Single in the City Read online

  ‘But London’s far.’

  ‘Look, if you’re gonna make a change, you should do it. There’s no sense in being half-assed when it comes to your future. Don’t be a coward. You should go.’

  I was stung by her words. We’d never been apart. We were closer than sisters. We were soulmates. How could she suggest so flippantly that I move thousands of miles away, like it was nothing bigger than a new hairstyle? ‘Well, maybe I’ll just book a flight when we get home.’ I wanted to scare her, to hurt her, to make her say she didn’t really want me to leave. She didn’t say anything.

  The next thing I knew, it was morning and Stacy was jumping on my bed. ‘I can’t believe you’re going to London!’ she kept screaming.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘London, London, London! Your flight’s on New Year’s Day.’

  And that’s what I get for being spiteful during a black-out.

  …‘So, once I got over the shock of having an eleven-hundred-dollar non-refundable ticket on my credit card, it did seem like the right thing to do.’

  ‘Plus there was the sign,’ Chloe says.

  ‘Yeah, I’m a huge believer in signs.’ At least she’s not looking at me like I’m crazy, which means she’s also a big believer in the cosmos. Or she’s an excellent bluffer, and I shouldn’t play poker against her.

  ‘And you’re not mad at your friend for pushing you into buying the ticket?’

  ‘Well, at the end of the day, I made the decision, even if I don’t remember actually doing it.’

  Am I mad at Stacy? Not for the reason Chloe thinks. Once Stacy gets an idea in her head she charges ahead with it. When we were in high school, she drove us nineteen hours to Graceland to see Elvis. She’d had her driver’s permit for about a week and Elvis had been dead for a couple decades. Our parents reported us to the police as runaways. No, I’m not mad at her for making me buy the ticket. I’m mad that she let me go so easily.

  …‘But if I don’t find a job I’ll have to go home.’

  ‘Isn’t there anyone you know here who might be able to help?’

  ‘I don’t know anyone.’ Except for Mark, but I can’t very well ask him for a job. Can I? ‘Well, I sort of just met someone. He runs some kind of events company.’

  ‘That’s exactly the kind of contact you need! Most good jobs don’t come through people like me. It’s the network you need to tap into. That’s where the real opportunities are. We get the postings they can’t fill. How comfortable are you with this guy? Could you ask him for a job?’

  How much to tell Chloe? Here’s my first potential friend in London. Will she think I’m a slut if I admit to sleeping with a man I just met, or will she say ‘You go, girl!’ or its English translation, leaving me in no doubt that we’re kindred spirits and cementing our friendship for ever? ‘It’s fair to say we’re pretty…comfortable.’

  ‘Then definitely ask him.’

  ‘What if he says no and that wrecks everything?’

  ‘Then he’s a knob.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘He’s a knob.’

  Door knob? Knob of butter?

  ‘A wanker. I think you say dick in American.’

  ‘Yes, we do,’ says I, speaking for my nation.

  Perhaps Chloe is right about Mark. There’s no harm in asking if there’s a job for me at his company. Really, I owe it to myself, and certainly to my parents, who paid good money for my college education. My mother would definitely tell me to ask. So would Stacy. And Chloe already has. It’s not like I’m coming from left field by asking. PR and party planning are kind of the same thing, if you substitute parties for press releases. I resolve to ask. The only complication is that I haven’t heard from him. Not that I won’t. It’s only been a few days, so he’s still within the acceptable callback window. But I don’t have his number. All I know is that his company is called M-something events. I remember because I asked if it was named after him (it isn’t).

  ‘Chloe, do you know of an M-something events?’

  ‘Not offhand. But hang on a sec.’ She whips out her phone. It’s one of the flippy ones that Captain Kirk would use, if he was real, and in a wine bar making a telephone call.

  ‘New York office,’ she mouths. ‘They can check the database…It’s not a name? Definitely initials?’

  ‘Definitely initials. M and something.’

  ‘It’s definitely in London?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘There are four.’ She jots down the telephone numbers and slides them over the table to me. I’m in the presence of great power. ‘There you are. All you need to do is call and ask for him.’

  How easy is that? It couldn’t be easier, assuming I knew his last name.

