Читать книгу Windows on the World - Frédéric Beigbeder - Страница 8

That morning, we were at the top of the world, and I was the center of the universe.

It’s half past eight. Okay—it’s a bit early to drag your kids up a skyscraper. But the kids really wanted to have breakfast here and I just can’t say no to them: I feel guilty about splitting up with their mother. The advantage of getting here early is you don’t have to queue. Since the 1993 bombing, security controls on the ground floor have been tripled, you need special badges to work here and the security guards who search your bags don’t fuck around. Even the buckle on Jerry’s Harry Potter belt set off the metal detector. In the high-tech atrium, fountains gurgle discreetly. Breakfast is by reservation only: I gave my name at the Windows on the World desk when we arrived. “Good morning, my name is Carthew Yorston.” Immediately you get a sense of the place: red carpet, tasseled velvet rope, private elevator. In this vast airport lounge (350 square feet under glass), the reservation desk stands like a First Class check-in. It was a brilliant idea to show up early. The queues for the telescopes are shorter (pop a quarter in and you can stare at the secretaries arriving for work in the neighboring buildings: cellphones glued to their ears, dressed in pale gray figure-hugging pantsuits, coiffured hair, expensive sneakers, pumps stuffed into their fake Prada handbags). This is the first time I’ve been to the top of the World Trade Center: my sons both loved the Skylobbies—the high-speed elevators which ascend the first seventy-eight floors in forty-three seconds. They’re so fast you can feel your heart leap in your chest. They didn’t want to leave the Skylobby. Finally, after four round trips, I was annoyed.

“Okay, now, that’s enough! These lifts are for people going to work, it’s not marked Space Mountain!”

One of the restaurant hostesses, identifiable by her lapel badge, escorted us to the other elevator which whisks you to the 107th floor. We have a busy schedule today: breakfast at Windows on the World, then a walk in Battery Park where we’ll catch the Staten Island ferry to have a look at the Statue of Liberty, later a visit to Pier 17, a bit of shopping at South Street Seaport, some photos of the Brooklyn Bridge, a tour of the fish market just for the smell of it, and finally a medium-rare hamburger at the Bridge Cafe. The boys love big juicy hamburgers smothered in ketchup. And large Cokes full of crushed ice—as long as they’re not Diet. Kids think of nothing but food, parents of nothing but fucking. On that score things are pretty good, thanks: shortly after my divorce, I met Candace who works at Elite New York. You know the type…She makes J-Lo look like a bag lady. Every night she comes to the Algonquin and climbs all over me, moaning (she prefers Philippe Starck’s Royalton which is just down the block) (it’s because she’s never read Dorothy Parker) (remember to give her a copy of the Collected Dorothy Parker, that’ll put her off relationships).

In two hours I’ll be dead; in a way, I am dead already.