City Girl (21 page)

After two months she took a small apartment in a renovated brownstone in the Murray Hill area of East Manhattan, sublet by a nurse who was going to work for a year in California. As studios go
in New York it was good. She had a small separate kitchen, separate bathroom, and a postage-stamp dining alcove. She had a view of the East River and the Queens Midtown Tunnel, and at night she
would sit in her big cane chair with its huge chintz cushions, drinking a beer and watching the never-ending stream of cars winding into the dark-holed entrance of the tunnel on their way to Queens
and the posh suburbs of Long Island. Maggie loved hearing the hoots of the ships’ sirens and the hum of the engines of the various river boats that steamed up and down the murky river. The
rent was high, but Maggie felt it was worth it to get away from the frenetic environs of the hospital. She had liked the nurses’ home but living there meant she was never rid of the hospital.
At least now that she had her own apartment, she was able to separate her private and working life, and although she enjoyed her work, she was always mighty glad by the time the day was over, to
take the subway, or the bus, or if she was not too tired, to walk to her little studio overlooking the river. It was comfortable, nicely decorated in pastel pinks and blues and, most important, it
was air conditioned. It also had its own intercom video system which from the security angle was great, as the amount of crime in New York city was staggering. Maggie didn’t see much of the
rest of the people in the building. The man across the hall from her kept the oddest hours; he must do shiftwork, she decided. The girl in the flat beside her, Jessica, worked in an advertising
agency on Madison Ave and she always said hello.

Before long Maggie got her bearings. It was almost impossible to get lost in Manhattan and once she had the grid system worked out, she was fine. The avenues went north to south, the famous
Fifth Avenue was the dividing line between East and West Manhattan and the streets and avenues all bisected at right angles. Besides she wasn’t far from the UN building; once she had that in
sight she was only a few blocks from home.

She decided she was going to explore every inch of the city. But first of all she must explore her own area. She discovered that just a few blocks away in the UN building you could get free
tickets to the General Assembly and could have lunch at certain times in the Delegates Dining Room overlooking the superb gardens and the East River. It was something she treated herself to many
times.

Food took on a whole new meaning for Maggie while she lived in New York. And if she hadn’t used up so much energy on the wards she would have come back to Ireland a very fat lady indeed.
She tried everything: hot dogs, bagels, strawberry cheesecake, egg rolls, duck paté with pistachios, beef sukiyaki, southern fried chicken, pumpkin pie. Each day had a new delight!

East Fifty-ninth street was her point of reference. On her day off, she would leave her apartment, walk the few blocks to East Fifty-ninth and carry on from there. Sometimes she would just walk
its length until she got to Central Park, or else she would walk to Third Ave, Lexington, Park or Fifth, take a section and explore, going from the Lower East side to the Upper West, as the mood
took her. She loved to ramble along Madison Ave, past the famous Maxim’s at Sixty-first, right up to Seventy-second street, and stare at the windows of the exclusive boutiques full of Giorgio
Armanis and Valentinos and other exclusive designer clothes that she had only ever read about before. She would observe the wealthy leisurely shoppers strolling up one side and down the other,
sometimes followed by chauffeured limos whose interiors bulged with dozens of new purchases.

Once, just outside Saks on Fifth Ave, she had actually seen Jackie Onassis looking stunningly elegant in a grey Burberry, her eyes hidden behind big dark glasses. Maggie had tried not to stare.
She remembered President Kennedy’s visit to Ireland, though she had been very young at the time, and could still remember that awful November day when her mother, sobbing, had told her of his
death in Dallas. It had been such a shock to see her mother cry that it had frightened Maggie.

‘Will the bad man come and shoot us?’ she had asked anxiously, her heart beginning to pound.

‘Ah no, darling, but say a prayer for the soul of John F Kennedy, and for his poor wife and children,’ her mother had replied, taking out her rosary beads.

