Then: nothing.
Around noon, I wake up, check that everything is where it’s meant to be – both on my body and my person:
Passport? Check.
Coat? Oh, I wasn’t wearing one.
Credit card? Check.
Debit card? Check.
Keys? Check.
Make-up? Check.
Shoes? Hang on. Where are my shoes?
A frantic, frenzied search of the apartment yields nothing. I realise with a slow, cold, dawning horror that they’re not here. I quickly come up with a list of scenarios:
1) I left them in the club, walking out barefoot.
2) I took them off in the cab home and just got out without them, barefoot.
3) I took them off in the street, for the few steps from the cab to my apartment. And somehow left them there, by the bins.
It’s number two, I reason. I mean: I know I was drunk, but I would never just leave them there in the club, when I was surrounded by people. Right? But I’m terrified that’s exactly what I did and play the hypothetical scenario like a memory, over and over in my brain, like a broken tape, looping round and round.
Had The Hollywood Actress noticed how drunk I was? Had her team? I flash back to the frowning face of a designer who worked for her when we were at the bar. Was that a memory? Or had I imagined it? Was her frown at my drinking? At me? Had I said something, anything, that I shouldn’t? As ever, now it is just a waiting game. Let the days pass, pray nothing is mentioned to me. And it isn’t. The shoes become the latest in my funny stories: ‘And I woke up, without my shoes! I mean, who loses their shoes!’
The bodies mount up once more.
Meanwhile, I still think, dream, of the man I left in London. Every trip back to that city is spent looking for him, seeking him out: his words, his feelings, his skin, his bones, his breath. I walk the streets of Soho, down, down, down, the bricks marking time, my path, taking me to him.
We meet, cling to each other, to walls, to limbs and lies we’ll repeat over and over: I love you; I miss you; I can’t live without you; we’ll be together one day; it’ll be worth this pain, the wait, wait, wait. He tells me he likes the pain and I can’t tell him that the pain is still breaking me from the inside out, shattering my rib cage with a violent wind I can’t contain, blowing through, pulling me down.
Back at work, the successes mount alongside the bodies that fall at night. I, the magazine, win award after award at ceremonies held at hotels with chandeliers. I get promoted, a pay rise, trips to new cities, more responsibility, more hours, more dinners in restaurants I would never normally be able to afford.
One evening, my boss summons me to dinner in one of those restaurants with a restaurant guy making waves in Manhattan. We arrive at his place downtown and are shown to the best table in the restaurant: centre of the room, slightly to the left, close enough to the kitchen to see the action but not feel or hear it. It’s a fairly typical scene: half the room desperate to be noticed, the other half desperate not to notice.
Strong vodka and whiskey cocktails are ordered; wine is poured. The business guy joins our table, a provincial guy playing at being a Real New Yorker. His bright striped shirt is untucked. His suit jacket finishes half an inch from where the rounded edge of shoulder does. He reeks of money – several hundred dollars’ worth of cotton pulled tight across his chest. A fat ring on his thin finger. He buys things; he buys people. But he can’t buy cool. And that’s where we come in.
We tell him: your food is great; the restaurant is fabulous; the crowd are wonderful; the drinks are divine. In truth, the drinks are simply strong enough. As always, my one-meal-a-day diet means I drink more than I eat. With each new round of drinks, one of our table bows out. They don’t have my fortitude. There’s four of us. Then there’s three and then there’s two. His wedding ring flashes and winks when it catches the light.
He wants to know what I think. I tell him. Liquor splashes; he orders more. The restaurant empties and closes around us. He doesn’t want to go home. He mentions a hotel nearby, getting another drink, but then he’s getting a room and I’m walking down a corridor that gets thinner and longer the more I walk. We’re in a room; it’s small and beige and the bed nearly touches both walls. I’m in the bathroom, orange and kitsch and like nowhere I’d ever want to be. I feel trapped. I’m in a hotel room with a man who’s married and don’t know how to get out, or how I got in.
I’m bleeding between my legs, but he doesn’t notice, or he pretends not to, and as the beige bleeds inside my eyes, he’s on top of me and I’m elsewhere, somewhere else, nowhere else.
‘Stay,’ he says, he asks, afterwards. I’m gagging, my mouth is filling with water and I can’t. I say I need to leave; I need to be gone. I feel dirty and rotten and evil and excuse myself with one sorry and a second sorry until I’m in the hall and clutching my body, horrified at what it’s done to me, how it’s betrayed me.
I’m clinging onto the walls, hard under my hands, as I heave and slap my mouth shut. The receptionist’s mouth is moving as I walk past but I can’t hear what she’s saying. I am spat out onto the streets of downtown, my back against the wall as I begin to mourn who I thought I was. Above
