peter

Most of Key West is still without electricity and the town is filled with the din of dozens of mobile generators and freezer units on refrigerated trucks, and the noise of pumps, and cranes and bulldozers clearing the debris, and the buzz of dozens of chainsaws being used to cut the hurricane-felled palms into smaller clearable chunks. There are great mounds of stinking seaweed in the streets, and dead birds everywhere.

The shops and restaurants and many houses are boarded up, often with defiant if banal messages to the hurricane spraypainted on the shutters. ‘Go away Hurricane Georges!' ‘Key Westers say
NO
to Georges.' ‘We
HATE
hurricanes.' On the shutters of a sunglasses shop is the message, ‘Shades is closed till further notice – you don't need sunglasses in a hurricane.'

The town itself is almost entirely depopulated. Only a few hardy eccentrics remain, defying the warnings to evacuate. A black woman with a bleached blonde Afro, purple bell-bottoms and white patent-leather platforms, cycles up and down, one hand on the handlebars, the other making frantic signs of the cross.

And later, on the boardwalk at the marina, we run into a one-legged, one-armed, drunken Ahab figure. ‘You'll see, this will come to no good!' he warns us in the tones of a Doomsday prophet.

The only place we can find to eat is Mangoes on Duval Street, which Amy, its indomitable owner, has kept open throughout the hurricane, as an emergency cafeteria. But we must get there for supper by 5.30 p.m. and be gone before 7 p.m. when the curfew kicks in and the National Guard begin patrolling the town for looters.

As we scuttle up the unlit street from Mangoes back to the Southernmost Guest House just before curfew, Ahab bursts out of a side street. ‘Your stars are ill-placed!' he bellows, brandishing a bottle of rum and giving us both a tremendous fright.

Back at the Southernmost Guest House the electricity has finally gone down. The big white air-conditioner stands silent and the temperature steadily rises while we try to judge the moment when it will be cooler to open the windows to the steaming doldrums outside and lose the largely illusory remnants of refrigerated air within.

Friday, 2 October

Joanna

Our forays into Key West's rental market have not been successful. We soon discover that most of the real estate agents have scarpered and only two of our viewings have survived. The first I have arranged with an absentee landlord, whose apartment I found posted on KeyWest.com.

Though the apartment is advertised as ‘classic Key West architecture', we arrive at a gated complex of modern white wooden houses. A wiry walnut of a man in his seventies, dressed only in micro cut-off denims and a sea captain's hat roosting on the back of his head, strolls out to greet us.

‘Hi there, people, I'm Argo and you must be the Brits to see Otto's place,' he says, hand outstretched. His chest is trellised with a froth of grey hair, and a thin stream of sweat emerges from under the peak of his cap, along his bushy right eyebrow, and down his cheek. His little brown dugs tremble as he bids us follow him up the stairs to a second-floor apartment. It is tiny, a fact the landlord has tried to disguise with a multitude of angled mirrors and smoked glass. ‘It kind of reminds me of the Middle East,' says Argo sincerely. ‘Not that I've ever been there. But Otto has.' We are in and out in four minutes.

Our second appointment is with Keith, a grey-faced young agent. He insists on firing up an ancient moped and leads the way, weaving erratically in and out of the fallen trees.

Our first stop appears to be the conch house of my dreams. Pale lilac with a little stoop, it is midway down a charming street in the old town, with a courageous palm tree still standing in its little patch of garden. ‘It sleeps nine,' says Keith, having some difficulty propping up his moped. He fails to mention that all nine would sleep in narrow dorm beds squeezed into two small bare rooms and that the place has clearly been repeatedly trashed by shifts of freshmen for the last ten years.

His final suggestion turns out to be a huge concrete development on the edge of town, built in a horseshoe around a pool now bobbing with driftwood and seaweed. Circa 1970, it has all the appeal of a penitentiary with long, bare concrete corridors which eerily echo our conversation. ‘This is awful,' murmurs Peter and we make our apologies.

‘I'm not sure a twenty-hour train ride with a baby
is
such a good idea anyway…' I start.

