Читать книгу The Three of U.S.: A New Life in New York - Peter Godwin - Страница 36

Joanna has imbued our unborn child with its own character. It is that of a street-smart, super-competitive, gravel-voiced Manhattanite, already ashamed of its odd, foreign parents.

‘Hey, Dad,’ she rasps in imitation, ‘how come you haven’t got a real job?’ The knowing foetus, her incarnation of it at least, is already withering in its take on our relative lack of financial status. ‘Why haven’t we got an Aston Martin like William’s dad, huh?’ it complains. ‘And what’s with this Village loft? It’s pah-thetic! How come we don’t live in a brownstone on the Upper East Side, like Gus?’

Joanna’s name choices have become ever more bizarre and arbitrary. ‘Obadiah. I like Obadiah,’ she pipes up over supper at Florent, apropos of nothing in particular – pregnancy has made her a mental doodler. ‘Or what about Zebedee?’ She is deep into her Old Testament phase.

We return home to find our answer service bleeping with a message. It is from Andrew Solomon.

When we first arrived in New York we came equipped with an armful of introductions to people we ‘absolutely had to meet’. Most of these meetings have proved rather awkward, contrived affairs, where once the subject of our mutual friend is exhausted, conversation becomes threadbare. So we have lost our appetite for this kind of entrée.

Andrew Solomon, journalist, author, socialite, art collector, is, however, in a class of his own. We have been furnished with his number by almost everyone we know in London. He has an astonishing social span – he is an international Zelig. I have met people in Botswanan game parks and on Caribbean beaches who, on hearing I live in New York, say, ‘Oh, have you met a friend of mine, Andrew Solomon?’

The answer is no. It is not, however, through want of trying. We have been playing phone tag with him for months now, but Andrew Solomon evidently lives his life according to an itinerary packed with ever more exotic and obscure locations.

‘I’m afraid we’ve missed Andrew again,’ I tell Joanna.

‘Oh, where is he this time?’

‘Nassau, Havana and Bogliasco.’