One New York Christmas

by Mandy Baggot

  ‘We’re not hooked up,’ Lara said. ‘We hardly know each other. We just …’ How did she explain it? ‘I have a sort-of boyfriend in England.’

  ‘What’s a sort-of boyfriend?’ Felice asked. ‘Like, you had sex with him one time and you still WhatsApp?’

  ‘No … nothing like that.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘He’s called Dan,’ Lara answered simply.

  ‘And why didn’t he wanna come with you to New York?’

  Lara swallowed. ‘He had to work.’

  ‘Yeah, first world problems again,’ Felice said with a heavy sigh. ‘Come back and talk to me when you’ve eaten rotting Asian food.’

  ‘Do you like the hat?’ Lara asked, watching Felice still admiring her reflection in the glass.

  ‘Yeah,’ she answered roughly. ‘I like the hat.’

  Twenty-Six

  Times Square

  ‘This is a little like Piccadilly Circus in London,’ Lara commented. ‘But taller and shinier … and there’s more traffic and … noise.’ She had shouted the last few words as she took in everything about one of New York’s most famous landmarks. The towers were towering and, because of the number of pedestrians and queues of cars, it all felt slightly enclosed and hectic. Wide neon billboards flashed, buskers played music in any available street space – there was so much going on it was difficult to decide where to look first. It was then, when Lara was pushed a little into the stream of the crowd, she realised Seth wasn’t next to her. Her heart started to pick up pace as the sea of people forced her along. Should she stop? Should she keep going? Suddenly, her arm was pulled, and she was, at last, out of the moving tide and standing in the porchway of TGI Friday’s.

  ‘Hey,’ Seth said, looking a little concerned. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘I …’

  ‘It isn’t like your little village, right?’

  She had told Seth a bit about Appleshaw as they’d walked here. The snow had stopped briefly, and the sun had come out, lifting the frozen chill just a touch. As they’d strolled through the city’s streets she had talked about where she lived, the people she loved and recounted the incident at the 1 December village parade. Seth had looked both amazed and alarmed – no wonder he was so good at acting – but also appeared to be really interested. However, thinking about Appleshaw had made her think about not being there, not being with Dan and being overseas and completely out of her comfort zone.

  ‘Tell me more about your almost-brother,’ Seth said softly, putting a hand on her shoulder. ‘Aldo.’

  An image of the lanky, curly haired man-boy came to her mind and immediately she smiled. ‘He has … learning difficulties. No one really knows why, or even if there is a reason why, but having his whole family die on him wasn’t the best start.’ She took a breath. ‘Everything fazes him,’ she said. ‘But also, nothing fazes him.’ She thought about those words. It was true. ‘He’s kind of trapped but also completely free. I think he’ll forever be somewhere between twelve and eighteen, but he doesn’t know any different and what does it matter? He is who he is, and who he is is simply kind and loving.’

  ‘I’m guessing he’s never been overseas either.’

  ‘He gets a nosebleed when he has to drive to Manchester.’

  Seth laughed out loud then held his hands steady on her shoulders, a bit firmer, stronger. ‘You good?’

  Lara took a deep breath in, filling her lungs with cold. She did feel better. ‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘I’m good.’

  ‘So, you think this place is busy now? You wanna see it at New Year’s.’ Seth stepped out onto the sidewalk again and she tracked his movement, this time sticking close.

  ‘I’ve seen videos,’ Lara said.

  ‘It’s crazy. There are bands and fireworks and thousands of people and—’

  ‘A big glittery ball.’

  ‘And a big ball,’ Seth confirmed, nodding. ‘And forty-eight tonnes of trash to clear up after … Now isn’t that a great eco-friendly way to start a new year.’

  ‘Wow,’ Lara replied. ‘That’s a lot of rubbish. In Appleshaw we usually get the paper doilies Mrs Fitch puts under the cakes flying about and the occasional crown from one of the three wise men. One of them always loses a crown.’

  ‘Your village sounds really great,’ Seth said, looking at her.