  There’s nothing like a few bottles of wine to bring girls together. The best conversations, even with strangers (and sometimes especially with them), revolve around sex, in a kind of verbal swordplay. I suppose this war-story swap is akin to dogs sniffing each other’s rear ends or apes beating their chests. It’s meant to bond (you’re so special, I’m sharing) and intimidate (don’t tell me about rough times) all at once. So we’re drunk. We’re strangers. We’ve degenerated into a conversation that’d win ratings for Jerry Springer.

  ‘You know,’ I say, ‘I once had a guy want to spank me during sex.’

  ‘Hmm. I went out with a guy who couldn’t come unless he sang the lyrics to “Eye of the Tiger”.’

  Wow. She sees my spank and raises me a crooner. ‘The theme from Rocky?’

  ‘The very one.’

  ‘I didn’t know it was popular over here.’

  ‘It was for him.’

  I haven’t told many people this, but the ante has been upped. ‘Once, a guy I was seeing turned out to be sleeping with his sister.’ Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets. We’re at the high-stakes table now.

  ‘Oof. What did you say?’

  ‘Say? I didn’t say anything!’ What do you say to something like that?

  ‘How’d you know?’ she snorts. ‘You didn’t catch them, did you?’

  ‘No.’ There isn’t enough therapy in the world. ‘Actually, it was circumstantial evidence. First, he had this enormous stack of family porn.’

  ‘Family –?’

  ‘You know, mother–son, kissing siblings, that sort of sick crap. Once I found those I started putting the pieces together.I mean, possibly a guy could grab one of those off the newsstand by accident, but it looked like he had a subscription. Then I started to notice how jealous he got around his sister’s boyfriend. I mean, he really freaked out sometimes.’

  Chloe drains her glass and reaches for the bottle. ‘That’s it? I went out with a guy who made me wear trainers in bed.’

  Training wheels? ‘What are trainers?’

  ‘Running shoes.’

  I take my cards off the table. She’s won the pot. ‘Pretty ones, like Adidas?’ I have my eye on the cutest pair of pale-blue and red Adidas running shoes. Think what a perfect chic urban footwear statement they’ll make (there’s no rule saying they have to be used for running). I’ll never have to buy another pair of sneakers again.

  ‘Uh-uh. Black high-top Reeboks.’

  ‘During sex?’

  ‘When else? And he wouldn’t let me go to the gym. I broke up with him.’

  ‘Of course. A girl’s gotta keep fit.’

  By the time the bell rings, I suspect I’m very drunk.

  ‘Will you be okay getting home?’ Chloe asks as I trip on the sidewalk.

  ‘Yep, fine.’

  ‘Will you take the Tube?’

  If I get into the Underground system, I’ll wake up in Zone 6. ‘Mebbe a taxi’d be best.’

  A kind driver at the roadside stands ready to help. ‘Taxi, taxi?’

  ‘Do you know where we can get one?’

  ‘Yes, taxi, taxi,’ he says, gesturing inside his obviously-not-a-taxi.

  ‘Does he want to drive us to a taxi?’

  ‘It’s
a minicab.’

  ‘Like a limo service?’

  ‘No, they’re not licensed. It’s just a punter with a car. You want a black cab.’

  Well, obviously. I may be (very) drunk and (occasionally) naive, but thanks to Mom, even I know enough not to get into a stranger’s car that pulls alongside me on the street.

  ‘Here’s a cab; we’ll share.’

  Bless her, she’s determined to make sure I don’t end up in tomorrow’s newspaper. The driver has trouble understanding me when I give him my address, but it’s not his fault. I’m speaking California Chardonnay.

  ‘By the way,’ she says, ‘I’m happy to come with you to look at flats if you want.’

  I don’t remember telling her that I need flats. I have enough shoes, and besides, I walk better in heels (trips on the sidewalk notwithstanding). ‘That’s okay, I can’t really afford any shopping till I find a job.’ Unless those Adidas go on sale.

  ‘An apartment, Hannah. You said you were going to look at apartments. I can go with you if you want.’

