Money, though.
All American money looks alike—hundred-dollar notes look like ones, fifties look like the rest. Weird. All decimal, of course, so my trick of translating into the simpler old pre-decimal guineas, pounds, crowns, florins, shillings, tanners, threepenny joeys, pence and farthings, which everybody could understand, wouldn’t work here.
Homesick and forlorn, I made myself some coffee, putting a coin on the till for it, and sat wondering about the USA, with its enormous meals and streets all numbered in order so you couldn’t get lost and everybody so cheery and… Like Rose, for instance. So direct, so willing to smile and talk. Most odd. So unlike us. I mean, as recently as 1989 Lord Dacre threatened to resign because his Savile Club decided to allow members to talk during breakfast, the bounders.
Somebody shoved the door. I leapt a mile, bawled a terrified “Hey, go home, ya bum!” and switched lights on round the place. Silence, or what passes for silence in New York. That is, traffic, sounds of people speed-walking, talk, sirens, motor horns, occasional yells.
The bar now seemed cold and uninviting, even stark. There’s something unnerving about tidiness, isn’t there? I’m always lost when some woman comes to stay, tidies me into her pattern, washes sheets and gets grub by the clock. I like a little disorder. Manfredi’s, all prepped for the morning, was an uncomfortable oasis.
Nothing to read, so I switched the telly on for company just as a policeman pounded on the outer glass panel, frightening me to death. His silhouette seemed convincing. I went to let him in.
“What’s going on here?” he said, eyes everywhere.
“Evening, constable. I’m still waiting for Mr Manfredi.”
He gazed around. He was all dark leather pouches. The gun made me swallow a couple of times.
“New, huh?”
“Yes, constable. Barman.”
He walked about for a few moments, eyed me in what can only be called a threatening manner, strolled out without another word. I was relieved to see him go.
An hour on, I surrendered all hope and got some cold grub from the kitchen fridges. I made more coffee, though by now I was sick of the bloody stuff. The great survival trick is to avoid cinnamon. America must float on a sea of the wretched spice. They put it in rolls, things called muffins which aren’t, in tea bags, in anything edible. Midnight came and went and the telly game shows went on and on. I barricaded the front entrance with chairs and a trough filled with giant greenery, tested the windows, listened horrified to somebody fighting outside, pulled out plugs, generally lessened the electricity bill for the dark hours… except there are no dark hours in New York, that insomniac’s paradise.
A bench seat would do me. Towards two o’clock I unfastened a window, peering out. Motors still about, pedestrians, somebody falling over, neons blinking multicolour into faces, somebody running down a side street. And the grids steaming as if Hell was somewhere immediately below. I couldn’t get used to the great funnels they stick into the roadway to pipe the gases high into the air. I latched the window, baffled. Grub finished, I washed the crockery in case the kitchen people went mental in the morning, and put the lights out.
The telly I left on, sound lowered. I dozed fitfully on the bench. Three or four times during the night I roused thinking I heard people trying windows, doors, but there was no one and I slept on.
CHAPTER TWO
« ^ »
SEVEN o’clock, and I was dismantling my barricade when Fredo came. He was there breathing hard, with the same bobby from the previous night. Fredo looked distraught, a piece of sticking plaster on his forehead and his wrists bandaged.
“Morning, guv. You okay?”
“That’s him, Fredo,” the policeman said.
They pushed in. The law stood by while Fredo attacked the cash registers. I got fed up just standing about while they exchanged meaningful glances so I went and brewed more of that terrible liquid. I’d have made myself an egg but I once cracked one at home and there inside was an almost fully formed live chick. Now I wait for birds to do the cooking, or go without. After all, what are women for? They can’t go about doing nothing all blinking day, not even in America.
The kitchen people were obsessional about their ovens, so I switched the electric ones on and lit the gas under the ones that looked as if they needed it. I heated some water, which I thought a really sensible move. We usually had quite a few people in for breakfast, who sat along the bar. I put the telly on, more unbelievable game shows with everybody clapping all the time.
“Yes, guv?”
Fredo was breathing hard, but sitting down now. The bobby was glaring. My heart sank. Morning of my fourth day in America, and it looked like I was for it.
“The money’s right,“ Fredo accused. His words hurt him.
I gazed blankly back. “I know. Delia tilled up last night.”
“Why’s he talk like that?” the cop said.
“Who minded the store, Lovejoy?”
I thought that one out. Some idiom? Guarded the restaurant, probably. “Stayed here? Me. I couldn’t work the alarm.”
The cop looked troubled, but shrugged and left when Fredo gave him a series of long slow nods. That left us