  He thought Appleshaw was great? Despite her wonder about what happened outside of her rural bubble, Lara thought it was great, but she also knew Dan didn’t think much of it at all. He preferred the city of Salisbury. Thinking about it, lately he had almost seemed to begrudge the village events she loved so much. Like his non-attendance at the advent parade …

  ‘Well, I think it’s great,’ Lara admitted, the beginnings of an a capella rendition of ‘Silent Night’ filtering into the air from a choir across the street. ‘But New York is cool too.’

  ‘New York is cool,’ Seth agreed. ‘I’ve lived here all my life.’

  ‘But you’ve travelled?’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘Ha! Even a little is more than me.’ She was aching to know where he’d been and what he’d seen. ‘Tell me where you’ve visited.’

  ‘I’ve been to Italy.’

  ‘Wow.’ She was probably going to be saying ‘wow’ a lot in this conversation, but Italy was one of the places she had looked at longingly on the internet. Ornate fountains with statues that spurted water, gorgeous piazzas to eat pizzas in, the Mediterranean weather … Dan had been there for work, delivering bespoke hot tubs to a big hotel. She’d asked him about the Colosseum and he’d laughed, nudged her arm and said he didn’t know there was a spirit called that, but he had drunk a lot of limoncello.

  ‘Did you drink a lot of limoncello?’ The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them. She breathed in, frost, along with the scent of sizzling hot dogs and caramelised onions wafted up her nose.

  ‘A little,’ Seth answered. ‘I was there for a couple of months working on a film. It was in the fall, so the weather was mixed. Some days it was non-stop sunshine, others it was rain and storms. But I loved it. And we got to see all the ancient buildings up close in the days we had off, be like tourists, you know?’

  No. She didn’t know. Not after only two days in New York.

  ‘Sorry,’ Seth apologised.

  ‘Don’t be sorry. Tell me more! Have you been to Paris?’ Lara asked, stopping as they reached a crossing, the street sign hung with festive lights.

  ‘I have.’

  ‘Was the Eiffel Tower amazing? Did you walk all the way up? Was the view as cool as the view from the Empire State? Did you eat frogs’ legs? Is the coffee really as good as everyone says it is?’

  Seth didn’t know what the Walk/Don’t Walk sign was currently displaying because he was focusing on nothing but Lara. She was bubbling with energy, spilling over with questions and curiosity, so different from a few minutes earlier when she had been disorientated by the bustle of the city. But now she was back to being bright, enthused and eager. She was this wonderful, enigmatic, contradiction. And now she was staring back at him because he had made no reply to any of her questions.

  ‘Oh … sorry, I did see the Eiffel Tower, half of the steps, the elevator the rest of the way. No to the frogs’ legs but I did eat a lot of croque monsieur and the coffee really is good.’

  ‘Wow,’ Lara replied, gazing up at him in awe. ‘I can’t even begin to imagine what Paris would be like.’ She smiled. ‘I’d want to drink all the beer from those fancy little European glasses and Susie, she’d want to spend the whole time shopping.’ She sighed. ‘It’s meant to be so pretty there at Christmas.’

  ‘What would your boyfriend like to do if he went there?’ Seth asked. Immediately, like someone had prematurely dropped the Times Square New Year ball, the joy went out of her eyes and he wanted to kick himself for even mentioning him.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Lara said simply. ‘Maybe see if he could get tickets to one of the football matches?’

&nbs
p; ‘He’s into sports?’ Seth asked.

  ‘Not playing them, apart from golf, but I think he does that just for the social aspect or to sell more hot tub products. He’s more of a spectator.’ She hesitated, as if a little unsure. ‘Do you play sports?’

  ‘Dr Mike played sports,’ Seth said with a grin, beginning to cross the street.

  ‘He played basketball with the street kids,’ Lara reminded him. ‘It wasn’t actually a proper game.’

  ‘Hold up! You wanna try playing with those kids. The couple minutes they put in the episodes was nothing! Sometimes we were out there for hours getting those takes.’

  ‘So, Seth Hunt doesn’t do sports,’ Lara said, laughing.

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘You seemed to be saying you got out of breath playing basketball with kids.’