Now as Maggie observed this famous woman in the flesh she remembered as a child how fascinated she had been by the big book about the President’s life and death, that they had at home in
Wicklow. Often when it was raining, Maggie would sit curled up in the huge armchair in front of a roaring fire, turning the pages slowly with Nedser her little dog snoring quietly at her feet. Now
she remembered those days with a little pang of homesickness. She could feel the texture of Nedser’s soft fur between her fingers, she could hear the soft gentle pitter-patter of rain beating
against the window pane, and smell the rich tangy perfume of the pine logs as they crackled and spat in the flames of the fire. How nice it would be just once more to be a little girl again leafing
through the big black book with the pictures of a radiant Jackie as First Lady. There was an immense dignity about her now and Maggie, conscious that she was staring, chided herself for her bad
manners.

On Sunday afternoons she would browse with friends around the antique stores in Greenwich Village, soaking up the unique ambience that made it one of the most exciting places in New York. They
would sit outside O’Henry’s on the corner of West Fourth and the Avenue of the Americas, drinking beer, eating baked clams flavoured with garlic and watching the world go by. It was all
so new, so exciting, so utterly different from home.

Sandra and Jennifer, two of the group of five that had come to America, had moved on to Los Angeles and they often tried to persuade Maggie to move over to the West Coast, but although she liked
to spend a few days there, she preferred New York. LA, despite its more laid back atmosphere, held no attraction for Maggie and the lifestyle seemed almost unreal. And the drug scene was something
else. She had been to parties where coke and other drugs were freely available and using them was as common as drinking wine. Sandra, she knew, often snorted coke. Jennifer had told Maggie that all
Sandra’s salary was going on drugs and Maggie could see for herself how her classmate’s personality had changed so radically as a result of her habit. She was taking pills to bring her
up and others to bring her down from her highs and sometimes she was so spaced out Maggie found it hard to believe she was holding down a job.

Once out of curiosity at a party in Dublin she had smoked a joint, had turned pale green and promptly puked. From then on she stuck to health foods and Guinness, ignoring the urgings of others
to try some ‘stuff.’ Maggie had seen too many overdose victims to have any desire to experiment. She thought Sandra was crazy to be getting mixed up in the drug scene and told her so
forcefully when she caught her snorting coke one weekend she was visiting LA. She’d also seen the telltale needle marks in her veins which meant she had been shooting up.

‘You’re crazy, Sandra. Get help before it’s too late or you’ll ruin your life!’ Maggie pleaded with the other girl.

‘Stay cool, Maggs, you’re such a square, you have no fun,’ was the other girl’s doped response and Maggie felt like hitting her for being so dumb and irresponsible.

Six months later, after a frantic call from Jennifer she ended up flying out to LA where she had to identify Sandra’s horrifically emaciated body in the city morgue. Weeping almost
uncontrollably, Jennifer told Maggie how the dead girl had been sacked from her job and had ended up on the streets of LA as a hooker, desperate to support her craving for drugs. She had been
working for a Puerto Rican pimp who had been feeding her addiction on heroin. Eventually she had overdosed and now lay cold as ice on a slab in the morgue. In the end, it was Maggie who took care
of the arrangements for having the body flown home and it was she who spoke to Sandra’s distraught parents on the phone and tried to console them. Jennifer had fallen to pieces in the crisis,
so Maggie made her take a holiday break, and took her to New York to stay with her for two weeks, until the other girl got over the shock.

It was Maggie, too, who had stayed with Jean, another classmate, when she was suicidally depressed, having had an abortion. Her boyfriend had told her he would leave her if she didn’t have
the abortion so she went ahead and had it. He left her anyway, unable to cope with her feelings of remorse. Maggie had listened to her outpourings, made her go for counselling and privately
wondered how two intelligent girls like Sandra and Jean had made such a mess of their lives. Life wasn’t all roses in the Big Apple, she mused. As she headed downtown towards the hospital,
tiny beads of moisture ran down her back so that her light cotton teeshirt clung damply to her body.

It was mid-August and the temperatures had soared into the nineties, the muggy heat making people short-tempered and aggressive.

‘Make up your mind, lady!’ an aggressive street vendor growled at her as she tried to decide whether to buy
Cosmo
or the
National Enquirer.

