Bicoastal Babe

by Cynthia Langston

  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.

  Chapter 28

  The 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.”

  “She’s like a bad gift that keeps on giving.” I grimace.

  “So what’s going on with all that? Why won’t you tell me?”

  I walk another block in silence, then I suddenly stop.

  “Victor.” I bite my lip. “Remember on our first date, when you asked me what I loved about New York?”

  He nods.

  “Well, I think I finally have an answer.”

  He waits.

  “It’s the height.”

  “The height?”

  “Yes. Everything is so high up. The buildings are so tall that you can’t even see the sun sometimes.”

  Victor looks amused. “So?”

  “Well, when you look around, you can never see very far because you’re always surrounded and closed in by the city circling you and buzzing on all sides. So it forces you to look up. To look to the sky. And then you see the height. Everything so high up that it’s hard to even make out the end of it. If you look too long, you start to feel dizzy. But the minute you look down and catch your balance, you feel like looking right back up again.”

  “So what does all that mean?”

  “I guess it’s the feeling of always wanting to do that. To reach up and try to touch the stars. Or at least touch the top of the highest building. It makes me want to be more, to always reach higher. It’s the energy, but not necessarily the energy of the city. It’s the energy inside of me. I’ve never felt that before. And I don’t feel it anywhere else. Does that make any sense?”

  Victor nods. “Of course.”

  “But then again, the height of it all is so overwhelming. Like I could reach and reach and reach, and never even skim the windows of the tenth floor. That scares me.”

  “Lindsey. New York is like its own little world. It’s why most of the people who were born here never even leave the island. New York can be anything you want it to be. And you can be anything you want when you’re in it.”

  “But I can’t stop wondering… if I never reach the top of the building, will I ever really be happy?”

  Victor laughs. “Happiness isn’t touching the top of the building, silly girl. It’s all in the reach.” He taps my nose affectionately. “Of course you’ll be happy. Don’t you see? You already are.”

  I stare at Victor for a moment, then smile and take his hand.

  “Let’s go ice-skating at Rockefeller Center,” I tell him, and quickly cover his mouth with my mitten to muffle his groans. “And then I want to go to Serendipity for that famous frozen hot chocolate.”

  Victor’s eyeballs have practically rolled to the back of his head, but I keep a tight clamp on his mouth.

  “I know. Tourist torture territory. But that’s what I want to do tonight. And you have no choice. You’re taking me. Okay?”

  Under my mitten Victor stops his moaning, but his eyes have not yet agreed. I clamp my hand even harder.

  “Yes?”

  After a moment he reluctantly nods his head and I let go.

  “I’m going to kill you,” he says, spitting mitten fuzz from his lips.

  “Don’t bother,” I tell him. “We’re going ice-skating. I’m probably going to kill myself.”

  Victor laughs, grabs my other hand, and we walk toward Rockefeller Center.

  • • •

  The next morning I cab it back to the apartment to pack up all my belongings. Jen is out, which is my only relief in the midst of the gloom I feel about having to potentially walk away from everything I’ve found and become on the great island of Manhattan.

  I haven’t told Victor about The Pulse, and he has no idea that I may never come back. I struggled all night, going back and forth, up until the moment I kissed him and walked out of his building. But in the end, I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t tell him. I couldn’t leave myself open to the uncertainty of his reaction. Maybe he’d have tried to convince me to stay. Or maybe he wouldn’t have. Both scenarios would’ve been equally hard.

  Because I was wrong. I do know all I need to know about Victor. And I do know all I need to know about New York.

  And now I also know what it is that I don’t know yet, but need to know in order to know. And you know what? It doesn’t have a New York zip code.

  Chapter 29

  It’s funny how you can feel the change between New York and L.A. even from the airplane. When you take off from JFK in the late afternoon, the windows are coated with a thin glaze of ice, and you can feel the coldness seep through the walls of the plane. Then as you fly west, the sky starts to get brighter, the ice melts, and you’re suddenly flinging away the airplane blanket because you’re so hot from the sunshine beaming in the windows. And as I step out of the airport to see a line of palm trees swaying in the soft breeze, I realize once again that my two homes could not be more different.

  Which gets me thinking. Given that I did not get around to telling Victor about The Pulse, if I tell Danny, then California will have the unfair advantage. So I’m going to have to do this blind.

  • • •

  “You might not come back?”

  Well, not totally blind. Carmen needs to know. I mean, I could spend the whole week absorbing and pondering L.A. just like I did with New York, then throw it all in a blender with a shot of intuition and a splash of instinct, but what the hell would be the point of that? If I had any sense of instinct whatsoever, I’d be more like Liz Gordon, and less like the Midwestern transplant who just spent a week desperately trying to spot someone jerking off in the Manhattan subway, just in case I didn’t make it back in a while.

  “What I need from you this week is objective help in making this decision, not biased influence fr
om someone who likes having a pal around to drink wine spritzers with.”

  “Well, sister, you came to the wrong place. How am I supposed to be objective? California kicks New York’s ass, any way you bend it. And by the way, it’s almost winter. Spritzers have flown south, my trend queen.”

  “Don’t be mean.”

  “I’m sorry. But if you leave, I’m really going to be sad. I’d miss you, Lindsey. You mean a lot more to me than just a pal to drink with. I thought you felt the same way.”

  “I do! I’m sorry.” I reach out and touch her arm. “I didn’t mean it that way. I’m being very selfish right now. In more ways than you know. But I feel like I have to be in order to make this decision. This isn’t easy for me.”

  “I know.”

  She reaches over and hugs me, and it occurs to me that until now I hadn’t given much consideration to Carmen, and the loss I’ll feel if I can’t see her anymore. Shit. This is getting even more complicated than I thought.

  • • •

  The first thing on my agenda is making sure the last edition of The Pulse measures up to the rest. I want to go out with a bang. It’s the least I can do for Liz, for the agency, and for the minuscule hope that someone might recognize my value as a trend-tracker, and hire me after this whole thing is finished.