  ‘No one said anything about out of breath … actually, I run. Not marathons or even half-marathons, just run, kind of for fun. It’s a good way to burn off some energy, gather my thoughts, learn my lines … and see the city.’ He looked at her. ‘What do you do?’

  ‘I dance to loud rock music in my barnpartment and I clamber over roofs saving farm animals.’ She slapped her jean-covered ass with her hand. ‘It seems to be enough to make up for the sitting on this all day in Tina.’

  ‘Tina?’

  ‘My truck.’

  ‘It has a name.’

  ‘She has a name.’

  ‘Pardon me.’

  ‘It’s not that weird. Everyone names their cars. Why can’t I name my truck?’

  Seth held his hands up. ‘No judgement here.’

  ‘Susie does think it was a little mad to name the snowmen though.’

  ‘Snowmen?’ Seth asked as they reached the other side of the street, traffic immediately beginning to move again.

  ‘They’re plastic and they glow! They’re sitting in the window box outside our living room where we’re staying in East Village. There’s three of them.’

  ‘Let me guess,’ Seth said. ‘You called them Harry, Ron and Hermione or something?’

  Lara stopped walking and looked at him, eyes wide like she’d just discovered ice cream for the first time. ‘Did Susie tell you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The snowmen!’

  He laughed then, suddenly catching on. ‘You really called them Harry, Ron and Hermione?’

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’ Lara asked, scowling a little.

  ‘Absolutely nothing. Obviously, I would have called them the very same thing.’

  A bleeping broke the moment and Lara stopped walking, pulling a cell phone from the pocket of her jacket. He stopped next to her, people beginning to walk around them.

  ‘It’s Susie,’ Lara stated, reading a message. ‘She says she’s back at the apartment, but David’s invited us to a hair show tonight. I suppose I should go.’ She sighed. ‘God, what’s a hair show?’

  ‘A show where they show hair?’ Seth offered.

  ‘Dr Mike was clever. Seth Hunt … not so much.’

  ‘Hey!’

  ‘God, I really don’t think I want to go to a hair show,’ Lara said, looking up from her phone to the street around them as if contemplating her whole life. ‘It sounds like there will be lots of people watching a lot of—’

  ‘Hair?’ Seth interrupted.

  ‘Genius,’ Lara said shaking her head. ‘Oh well, I’m sure it will be different and different is why I’m in New York.’ She pulled in a breath. ‘Different … and taking photos of me with a hot, albeit quite stupid, actor.’

  She’d called him hot. Did she think he was hot? Something made him tighten his core, stand a little taller. The media called him ‘hot’ on occasion, women he was interested in … well, there hadn’t been any women he was interested in for quite a while. He cleared his throat. ‘I’m joyously free though, living in my stupid bubble,’ he joked. And then he knew exactly what he wanted to do. ‘Listen, if you don’t wanna go to the hair show then—’

  ‘I could get some takeaway? Watch Netflix?’

  ‘You could,’ Seth agreed. ‘But, see, there’s this thing I have to do tonight … and it kind of loosely involves France, you know, if you wanted to experience a close-to-the-real-thing coffee.’ He hadn’t explained anything at all in that sentence except the coffee part. Why was he behaving like the class nerd asking the odds-on favourite for Prom Queen for a date? Not that this was a date, because Lara had a boyfriend and he wasn’t in the right head space to get involved. At that moment his mother’s photo in his pocket felt not like photographic paper but weighty like a bag of sugar.

  ‘I don’t want to take up all your time with my mad, probably hopeless and frankly quite ridiculous social-media crusade.’

  ‘No, I know, and I don’t think that.’ What was he trying to say? He cleared his throat again. ‘There’s this film I really, really want to be in and the casting director is having dinner at this French restaurant tonight. I was gonna go there and—’

  ‘Stalk him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Poison his water glass then be there with a quick antidote?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I come from near Salisbury. Believe me, anything is possible.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I was just gonna, you know, talk to him, reintroduce myself, make sure he knows how much I want the part so I’m at the forefront of his mind when he thinks about making the call-backs.’

  A taxi blasted its horn and Lara jumped, bumping into him. He reached out to steady her. ‘You OK?’

  ‘This countryside girl is only used to loud mooing and the occasional tractor.’ She smiled at him. ‘OK.’