‘If we set off now, we could get the last flight back from Miami to Manhattan,' he says quickly. We leave Keith at the gate to Key Alcatraz, frantically pumping his kickstart.

Friday, 2 October

Peter

We pack our bags, settle up with supergran, and set off on the four-hour drive to Miami. As we negotiate around another pile of fetid foliage, a piece of it detaches itself, and rolls down in front of us. It is Ahab, our personal doom-monger, come to bid farewell. He stands up in front of the car, his beard and clothes festooned with bits of seaweed and palm fronds, and gives the bonnet a tremendous thump with his old wooden crutch. ‘You are blighted!' he rages, shaking his bottle at the now sunny skies. ‘Calamity is upon you!'

I hoot and he staggers away, throwing himself back on to the great mound of fly-hazed seaweed from which he becomes again indistinguishable.

Monday, 5 October

Joanna

Back in Manhattan I am now suffering from heartburn and unable to sleep. I lie in bed surfing aimlessly through the seventy-six channels we receive via Time-Warner cable.

On Channel 2 David Letterman is reading a news item about students in a social-studies class whose teacher had set them the arduous task of biting slices of toast into the shapes of American states.

Over on Channel 34, public access television, a man in sunglasses is introducing a photograph of his own misshapen penis, which twists like an ‘S'. This, he explains solemnly, is a symptom of Peyronies's disease, then he tries to sell his own patented technique for penis enlargement. Twenty minutes later, when I flick past again, he's still there, with the same photo of his unusual penis displayed onscreen.

Tuesday, 6 October

Peter

I try Andrew Solomon again. His answer message informs me he's away on another trip and furnishes me with contact numbers in London, Istanbul and Patmos. ‘Until the 11th,' says his message, ‘I can in principle be reached on a Turkish boat phone, number (7-095) 969.74.39, though I am mistrustful of both that redoubtable technology and our captain's language skills.'

Wednesday, 7 October

Joanna

Though they are usually keen to recommend local services in exchange for a tip, the doormen are unable to suggest anyone to help us move apartment, so I resort to looking in the back of the
Village Voice.

‘Don't worry, lady, this is a small job for us,' says Ira, of GV-Moving-For-All-Your-Needs. ‘We'll deliver the packaging materials in advance and our men will arrive on the dot of eight a.m.'

The packaging arrives as promised and I am rather impressed to find there is much more of it than I had ordered.

‘They're clearly used to people underestimating how much stuff they've got,' I rationalize to Peter, who is silently assembling cardboard boxes of various sizes. ‘That's what I like about American companies, they seize the initiative.'

‘It'll be rip-off,' says Peter. ‘New York movers always are.'

By 9 a.m. the following morning, I have phoned Ira twice and both times I've been fended off by the voicemail. I leave a message on a random extension and eventually a woman calls me back to assure me a truck is on its way but has been delayed due to the terrible traffic. ‘But you're only in SoHo,' I protest.

‘The office is in SoHo, but the truck is coming from New Jersey,' she says.

At 11 a.m. it finally arrives with a crew of five, headed by a twitchy redhead who introduces himself as ‘Your foreman, Isaac, I am Israeli.' For the next two hours they proceed to wrap everything we have not already packed in vast swathes of bubble wrap, including the bed and sofas, though we assure them that wrapping them in blankets would have been fine.

‘We don't want any tears in the fabric,' warns Isaac, winding vast straps of masking tape round and round the mattress.

‘He seems very cautious,' I whisper approvingly to Peter. By 2 p.m. we are done and hail a cab to the Upper West Side.

An hour later there is still no sign of Isaac and his gang.

‘They've probably stolen all our stuff,' says Peter gloomily.

‘Of course they haven't,' I say, but I'm privately relieved to see the truck finally straining up West End Avenue. As Peter shows two of the men to the service elevator, Isaac pulls me to one side, fidgets quickly on a notepad and presents me with the bill. It is for $1,839.

‘You pay me now,' he says. ‘Cash only.'

‘But that's
three
times the original quote,' I exclaim. ‘I'm not paying that.'

