Bicoastal Babe (31 page)

“Stop! No talking about men. This is all about the cities,” Holly points out. I nod. “Okay, now do L.A. Things you love about Los Angeles.”

“Okay, let’s see.” I switch my mind over to the other side of the map.

“The sunshine. The mountains. The canyons. The beaches.”

“That’s a start.” Danielle whistles in envy.

“The palm trees. I really like the palm trees. I feel like I’m someplace exotic, even when I’m just driving down the street.”

“What else?”

“The relaxation. It really is laid-back there. I walk around all the time feeling a sense of calm, like I’ve just had a really nice glass of wine. Even when I’m stressed, I still feel like it’s all cool – like everything’s going to be okay. I find myself walking a little slower, sleeping a little later, breathing a little deeper…”

“But you’re breathing in all that smog,” Holly points out.

I roll my eyes. “Forget the smog. You don’t notice the smog. It’s just really nice there. It’s peaceful. I feel… happy, I guess. But calm happy. It’s a different happy.”

Danielle puts down the chalk. “Okay. These are all good things, and they present a clear dilemma. So you’re going to have to listen to your instinct.”

“I left my instinct in the unisex bathroom at O’Hare.”

“Shut up. And close your eyes.”

I obey.

“Okay, now in your mind, visualize your very favorite place in New York – the one place where you can look around yourself and feel the absolute happiest and most wonderful. Then do it for L.A.”

Holly and Danielle are quiet for a moment as I let my mind wander east, then west. It doesn’t take long to conjure up my two favorite places, and exactly how I feel when I’m in them. The only problem is, they’re not actually
places,
by the strict definition of the word. But they’re places to me. Places come to life.

I open my eyes. “Remind me again. Where did we get with the guy list?”

“Even Steven.”

“Shit.”

•   •   •

Arriving at the airport the next morning on my way to New York, I’m alert and conscious of every single detail. It’s kind of like “breakup sex.” When you’ve just ended a relationship with a guy for real, and the pain is fresh and raw, and you get together that one last time to do the deed in honor of all the times you did it before, when you took it for granted because your love seemed like an endless well.

At the outset, breakup sex appears to be a fun, safe, what-the-hell-and-why-not kind of excursion.
Might as well,
you think. Because it could be a while before you’re in this position again, no pun intended.

So you call a temporary truce, maybe have a glass of wine, and agree to leave everything else behind, even if it’s only for an hour or two. But then not far in – usually somewhere around the time that he pulls your shirt off, you begin to feel very sober and very conscious. It suddenly seems as if it’s all happening in slow motion, and you realize that you’re noticing things you haven’t noticed in a long, long time. Every soft touch and delicate taste, the wonderful smell of his skin that you’d forgotten was even there. You go through the motions of sex, but you know that what you’re really doing is making love to everything he was to you, every warm memory and bit of happiness he ever made you feel. This is one time in life that you truly, truly wish the moment would never end – most of all because you know that it’s about to, probably forever. So you go slowly, you try to make it last so you can hold on to it and keep feeling it, even for a few more moments. Most of all, you try to capture it all in your memory to keep as a permanent souvenir of something and someone you once loved. You do this because as you lean in to kiss him so he doesn’t see the tear falling down your cheek, it occurs to you that someday, somehow, you’ll be glad that you paid attention.

So that’s me on my way to New York. For potentially ever. Or at least for my last week as a trend tracker for Gordon-Taylor. I take careful note of every moment of the flight, every inch of the terminal at JFK, every glittering light outside the cab on the way into the city. For I have one week to capture and absorb every little detail about Manhattan that I can. Because I could very well end up moving to New York full-time, and trying to find a new job at an agency in the city. And on the other hand, I could very well end up not.

T
he next morning in New York, I decide to wait a day before calling Victor. I have to conquer this last newsletter all by myself, so I should probably get a head start on work before allowing myself to play. Also, I’m in the mood to spend a little time alone, walking around, just me and the city, trying to understand each other and figure out if we really have something here between us. And, of course, there’s the fact that I have absolutely no idea how to tell Victor about the demise of my job, and the potential that I have only six more days in New York.