  ‘OK?’

  ‘Show me a little bit of France here in New York,’ Lara agreed. ‘It sounds like there will be plenty more photo opportunities there than at a hair show.’

  He smiled. ‘Great! I mean, good … yeah, photos of frogs … their legs, I mean, and … coffee.’ He stopped talking before the apparent mix of excitement and apprehension turned into an unworkable fusion of words.

  ‘Well,’ Lara began. ‘As long as it isn’t too expensive, I was thinking beer in one of those European glasses.’

  He smiled at her. ‘I like your thinking. Good plan.’

  Twenty-Seven

  Lara and Susie’s Airbnb apartment, East Village

  ‘You know David said he was cutting the hair of a prince this morning.’

  ‘Mmm,’ Lara answered.

  ‘He wasn’t lying.’

  ‘Did you think he was?’

  Lara was sitting in the window seat again, legs curled up underneath her, composing a text to Aldo. She had received one from her almost-brother earlier indicating that he had let a couple of animals from the farm into their house because they looked cold. A quick text to her dad and Gerry had replied with a quip about the time difference, then confirmed that the shire horse and the alpaca were safely back in their own home. Her dad had then reiterated his concerns about the safety of New York and said she should also avoid somewhere called Hunt’s Point.

  ‘I don’t know. I just thought that maybe he had made his job and New York sound just a little bit too fantastic, that it couldn’t really, seriously, be quite as amazing as it all seemed. I mean, when he said he paid for our flights with tips I thought he’d maybe … borrowed the money or … put them on his credit card.’

  ‘How do you know the prince is real?’ Lara asked, still focusing on her message.

  ‘I googled him, obvs! He’s from Saudi Arabia but he has an office here for his oil business in New York – well, it would be oil, wouldn’t it – and my David cuts and styles his hair! Asks for him personally!’

  ‘Who cut his hair before David came to New York?’ Lara asked, typing more.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Before David joined the New York salon. Who cut the prince’s hair?’

  ‘I have no idea. Why?’

  ‘Well, there must be a reason the prince got David when he hasn’t been
there that long.’

  ‘Because David is an excellent stylist.’

  ‘I know,’ Lara answered. ‘I just wondered …’ She looked up from her phone and finally took in Susie’s appearance. ‘Whoa!’

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Susie asked, blinking back at Lara, then looking down at her outfit of a long, stylish, figure-hugging red skirt teamed with a cream jumper, a crystal embellished robin on both sleeves.

  ‘Your hair!’ Lara remarked. ‘It’s …’ She desperately searched for the right word. ‘Extraordinary.’

  Susie grinned and moved closer to Lara, using the window as a mirror. She carefully poked a couple of escapee strands back into the huge spiral of hair forming a solid mass that stood up about thirty centimetres. ‘It’s supposed to look like the Guggenheim.’

  ‘God!’ Lara exclaimed. ‘It really does.’

  ‘Do you think?’

  ‘Really,’ Lara said, admiring her friend’s appearance. ‘I don’t know how you do it.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know how you drive a truck or … put up with Dan.’ Susie looked at Lara, hands at her mouth. ‘Sorry … I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. I wasn’t thinking.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ Lara answered with a determined nod. ‘I know what you meant and, of course, you’re right really.’

  ‘Any more posts from the Salisbury Christmas market?’ Susie asked, lowering herself onto the seat next to Lara.

  ‘I haven’t looked.’

  ‘Come off it.’

  ‘I haven’t!’

  ‘Lara!’

  ‘OK … I did look, once.’ She sniffed. ‘But there was nothing else. Just some of his stupid friends from work commenting on the photo.’

  ‘What did the hot tub morons have to say?’

  ‘Nothing much. Just being moronic.’

  ‘Lara, if you don’t tell me I’ll just look myself. He’s still my friend on Facebook – for now.’

  She took a deep breath. One particular comment had hurt. She knew it was pathetic, a remark made by Johnny, one of Dan’s most laddish, very-inflammatory-after-the-sixth-pint friends, but it had scorched.

  ‘Johnny Warren said, “nice upgrade”.’