New York Valentine (8 page)

‘Get a photo!’ Lana suggested.

But too late: the girl had opened her front door and slipped inside.

‘There it is!’ Lana exclaimed and pointed to a high, ten- or twelve-storey building, of red brick. Rows and rows of bells were lined up beside the double glass front doors.

Once they were out of the taxi and standing on the pavement, Annie and Lana couldn’t help exchanging glances … both feeling a heady rush of excitement and astonishment.

‘We made it!’ Annie told Lana. ‘We’re here. We’re standing in East 16th Street, midtown, between Fifth and Sixth!’

‘We came up Sixth,’ Lana said, ‘so that—’ she pointed a short distance ahead to the junction on the other end of the street – ‘that must be Fifth Avenue. Right there.’

Annie smiled: ‘This is sooo cool. C’mon, find bell, let’s get in, let’s see Elena, let’s dump luggage and let’s get out again!’

Lana found the right number and pressed the buzzer. Several moments later, a fuzzy ‘hello’ came out of the intercom and the front door clicked open.

Inside, the lobby was dark and cool, lined with locked letterboxes and four elevators with shiny golden doors.

‘Tenth floor,’ Annie instructed Lana, looking at her scribbled instructions.

The lift brought them out into a nondescript corridor lined with brown doors and hideous wall lights. Checking numbers, they walked left, then turned down another long corridor. At number 121 they stopped and Annie knocked at the door.

Several moments later and Elena was standing in front of them. But she looked nothing like the Elena they remembered.

‘Are you OK?’ Annie asked straight away.

Elena’s long blonde hair was hanging lank and limp round a pale, exhausted face. There wasn’t a trace of make-up to hide the circles under her eyes and she was wrapped up in a short silky dressing gown. Even though it was lunchtime in NYC, Elena obviously hadn’t made it out of her pyjamas yet.

‘No, not OK,’ the deep, accented voice replied gloomily, ‘and I asked my mother to tell you not to come.’

Elena miserable:

Floral silk dressing gown (Victoria’s Secret)
Worn white T-shirt (borrowed from Sye)
Chipped pedicure in Fire Engine Red

(Thai Blossom nail boutique)
iPhone (Apple)
Total est. cost: $600

‘End of business. End of story.’

‘But we’re here to help you!’ Annie exclaimed, putting her bright smile of greeting back in place and trying not to feel too winded by Elena’s less than enthusiastic welcome.

‘Huh,’ came the unwilling response.

‘But your mother thought I could be lots of help, darlin’,’ Annie insisted, ‘and Svetlana thought it would be useful for Lana to come and help us all out too. Free workers – that’s got to be a good thing.’

Elena couldn’t have registered Lana at first, because now she brightened slightly, peered over Annie’s shoulder and said, ‘Lana, I not know you here. Please come in.’

For a moment, Annie wasn’t sure if this meant she had to stay outside.

But Elena repeated: ‘Come in,’ and she did seem to mean both of them.

She opened the door wide and stood back to let them into the tiny corridor. This opened out onto a bright room with a white-tiled floor which contained a kitchenette, a fold-down sofa, a TV, a tiny café table scattered with papers, and all in a space about two metres square. Now that all three of them, plus Annie and Lana’s bags were in the room, it felt claustrophobically small.

‘There is only one very small bedroom,’ Elena explained, ‘You will have to stay here.’

Lana gave a little gasp of surprise while Annie dismissed the idea as bonkers, quickly trying to work out if she could afford to move them into a hotel. But four whole weeks? That would just be totally beyond the budget. Impossible. Almost as impossible as trying to live in a tiny kitchen, on a fold-down sofa … with Lana!

Annie was conscious that she needed a long, cool, thirst-quenching drink. A long bladder-relieving pee might also have been a nice idea, not to mention a comfortable seat and a degree of pampering. But, nevertheless, she turned to Elena and tried to concentrate on the poor girl’s woes.

‘You look very upset. Has it been a terrible time?’ she asked soothingly.

Elena sank her long-limbed, lanky frame down onto the corner of the squashy sofa which Annie had been eyeing up for herself and threw her head dramatically into her hands.

Lana and Annie pulled up the two spindly café table chairs and prepared to listen.

It was a fraught story.

The partner had disappeared, taking with her a sizeable chunk of company money and leaving unpaid debts, including at the factory which had made the last run of dresses. Elena had no intention of pursuing the ex-partner through the courts because: ‘this America – lawyers and doctors are the most expensive people. Once you get involved you can never stop paying.’