I take a quick shower, pull on a heavy sweater, and skip down to the Iranian bagel guy around the corner.

“Miss Lindsey!” He smiles.

“Good morning, Harish.”

“The usual, yes?”

I nod and dig for two dollars. Just my typical, still-half-asleep morning routine, but as Harish hands me my coffee and chocolate croissant, I suddenly realize that at the bagel cart on the corner of Christopher and Hudson Street in Manhattan’s West Village, I, Lindsey Miller, have a “usual.”

A usual.

Okay. Forget how many years you’ve lived here, or how many times you’ve taken the 6-train, or how many calls you’ve made to the cops when somebody’s car alarm went off at four in the morning. Forget how many times you’ve whizzed through Times Square in a taxicab, how many forgotten subway passes are still lying around in your purse, or how many mornings you’ve walked to the corner in the snow for a hot chocolate and a Sunday
Times.
Forget all that. None of that stuff makes you a true New Yorker. It’s all inconsequential. You know that you’re a true New Yorker if and when – and only when – you discover that somewhere in the city, you have a “usual.” Double confirmation if your “usual” is routinely handed to you by a jolly Iranian who’s nice enough to smile. Triple if he remembers your name.

So I have a “usual.” And that makes me a New Yorker. A real New Yorker. At least, that’s what I’m telling myself as I blend into the line of about ten billion tourists, waiting to board the elevator that climbs to the top of the Empire State Building. I should be at home, poring over numbers and statistics from the trend study. Or shivering in Central Park as I interview consumers about leather baseball caps and hip-hop infused with harmonies from classic rock songs. But I also need time to think, and this line looks like it’s going to give me plenty of that.

This whole time in New York, I’ve been so hell-bent on trying to feel like I belong here that I never really did anything touristy at all. I never sat on the top of a double-decker bus, never took the NBC studio tour, never waited for discounted
Mamma Mia!
tickets at the TKTS booth… No, I was way too cool for all of that.

But this week I’m finding that I don’t give a crap about being cool and fitting in. I want to do all that touristy stuff. Make up for lost time. Take bad photos of all the sights they picture on the front of the postcards. Eat a dirty-water dog on the street, and complain loudly that back in Kansas, a beer costs only a dollar seventy-five, and that’s in one of them “fancy places.”

These are my thoughts as I stare down from the Empire State, marveling at the vastness of it all and trying to avoid getting cherry ICEE spilled on my new Gucci jacket by the annoying brat next to me who keeps screaming something about missing the SpongeBob show.

I take a deep breath and wonder for a second if they allow smoking out here. That would make it all such a perfect moment. And I can’t see why not. I mean, it
is
outside. Well, kind of. It’s outside but still on a deck of the building. So does that make it outside or not? Hmmm. Oh, well, it doesn’t matter. I’ve given up cigs for good. At least, that is, in a faraway place called…

Wait, I’m not here to think about any faraway places. I’m here to think about my life, my Manhattan, and how they fit together – if they fit together at all. But in order to do that… Oh, who am I kidding.

I reach inside my purse and pull out my cell phone.

•   •   •

“Now listen. My time is very precious this week,” I tell Victor firmly. “I have a ton of work on the newsletter. More than usual.”

“Shut up.” He hoists me over his shoulder and slaps my ass through my new chocolate denim jeans.

I squeal with giggles. “I mean it!”

With my arms flapping and my feet kicking, Victor carries me into his bedroom and throws me down on the bed. Then he grabs my brand-new white DKNY button-down shirt and rips it open. I gasp as I hear the cotton tearing and see the buttons fly across the room. “I’ll buy you a new one.” He smiles, and attacks me like a hungry panther.

•   •   •

I’m still grinning when I remember this now, as I stand alone a few nights later on the evening Circle Line boat trip around the Manhattan shore. The night air is crisp, and I watch my breath drift up in the cold air like a swirl of smoke. I can hear the low waves splashing up against the side of the boat as I rub my hands together briskly and stare at the skyline before me. This far out, the city is silent. Just a twinkling mass of lights that glow up into the sky and render the stars invisible.

