Читать книгу I Heart Christmas - Lindsey Kelk - Страница 8

One of the most common phrases I heard in New York was ‘go big or go home’. Usually, this made me very happy. Everything was more over the top here – the people worked harder, the bars opened later and there was bacon in everything – but today, even the weather was acting like a real New Yorker. Whoever had upset the wind and brought the brutal sleet shower that slapped me in the face when I stepped out of my apartment needed a kicking. It was days like this that I was reminded I was not a true New Yorker. A born-and-bred city gal would have pulled on her North Face jacket, muttered ‘fudgedaboudit’ and gone about her business. I stood on my doorstep in a duffel coat and a fancy scarf that became immediately sodden, and whimpered until a cab buzzed by. I couldn’t think of a day I’d been happier to stick out my arm and jump inside. This was an open-minded city but murdering commuters because you had had too many drinks and not enough hot dogs the night before was generally considered a no-no and, I imagined, it was especially frowned upon at Christmas time.

As soon as we left the doctor’s office, Jenny and I had headed straight to the St Regis for ‘dinner’. Only dinner turned out to be a bowl of bar nuts and three martinis, a choice that was neither nutritious nor conducive to an easy morning commute. Thank God it was perfectly acceptable to wear sunglasses indoors in December in this city. My comfy, comfy leggings, cocoon-like Club Monaco sweater and battered old Uggs combo had been frowned upon by the girls in the office but I was fairly certain I’d got the greasy egg, bacon and cheese sandwich past them without anyone detecting it. My satchel was going to stink for weeks. Stink like heaven.

No sooner had I sat down to take my first bite than my phone began to ring. I picked up as quickly as I could, just to stop the noise, fumbled with the handset for a moment and finally managed to answer.

‘Angela? It’s Mandy from human resources. The first interviewee for the assistant position is here. Are you on your way up?’

The assistant position. Interviews. I had to sit in a room and talk to strangers about a job I didn’t really want to give them. I looked longingly at the greasy paper bundle in my handbag and sniffed.

‘I’ll be up in five minutes,’ I croaked into the phone. ‘How many are there?’

‘Eight,’ Mandy replied. ‘Five minutes.’

For a moment I wondered if HR at Condé Nast spoke to Anna Wintour like that. Taking one delicious bite out of my sandwich before trudging back out of my office, I figured they must. Even a Prada-wearing devil had to hand in her appraisals on time, surely?

Of course, the interviews were torture.

Even if I hadn’t had a seventeen-piece orchestra tuning all their instruments at the same time inside my head while my stomach behaved like it was on a roller coaster, on the deck of a cruise ship, travelling through very choppy waters, it would have been unbearable. In fact, trying not to vomit was pretty much the only interesting thing I had to focus on throughout. One after another, shiny-haired, impeccably dressed and wildly overqualified boys and girls filed in, sat down and showed me the result of their very expensive childhood orthodontist work and even more expensive education. Not one of them had a single, solitary hair out of place and not a single one of them had woken up with a little bit of their own sick on them. Was it weird to feel intimidated by your own potential assistant? Alistair, Chessa, Tessa, Betsy, Beatrice, Sarah, Sarah and Sara were all exactly the same human being. Well, Alistair obviously had some differences from the girls but he was wearing very expensive designer shoes and did also like kissing boys, so not that many. They were fashionably put together but not making any sort of statement. They had all attended expensive, liberal arts colleges and had degrees that had great potential to be entirely useless in the outside world. They all lived on the Upper East Side with their families or had just moved out to Brooklyn and they all had an uncountable number of internships under their belt. Basically, everything added up to ‘they were all really rich’. It wasn’t like I’d grown up without two pennies to rub together, or like I hadn’t met some very rich people in my time in New York who weren’t entirely dreadful, but something about that soft-focus sheen that money gave a person made me nervous. The idea of having to ask someone to go and get me a coffee when they had never had to light up the inside of their handbag with their pay-as-you-go mobile looking for a last pound coin to pay for their kebab on the way home from Wetherspoons made me feel a bit, well, weird.