There were many orders to fulfil: a whole range of high end shops had placed requests for the next collection of Autumn/Winter dresses. The shops were expecting those dresses within weeks but there was no money to buy material, or to have the dresses made up. The factory in Hong Kong was not going to make a single dress for Elena until she had paid her bill for the last order.

‘I don’t know how to get out of this,’ Elena confessed. ‘I think I will have to tell everyone who has ordered dresses that we can’t deliver. But then we will be finished. End of business. End of story.’

She glanced up as she said this and Annie could see that she was close to tears.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ Elena added in a shaky voice.

There were so many questions Annie would have liked to ask, so many possible suggestions, solutions, areas to explore. But just then Elena’s phone bleeped. As she picked it up and checked the screen an unexpected smile flashed across her face.

‘Sye is at the door. He’s coming up,’ she beamed, looking up at them.

Ah. Sye. Of course
.

Annie remembered now.

Sye was a very handsome, utterly charming photographer, based in New York, who’d met Elena at the first Perfect Dress fashion show in Paris, back in the spring. Sye, with his dreamy eyes and hippie cool hair, was very possibly the reason 22-year-old Elena had been so keen to quit London and her mother’s comfortable Mayfair mansion in order to open up the New York Perfect Dress ‘office’.

Yes, having a New York ‘office’ sounded very impressive, but the New York Perfect Dress office was in fact, Annie suspected, the little spindly-legged coffee table she was now sitting at.

‘How is Sye?’ Annie asked.

It was amazing how Elena’s face had brightened.

‘He’s good,’ she replied, ‘he’s very good. He always makes me feel better about everything.’

‘OK, so, when you’re ready, we will talk about the business. You’ll tell me all about the problems and we’ll think hard about what we can do to solve them. I promise you, I’ve had all kinds of financial ups and down in the past and I want to do everything I can for you.’

With a shy smile, Elena replied: ‘I know. You are a very good person. Think of the fashion show. It would never have happened without you and I would never meet Sye and sell the first dresses. I’m sorry I not very kind when you arrive. Sorry,’ she smiled apologetically first at Annie, and then Lana.

‘Fogeddaboudit,’ Annie said, trying out her new ‘transatlantic’ twang. Lana nodded in agreement.

There was a tap on the door and Elena jumped up to answer, running her fingers through her hair as she did so. She disappeared behind the small partition wall which screened the living room from the door.

Annie and Lana smiled at each other as they heard the exchange of ‘Hey baby’s and the long, smoochy kiss that followed. Then Sye came into the room, Elena draped around his waist and shoulder.

‘Hey there,’ he said with a big grin.

‘Hi,’ Annie and Lana replied.

‘Nice to see you again,’ Annie told him, ‘you look well.’

‘You too … Just off the plane? You must be exhausted.’

‘No! Too excited. Too much to see. Too much to do,’ she told him.

‘I know – this city is the best,’ he said with a grin.

Sye was as scruffily handsome as Annie remembered, dirty blond curls, heavy stubble, tanned face, strong tanned arms emerging from his rolled up shirtsleeves. Broad shoulders crisscrossed by at least two camera straps.

Annie wouldn’t have thought at first glance that Sye was the man for Elena – and certainly Svetlana could not stand the thought of her daughter hooked up with such an ordinary mortal, when she wanted Elena married off to a multimillionaire ‘at least’ – but it was obvious Elena and Sye were devoted to each other.

Maybe Sye’s easy charm and relaxed friendliness were the perfect foil for Elena’s intense ambition and nerviness.

The pair sat down on the sofa and after several moments of watching them trying and failing to keep their hands off each other, Annie realized that she and Lana needed to be out of the way.

‘Are you as hungry as me?’ she asked Lana.

‘Definitely.’ Lana looked away with something of a blush as the hand around Elena’s waist slid down to her buttock and squeezed.

Elena moved one leg over Sye’s and the two sat entangled together, jiggling, finding it almost impossible to concentrate on anything else but each other.

‘I think we’ll go out, Elena,’ Annie announced. ‘Get some food, walk around the neighbourhood … step out onto Fifth Avenue for the first time.’

‘Good idea. Eat first. We talk later,’ Elena agreed, then floated a kiss onto Sye’s earlobe.