The week is a blur. I managed to cram in all my work, while still dragging Victor to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim, and the Museum of Modern Art all in one day. Then to Sotheby’s for a trinket auction the next day, and the day after that, to St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the United Nations Headquarters, and Elaine’s for an afternoon martini. Then yesterday, all the way out to closing day at the Bronx Zoo. And yes, by this point, Victor is ready to pummel me. We also made time for a few new restaurants and clubs, and a benefit for Citizens for the Arts where we drank White Russians (part of the new eighties chic), and Victor introduced me to a group of old biddies swathed in bad costume jewelry as his “girlfriend.”

The whole time, I kept waiting for that moment of inspiration, in which I’d be suddenly zapped with all-consuming certainty that I should either move here or not move here. I kept looking for the answer in every sidewalk crack and store window, in every tired and hurried face I passed by on the street. And in Victor – in every word and every gesture that he unknowingly made throughout the course of the week. But I never found the answer.

And now tonight, as I slowly walk home alone, down my block and up to the five-story brownstone with a mailbox that still says SAVAGE/MILLER, I am getting really frustrated. What else do I need to know about New York? What else do I need to know about Victor? What else do I need to know, in order to just
know?

•   •   •

“Lindsey. Pass the bubbly.”

It’s my last night here in New York, but I still have not revealed anything out of the ordinary to Victor. Rather than attending a broker benefit at the Shrine, I convinced him to come over and order takeout, in the hopes of finding the right moment to spring the news. When he showed up with champagne, caviar, and foie gras on little rice crackers, I knew I’d made the right decision.

Yet now as we sit here, with the food spread out on the floor and Victor tugging at my bra strap under my new cashmere turtle-neck, I’m feeling a large lump in my throat that’s preventing me from forming any words at all. Frowning, I push Victor’s hand away. When it slides back up, I push it away again.

He sits up and looks at me curiously. “What’s up with you tonight?”

“What do you mean?”

“You seem off. And you’re strangely quiet.”

“I can’t be quiet?”

“A question I’ve pondered many times.”

I slug him.

“And look.” He points to my plate. “You barely touched your caviar. Now that’s a bad sign. That’s where I’m worried.”

“I think I’m just tired,” I say, trying to sound tired.

Victor reaches for the crackers, and I’m just about to lean back and flip on the television when I hear a key turning in the lock. I spring up to see Jen dragging a suitcase through the doorway.

“What the hell are you doing here?” I demand.

“My stuff is still here. And I still have keys.”

“Well, get your stuff and get the hell out!”

“What are you going to do, call the police? My name is still on the mailbox.”

“You’re not staying here.”

“I am until I can find another apartment.”

“So you’re going to live in New York?” Mental note to add this to the “con” list.

Jen shrugs. “Not sure yet. But I’m here now, so deal with it.” She walks into the bathroom and shuts the door.

Victor looks at me in confusion. “What’s that all about?”

I shake my head. “Forget it.”

“Did she quit?”

“It’s a long story. One I’m not in the mood to explain. Can we go over to your place?”

As Victor stands on the corner trying to hail a cab, I decide that the cool New York air feels good. “Maybe we could walk?” I ask him.

“The park is all the way up Manhattan, Lindsey.”

“At least part of the way? I’ll bring my mittens.”

Ten minutes later we’re strolling through the crisp autumn night. Victor is rambling on about some work thing, but I’m having a hard time concentrating on his words. I thought I was finished having to endure the torture of Jen, but now, on my last night here, I’m castaway from my own apartment. Which, technically, is still under Gordon-Taylor’s lease until the end of the month.

“So I’ve got my eye on a new venture,” Victor is saying. “But a lot of things have to fall into place. I should know in the next couple of weeks.” He sounds excited and a little bit strange, but I barely notice. His words are going in one side of my head and out the other, as if no processing mechanism sits in the middle.

“Are you listening?” Victor asks.

“Not really. I’m sorry.”

“You’re upset about Jen.”