snorted. ‘If you walk around with your eyes closed. I’ll dip into my own savings to pay for some proper cleaners before we move in. No arguments.’
‘Fair enough, but then I think we can work some magic on it. I mean, what more do we need, really? We’re going to be at work or out most of the time.’
‘Well, I guess a little more space would have been nice, maybe an oven so we could cook something other than soup, just occasionally, and— urgh!’ I instantly regretted opening the microwave. ‘But, I know we’ll save money living here.’ My voice faltered: ‘Have… have you actually paid the deposit?’ I was on the verge of tears as Rob explained how he’d already put down our non-returnable deposit, because some others had shown an interest in it too, this being one of the coolest addresses in Brooklyn, and he didn’t want us to miss out.
‘It’s just not the kind of place I’d imagined us making our first home together, you know?’ I said.
He squeezed me tightly. ‘I know, me neither, but what is it Kirstie and Phil say – “location, location, location”? Seriously, this couldn’t be a better address and, with your sense of style, we’ll make the best of it. Did you see all those vintage furniture shops we passed on the way from the subway? We’ll check them out tomorrow and we’ll hit the flea market on Saturday. It’ll be fun.’
‘After the cleaners have been?’
‘After the cleaners.’ He was doing the head-holding thing again, always picking the right moment to take my face in his hands, look at me straight on and tell me with his eyes that whatever it was, was going to be okay.
‘At least we haven’t seen a cockroach yet.’ I half smiled, my eyes wandering around the tiny living area and spotting an ominous brown patch on one of the walls.
‘Well, that’s something.’
Vowing to turn our sardine tin into a tiny palace by way of some bleach and elbow grease, we got the subway back to Manhattan.
As the doors closed and the train left the station, the sound of some heavy rap blared out of a portable ghetto blaster. I gripped my purse in my pocket; I’d heard about muggings on downtown trains.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, sit back, relax, it’s show time!’ boomed a voice in the centre of the carriage. I slunk back in my seat and averted my eyes, but Rob did the opposite; he leaned forwards to get a better look as a breakdancer began skilfully swan-diving down the centre of the carriage floor in front of us. Then he jumped up and swung between the ceiling rails, spinning 360 degrees through his arms. Some of the passengers on the train burst into applause, and others barely looked up from their reading material. Then another dancer jumped forwards, clinging onto a vertical railing and twisting his body around it as he hugged his way down, before leaping onto the next railing – like a flying monkey – and doing the same, until he had worked his way down the carriage from pillar to pillar. A few people got to their feet around the edges, clapping them on. Forget Britain’s Got Talent, I’d never seen anything so cool and I was starting to shed my inner Londoner – who would ordinarily be timidly peeping over a copy of Metro, looking for an exit route – and clapped along too.
‘How wicked is this?’ Rob nudged me, not taking his eyes off a third dancer who was walking through the carriage on his hands, legs bouncing in time to the beat, and then finished off his routine by flipping off his friends with a flourish of perfectly choreographed backward somersaults. Without breaking anyone’s toes! I wonder if my insurance would cover that, Dad. Finally, as we sensed we must be nearing the next stop, all three began spinning on their heads, gliding with ease through at least fifteen rotations, before jumping back onto their feet and holding their headscarves in their hands for a quick whip-round from their audience. Some of our carriage mates coughed up a few coins, while others just sat there coolly, hands in pockets, as if this happened every time they took the L train to work.
‘Only in Brooklyn,’ a guy next to me commented, as he seemingly reluctantly tossed a five-dollar bill into a sweaty headscarf. I tipped all the change I had in my purse into the dancer’s hands and swiped a card from a fan poking out of his top pocket.
Seconds later the train came to a halt, and one of them picked up the ghetto blaster and they were gone, probably darting into the next carriage to entertain all over again.
Rob and I were buzzing.
‘So we might be moving into a shoebox—’
‘Make that a children’s shoebox,’ I interjected.
‘Okay, a shoebox for a millipede – whatever you want to call it – but I really don’t care, because I’ll be living there with you and I couldn’t love you – or this city any more right now,’ he said, sighing. ‘You’d never get that in London.’
I had to agree. ‘And we’ll make our little millipede box the cosiest home ever. It’s going to be great. And you’re clever for sorting it out. I love you too.’
The next day, after cleaners had made the place smell of lemon disinfectant, rather than someone else’s toilet, and a year’s worth of burnt cheese had been scrapped off the microwave, we took a taxi across town with our suitcases of belongings and moved in.
On our first night in the flat, we were woken up listening to our next-door neighbours having very loud sex. She was a screamer, he a shouter. We might not have known their names before, but we certainly did now: Max and Tina. In between the thumps on the wall and the shouts, any chance we had of sleeping was put to an end by the fact we had so far failed to notice that we lived opposite a fire station. A whirring siren sound went off a couple of times just in the hour that we were trying to get to sleep.
On the second night, Max and Tina held a dinner party with some equally shouty friends. We opened another bottle of beer each and pretended it wasn’t as loud as it was, already feeling like an old married couple in our late twenties. Then we turned up our own music and tried to have sex on the sofa, but the noise from next door was too distracting. So we went out and got drunk on tequila and more beer at our new local, passing out back home, some time after the dinner party had finished.
On the third night, we wore earplugs and managed to sleep reasonably well, save for the strobing orange light from the streetlamp positioned directly outside our bedroom window and the occasional siren from the fire station.
‘Blackout blinds,’ Rob muttered woozily.
But, to be honest, when the light buzzed on for long enough for me to admire my boyfriend’s matinée idol profile on the pillow next to me, I didn’t really mind. And I knew I’d get used to the sirens.
There was something kind of pretty about the way the light hit our bed and bounced off the 1970s I HEART NEW YORK print we found in a thrift store earlier that day and which now hung on our bedroom wall, covering the brown marks. The only picture to grace our walls so far.
In the next blast of orange, I captured the image and uploaded it to Instagram; Rise filter; caption: ‘Goodnight Williamsburg #NYC #stylist #newhome’
Dana was true to her word and the following afternoon my new American cell phone rang with an unpaid rush job putting together a suitcase of cool looks for a ‘hot, young, model-stroke-actress’ desperate to make her fashion mark at the boho lover’s festival of music festivals, Coachella.
‘None