As the interviews dragged on, I discovered that they were all perfectly nice and had excellent interview skills. They all wanted to work in journalism and they were all so excited about the opportunity to work on a magazine as fun and as fantastic as Gloss. Blah blah blah. Why hadn’t anyone thought to bring me a snack as a bribe? After the first hour, I would have given them my job if they’d have just given me a bag of Doritos. As soon as Tessa had finished telling me about her award-winning humanist-slash-beauty-slash-kitten fancier blog and wafted out of the room on a cloud of Chanel, I leapt to my feet and told Mandy I had an important conference call that meant I absolutely had to get back to my desk. There was no way I could sit and discuss the subtle differences between Sarah’s English major and feminist theory minor versus Sara’s English major and quite blatant cocaine addiction minor. I felt like I’d just interviewed the entire cast of Gossip Girl and I needed a quiet sit-down.

And so that was exactly what I was not about to get. As I sloped back to my desk, I spotted a blonde head poking up from the chair in front of my desk. Delia. At least she might take sympathy on me, I thought, cheering slightly at the thought of some empathetic nodding. And most importantly, she wouldn’t judge me when I ate the shit out of that cold egg sandwich.

‘Fuck me,’ I announced, pushing the glass door open and letting it close loudly behind me. ‘Interviewing is too hard. All I want to do is bury myself in a vat of Ben & Jerry’s and eat my way out.’

‘Ew.’ Delia wrinkled up her tiny, surgery-free nose and gave me the filthiest look she could muster. Which would have been a strange response for Delia, if it had in fact been Delia. But it wasn’t. Of course it wasn’t, because today was turning out to be a day of complete and utter shittiness and that could only mean one thing. Delia’s twin sister Cici had come to pay me a visit.

Fucking. Brilliant.

I sank down in my chair and stared at her. It was like being in the same room as a spider – I wanted it to go away but I didn’t dare take my eyes off it in case it came to get me when I wasn’t looking.

‘Cici,’ I said eventually.

‘Angela,’ she replied, wiping off the look of disgust and replacing it with a bland, easy smile I recognised from the poor little rich girls I’d just interviewed.

‘I am too tired today.’ I prayed she would make it quick. ‘Can you just punch me in the face and leave?’

Cici looked at me blankly for a moment and then threw her head back in a terrifying laugh that I’d previously only seen written down in Jenny’s most manic text messages. ‘Oh, hahahahahaha. That’s funny.’

‘Is it?’

Just for a moment, I really wished I’d had a panic button installed under my desk.

‘Yes?’

I breathed in, breathed out and waited but apparently she really didn’t know what I was talking about. Cici sounded the same but, while I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, something was very slightly off. Her super-trendy outfits had been replaced by a pair of bootcut jeans and a regular-looking sweatshirt and her hair, gorgeous as it was, didn’t look like it had seen a straightening iron in, well, at least five seconds. Maybe she was dying? I peered under the table. She was wearing trainers. No heels. Perfect for a speedy getaway.

‘Oh.’ Finally, she clicked. ‘Because you think I hate you and, you know, all that stuff that happened.’

When Cici said ‘all that stuff that happened’ I assumed what she meant was the time she’d had my suitcase blown up at the airport in Paris and tried to sabotage my career by blackmailing my assistant into screwing me over. Or maybe when she got me fired, which meant I almost lost my visa and could have been deported. Or maybe it was the time she tried to destroy Gloss, the magazine her very own sister was working on, before it had even launched. Of course, I had responded to this evildoing with grace and maturity and had risen above the whole thing. Aside from the time Louisa almost beat the living shit out of her. But that was totally by the by.

‘If you’re not here to ruin my life, or at the very least Christmas, what do you want?’ I asked. I was too weak to get into a scrap again, although throwing up on her would be new and, I imagined, quite effective.

‘So, Deedee told me you need a new assistant.’ She flicked her hands out to the side in a kind of jazz hands gesture. Her nails were all chipped and bitten down. Cici Spencer hadn’t had a manicure … OK, she was definitely dying. ‘So, like, I’m here to be your new assistant.’

More often than not, in situations where most people would have been rendered speechless it was my unfortunate habit to let out a string of expletives and unintelligible noises. However, in this instance, I was quite simply gobsmacked.

‘I know we’ve had some issues in the past,’ Cici went on, ignoring the horror on my face and the fear in my eyes. ‘But I’ve totally changed. I’ve been in India at a yoga retreat.’

As if to convince me that this complete and utter spiritual shift was complete, she tugged on a tiny plait, interwoven with gold and red threads, hidden in her hair.

‘I was there for six weeks.’

For a moment, I was very worried that I had actually drunk myself to death the night before and this was some sort of purgatorial test but a quick and painful pinch of the arm proved that whether I liked it or not, this was happening.