‘We’ll call you when we’re thinking of coming back. OK? Or maybe meet you somewhere out?’

‘Hmmm mmm … ya …’ Elena was looking deep into Sye’s eyes. She brushed his hair out of his face and he nipped her hand with a hungry kiss as it passed his mouth.

‘You’re not changed. We should go to your room and get you changed,’ he told Elena in a voice which was intense and urgent. It was as if Lana and Annie had already evaporated.

No time to fix her hair, no time to change her shoes, Annie just snatched up her handbag and headed for the door. She pulled Lana along with her. It was definitely time to get out of here, before they were watching a live show.

Most handsome passer-by:

Freshly pressed pink shirt (Gant)
Freshly pressed white jeans (Levi’s)
Brown boat shoes (Timberland)
Gold-rimmed sunglasses (Ray-Ban)
Brown mailbag (Dooney & Bourke)
Fresh, clean scent (Calvin Klein)
Total est. cost: $950

Flirty smile

‘Did you know it was going to be as hot as this?’ Lana said, instantly regretting the fact that she was still wearing her travelling jeans.

‘Air conditioning,’ Annie said, ‘you get all cool and comfortable and then you can’t adjust to the real temperature outside again. Relax, we’ll walk slowly, on the shady side of the street. Fifth Avenue first?’

‘Oh yeah!’

The irrepressible, wild with excitement smile had returned to Lana’s face. The one she’d been wearing as soon as the taxi had carried them over Brooklyn Bridge and into this amazing city.

Down the street they went, past a bookstore, a swanky interiors shop and a smart café. The pavement widened as they approached the Avenue and then – pow! They were standing
gobsmacked
in the vast canyon of one of the most famous avenues in the world.

Both Annie and Lana had to look right, left, up, right, left and up again to take in the vast scale of this road.

It was wide, wide, wide with multiple lanes of honking, jangling traffic. And it was so high! Five-, ten-storey, even twenty-storey buildings on each side and in the distance skyscrapers, but with the Avenue cutting a vast concrete valley between them.

‘It’s fantastic!’ Lana gasped and did a little dance, ‘I can’t believe it! Look, there’s the Empire State, finally! Right ahead of us. It looks like we could just walk in a straight line and be there.’

Annie was too overwhelmed to speak. She was trying to take it all in: the vast Avenue, the gleaming shop windows all around, the hustle of the crowds rushing past them, the stifling heat, and the overwhelming adrenalin buzz of the place.

Just looking at this street was like chain-drinking espressos. It was incredible!

‘I’m never leaving,’ Lana announced. ‘I’m going to stay here for ever. This is my spiritual home, Mum.’

‘Me too,’ Annie agreed, ‘let’s walk!’

So they strode side by side through the lunchtime bustle, Annie – eyes on stalks – checking out the shop windows, each more enticing than the next, and then, of course, the New Yorkers themselves.

There was a definite New York summer look: pencil thin figure, bright sleeveless dress, big hair, big sunglasses, high heels or manicure with flip-flops plus blingtastic bag.

In the last minute she’d seen a Prada, three Coaches, a Marc Jacobs and a rash of Louis Vuittons: possibly real, possibly fake. These girls loved their arm-candy.

‘Don’t they look amazing?!’ Annie said, meaning the women.

‘I have never, ever seen so many good-looking guys in such a short space of time,’ came Lana’s astonished reply.

Annie gave her a nudge, but now that she looked, she could see it was true.

New York men all seemed to be tall and lean with immaculate hair, sunglasses perched on their heads, tight jeans, clean pressed polo shirts. And they had muscles! Teeny waists! High buns!

‘They can’t all be gay … can they?’ Lana wondered.

Several blocks on, the irresistible window of the 21st Street Deli drew them in. Inside was a salad bar on truly epic New York scale.

‘I don’t know what to get,’ Lana wailed in front of the triple rows of salad on offer. ‘I’m not even going to have room in my box for a bit of everything!’

When they were sitting in front of a huge glass window eating salad and sipping iced tea in the air-conditioned splendour, Annie’s mobile rang.

‘Hello.’

She recognized Ed’s voice straight away.

‘Hi there!’ she replied.

‘You’ve adopted the lingo then.’

‘I’ve adopted the city. I’m a New Yorka now. You guys are going to have to pack up and move over to join us. Kidding!’ she added quickly. ‘Is everything OK?’