‘It's the packing materials,' he says rudely, shoving the figures at me. ‘You used twelve rolls of bubble wrap. And we've used sixty rolls of masking tape, twelve wardrobe boxes, forty book boxes, six hi-fi boxes … Then there's the three hundred dollar service charge.'

‘But no one told me I had to pay for those separately,' I start, suddenly realizing how naïve I've been. ‘And no one told me about a three hundred dollar service charge.'

‘Well, it's compulsory,' he shrugs, folding his arms across his sweaty grey Gap T-shirt. ‘Sixty bucks per worker. Then there's the travel time because the traffic was so bad it took us three hours to get to you this morning. Then another hour to get here from the Village…'

‘But why did no one tell me about this? That's why I got a quote from Ira.'

‘Ira, schmira,' he says. ‘It's not my fault.'

He kicks the side of the van, where our possessions are still hostage and I stomp off to the cashpoint to get more money.

When I return to the apartment, I wait for them to unload our belongings. Then I slip into the kitchen to phone Isaac's boss. He claims to have no record of my original quote.

‘But Ira faxed it to me,' I say, waving the fax at the phone.

‘Ira doesn't work here any more.'

At this point I fall back on the phrase I have found most useful since living here. ‘Look,' I say in what I hope is a calm but menacing voice, ‘I feel it's only fair to tell you at this stage that I am a lawyer and your company has already violated several state regulations … In addition I have a quote on paper…'

‘OK, OK,' he says quickly. ‘Fifteen hundred dollars.'

‘Twelve hundred,' I counter. ‘That's still twice the original estimate.'

‘OK, OK,' he says again, wearily. ‘Put Isaac on the phone.'

The two of them then have a screaming argument about the service charge, which Isaac has clearly invented.

‘I wasn't going to take it anyway,' he shouts at me, flinging the receiver down. I hand over the $1,200 cash and he storms off, his four silent cohorts trailing sullenly behind.

‘Never mind,' says Peter as I slip the deadbolt on the door. ‘At least it's all over and we're here now.'

It isn't over. Ten minutes later the boss calls back to say he has decided to sack Isaac for imposing the bogus service charge.

‘Well, that's your decision,' I start, when Peter starts frantically mouthing, ‘No, no, don't get him sacked, he knows where we live!'

And so I spend the next few minutes ludicrously trying to defend the surly crook who has just tried to rip us off.

Thursday, 8 October

Peter

I am walking up Broadway, north from 96th Street, returning with Joanna from a trip she has forced me to take to a local grocery she has been recommended, the Gourmet Garage. On the window it calls itself ‘a working-class deli', but in fact it is full of yuppies buying mesclun leaves, unpasteurized manchego cheese, white truffle oil, and organic granola with dried strawberries.

The Sherpas of Broadway throng about us, hardy delivery men from Ecuador, Peru and south China who live frugally in rooming houses and remit most of their pay to families in their distant homelands. Short and wide and sturdy, like tough little pit ponies, they haul groceries and take-out food on their bikes, riding on the sidewalks, where they slalom through the pedestrians and careen the wrong way up the street, fearlessly dodging the heavy, erratic traffic. They chatter to each other in harsh mountain Spanish and in ejaculatory Cantonese diphthongs, unseen and unheard by the middle-class residents of West End Avenue and Riverside Drive. It reminds me of South Africa in the old days, where blacks were socially invisible to whites.

Friday, 9 October

Joanna

Brunching with Kelly, Jeff and several of their friends I recount our experience with Isaac. They are unsurprised. Our story, it turns out, is a standard tale of Manhattan moving, if not a rather lame offering. Meredith announces that last time she moved apartments her possessions were safely in the truck when the foreman demanded to know how much tip she was planning to give him.

‘I don't know, it depends on how much gets broken,' she joked, having set aside $40 for each of the three men.

‘Well, lady, how much gets broken depends on the tip,' he leered, sticking his unshaven chin alongside her cheek. ‘I usually recommend a hundred dollars a man or it's not worth our while. If anything gets broken, you can always claim on insurance. Do we understand each other?' She ended up forking out $300.