‘So, you went to a spa in India, got your hair done and now you’re a new person?’ I just wanted to get all my facts straight before I called the police.

‘I mean, they called it a spa,’ Cici said with a raised eyebrow. ‘But, you know, I didn’t dare sit in the steam room on my own and I had to take my own towels. And for some reason there were, like, cows and elephants everywhere.’

‘Because you were in India?’ I suggested.

‘Yeah, at a spa,’ she repeated.

‘Right.’ I used my last reserve of strength to stand up and press my hands onto the desk, trying my hardest to look stern and as though I wouldn’t fall over if a kitten pushed me with a whisker. ‘This has been fascinating but you have to leave. I’m sure you’ve got whatever hilarious kick you were after out of my outfit anyway.’

‘Listen, Angela.’ Cici flushed bright red and stood up until we were face to face. Except for now she was about five inches taller than me, even in trainers. Albeit nice ones. ‘I really have changed and I really want to make a new start. I guess in some weird, abstract way, I sort of kind of feel like you and I owe each other an apology.’

‘That is interesting,’ I said as my psycho alarm began to blare inside my head.

‘But clearly you want to hold a grudge.’ She sniffed and feigned a sad face. ‘I guess spending all that time soul-searching and working out how I can be a better person, how I can make my pops and my sister proud, I guess all that was for nothing.’

‘It would seem so,’ I said with as much sympathy as I could muster. ‘I hope you at least got a good massage out of it.’

‘You’ve changed.’ Her eyes flashed, as though she was being hard done by, as though she might actually be able to squeeze out a tear. ‘I know you don’t believe it but I liked working with Mary when I was her assistant, you can ask her.’

‘Well, yeah,’ I admitted. ‘But I’m fairly certain you never accidentally on purpose dropped a picture of a huge penis in any of her PowerPoint presentations either, did you?’

‘You have changed, Angela,’ she nodded, smiling. ‘What, now you’re a big shot editor with your dumb dip-dye colour job, you’re too big and important to give a girl a second chance? And FYI, I wasn’t even going to mention your cruddy outfit.’

‘By my count, this would be your fifth chance,’ I pointed out. ‘And it’s not dip-dye, I just haven’t had time to get the roots done.’

‘Whatever,’ she snapped. ‘Namaste.’

I watched Cici and her wounded karma flounce all the way down the office, confusing the newbies who thought she was Delia in a never-before-seen huff and scaring those who remembered her from her previous reign of terror at Spencer Media. I fixed my eyes on her tiny bottom until she was safely in the lift and safely out of the building. And then I sat down. And then I sighed. And then I threw up in my bin.

My name is Angela. I am disgusting.

Two hours later, I was still sat at my desk, surrounded by Christmas cheer I was struggling to feel and desperate to get outside into the fresh air. But sadly, if I wanted to take any time off the following week, there was a lot of work to be done. I’d already had an email from Mary saying they needed me in on Monday but I was still hoping to take the rest of the week off. Four days of fun was better than none.

I rubbed my eyes to stop them from blurring as I stared at a page of mascara reviews, only to pull away my fists covered in blackish brown smudges. I’d been looking at my computer for too long and I was a long way from being finished yet. There was every chance I shouldn’t have spent half an hour streaming the Come Dine With Me Christmas special after Cici left but how else was I supposed to get back my seasonal spirit? That girl brought out my inner Grinch. Before I could focus my eyes back on the screen, my iPhone rattled across the glass top of my desk, flashing up a name that made me very, very happy.

‘Hello!’ I screeched, mentals and mascara smudges completely forgotten.

‘Clark, get your arse outside. I’m freezing my bloody balls off.’

Even though it was not Santa, I would have been hard-pressed to be more excited. This was someone who gave much better gifts and visited far less regularly.

‘On my way,’ I replied, hanging up and clapping my hands. The magazine could manage without me for ten minutes. Probably.

‘All right, you old slag.’ As soon as I stepped out of the Spencer Media lobby James Jacobs, my absolute favourite formerly closeted gay actor from Sheffield, threw his huge arms around me and squeezed until I squeaked. I hadn’t seen him since my wedding, despite repeated promises and four a.m. text messages swearing he’d swing by the next time he was in New York. Oh, to be so jet-set-slash-busy doing it with boys. We hugged it out while I wrapped my not nearly warm enough but very cute Theory duffel coat and jumped up and down, half because I was so excited and half to warm up my feet. It really was bloody freezing.