  I did say that, didn’t I? Floating somewhere in the wine is the recollection that when deciding to be optimistic on the job front, I also decided to look for a place to live. Given that Mark could have the perfect job for me, I should at least look around. I vowed to start first thing in the morning. It seems unfair to make such a brand-new friend suffer. ‘Thanks very much, but I’ll be fine. I’ll just blitz through a bunch in the morning and get it done.’

  ‘You may need a little more time than that.’

  Why does she look so sceptical? She obviously underestimates my highly evolved hunter-gatherer instinct when it comes to finding things to buy, or in this case, to rent.

  4

  I’m still optimistic, if tremendously hung over. I officially have a friend in London, this is a gorgeous neighbourhood, the apartment sounds great, my skinny jeans are even a little loose and my Juicy Argyle cashmere sweater is a style favourite. Nothing says ‘Make me your housemate’ like having covetable clothes.

  ‘Um, hi, I’m here about the apartment?’ A Sienna Miller doppelgänger is blocking the doorway. It’s not a good start, though it’s possible, in a ‘perhaps I’ll win the lottery this week’ way, that she’s beautiful and nice. It doesn’t matter. I’m willing to overlook her obvious lack of flaws when I step inside. This is exactly the way I’d decorate my own place–just Pottery Barn14 enough to be comfy without tipping over into baby-dressed-as-flower artwork. There’s a squishy-looking sofa in one corner, perfect to curl up on with Ben, Jerry and a spoon. If they shift that table over, they could get a reading chair there, maybe with a floor lamp…

  ‘The room’s a single.’

  ‘That’s okay, it’s just me.’ Although hopefully not every night.

  Nothing truly prepares you for the disappointment of dashed hopes. We don’t go inside the bedroom. Why? Because it’s literally a bed-room. It’s maybe, maybe, five feet wide by eight feet long. The only way to get into bed would be to take a running leap from the doorway and launch myself on to the mattress. ‘Uh, it’s kind of small.’

  ‘We did say in the advert that it was a single. And the rent is very reasonable.’

  So people gratefully pay for the chance to live in a submarine torpedo launch tube at the right address. Thanks anyway, Sienna.

  South Ken definitely looks like the right address, even if the architecture is a bit schizophrenic. That’s something I know a little about. Architecture, I mean, not schizophrenia. I took a course in college when the object of my desire signed up, only to have him drop the class on the last withdrawal day while I was in bed with tonsillitis. I never saw my tonsils or the object of my desire again, but I got a B+ in the class.

  The need to crawl under the nearest duvet is taking on a new degree of urgency, but the next apartment is just a block away at number eleven. Lucky number eleven. That was my soccer number, though I only played for a week before it dawned on me that watching Days of Our Lives after school was infinitely preferable to sweating in a field. They let me keep the shirt though. There’s number two and, across the street is…forty-eight. I’m in no frame of mind for higher-order thinking, but I’m sure the house across the street from number two should be number three. Forty-seven, forty-six, forty-five…There it is, across the street from forty-four. What kind of country numbers its buildings sequentially up one side of the street and down the other? How do they assign house numbers if they have to extend the road later? Negatives? Fractions? Are there people living at Twenty-one-and-three-eighths Queen Street?

  ‘Hi, jeez, you’re hard to find!’ I blurt when a pudgy girl answers the door. I’d be much more comfortable living with this mere mortal. I knew this was going to work out.

  ‘Really?’ She looks a little doubtful about my mental capacity. ‘The bedroom’s through here.’

  At least I don’t have to step on the bed to open the window. ‘It’s great…wooh.’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  Her concern is understandable given that my stomach is groaning like an extra from Jurassic Park. The force of this painful eruption just drove me to the mattress.

  ‘Fine, thanks, wooh.’ She doesn’t need to know about my appalling lack of fortitude in the face of a good vintage. ‘Sorry. Just a little cramp.’ Panting seems to help the spasms. ‘Um, where’s the kitchen?’

  ‘We don’t have a kitchen.’

  ‘What do you mean, you don’t have a kitchen?’

  ‘Lucy’s room is the old kitchen. But all the appliances are gone.’

  ‘Where do you eat?’

  ‘In the living room.’

  ‘No, I mean, where do you cook?’

  ‘Cook?’