‘Ah, blow it out your proverbial,’ she snapped back, deciding to take her custom elsewhere. She grinned to herself – she’d been dying to use that colloquialism since
she’d heard one of the nurses say it at the hospital. And it had certainly taken the wind out of Grumpy’s sails. He looked positively insulted. Sticking her purse back in her bag,
Maggie decided it was too hot to walk, or even wait for a bus. She dived into a subway entrance and clattered briskly down the steps. She had just reached the bottom when a skinny wild-eyed
coloured youth stood in front of her and produced a vicious-looking flick knife. She didn’t know that Jose Guerreo had been watching her from the moment she had stopped by the kiosk to buy
her magazine and that he had noted with satisfaction the nice thick bulge in her wallet. Blithely unaware that Jose Guerreo was mainlining heroin and needed to score fast to feed his addiction,
Maggie came to a breathless halt at the base of the subway steps. The youth almost smirked as he instructed her to hand over her money.

Maggie stood, open-mouthed.

‘Come on lady, what’s keepin ya, d’ya wanna feel my knife in ya ribs?’ he snarled as Maggie stood stock still in shock. My God! She was actually getting robbed in broad
daylight and people were just stepping around them, eyes averted. She had heard of people getting mugged so often, had taken care of victims in hospital and now it was happening to her. She
couldn’t believe it.

‘Gimme the money NOW!’ The youth made a threatening gesture with the flick knife.

Anger boiled up in her. He couldn’t be more than sixteen or seventeen, the little scut! Grimly she rummaged in her bag and found what she was looking for. In a voice that shook with temper
and disgust Maggie brandished a scalpel in her attacker’s surprised face.

‘Listen! You little hoor’s ghost. In case you don’t know what this is, let me enlighten you. This,’ she waved the instrument at him furiously, ‘is a scalpel . . . a
very sharp scalpel . . . that’s used for cutting off the balls of little pricks like you. So unless you want to become a eunuch I’d advise you to fuck off right NOW!’

She thrust the scalpel in the direction of his most treasured possessions and he gave a yelp of horror. Christo! The dame was a nutcase; maybe she was wired too! Hastily Jose Guerreo rethought
his strategy. There were plenty of other dames to be ripped off, he decided, as he sheathed his knife and melted into the crowds, leaving Maggie glaring after him.

It really didn’t hit her until she sat in the swaying tube as it trundled its way through the city subway. She started to shake. God Almighty! Was she mad? She had seen people die of stab
wounds from being mugged on the street by drug addicts who were so high they didn’t know what they were doing. He could have been on crack!

‘Christ, what a city!’ she muttered aloud, her limbs trembling with reaction. A middle-aged black woman eyed her warily and moved a little away from her. Maggie felt like laughing
hysterically. Life wasn’t all fun and excitement in the Big Apple.

Twelve

Maggie shivered in the scorching heat of Saudi as she remembered the occasion. Even the memory brought a hard knot in her stomach and she remembered the fear that she had
continued to experience months after the incident. At least Saudi was relatively crime-free, she thought, as she shifted her weight on the bed and continued flicking through photos, feeling as
though the events of the past were somehow unreal. A small coloured snapshot slipped onto the coverlet and she smiled with pleasure as she held it up and stared at the picture of a pleasant
handsome man. She had really cared for Leonard. They’d had such good times together despite their inauspicious first meeting. Maggie smiled broadly at the memory.

It was a Monday morning, her day off. Maggie, feeling a sunbeam tickling her cheek, opened her eyes, stretched luxuriously and jumped out of bed. It was great to have the whole
day all to herself. She had long been promising herself a trip to the Guggenheim Museum, the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed building which housed a treasure trove of exhibitions, and today she was
going to immerse herself in culture. She’d had breakfast, made her bed and showered. Humming gaily to herself she dashed off a letter to home, she’d post it en route to the museum. She
decided to give the studio a quick dust before she went out, she’d vacuumed yesterday, and that would be her housework done and she wouldn’t have to feel guilty about not doing any.
Industriously she sprayed her polish around and shone with a vengeance. The studio was a joy to live in, it was really easy to keep clean. The biggest item of furniture was the old piano in the
corner by the window. Maggie flexed her long tanned fingers and grinned to herself. It had been years since she played a piano. Energetically she began.