‘Why didn’t you tell me you were coming to visit?’ I demanded, still mid-hug. Sometimes his hugs went on a bit and I couldn’t quite breathe but they were very lovely. ‘Or are you on the run?’

‘How did you know?’ he asked, letting me go and holding me at arm’s length to get a good look. ‘I’m here for work and to tell you to get your hair cut. Where do we go?’

‘We could just go upstairs?’ I suggested. ‘I’ve got an office with walls and windows and everything.’

‘As impressive as that sounds,’ James said, patting me on the top of the head, ‘I’d rather not.’

‘Because of the celebrity mags?’ I asked, all sympathetic and understanding.

‘Because I shagged one of the blokes who works on reception once and never called him,’ he replied. ‘So, where are we going?’

I thought for a moment. He didn’t want to go to the office, I didn’t want to go to the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company and neither of us wanted to stand in the street freezing our nuts off, which did not leave us with many options. Looking up at James, six foot something, glossy brown hair, huge eyes, cheekbones that would slice bread, I frowned. Did he have to be quite so bloody tall and gorgeous? If we couldn’t go somewhere he wouldn’t be recognised, we had to go somewhere no one would care. Somewhere people had other things to think about. Somewhere in Times Square …

‘I know just the place.’ I grabbed his hand and dragged him down the street. ‘I’m a genius. Follow me.’

‘You’re a genius?’ James shook his head and folded his arms. ‘Sometimes, Angela Clark, I worry.’

‘Embrace it,’ I replied. ‘It was close, it’s quiet and no one in Toys R Us a week before Christmas gives a shit about you. They just want a Buzz Lightyear or Teletubby or whatever the kids are into these days. Plus, I’ve got a bag of Sour Patch Kids in my handbag so you’ll even get a snack. What more could you want?’

When most people were stressed or unhappy, they went to look at the ocean or hang out in the park. Others opted for retail therapy – Holly Golightly went to Tiffany, Jenny Lopez went to Saks Fifth Avenue, I went to Toys R Us in Times Square. Admittedly, it was a bit odd when I didn’t have any kids of my own but I had yet to find anywhere else within ten minutes’ walking distance of my office as distracting as the giant animatronic dinosaur in the Jurassic Park section of the store. When Bergdorf put one of those in, I’d walk the extra ten blocks. Until then, I was staying here.

‘Sour Patch Kids are not a snack,’ he said, taking a handful anyway and raising his voice over the extra-loud music. ‘Jesus, I haven’t eaten this much sugar in about seven years. Incredible. Your logic troubles me.’

‘But you do admit it’s a kind of logic,’ I said, ‘so that’s something.’

‘If anyone tweets about this, I’ll kill you,’ he said, pausing to offer the kids in the My Little Pony car below us a dazzling smile and flip his curly brown hair away from his face. Yes, he clearly hated the attention. ‘And if I get motion sickness, I’m going to throw up on your shoes.’

I crossed my legs, tucking my Uggs under the seat, and hoped he was joking. It was a miracle I’d never thrown up on them, I’d be damned if someone else was going to do it.

‘OK, what’s going on?’ I asked, popping a handful of sour sweets in my mouth and leaning back to enjoy the ride. ‘Aside from making my Friday complete, what are you doing here?’

‘You can’t tell anyone,’ James leaned in to whisper in my ear with unnecessary but very welcome theatrical flair. ‘I just auditioned for a musical.’

I stared at him with a completely blank expression.

‘Fuck off.’

James. In a musical. Ha. Yes, he was an actor and yes, he was as gay as the day was long but he was far from camp and, above all else, he was a boy from Sheffield. It just wasn’t possible. Boys from Sheffield weren’t in musicals. They could be in bands but they could absolutely, positively not be in musicals.

‘I did! I just auditioned for a musical!’ he insisted, just loud enough for everyone in the shop to update everyone they knew on every form of social media known to man. So much for subtlety. ‘I’m serious.’

And according to the slightly annoyed glint in his eyes, he was.

‘Hollywood wasn’t enough?’ I sipped my water and tried to rein in my excitement. I loved a musical – it was my not-so-secret secret shame. The fact that tickets were so incredibly bloody expensive was the only thing that stopped me from singing along with Pippin every single night. Well, ticket prices and the fact that everyone I knew would disown me. ‘Which one?’

