Snapshots from New York

Late, after the long flight, I found myself in a yellow cab speeding towards Manhattan on the wrong side of the road. I was staying in Harlem, in a grand old five-storey house with an intricate set of rules — you know the sort of thing: two keys for every door, sly but vital knobs to avoid flooding the bathroom — delivered by my Airbnb host Tony, a chirpy, French-born investment banker. The house was full of dark wood and voluptuous sculpture, all by one artist whom Tony represented as a side hustle. What a beautiful house, I said. I would love to tell you about the ’eestory of the ’ouse! said Tony. Maybe tomorrow, I said, in a voice more desperate than intended. He let me go. I attempted the knobs, showered with minimal flooding, got into bed, and peered out the window alongside: oak trees, reddish stoops, street lights — what cinema! I fell asleep disbelieving, propped against the sill.

*

I woke early and headed for the nearest supermarket which, like all foreign supermarkets, was fascinating. Row upon row of unbelievable products unfurled before me — baloney, bottles of seltzer, biscuit dough in a can — but there seemed to be nothing particularly fresh or wholesome. How could a place be at once so abundant and so depressing? I bought a box of instant oatmeal, some yoghurt, and a battered bag of nectarines. A big, gentle-looking man stopped me on the way home. Pardon me ma’am, he began, I know you’re Asian but I mean you no harm. I thought to myself, you could not make this up. He asked me for twelve dollars in cash. It was such a specific amount, requested so politely, I felt a little heartbroken.

*

My phone had no signal and is too old to accept an e-sim, so I had no internet whenever I left the house. But how hard could it be? I screenshotted various parts of the map and walked along Amsterdam Avenue, resisting the urge to photograph literally everything, to a bakery famous for its chocolate walnut cookies. I ordered a cookie and an iced coffee. You mean a cold brew? said the server. Yes, I agreed, with the distraction of someone who is trying to work out whether you’re supposed to tip at a bakery (you are). I walked to nearby Morningside Park and sat under the flickering squirrels, listening to the different idiom all around. You have a good day, baby, said a woman to her friend. Blessings, blessings! called one male security guard to another across the street. The cookie, delicious, was the size of three cookies. The coffee tasted vaguely of bins.

*

At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I spent two hours delighted despite the crowds by peony-patterned porcelain and painted cypresses. How wild is it, I thought, that people have always been hungry for beauty? I was hungry for other things, too, so I ate a sandwich in Central Park — then hovered outside the Met and used its wifi to let S and G know I’d reach them uptown by three o’clock.

Almost immediately, it began raining. Not a light drizzle, more like the bottom had fallen out of the sky. The map screenshot said I needed to cross the park. I hoofed it along what appeared to be a straight path, vision rain-blurred, and emerged onto what should, according to the map, be Central Park West. Reader, it was Fifth Avenue. Somehow I had come out six blocks up on the same side where I started. The rain was falling too hard to read my phone, so I walked to the Guggenheim (a vendor in a rain poncho hauntingly shouting UM-be-rella, UM-be-rella while I fought with myself over the ethics of buying an item I’d use once all trip and have to leave behind), connected to the wifi, and informed S of the fiasco. She assured me there was no rush.

I struck out again for the subway, this time locating an actual road, accepting mouthfuls of city puddle with each passing car. Here, finally, was the correct station. Here was the train, and the street, and the flower shop around the corner, and the correct apartment building, and the correct apartment — the door of which opened to reveal two dear friends I haven’t seen in years. Almost immediately, the rain stopped.

*

Smell that inimitable bouquet! Cheez-Its, sun-warmed pee, pizza, trash, hot metal, chemicals, corn. Here are the yellow cabs, here the drunks on the subway, here the rap issuing out of a speaker with wheels, here the lights; here the building-high advertisements, the Fifth Avenue mothers in lululemon, the cushiony silence of the public library, the spill of the parks; here the famous comedy club, the famous television studio, the famous banana pudding, the famous Matisse. Here, most importantly, the bagels: queued for: cash only: lox and scallion cream cheese on toasted everything, please. Get the capers. Get the onion. Tomato if they have it. Everything they say is true.

*

I met G at a bakery called Librae. She had an espresso pain au chocolat (oof, it was good) and I had a black lime babka bun with lots of squintingly tart lemon curd (double oof) and an iced americano (well, perfection is overrated). We walked through Washington Square Park — does a better people-watching spot exist? — while a man in a fedora played Billy Joel on the public piano, then wandered around Greenwich Village. Here was the restaurant where they served a salad so storied I’d heard about it on the other side of the world. Here was the window in which Carrie Bradshaw had sat typing her column, romanticising journalism to an unbearable degree. At a beautiful bookshop called Three Lives & Company, I bought a memoir in piano lessons (!) and imagined for myself a whole life in the West Village — moneyed, of course — involving a stoop and the existence of good coffee and endless books and snow.

