Chapter 22
Dear Adam
I’m writing to you about an issue I’m having with my girlfriend. She…
Dear Adam
Please could you settle a disagreement between me and my wife? She says I’m the asshole here but I dis…
Dear Adam
I’ve done a bad thing and I don’t know whether I should say something to the women involved. You see, I was…
‘Ladies and gentlemen, we will shortly be beginning our descent into John F Kennedy Airport. Please make sure your seatback is in the upright position, your tray table is stowed and your seatbelt is securely fastened.’
The tannoy announcement jerked me away from my laptop screen. I’d promised myself that I wouldn”t work during the flight, to make the most of my first solo long-haul travel experience, but it hadn’t turned out that way. Wired from the stress of navigating the airport on my own; being asked to take my Docs off to go through security, which meant undoing all the laces and took ages, with an impatient, tutting queue building up behind me; then panicking on at least five separate occasions that I’d somehow lost my passport, I’d been a bundle of stress by the time I boarded the plane.
That stress had only been compounded when I thought of all the work I had to get through. Of course, I was in New York to see my sister, attempt to discover the truth about what was going on with Zack (if it was Zack) and hopefully resolve things between them, one way or the other. But I still had my job to think about. The backlog of emails that had gone unanswered over the past couple of days, because the only one I’d been able to think about was from Anonymous, Citizen of Nowhere. The need to prove to Greg that I could do this. The challenge of turning the answers GenBot 2.0 produced into something that sounded like advice Adam (or I) would give.
I’d necked two gin and tonics, devoured a soggy hummus and carrot wrap, then stared at my screen until I’d fallen asleep, only to wake in a panic an hour before landing and stare at it some more.
To be fair, I hadn’t slept much the previous night. After work, Ross and I had gone for coffee, which had turned into a glass of wine, which had turned into a shared olive and nduja pizza and a bottle of wine.
While we ate and drank, he’d downloaded some of his extensive knowledge of New York City, and tried to commit as much of it as possible to memory, notes on my phone and five pages of scribbles in a spiral-bound notebook.
‘I mean,’ he’d said, leaning across the table, his elbows on either side of his pizza plate, ‘I know you’re going out there for a reason, and an important one at that. But you’ll have five days there, right? You may as well make the most of it.’
‘I don’t know if I’ll have five days,’ I objected. ‘My first priority is to find out if there’s anything actually going on with Zack and this ex-girlfriend of his. Then I’ll need to see Amelie, and either tell her or not tell her – I’m not sure yet. But if it turns out he is cheating on her, and I decide I do need to tell her, she might want to come straight home with me.’
Which is why I’d freaked out about having to spend a fortune on a flexible return ticket. Fortunately, Ross turned out to be a seasoned traveller and knew all the tricks for getting the cheapest deal possible, otherwise my plan might have been scuppered before it had even begun.
‘But you’ll still have to eat and drink, right?’ he’d argued. ‘There’s just so much. Salt beef bagels at Katz’s, the Chelsea food market, the street food – and cocktails. Go on, Lucy – you’ve got to go to the Campbell Apartment have a dry martini, just for me.’
‘The what?’ Pushing my pizza aside, I’d scribbled in my notebook. I wanted to show willing – let Ross see that I was paying attention to his proposed itinerary – but the truth was, I couldn’t imagine myself going to a food market, never mind a swanky cocktail bar, on my own.
‘Campbell Apartment. It’s in Grand Central Station. It’s – but I won’t spoil it, you’ll see it for yourself. And you can see the Empire State Building, and Central Park, and go shopping at Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s.’ He hesitated, then added, ‘And visit Ground Zero, obviously.’
I’d nodded, scribbling again in my notepad, then Ross shyly produced his phone and showed me a link to an app where he’d marked all his suggestions on a map for me, with little notes about why they were so cool. Fascinated as always by new technology, I downloaded it and exclaimed over it a bit, thanking him over and over.
But I still wasn’t sure I’d want to pay a visit to the scene of that long-ago tragedy, however historically significant it was. And given the stress the flight and the relatively affordable AirBnB (illegal in New York, Ross had explained, but everyone did it anyway) I’d booked would place on my finances, I couldn’t imagine myself doing any kind of massive department store haul. But I could browse, I supposed, if I had time, and get a present to bring back to thank Ross for his help.
