The Upgrade: A Cautionary Tale of a Life Without Reservations (14 page)

The waiter stopped scribbling on his pad. “I’m really not sure we can do that, sir.”

“Why not?”

“Our French toast is served on plates.”

But Doug wasn’t budging.

“Son, I’ve seen most things in my sixty-nine years—I think I can handle French toast in a bowl.”

I liked Doug. The waiter explained that he’d have to check with the chef, and scurried off to do exactly that.

As he left, the schoolteacher from the previous night came and sat down with us. I was also growing to like the communal seating on American trains as opposed to British trains where only the mentally subnormal make so much as eye contact with a stranger.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” she said, “and what’s the news this morning?”

“Doug just ordered French toast in a bowl,” I explained.

“A bowl? What’s wrong with a plate?”

“The plates are meeting us in St. Louis,” said Doug. He didn’t skip a beat. And neither did the teacher …

“Great. I could use some French toast in a bowl.”

The waiter came back just in time to hear the teacher also setting her heart on French toast in a bowl. The poor man looked like he was going to cry. “I’m sorry, sir, ma’am, but the chef says if we give you French toast in a bowl, we’ll have to give everyone French toast in a bowl.”

“So what?” asked Doug, raising his voice just loud enough. “Tell me, son, would society crumble if that happened? Would the terrorists win if every man, woman and child on this train were to be served French toast in a bowl? Because I’d say our freedom to enjoy French
toast in a bowl is what makes us Americans. In fact, if the terrorists could see us now, I’d say they’d be taking some measure of joy from our inability to manage to take some French toast and put it in a bowl, wouldn’t you say, son?”

“I’m sorry, sir, that’s just what the chef says.”

“Well,” said Doug, his voice creeping even louder, “you tell the
chef
that Doug Anderson of Hawley, Pennsylvania, has two things to say in reply. Now, you should write these down in your little notebook there so you get them right.”

The waiter kept his pad in his pocket.

“First off,” Doug continued, “the customer is always right. And second, if all you do is prepare Rice Krispies on the railroad, you got no business callin’ yourself a chef.”

His piece said, Doug ordered the oatmeal, which I couldn’t help but think was unwise given that he’d just insulted the chef. I’ve seen
Fight Club
. I know what goes on. I ordered a sealed pot of yogurt.

Chicago. “Oprah, Obama, Michael Jordan, Mr. T. So what you’re basically saying is that Chicago is home to all of white people’s favorite black people?”

The girl sitting at the next table in Starbucks didn’t laugh. “That’s inappropriate,” she said and returned to her book.

Until then she’d been giving me an enthusiastic verbal tour of the city after overhearing my accent as I ordered coffee. I smirked to myself and opened my laptop to email Robert. He and I had a long-running competition—now entering its third or fourth year—to see which of us could elicit the words “that’s inappropriate” the most times from American girls.

The concept of “appropriateness” is much more real to Americans than it is to Brits, despite us being the ones who are supposed to be stuffy and formal. I’d noticed it a lot with swearing: while Brits of both genders will be quite happy, among friends, to use the word “fuck”—as a verb, a noun and adjective or an adverb—a surprising number of young Americans blanch at the idea. Rather, they’d talk about “dropping the F bomb,” as if four letters were capable of leveling Nagasaki. Why actually use the word when the very threat of it was enough?

Worse, of course, was “the C bomb,” which I took particular delight in dropping at every available opportunity. Perhaps it’s the fact that my dad’s family hails from Glasgow but, used outside of its gynecological sense, it’s always been one of my favorite words.

Actually, that was one of the many reasons I liked Hannah: being Canadian, she had all of the spark and energy and attractiveness—and accent—of an American, but with none of the silly coyness. We’d only met once before and yet she hadn’t hesitated to call Sarah Lacy a cunt.

As if summoned across two continents by those thoughts, five minutes later an email arrived with Hannah’s name in the “from” line. I’d sent her a short note from the train, using my phone—nice to run into you again, we should catch up when I’m back in London, all that bullshit—but I hadn’t really expected her to reply. And yet …

This was unbelievable. She’s single again, and I’m in Chicago. “Cunting fuck shit,” I cursed to myself. The girl at the next table let out a loud sigh. So inappropriate. I tapped out a reply, something casual.

It took me about forty minutes to get the casual, spontaneous wording just right. After I clicked send and my email began its journey across two continents, I noticed another message had arrived—this one from Eris. You wait all year for a pretty designer and suddenly two come along at once.

Eris had been looking at my blog and had read a post I’d written on the train from Dallas about how it wasn’t really a city that I could see
myself spending a huge amount of time in. It was just too spread out, too nondescript. It just seemed to lack character.

Of course, I’d decided all of this during a twelve-hour stay, much of which I’d been either drunk, asleep, in bed with a pretty blonde girl or all of the above.

