Authors: Grace Wynne-Jones
No one comments on my tears. It’s that sort of day. ‘My hair
is very unruly,’ Erika continues. ‘I’ve never learned how to blow-dry it properly. Lionel says it’s lovely, but that’s only because he
has no sense of style.’
‘Who’s Lionel?’ April asks.
‘Oh, some stupid guy from the office,’ Erika says dismissively.
‘And now he wants me to help a load of refugees speak English.
I mean, my English isn’t that good; how am I supposed to teach a bunch of foreigners about grammar? A lot of it’s instinctive. I
don’t even know some of the terms.’ She scoops some cream from
the plate with her finger and pops it into her mouth. ‘So I’ve
decided I’ll bring my guitar along and sing to them, and then we’ll
talk about the lyrics.’
Fiona and I exchange concerned glances. Erika can hardly sing, and she is awful on the guitar. What’s more, the only song she can
remember is ‘The House of the Rising Sun’, which is a sad song
and could have a depressing effect on people who may be feeling
miserable already.
‘I suppose I might as well busy myself with good deeds, since
I’ll never meet anyone else like Alex.’ Erika sighs dolefully. ‘Does
anyone want that éclair?’
We shake our heads, and she grabs it. I’ve chosen a chocolate
cake with layers of mousse; it’s creamy and light and delicious, and it doesn’t even taste fattening.
‘The sad thing about men…’ Erika pauses to munch on her éclair. ‘…is that they’re so
unsatisfactory
.
Most of them just don’t
understand us, and the ones that do are married or gay or
monks.’
‘That’s not fair,’ Fiona protests. ‘Some men are lovely. I bet a
lot of them feel the same way about us.’
‘Look, let me enjoy being unfair for a moment, will you?’ Erika
says sharply. ‘I keep trying to be fair, and you know something?
Sometimes it’s a right pain in the arse.’
I laugh, and the others do too. Erika looks so fierce and ruffled,
like a kitten.
‘Anybody want more coffee?’ I ask. I am droopy with jet lag.
Fiona shoves her cup towards me.
‘I wish I could put on my flip-flops now,’ Erika says. ‘It feels w
rong, being in New York without wearing my new shoes.’
‘
And I want to put on my socks,’ I add. ‘My New York socks.’
‘
Let’s all go down to the spa,’ Fiona says. ‘You can put them o
n there.’
‘But you’re supposed to take your clothes
off
in the spa,’ Erika
says.
‘Yes, and then you put them on again.’
‘We should go to Central Park afterwards,’ Erika says. ‘It’s such a lovely afternoon, even though it’s a bit muggy. My flip-flops should feel lovely and fresh.’
‘But it will probably get a bit cooler later, and then my socks will be nice and cosy,’ I say.
‘You should all come and visit me in California,’ April
suddenly announces. ‘There’s enough room in my condo.’
‘
Condom?’ Erika frowns at her.
‘Condo. Condominium. It’s got a swimming pool. You could
all fly out there tomorrow.’
We stare at her. Just for a moment, I can sense we are all feeling
that this is a good idea. Once we’ve shopped for shoes and socks
in New York, we need to move on, and California is ideal. We could hang out in San Francisco for a while, and then maybe
travel south and drop in on L.A. We would naturally travel in an
open-topped car and play loud music about love and cars and
moving on down the highway. We’d stop in motels and have wild
sex with hunky, bronzed men who drove beat-up Chevys. Then Paris would beckon… or Rio. I look at Erika and Fiona. Their eyes are soft and dreamy.
‘I have to get back to darling Milly.’ Fiona is the first to break
the trance. ‘I can’t believe I just left her like that.’
Erika looks at me excitedly. ‘But
we
don’t have much to go
back to, do we? We could stay in the condom for a while.’
‘
Condo,’ April corrects her.
‘We could stay there for a while and then get a camper van, Sally. We could get a camper van and roar into the desert.’
‘I don’t know, Erika.’ I look at her warily. Maybe those
calming herbal remedies have a bit more in them than she
thought. ‘It all sounds very… interesting… but I don’t think a camper van would really suit me.’
‘But they have loads of different types,’ she protests.
‘And we’d need more money.’
‘
We could be buskers. I’d buy a new guitar. And I could make
more cats. And… and you could write articles about it.’
‘I think we should go home and discuss this when we’ve had more time to… you know… think about it.’
Erika purses her lips stubbornly.
‘Look, Erika, Sally is married,’ Fiona adds carefully. ‘Even though she sometimes seems to forget it, she has acquired a husband.’
‘That she doesn’t seem to know what to do with!’ Erika splutters. ‘Especially since he slept with Charlene.’
‘What?’ April exclaims.
‘Diarmuid slept with someone else,’ Erika says casually. ‘But
Sally doesn’t really mind, because she’s in love with Nathaniel.’