I took a gulp of wine and, to my surprise, heard myself say, ‘I wish you were coming with me.’
He laughed, but there was something forced about it. Too far, Lucy! My mind warned me.
‘Yeah, I’d be a great tour guide,’ he said. ‘But like you say, you’re there for a reason. So you’ll need to get from Brooklyn to Wall Street, if you’re going to go full gumshoe on this Zack. Let me show you how the subway trip works.’
He took out his phone again, and I shuffled my stool around so I could see the screen. Patiently, he explained the journey step by step, telling me how to pay on the subway (once he’d explained that that was what the Tube was called), and reassuring me that it was perfectly safe, even if I was travelling alone late at night.
‘And remember, you can Facetime me any time you like,’ he said. ‘It’s a big city, but it’s just as easy to get around as London. You’ll have a ball.’
I wondered whether talking about New York somehow brought his own background to the surface. But there was no time to ask him to say it again, or teach me more phrases that would make me sound less like a limey (if Americans even called British people that any more), because our waitress was hovering to see if we wanted more drinks or the bill.
‘Let me get this,’ I said. ‘Please. It’s the least I can do. And now I guess it’s my turn to show you stuff.’
‘Right,’ he agreed. ‘Astro 101? Let’s go.’
Letting him into my flat was the weirdest thing. Apart from my dad and the plumber I’d had to get round one time when my kitchen tap sprung a leak, and the estate agent when I’d first moved in, I’d never been alone with a man in there before. It felt weird – but also not weird, because the man was Ross.
When he heard my key in the door, Astro came running, eager for his dinner. I reintroduced them, and Ross squatted down and scratched Astro behind the ears the way he liked, and I let him give him his food to cement their relationship. Then I showed him where everything was, apologised for the fact that he’d have to scoop the litter tray out twice a day, and demonstrated my cat’s favourite pouncing game with his yellow mouse with the feathery tail.
And then I handed him my spare keys and said, ‘I guess that’s everything. Sorry, I don’t think there’s an app for cat-sitting.’
‘I guess I’ll manage without one. Uh… Good luck then, Lucy. And bon voyage.’
‘Thank you. For looking after Astro and – you know – everything.’
‘Keep in touch, all right?’
‘Of course.’
I opened the door and we stood there for a second, me on the inside and Ross on the outside and Astro kind of snaking between our legs. I thought, Is he going to hug me? Is he? Then I remembered his awkwardness over the unsolicited physical contact at the escape room, and I realised I was going to have to take the initiative – either that, or go unhugged.
So I raised my arms and spread them out, and Ross stepped in and wrapped his arms round me, and we stood there for a moment, our bodies almost but not quite touching.
Then he moved away and so did I, we said goodnight and I went inside and started packing.
And now I was here. Looking out of the window of the plane, I could see Manhattan spreading out below me – that must be Central Park, a vast square with a sparkling lake at one end, surrounded by a grid of streets and building upon building – like a square of graph paper that had been partly coloured in with a green marker pen.
Then the aircraft circled away, and wispy clouds obscured my view. But I could feel the descent, slow and steady, one wing then the other dipping. I was three thousand miles away from Ross – but, weirdly, it didn’t feel that way. I was arriving in a city he loved – a city that was far more his, I sensed, than it was Amelie’s, even though she was there and he wasn’t.
And then, with a gentle bump and a sudden deceleration that made my seatbelt cut into my tummy, I was there, too. I waited patiently for permission to undo my the belt, stand up and retrieve by bag from the locker overhead, and then I followed the slow-moving line of people to the front of the aircraft, through the door and into a long tunnel.
Half an hour later, I’d retrieved my bag, bought a bottle of rum at duty free for no particular reason except that I was travelling now and that was what travellers do, and was making my way to the train station. (‘Don’t get a yellow cab,’ Ross had advised. ‘They’re cool, but the drivers are grumpy gits, the traffic is terrible and they’ll charge you a fortune.’)
His instructions had given me the knowledge and confidence I needed to get where I needed to be without gazing fixedly at Google Maps and looking like a tourist, which I felt proud of in a silly and random way. And the email my host had sent me gave clear instructions on how to locate the apartment.