I read the email twice. Her story about feeling like she didn’t belong in Dallas and knowing she had to leave was very similar to my feelings about London. I mean, I absolutely loved the city, but I also knew I couldn’t live there.

All the drinking and the memories and the drudgery and the cost just ground me down. I could see how, as an interactive designer, San Francisco was the obvious place for Eris to go: it’s the heart of the technology industry and a city packed with artists and creative people. For me, the whole world was my San Francisco. I wanted to keep traveling and experiencing new things and knowing that, if I ended up in trouble, I could always hop on a plane or a train and head somewhere else.

I was suddenly aware of a figure standing over me. Tall, skinny, about eighteen-years-old and wearing a Starbucks apron. I looked up. Yes?

“Excuse me, sir,” he said, with a pomposity that belied his years. “One of our customers has complained about your use of ‘language.’ I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave. There is a bar next door if you’d like to curse.”

“My use of language? Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

The girl at the next table was looking over, a self-satisfied smile playing around her lips. It was time to head somewhere else.

I
slept quite a lot of the way between Chicago and New York, taking care to put all of my valuables into my laptop bag before wrapping the strap around my feet and pushing it under the seat in front. The people on the train looked like a trustworthy bunch, but you can never be too careful.

I’m quite a light sleeper, which made the subsequent theft of my iPod, my phone and my
USA by Rail
book somewhere between Charleston and Cincinnati all the more mysterious. The thief must have crawled under the seat. For some reason, though, he’d left behind my laptop and charger.

The loss of my phone was sort of a mixed blessing—God only knows how much of an international roaming bill I’d racked up in the past couple of months. I’d realized back in LA that I hadn’t given my phone company in the UK a forwarding address—mainly because I didn’t have one—so there was no way for them to bill me. I figured I’d just use the phone until they cut me off and try to fix things when I was next in London.

But still, as the
Cardinal
service pulled into Penn Station, the absence of Wi-Fi on board—score one for British trains—meant that I’d been out of touch with the outside world for twenty hours. I knew how those smokers back in Poplar Bluff felt.

When I finally found a bar with a decent Internet connection, there were no more messages from Eris, which was disappointing as I’d got used to her daily cajoling to get on a plane to San Francisco. There was, however, an email from my friend Caroline, a comedian from New York who also happens to be Joan Rivers’ niece. She is precisely as much fun as you imagine that person to be.

A quick check on the Internet Movie Database told me that
21
is the movie adaptation of
Bringing Down the House
, Ben Mezrich’s book about a group of MIT students who applied their geek math skills to count cards in Vegas.

I’d read the book back in London and so was definitely keen to see the movie, even though I didn’t have the first idea who Kate Bosworth or Jim Sturgess were. The only thing stopping me was the fact it was already Saturday evening, I hadn’t booked a hotel room and the screening had started an hour ago, halfway across town.

Ah well, at least I could get to the after-party early and avoid the queues. Rather than trying to check into my hotel before the party, I decided to leave my bags in storage at the station and collect them afterwards. Or at least that was the plan until I learned that Amtrak will only store bags for passengers who have an outward ticket. I showed the man at the baggage check my rail pass—still valid for three whole weeks—but he shook his head.

I had to be actually booked onto another train. “It’s to stop terrorists leaving bombs here,” he said, with the look of a man who knew he was enforcing a ridiculous policy. Exploiting what seemed to be a reasonably obvious loophole in Amtrak’s plan to foil terrorism, I dragged my suitcase to the ticket office and used my rail pass to book myself a free ticket onto a train back to Chicago. They gladly accepted the bag.

Now all I had to do was remember to collect it before 6:55 the next
morning, otherwise all of my possessions would be on their way back west without me.

Sure enough, there wasn’t a queue at the after-party. There was, however, an officious-looking woman with a clipboard.

“Hello,” I said, “I’m here for the
21
party.”

The clipboard woman looked me up and down—I looked like a man who had been on a train for twenty hours—and instantly made her judgment. “Are you on the list?”

“I honestly don’t know, I was supposed to be with someone. My name is Paul Carr. I’m with the
Guardian
in London.”

That, as it turns out, was precisely the wrong thing to say. She gestured to a gaggle of photographers standing next to a black SUV, waiting for the first of the celebrities to show up.

“Oh, no, I’m not here to cover the party. I’m a guest,” I said.

“You’re not on my list,” she said. “I’m sorry. It’s a very strict guest list tonight. Fire regulations.”

I felt like an idiot. My “I’m a journalist” card might work to get past a bouncer in Austin, but it certainly wasn’t going to work with a professional celebrity PR girl in Manhattan. This woman probably spent half of her life keeping journalists out of things, citing fire regulations. I’d have had more luck if I’d claimed to be a fireman.

I shrugged and headed back down the street; I’d just have to wait an hour or so for Caroline to show up. But then, as I trudged forlornly away, one of the photographers who had been watching my unsuccessful blag shouted behind me: “nice try!”