‘
Who’s Nathaniel?’ April leans closer.
‘He’s a gorgeous guy who’s in love with Eloise. It’s like Pass the
Parcel.’
‘I see.’ April looks at me thoughtfully.
‘I’m not in love with Nathaniel!’ I protest. ‘I might be if I felt
he was available, but I know he isn’t, so I’ve… I’ve reined in my
feelings for him.’
‘You rein in horses and ponies,’ Erika says. ‘And even then they
sometimes don’t stop.’
‘It’s an expression, Erika. You can rein in other things too… such as wild wishes to roar into the desert in a camper van. Sometimes it’s necessary.’
‘I’m going to have to go soon,’ April says.
‘Oh, no – you can’t!’ Erika exclaims dramatically. ‘You’re the
only sensible person here.’
‘So you’re not going to come to California with me?’ April smiles at us.
‘I’d love to… another time.’ I get up and hug her. ‘It’s been
wonderful seeing you again. We really must keep in touch now.
I’m sorry I haven’t phoned more often.’
‘Don’t tell anyone what I told you, will you?’ She looks at me
cautiously.
‘No, of course not. But I’m glad I know. Thanks so much for
telling me.’ I throw my arms around her again and we hold each
other. There must be a number of Aprils. I’m so glad I finally got
to see this side of her.
‘Oh, feck – I forgot to get Mum a birthday card!’ she suddenly
exclaims. ‘Would you buy it for me? Nothing too sentimental. Nothing with teddy bears on it. I’m not that sort of person.’
‘OK.’ I smile. This is a more familiar April. I’m not sure I could
have got used to her being huggy and sweet indefinitely.
As she reaches for her bag, I say, ‘Actually, April, there’s something else I meant to ask you.’
‘What?’ She looks at me solemnly.
‘What exactly don’t you like about my lipstick?’
Chapter
Twenty-Eight
There’s a black woman
on the small stage, swishing a pink feather boa as she sings some jazz song. She sounds husky, experienced, weary in a way that isn’t plain tired. She thought life was going to be different, that’s what she’s singing: it’s been OK, but she thought she was going to get more out of it. She’s not complaining, but she’d just like us to know that. And she still has the diamond ring he gave her, the one she almost threw away.
There’s a saxophone solo at the end. It’s good. The whole thing
amounts to something – I can’t say what, exactly, but it’s not
cheap and not too simple. It’s an old song. We need the old songs.
They remind us that what we humans want and need, deep down,
really doesn’t alter.
Erika and Fiona and I should be eating dinner, but after we left
Central Park we walked down some scary side-streets and got a
bit lost and met a guy called Samuel. He told us the way back to
the hotel, but he also told us about this place. It’s called the Furry
Avocado and we were virtually standing outside it. Samuel said it
was funky and we’d like it here. He also said he’d be singing
himself in a while, and we got intrigued. So now we’re sitting here
in this dusky little room. It’s smoky and shabby and wonderfully
weird.
Erika and Fiona and I have decided that we are the kind of
women who get down and boogie. Erika isn’t talking about Alex,
and Fiona isn’t calling Zak every twenty minutes to check on Milly’s welfare. I have even managed to stop continuously thinking about April and what she told me, but I seem to have transferred my anxiety to the diamond brooch; I look in my bag every five minutes to check that it’s still in there safely. I’m
somehow comforted by the fact that I am wearing lipstick that is
a deeper shade of pink and isn’t ‘awful’. April said the other stuff
was verging on white and didn’t suit my complexion.
Before he went off to tune his guitar, Samuel told us he works
in a health-food store. That’s what I’m gradually figuring out about this place: all the performers haven’t quite made it. It
doesn’t seem to worry them. They’re good, but they haven’t got
that other thing – that thing that would make them famous and rich and on television and in big concert halls. But I sense they don’t mind too much, because they’re still singing. They’re still
doing what they love on their own terms. And I like their terms. I like that we are in this dark, almost poky little room together. I
like that a guy called Rik is singing about his banged-up old car
that took him across the Midwest. He isn’t comparing himself to
others and fretting that he doesn’t have a CD in the top forty. I
bet he’s happy – and I really wish he were a first cousin. He’s just
the sort of guy who would bring a real buzz to Marie’s uptight family gatherings.
Samuel comes on next. He’s short and chubby and smiling, and
his hair looks as though he asked a friend to cut it when they were
both drunk; it sticks out in strange places. Samuel picks up his
guitar, and Erika starts clapping as though he’s Bob Dylan. And
then he starts singing, in a strong, raspy voice, about this woman
he knew and how he’ll never forget her; how being with her felt
like home, the home he’d never had. And then she dumped him for a truck driver and he became a vegetarian, though his cat, Chuck, still eats meat. Erika is utterly enraptured.