21
I AM DETERMINED to not let the disappointment of last night ruin the magic of the holiday. I flew twenty-something hours to be here, for god’s sake. I’m in New York . In December . And it actually snowed last night. This trip can still be everything I need it to be. Forget Mac.
I wrap myself up in my cutest beanie and scarf combination, a cream hat with a pom-pom and a green scarf with more pom-poms, feeling very Christmassy, and I have breakfast with Hayley.
A message from Mac arrives right as I’m eating my omelette. I don’t eat omelettes ever in Australia, or bacon, but American omelettes and American bacon and American black coffee (with free refills) is all different, and I am open to new experiences. Australian Anna finds bacon revolting, American Anna is ordering an extra serve for the table.
Get ready for your New York Christmas experience , Mac’s message says. With two Santa emojis.
I can’t help grinning, even though I was determined to not find anything he does cute from here on. I keep thinking of touching his leg with mine, practically panting at the dinner table, and I cringe. But he put his lips to my stomach in a garden once. He slid his hands up the sides of my thighs in a bathroom. He pressed me against a wall in a restaurant. Remember that (as if I could ever forget). I am not delusional. There was something there, once. But now my walls are up. I’ve had my moment of vulnerability. I am strictly a woman of words, not men, again.
‘When are you thinking?’ I write back. I am expecting him to say, tomorrow, Friday, later in the week.
‘I’m at your hotel now,’ he writes back straightaway.
My heart races a little.
I direct him to the diner we’re at.
‘Mac is coming,’ I say to Hayley.
She is busy sending Luke pictures of our breakfast. She’s sent him twenty photos of every single meal we’ve had so far, because she is determined to make him jealous, and Luke loves food. She is angling in on the bacon as I speak.
She looks up. ‘Oh cool. How do I make bacon look not-disgusting in a photo?’
‘I think it’s all in the lighting.’
Mac slides into the booth beside us. He chooses to slide next to Hayley. I try not to notice. But I do.
‘Good morning,’ he says.
‘What is that?’ I say. He is wearing a grey knit jumper with a row of white reindeer embroidered across the front.
‘My Christmas jumper,’ he says. ‘Well, sweater, to be culturally correct.’
‘Wow. You don’t seem like a Christmas-jumper person,’ I say.
‘It’s part of your ultimate New York Christmas experience.’
He should not look so attractive in a reindeer-themed knit. But he does. Or maybe my sad, scrambled, jet-lagged brain just finds him appealing in anything.
‘You two are going to have the best day,’ Hayley says.
‘Now I’ve seen the jumper, I think we are,’ I say.
We give Mac some of our extra bacon, and we chat, and suddenly it feels nice. The pressure is off. I can be a big touristy Australian dork and get excited about snow and department stores and eating pretzels on the street. And if sex is off the table, I can really lean into the food. Bring on the bloat. I am starting off strong with bacon and black coffee. And I am wearing my most comfortable sneakers, my oversized puffer jacket, my ridiculous hat. And he’s in themed knitwear. No one is trying to seduce anyone here.
Hayley heads off to her conference and I turn to Mac.
‘Do you have an itinerary?’
‘I have ideas.’
‘Close enough. Let’s hear them.’
‘Well, it snowed so we should go and see Central Park covered in snow. Or we could look at Christmas windows. Or go to bookstores downtown. Or the Met.’
‘Can we do all of that?’
‘Yes.’
‘Let’s start with the snow.’
I don’t realise how big Central Park is until we get there. We walk and talk, and I keep marvelling at the snow.
‘This is my first white Christmas.’ I don’t ski or snowboard, so I’ve barely ever had the occasion even to see snow at home.
‘Mine too,’ he says.
‘Really?’
‘It didn’t snow here last year, and every year before that I’ve been in LA.’
‘Oh wow. No wonder you brought out the reindeer jumper.’
‘I am doing the hard work of upholding the Christmas spirit today.’
‘Hey! My scarf is green! And you have no idea what I have on under this coat.’ This feels too flirty, and I immediately regret saying it.
‘What do you have on under the coat?’ he asks, straight-faced, but I sense he is leaning into the flirty. No. Not allowed. He can’t reject me last night and then turn around and be cute today.
‘Nothing. I mean, nothing Christmassy. I’m wearing three thermal layers.’
‘Sensible.’
‘My face is burning from the cold. Is that normal?’ I say in case he thinks I’m blushing.
He takes off his gloves and presses his bare hands to my face.
‘You do feel cold.’
‘So do you.’
It’s too intimate, standing here with him touching my face, and yet, now we’ve made physical contact, I don’t want him to let go. I want to take his cold fingers into my mouth and warm them up.
The jet lag must be heightening my hormones. Everyone is more attractive when you are on a holiday. That is a proven scientific fact (I saw a headline once).
He lets go of my face and pulls his gloves back on.
‘Let’s go look at art,’ I say.
‘Okay.’
I make him take a photo of me posing embarrassingly on the steps of the Met, to fulfil my old Gossip Girl dreams, and then we go inside. And it’s then I remember why I don’t go into art galleries with other people.
‘I need to tell you something,’ I say.
‘What’s that?’
‘I sometimes get…emotional at art galleries.’
‘Emotional how?’
‘It sounds a bit ridiculous but seeing art in real life, especially famous art, can make me cry. Not all the time. Sometimes. I am just telling you in case you see me looking teary and you think something’s wrong, it’s not. I just have this thing. I cry at art, and live music, musicals, things like that. So don’t worry about it. Don’t even look at me.’