  While it’s fine to exist on take-outs and dinner dates, I have a feeling that at some point, in a moment of foolishness perhaps, I might get the urge to actually assemble my own food. I’m no Julia Child,15 but the ability to make an omelette is a basic human right. To think I was blissfully unaware that I needed to ask whether an apartment comes with optional accessories like a refrigerator.

  ‘Thanks, can I, wooh, let you know?’

  ‘The rent’s very reasonable. Only two-fifty a week.’

  So I keep hearing. Wait a minute, did she say…‘Two-fifty a week? You mean per month.’

  ‘Er, no, it’s two hundred and fifty pounds a week. But the gas and electric’s included.’

  So Brits quote their rents in weekly increments to make themselves feel better about lining their landlord’s pocket with amounts that most third-world countries consider an appropriate payment on their national debt. ‘Thanks, I’ll let you know.’

  I won’t lose heart. And I won’t lie down on the sidewalk, which is what I really want to do. What am I doing anyway? I can’t afford to live here. I’m 3,000 miles from home, with a dwindling bank balance, no job, one friend less than 24 hours old, a seat reserved on a plane in a couple weeks and I may have just gone into labour. Who looks for an apartment under these circumstances? Being optimistic is one thing, but this is ridiculous. I may as well buy a wedding dress on the off-chance I actually do get married somewhere, some day, to someone I haven’t yet met. Throw in a couple ponies for my non-existent children.

  ‘Stace, what the hell am I doing here?’

  ‘Aw, Han, I know it’s hard getting started, but you owe it to yourself to try to make it work. Otherwise you’ll regret it later.’

  ‘I know. It’s just…I’m being stupid. I mean, who does this?’

  ‘I would.’

  ‘But you’re different.’

  ‘I am not! Han, we’re exactly the same. You can do this too.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I don’t believe that. ‘I really miss you.’

  ‘I miss you too.’

  I don’t believe that either. The resentment, never too far away, slaps me. It’s been too easy for her to let me go. We’re supposed to be a team. We literally haven’t made a decision without the other’s input…or at least I haven’t. A memor
y intrudes. Like most intrusions, it’s unwelcome. College admissions. We waited for the envelopes to arrive (dreading the skinny ones, knowing they meant rejection). The daily phone call after school–did it, didn’t it? Then one day it did. Stacy got her first acceptance. To her, our, first choice. ‘OhmygodI’mgoingtoUConn!’

  ‘That’s great!…But what if I don’t get in too?’

  ‘Of course you’ll get in.’

  ‘But what if I don’t?’

  She was quiet for a while. ‘Well, the other schools aren’t that far away.’

  I did get in but I guess I knew, even though I didn’t want to know, that I needed Stacy more than she needed me. With her to lean on, I didn’t have to make my own fun, or decisions, or pursue my own dreams. I guess I’ve been on autopilot in more ways than one. Maybe that’s what she’s telling me. It’s time to live my own life. The waves of betrayal hit me all over again. That’s a rotten thing to tell a friend.

  ‘Stace, why’d you let me go?’ My heart is thumping in my neck.

  ‘What do you mean, let you go? How was I going to stop you?’

  ‘You could have talked me out of booking the ticket.’

  ‘Hannah, you were so excited to do it!’

  She’s right, I was. ‘You could have asked me not to go.’

  ‘I couldn’t do that!’

  ‘Maybe you should have.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because we’re best friends. Because you don’t want us to be a million miles away from each other. Because you need me there.’ I wish my voice didn’t shake whenever I get emotional. ‘Stace? You there?’

  ‘I’m here…Hannah, do you think I want you to be in London? I mean, that I’m happy you’re so far away?’

  ‘Psh, you’ve made it sound like you are.’ I know I’m being petulant.

  ‘You’re such an idiot. I’m miserable without you. We’re a team, like two halves of a…I don’t know, pick one of those stupid similes you like so much. I hate that we can’t see each other. It’s not the same on the phone. Honestly, I hope you don’t find a job and you come home and we go back to the way things were. But if that happens, I know you’ll be miserable. You’ve decided to do something huge, Han, and I want to back you up on that, only…I’m selfish. I also want my best friend back.’