The building was a red-brick apartment block on a tree-lined street, just a few minutes’ walk from the subway station. Across the road was a deli, and round the corner a corner shop – a bodega, as Ross had said they were called. It was mid afternoon and the streets were quiet – or what I imagined quiet would be for the city that never sleeps. A couple of women with babies in buggies were power-walking along the pavement (sidewalk?); a guy was arranging cloths and glasses on tables in a restaurant; a man with a dog was strolling along, patiently waiting while it sniffed and peed against a lamppost.
But I didn’t want to linger – I wanted to investigate the place that was going to be my home for the next few days. Furtively, I entered the passcode into the keypad outside the main door, and it swung obligingly open. I hefted my backpack higher on my shoulder and climbed to the second floor (third in American, as Ross had explained), and slotted the key into the door of apartment 3B.
It turned obligingly and I stepped in. The flat was tiny – its ceilings were almost as high as the floor area was wide. But it was spotlessly clean, and sunlight streamed through all steel-framed windows on one wall and reflected dazzlingly off the parquet floor. There was a cream Ikea sofabed next to the window and a tiny kitchen next to the door, just beyond a smaller, sliding door that I imagined led to the bathroom.
There was a wardrobe and a glass coffee table with a money plant in a brass pot on it, a few framed theatre posters on the walls, a wall-mounted TV – and that was it. It was tiny and perfect and, straight away, I imagined myself living here, waking up in the morning with someone next to me in the unfolded sofa bed, making coffee in the drip machine I saw on the kitchen counter, going out for pastries and exploring the city.
Except, of course, there’d be no room for Astro here, that was for sure. So it would never work.
Swiftly, I unpacked my clothes and arranged the contents of my washbag in the bathroom, which was small and windowless with a shower over the stainless-steel bathtub. I investigated the kitchen cupboards and found plates, glasses, coffee mugs and cutlery – two of everything. There was everything I needed and nothing I didn’t – except maybe someone to share my adventure with.
But Ross was sharing it – albeit remotely. So I sent him a picture of the apartment and a brief message saying I’d arrived safely and everything was great. I was itching to head out, explore the neighbourhood, find some food and plan my next move.
First, though, I had work to do. I might be in a foreign city, but I was still working and Adam was still on duty. So I perched my laptop on my knees and turned to my overflowing inbox.
There was an email from a guy who, at five foot five, was demoralised by the number of women on the apps who only wanted to date tall men, and was considering lying about his height on the basis that, once they met him, they’d be so blinded by his personal magnetism they wouldn’t notice his small stature.
You think a lie is a good basis for starting a relationship? I thought. Don’t be a dick.
There was an email from a sixteen-year-old who knew he was gay but hadn’t come out yet and had fallen in love with his best friend. My heart twisted in sympathy for him – he might be a dick or he might not, but he needed considered advice. I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to deliver that right now, so I saved the text of his message into my folder of problems I was definitely going to address in the next few weeks.
There was an email from a father who’d recently started dating a woman and wanted to know when and how to introduce their kids to each other, which would definitely need input from the child psychologist I contacted when I had a problem I felt neither I nor Adam nor GenBot 2.0 was qualified to respond to.
But I kept coming back to the message I was sure Zack had written. I was going to answer it – I felt compelled to. But I didn’t know what to say.
I pasted the message in its entirety into GenBot, and waited for it to respond. After a few seconds, it produced its usual lengthy, mild-toned reply.
Your situation sounds complicated… It’s normal to experience temptation in a relationship… Talk to your wife and find out what’s troubling her… Don’t embark on an affair without ending your marriage…
‘For God’s sake,’ I snapped. ‘Come on, AI Adam. Get with the programme.’
But can’t you see what a dick this man is being? I typed.
He comes across as somewhat materialistic, the algorithm returned.
And he’s thinking of cheating on his wife!
Betrayal in a relationship is never an advisable course of action.
So why are you being so sympathetic to him?
I am a generative language learning model. If you have relationship concerns, I recommend seeking counselling.
‘Oh, fuck off.’ I snapped my laptop closed, picked up my bag and the keys and headed out. But before I descended the stairs, I made sure I had Ross’s app open on my phone, and was surprised to see I had a message from him as well.
Hope you got there safe. Thinking of you.
And at the end was a row of three Xs. I could see straight away how many there were, but I counted them all the same.