*

I went to Mood Fabrics, which is the fabric shop they send the designers to on Project Runway. God, it’s wonderful. You take the elevator up — there’s a doorman who presses the button — and emerge into the silks. The shop is full of sulky fashion student salespeople and men in stylish hats wielding oversized scissors and no-nonsense garment workers shouting into their phones and hunting for buttons. I ran into a girl wearing a fantastic lilac sundress and carrying three rolls of velvet. I love your dress!! I said. I love yours!! she said. We exchanged the gleeful smiles of two fellow sewists. After forty-five minutes of thinking !!!!!!!!!!!! to myself over checked Japanese cotton and prawn-patterned brocade, I bought some beautiful red twill for a jumpsuit and fled before I spent my life savings.

*

This morning, the Italian couple staying in the room down the hall from mine appeared in the kitchen, impeccably dressed according to two wildly different aesthetics: Roberto in leather biker vest, black jeans, and Docs; Ricardo in a lime green camp shirt and tiny pink shorts, like a rare bird. We got talking. From New Zealand, che bella! cried Roberto, like a parody of an Italian person. They loved New York, were staying another week, were having the best time. We swapped notes on our itineraries. They were off to the Met. Yesterday, they had visited Little Italy. Eh, it was not like home, said Ricardo, shaking his head. Eh, there is no espresso in New York, added Roberto.

*

Brooklyn. Two pastries, because what is the point of a holiday. I drank coffee in mostly-concrete Boerum Park and the day came rushing in close. Around me, the children of Brooklyn were milling, so different from the children of Harlem. Two dads rolled up with double-bunk strollers; their toddlers wore tiny name-brand sneakers. After finishing my coffee, I walked to a bookstore called Books Are Magic, where pretty much every book I picked up had been signed by the author. It was one of those funny reminders New York had been providing all week: every writer you admire is just a person, like you, who lives in a specific city, like you.

*

The Brooklyn Promenade looks across the water at the Manhattan skyline and is a great place — take it from me — to eat a box of cut watermelon and a fistful of peanut butter cups and feel so lucky you could die. Afterwards, you could walk along the whole promenade, dodging Citi bikes, eavesdropping on conversations both familiar (‘I ain’t texting him back’) and foreign (‘Jonas just launched the IPO for his macadamia milk’), and drinking in a view so spectacular it seems unreal, silver buildings and fairytale bridge and slapping river and far-off Statue of Liberty all wrapped in a blue gauze of fine weather. For full effect, it should be — have I mentioned this? — uncomfortably hot. Maybe you will cross the Brooklyn Bridge, after deliberating with yourself about whether you have it in you, in the heat (you do, but only just). Crossing, after much confusion about where the entrance to the bridge walkway is (still no internet, you guys), you might hear the song “Empire State of Mind” not once, not twice, but five times. The view will never dim, the city caught in a net of suspension cables like some fantastic fish.

*

Bad news from Texas. The relatives I was supposed to stay with in Georgetown had Covid. I rang my aunt, who, in the miraculous way of women everywhere, had already come up with a solution. Could I fly to Dallas instead? There was another cousin who could host me. I looked up the tickets — it would work, but only if I flew two days later. I texted S and begged: could I stay? While I was waiting for her reply, I ran into Tony on the stairs, who suggested we share a pizza in the kitchen. I’ll shout us, he said, then gave me his credit card. Get a beeg one! Somehow, I agreed. I walked a block up and ordered an 18” from a place called Uncle Tony’s (would he notice the joke?), gratefully paid with somebody else’s money, and ate two pieces extremely slowly while Tony told me his life story and the tale of several recent financial grievances (he did not notice). Next time, he said cheerfully, as I got up after forty-five minutes citing “writing to do” (this blog post lol), you can do the talking! Luckily there will be no next time, because tomorrow I leave for S and G’s — they have graciously offered me their couch.

*

At Dominique Ansel in Soho, the cronuts — June’s flavour was peach and cornbread (!!) — were impossible; somehow both crisp and soft, summer-scented, tasting of proper butter. We sat around licking sugar off our fingers and talking pleasurably about nothing much before G left for Juilliard and S and I walked down to Chinatown. It was familiar and wonderful to me: the elderly people who shuffle exactly like my grandparents, the piles of rambutans and bitter melons, the dim shops selling oyster sauce and incense, all the red. S wanted to show me a beautiful bookshop called Yu and Me. At least longing is free. Then she had to go to work, so I walked for hours, all through searing Lower Manhattan, up to Union Square Park, and further, footsore, to Central Park — finally free of the map.

*

G has a conductor friend, L, who takes us all to breakfast at a heaving diner. We have the eggs and potato hash (sized for two people) and the strawberry Nutella pancakes (sized for three) and talk about Broadway shows and Bernstein. I am thinking about how life does not get better than this — old friends and new; delicious, vaguely outrageous food; such a view of possibility, stretching long and wide — when: it gets better. L takes us all to Carnegie Hall to watch a dress rehearsal of the Met Orchestra. They let me in, last minute addition, even though I don’t have a ticket. We get the central box in the circle, where the acoustic is so astonishing we can hear the conductor speaking with his back to us. The orchestra plays, sprawling, all the percussion out, and fills the space with living music. After the interval, some singers appear and produce a sound that is an answer to a question I didn’t know I was asking. You want to know what love is? It’s this: G stroking S’s hair, L listening with eyes closed, the city outside, and one big gold sound happening all around.