‘Les Mis,’ he replied casually as he popped another sour sweet with relish. ‘God, I’ve missed junk food. Maybe I’ll get really fat next year and then do Dancing with the Stars to get it all off.’

My heart stopped. My eyes widened. Had he just said what I thought he had?

‘Les Mis as in Les Miserables? As in the best musical ever made? As in I know all the words and sometimes when I’m in the shower I like to pretend I’m Eponine and you can never, ever, ever repeat that as long as you live?’

‘Yes, Angela, you mental, that Les Mis,’ he said. ‘You know they’re reviving it?’

‘Of course I know they’re reviving it,’ I answered in a near shout. ‘There is a blog, James. There are several blogs. I cannot believe you auditioned for it. Who are you playing?’

‘Well, if I get it,’ he said, very clear about the ‘if’, which I ignored, obviously. ‘Jean Valjean. You know?’

I did know. And to communicate this, I pressed my hands to my heart and nodded because I was entirely without words. Twice in one day. It was a new record.

‘And yeah, I had the audition this morning so I flew in last night, met the producers, sang my song …’ He raked a hand through the too-long hair that now made all sorts of sense and shrugged. ‘I’ll know in a few days if they want to see me again, so I thought I’d stick around.’

‘I’d invite you to stay but it’d be the sofa or the airbed and I am sure you are far too fancy for that,’ I said, trying to pretend I didn’t want to talk exclusively about the fact that he was potentially going to appear in my all-time favourite musical ever.

‘Don’t worry about it.’ James pulled a face and stretched his arms out along the back of the car. He was clearly enjoying himself, even if he wasn’t prepared to admit it. ‘I’m staying at the Mondrian. And you know I don’t do Brooklyn. It gives me a rash.’

‘You’ve never been to Brooklyn,’ I pointed out. ‘But if you’re going to be here over Christmas, I’m going to force you over at gunpoint. I’m going to do a Boxing Day thing. Jenny’ll be around. And probably Graham and Craig. You remember Graham?’

‘Graham?’ James furrowed his brow into a vision of contemplation. He was so handsome. When I was thinking hard, I looked like I needed the bathroom, or was about to cry. Because sometimes when I had to think that hard I did cry. ‘Is he the one I met at your wedding?’

‘Yes,’ I replied, practising my judgey face for when I got back to the office. ‘In England and in New York. He’s the bassist in Alex’s band? Very tall, handsome, glasses? You had sex with him several times?’

James clicked his fingers and nodded. ‘Oh yeah. Nice guy.’

‘And so memorable.’

‘It was ages ago,’ he said, as though I was being entirely unreasonable. ‘We hooked up, we weren’t the ones getting married.’

‘I suppose it is easier to remember the names of everyone you’ve ever had sex with when you can count them all on one hand,’ I replied. ‘Names, dates of birth, identifying marks, names of parents, allergies and medical issues.’

‘I can’t decide if you’re my hero or the saddest woman I ever met.’ James squeezed his arm around my shoulders, elbowing Woody and Buzz in the face. ‘Poor lamb. Tell me all about it. Have you got the seven-year itch a bit early?’

‘No,’ I protested, horrified at the very thought. ‘I wouldn’t cheat on Alex. Not even with a Hemsworth.’

‘What about both Hemsworths?’ he asked.

I paused for a moment.

‘Nope,’ I declared. ‘Not even both Hemsworths and a Gosling.’

‘Shit, that’s serious,’ James clucked. ‘You really should think before you say such things.’

‘I mean it,’ I said and I did. ‘Let’s be honest, I was never very good at dating. I’m perfectly happy to have retired early.’

‘Sounds nice,’ he said, contemplative for a second. ‘But yeah, there comes a time when enough’s enough. But what can a boy do when he’s ready for a change?’

‘Secretly pop over to New York without telling his friends,’ I suggested, ‘and audition for a part in a musical?’

‘Oh Clark, you’re not as green as you are cabbage-looking, are you?’ He smiled and gave my shoulder another squeeze. ‘You can be quite perceptive sometimes.’

I smiled. Upsettingly, it was the nicest thing anyone had said to me all day.

‘So what’s going on?’ I asked, smiling broadly at the bored-looking shop assistant who was in charge of shoving people on and off the ride. I wondered if anyone ever fell off. I wondered if anyone ever jumped off. It would be a hell of a way to go.

