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‘I’ve been offered a job, on this new magazine,’ I said, trying to find some strong ground to stand on. ‘I’ve been doing some stuff for the website here, and they’ve offered me a staff writer job.’
‘There you go. It’s not all bad then is it? Why don’t you go and pack your bag and come back. Come back today, I could meet you at the airport tomorrow! I can’t stand thinking of you there, being upset on your own. Please Angela, I just want to know you’re all right. I just want to see you.’
‘I haven’t been on my own,’ I said again, looking out of the door, watching New York buzz by. ‘And I love it here. Honestly, I’ve actually been sort of OK.’
‘You don’t sound it, Angela,’ Louisa sighed. ‘Why don’t you call me when you’ve booked your flight. You know what we need, we need Ben & Jerry’s and Dirty Dancing.’
‘I’ve already done all that, Louisa.’ I shook my head, remembering why I had left in the first place. ‘Things aren’t perfect here, but just coming home won’t make everything better either.
‘Angela, you need your friends, listen to yourself!’ she replied. ‘What Mark did was bloody awful, and we’ll never forgive him for it, but you have to come home sooner or later. You can’t run away for ever.’
‘I don’t think you understand,’ I said, standing up and walking out into the almost fresh air. ‘I’m not running away. I was, when I left, I was, but now I’ve got some real opportunities here. Some really exciting things have happened.’
‘It always seems that way when you’re on holiday,’ Louisa was starting to talk to me as if I were drunk. Or five years old. It was frustrating. ‘But be real Angela, you’ve got to get on with life.’
‘Yes, you’re right,’ I nodded, rounding the corner and looking up at the Chrysler Building. It still broke my heart, it was so beautiful. ‘But coming home wouldn’t be getting on with life, it would be going back to something I was unhappy with.’
‘Angela,’ Louisa was starting to get impatient. ‘I get it, you think you’ve put the Mark-cheating-on-you-thing behind you.’
‘Don’t tell me what I think,’ I said, my voice growing stronger. ‘And yes, Mark is a shit. If I ever see him again, I’m likely to try to castrate him, but what he did to me wasn’t nearly as bad as what I did to myself …’ I could almost hear Alex’s words coming out of my mouth. Fancy that. ‘I hadn’t been happy with him for years. He wouldn’t have looked at someone else if things were good between us. I should have left him, Louisa, but I was too scared. I wasted years of both our lives. Just pissed them away.’
‘But—’ Louisa tried to interrupt, but I wasn’t ready to stop.
‘And in the last three weeks, I feel like I’ve actually been living. Making good decisions, doing good things. If I came back now, what would happen?’
‘You’d be with people who love you and care about you,’ Louisa said. Her voice certainly didn’t sound like that of someone who loved and cared about me. I took a deep breath before I said anything else. Before I could, I heard the call waiting beeping quietly on the line.
‘I have to go, Louisa,’ I said, shielding my eyes and looking back up towards the apartment. I could see Jenny pressed up against the window, looking for me, her phone in her hand. ‘I don’t know exactly what I’m going to do, but can you tell Mum I’m OK, and I’ll call on Monday?’
‘Angela, for God’s sake,’ Louisa sounded incredibly cross, ‘you’re living in a dream world. Wake up and come home’
‘I don’t know about that,’ I said, shrugging. ‘But I’ll know by Monday. Love you, Louisa, I’m glad you’re OK.’
Before she could start trying to talk me home again I hung up. Jenny had already rung off, and when I looked up at the window, she had vanished. I wasn’t ready to go back in there just yet, but I wasn’t ready to belly up and go back to London either. I needed somewhere to think.
For an hour I wandered the streets. Down, across, across, up, back down again. I didn’t even realize I’d arrived at the Empire State Building until I walked straight into the queue of people.
‘Watch where you’re bloody going,’ an unnecessarily fat British man tutted and sighed as I backed away with incoherent apologies. ‘Bloody Americans,’ he nodded to his companion, ‘they’re so bloody rude.’
Finding a tiny space outside a pharmacy on the corner of the street, I stared up at the building, but it didn’t offer any easy answers. Just memories forged from countless hours of TV and movie watching, spliced with scenes from my visit with Alex. Feeling choked by the crowd, I shook off the fug and turned on my ballet pump. Uptown. Up and out. For the first fifteen blocks, I thought I was heading to the park, but as I crossed over Fifth and onto Sixth, a different refuge came to mind. Hopefully one where I could fill my head with something other than the hamster wheel of questions that were tracking over and over.
Although it was still fairly quiet, it was a museum after all, MoMA was busier than it had been the last time I’d been there. I paid my $20 and hopped straight on to the escalator, travelling up to the fifth floor. I was surprised at the number of kids running around. Very cool parents, I thought to myself, although secretly wishing the very cool parents would scoop all of them up and take them across the road to FAO Schwarz. Even though there were dozens of people loitering, not one of them uttered a word to me as I sank down against the wall opposite Christina’s World and stared. I didn’t even cry. I just stared, losing myself in every last blade of grass. I ignored the curious whispers, although I did pull a bit of a face when one tit in a cagoule suggested to his girlfriend that I was a performance artist. Was I wearing a bear suit? I just shut it all out, every word of everyone. The people who were there, the people who weren’t. I shut out all of the advice, requested or otherwise, not one of them had told me anything I wanted to hear, but they were all right. Jenny was right, I was a big fuck-up, Louisa was right, I had run away, and Tyler was right, I really didn’t know what I wanted. But it was time to work it out.
An hour or a whole day could have passed before I eventually pushed myself up off the floor, it really didn’t matter. As I wiped away a few sneaky tears that had slipped out unnoticed and pulled my messy hair back into a ponytail, I spotted someone else having a good stare. There, leaning against the escalator, was Alex. He smiled sadly and raised a hand. I froze for a second, and then waved back, not knowing what else to do. He gave me a cool single nod and came over.
‘Hey,’ he said softly.
‘Hey,’ I replied. My voice sounded strange after being silent for so long. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Jenny called Jeff, Jeff called me, I called you, you didn’t answer,’ he said. ‘It’s a big long chain of people calling people until I figured out you might be here.’
‘Oh,’ I nodded. ‘Wait, Jenny called Jeff?’
‘She didn’t have my number, and I guess she thought you might have come over to mine,’ he explained. I couldn’t even begin to think how awful I must look. ‘She was worried about you.’
‘They broke up,’ I said quietly, thinking about how furious Jenny had been. I wished I could go back and try that conversation again. ‘Jenny and Jeff. She’s so upset.’
‘Him too,’ Alex looked at me. ‘I hope they work it out, but it’s hard when you can’t trust the other person.’
‘It’s all anyone seems to be doing, working stuff out. Gets tiring after a while.’
‘It does, but what else are you supposed to do?’ Alex put one hand gently on my shoulder. ‘You want to talk?’
‘Not in here though,’ I said, letting him guide me towards the escalators and outside.
‘So, what’s going on?’