you’re dry.’
‘What, you’ve got like twenty copies,’ she gestured to the other three magazines in the plastic bag. ‘Shit, look at you! You’re so my hero, doll.’
‘Come on,’ I said, taking the spare copies and stashing them on a shelf next to the US edition of The Look in which my columns had already featured. ‘You’re going to be late for work.’
‘And you’re never going to get that spring fling piece to that psycho Brit bitch if you don’t do it today,’ she reminded me needlessly. ‘Did your mom see it yet?’
‘They’re still on the Christmas cruise.’ I closed up my laptop and slipped it into my (slightly battered but still amazing) Marc Jacobs bag. ‘They won’t be back for a couple of weeks.’
‘She’s gonna freak when she sees you in a magazine!’ Jenny danced around the living room in her towel. ‘Last time we talked, she was so excited for you.’
‘I can’t even begin to tell you how uncomfortable I am with the fact that you two have weekly chats,’ I smiled, taking off my hoodie, layering up several T-shirts and finishing up with my coat. ‘How is the life coaching going?’
‘She’s my best client since you. Seriously, if you would talk to your parents without my having to start the call every week, I wouldn’t have to know about Avon’s special offers and Anne-next-door’s curry night, would I?’
‘We talk.’ I sighed, throwing underwear at Jenny. Our weekly Sunday evening phone calls home had become a ritual for Jenny and I, whether I liked it or not. ‘I just don’t think I need to talk to my mother every time you speak to yours. It’s not a requirement of my visa. Now get your knickers on, Lopez. We’re leaving.’
We walked arm-in-arm, trying not to slip in the snow, all the way down to The Union, where I hugged Jenny goodbye and left her at the door. Union Square Park looked picture perfect in the snow, but it was too cold to go and sit right now. Every time I went outside at the moment I remembered Alex’s promise to take me back up the Empire State Building to see the city in the snow.
No, bad Angela, I wasn’t supposed to be thinking about him. I turned left and tiptoed down to the music shop on the corner, hoping some new CDs might inspire me to go home and get it on with my laptop. God knows I hadn’t got it on with anyone else in months. As I passed through the security gates, I beeped loudly, attracting the attention of the guard, but I smiled, holding up my mobile phone.
‘Just a text message,’ I said. He smiled back, but he also followed me into the store.
Just got my copy of The Look. I’m so proud of you! Louisa
x x x
I re-read the message a few times until I had burned it onto my retinas, then I stashed my phone back in my pocket overly dramatically for the security guard’s benefit.
I browsed contentedly for a few moments. I’d been sort of out of the music loop since the summer, all part of my Alex Reid cold turkey programme prescribed by Dr Jenny Lopez. I hadn’t called Alex and he hadn’t called me. As much as I knew he was right, that it was all too much too soon, I really didn’t think I could face bumping into him at a gig, with some skinny hipster girl on his arm and I knew that I wouldn’t be able to do the ‘let’s just be friends’ nonsense. What I hadn’t reckoned on was bumping into him right there and then. I froze, my heart lodged in my throat. There he was, staring back at me, slight smile on his face, hair perfectly dishevelled, his green, green eyes staring right into mine. It was a great photo. I picked up the magazine and flicked to the interview without thinking. Quickly, I paid at the counter and abandoned my CD mission, heading for Starbucks. Before I could cross the road, thinking I would go and say hello to Johnny, I realized I was opposite Max Brenner’s. I looked down at the picture of Alex on the magazine and across to the hot chocolate Mecca.
Running across the road and dashing into the wonderfully warm restaurant, I flipped through the pages. For half a second, I looked around, wondering if he would be there. Of course he wasn’t, why would he be? It was eleven-thirty on a Monday morning in January. He would still be in bed or in the studio or … I shook my head and smiled at the hostess, yes, table for one. Thinking about Alex wasn’t getting me anywhere. Not thinking about him had been getting me along quite nicely, and it had taken a good month of cold turkey (Jenny had confiscated my iPod and CDs and deleted my Stills albums from my iTunes) before I could even get through a day without wondering what he might be up to. Once my hot chocolate arrived, I grasped my mug gratefully and sipped the thick chocolaty soup, opening up the interview. I skipped through their art school beginnings, the first two albums achieving critical acclaim. Like every other underappreciated New York band, they had a huge UK following. Slight exaggeration, I thought, but I’ll let it go. But now they were releasing their third album. I put down my drink and read on. It was a more deconstructed sound, the sound of a band that had stripped themselves apart and put themselves back together again.
‘“If it sounds that way, it’s because that’s what it’s about,” says lead singer, Alex Reid.’ I whispered out loud to myself. ‘“The album was written really quickly and recorded in a couple of weeks. It’s just what we were going through as a band, some stuff I was going through personally. It’s about what happens when you have your whole life pulled out from underneath you and how you go about working out your place in the world again. I think pretty much everyone can relate to that.”’
I pushed the magazine across the table, closing it and turning it over. He hadn’t called me and I hadn’t called him. I’d thought about it, a million times. I even thought I’d seen him at a welcome back party we threw for Gina at some hip club on the Lower East Side before she upped and left for Paris permanently. I tucked the magazine into my bag, knowing I should just throw it away. But I was so proud of him. His face peered out of my bag, next to my copy of The Look UK. He would be so proud of me.
I took a deep breath and rustled my phone out of my pocket. Before I had a chance to talk myself out of five months of aversion therapy, I dialled.
‘Hello?’ he answered on the first ring.
‘Hey,’ I said softly, thrown by his voice. ‘Alex?’
‘Angela?’ he asked. He sounded sleepy.
‘Yep,’ I smiled. When was I going to learn to think about what I was going to say on the phone before I called people? ‘I was just thinking about what you said? About seeing the city when it snowed. And I saw the interview. About the new album.’
‘Interview? Snow?’ he yawned. ‘Angela, are you in New York?’
‘Yes,’ I said, hopefully. ‘Actually, I’m in Max Brenner’s. I was thinking about – about, well, you.’
‘You were?’ he asked. I hoped I could hear a smile in his voice.
‘I wondered if you fancied a hot chocolate?’ I asked, crossing as many of my fingers as gripping my phone would allow.
‘Uhh,’ he paused for half a moment. ‘Angela?’
‘Yes?’ I said. Please don’t hang up, I prayed silently.
‘You took a really long time to call me,’ he said. ‘But I’m really glad you did.’
‘Me too,’ I said happily. ‘Now get your arse out of bed and come meet me.’
I