‘Nothing really.’ He peered over the edge of our car and tapped out a beat on the side of the carriage. I noticed the stubble on his cheeks, the dark shadows under his eyes. I’d assumed they were evidence of too much travelling and fun times but maybe not. ‘Just feeling a bit shit, a bit lonely. It’s been a long time since I’ve had someone around.’

‘And that’s what you want?’ I covered my mouth so as not to offend him with a mouthful of neon goo. ‘A boyfriend?’

‘I want something,’ James said, looking behind us. Buzz and Woody seemed to understand. ‘I want someone to text stupid things to, not just a picture of my knob and my place at twelve? I’m thinking about moving to New York permanently actually. LA feels a bit tired.’

‘Obviously I would love that.’ I decided to ignore the dick pic part of the debate. That was an issue for his agent, not me. ‘You really think the dating prospects are better here than in California?’

‘That’s what I hear,’ he replied with a shrug. ‘And it’s a better place to raise a family for me, I think.’

‘Everyone has gone baby mad.’ I dug my hands deep into the pockets of my coat and tried to remember if I’d taken my Pill that morning. ‘Is there something in the water?’

‘You too?’ James broke into a real smile. ‘That would be amazing. Imagine, our little babies growing up together, going to school together, beating each other up, having incredibly awkward sexual encounters and then crying about it all in therapy twenty years later. Amazing.’

‘Well, as special as that sounds …’ I couldn’t quite return his big grin but I mustered up the ghost of a smile so as not to let him down. ‘It’s not me just yet. Alex, maybe. Jenny, yes. My friend, Erin, just had her second.’

‘You’re not ready?’ he asked.

I fiddled with my engagement ring and shook my head.

‘I just pulled a half-empty, family-sized bag of Sour Patch Kids out of my handbag and that was supposed to be my lunch,’ I said. ‘No, I’m not ready. How am I supposed to take care of a baby? I am a baby.’

‘You know what they say, there’s never a right time,’ he said, taking another handful of sweets and throwing them into his mouth. ‘But I have just crossed you off my surrogate list.’

‘Thank you.’ I scooped up the rest of the sweets into my hand and folded the bag as small as possible to avoid filling the bottom of my satchel with sour sugar. Again. ‘It is appreciated.’

‘You say Jenny’s feeling broody?’ James did not extend the same mouth-covering courtesy to me that I had shown to him. Gross. ‘She seeing someone?’

‘Yes, she is, and sort of, but maybe not by now. She’s being ridiculous. It’s totally out of nowhere.’

‘Hmm.’ My favourite gay leaned forward, elbows on knees, swinging the carriage forward. I just managed not to squee with delight. ‘Biological clocks are pretty intense, Clark, and she’s a couple of years older than you, isn’t she?’

‘I know,’ I said, feeling a tiny bit guilty. ‘I’m not giving her a hard time, or at least I hope I’m not. I just don’t want her to rush into something this massive and then regret it. I don’t know if she really wants a baby or she just doesn’t want to be on her own. I don’t think dating Craig has really been the relationship of her dreams.’

‘Which one is Craig?’ he frowned.

‘The one in Alex’s band that you didn’t have sex with,’ I said. ‘I hope.’

‘I definitely only did the one in the glasses,’ he said, squinting with the effort of remembering. ‘But I think I remember him. He’s hot.’

‘He is,’ I acknowledged. ‘But I don’t think he’s particularly thinking about the future right now. He’s a straight, good-looking thirty-two-year-old musician in Brooklyn. That gives him the emotional maturity of a nineteen-year-old anywhere else in the world.’

‘Alex manages monogamy,’ James said, his foot tapping along to ‘Frosty the Snowman’ as he spoke. ‘Maybe you’re just being cynical.’

‘And I fully expect to wake up from my coma and find out Alex was all a dream any day now,’ I replied. ‘He is not the norm here, you know that. Dating is hard. I think that’s a bigger problem for Jenny than the baby thing. I just don’t think she wants to admit it.’

‘It’ll all come out in the wash,’ he said with a yawn. ‘You’ll get the truth out of her eventually. Probably when you’re hammered.’

‘You know me so well,’ I said, wincing at the thought of ever having to drink again. I could not hold my ale like I used to and that was saying something. ‘Why don’t you come over for dinner? I’ll call her, we’ll get her liquored up together?’

‘In Brooklyn?’

‘Yes?’

‘Oh, Clark,’ James replied with a friendly smile. ‘How many times? I Don’t Go There.’

You had to admire a man who had his principles.