I am babbling. But of all the people to see me get emotional, it has to be the man who witnessed my total sobbing meltdown earlier this year. He must think I am a ball of sloppy drama. I’m not. I have never even cried at work, despite having the world’s most infuriating boss and often soul-deadening tasks to complete. I can turn myself into a robot with the best of them.
But art is a different matter entirely.
Mac leads the way into the museum.
‘I can’t not look at you,’ he says.
‘Yes you can.’
He doesn’t answer that.
‘I won’t make fun of you.’
‘Good.’
‘You can cry in front of me anytime you like, okay? For any reason.’
‘Okay.’
‘Besides, I feel like that all the time, when I go to the theatre. And the movies.’
‘Really?’
‘Of course. People who aren’t moved by art are the weird ones.’
‘Right. Imagine never having cried reading a book or watching a TV show. Or a play.’
‘Most people have never even seen a play,’ he says.
‘Now you sound like a snob.’
‘I’m not a snob. It’s just a fact.’
‘What was the first play you ever saw?’
‘The local community theatre Christmas nativity play. The boy playing Joseph forgot his lines. I knew, in my five-year-old heart, I could do a lot better.’
‘You’d kill the role of Joseph.’
‘I did! I played him three times over the years—Catholic primary school. Joseph at Christmas, but obviously I was gunning for Jesus or Judas at Easter time.’
‘Obviously.’
‘I did a very dramatic Jesus dying on the cross in grade six. It was like an interactive performance, where the audience walked through the school and came across various scenes. Anyway, I went full throttle on the anguished cries and moans of pain and the wailing and cursing—I added some really good stuff there—and fake blood dripping from my hands, and every child in the audience cried and the school had formal complaints and the local paper covered the controversy.’
‘Oh my god.’
‘I think that was the biggest media buzz I’ve ever had from a performance.’
‘No, you’re always on those Buzzfeed articles about the twenty-five best Code Blue patient storylines.’
‘The casting director must have seen the reaction to my Jesus-dying performance and they knew they had to have me. I could do a great death scene.’
‘Your Code Blue character didn’t die.’ He had an inoperable tumour in his stomach that they operated on and he lived, but his girlfriend was hit by a car in a freak accident while he was on the operating table. She was going out to buy him his favourite sandwich to have once he woke up and could eat again. It was a truly devastating plotline.
‘You are a fan, aren’t you.’ He pauses. ‘Of the show.’
‘Of the show. Yes.’
We smile at each other.
There is a special Van Gogh exhibition on at the Met, and exactly what I predict would happen happens. I tear up when I see The Starry Night . And Wheat Field with Cypresses , and his self-portrait with a straw hat. And then it happens again, later, at the Monets. Not sobbing, not making a scene, just a few small tears wiped away. Mac says nothing. He doesn’t make fun of me, which would annoy me, and even better, he doesn’t try to comfort me, which I would hate. We move around mostly in silence. At one point, his shoulder brushes against mine. I can’t tell if it’s on purpose or by accident.
After the Met, we get salads from a popular chain, and then we look in shop windows at their Christmas displays. I insist he takes a photo of me in front of every Christmas tree we come across. We get cold and go to a cosy cafe with fancy tea and scones in the theme of Alice in Wonderland.
‘There’s a bunch of night-time Christmas markets on this week,’ he says. ‘If you want to go.’
‘I’d love to.’
‘Or you and Hayley could go. I don’t want to crash your holiday.’
‘You’re not crashing it.’ ‘I don’t need to come. I can just give you a list of stuff to do.’
‘I want you to come. It’s fun to have a tour guide.’
‘Okay.’ He looks pleased, and cuts his pumpkin scone down the middle, offering half to me.
‘Thanks,’ I say, giving him half of my chocolate-chip scone in return.
Hayley messages to ask how the day is going.
Would you hate me if I had dinner with some conference people here tonight? she adds.
Totally fine , I text back.
Take Mac to the magic thing , she writes. We have tickets to a show that I am very excited about and Hayley is not.
Good idea , I reply. The idea of inviting him makes me feel immediately stressed. I look up from my phone, as casually as possible, and take a long sip of my tea for courage.
‘I booked Hayley and me tickets to a show tonight, but she’s going out with conference people, so I have a spare ticket if you’d like to come,’ I say, in what I hope is a breezy tone.
‘Yes, that sounds fun,’ he says immediately.
‘You don’t know what kind of show I’m talking about yet.’
‘What kind of show? A musical?’
‘A magic show. Sort of.’
‘Oh.’
‘Your enthusiasm has dipped.’
‘Slightly.’
‘You don’t have to come.’
‘You can’t go to some weird magic show in a strange city by yourself.’
‘It’s not weird!’
‘You shouldn’t go to a not-weird magic show in a strange city by yourself either.’
‘Probably not,’ I say, smiling at him.
We go back to my hotel room before the show, because Mac’s apartment is too far away for him to go there between this and dinner. (We’re getting dinner now.) He offers to wait in the lobby but I said, don’t be silly, which I now regret, because our room is tiny and I was going to shower and go to the bathroom and have a moment to breathe alone and now I can’t do anything but brush my teeth and get changed.
He seems to realise it was a bad idea as well. He sits on the bed and picks up the TV remote.
‘Should I put the TV on?’ he asks.
‘Why?’
‘To give you privacy.’
‘It’s fine. I mean, put the TV on, but I don’t need privacy.’
I do. I need to at least fart quietly. But I go in the bathroom to brush my teeth and put on make-up and I leave the door open. It’s a point of pride: look, I have nothing to hide, I am a perfect human with nothing gross about me. He can’t see into the bathroom, but there is no sound barrier.
I’m looking in the mirror, contemplating what can be done with my eyebrows in five minutes, when his face appears behind me.
‘Your mum keeps trying to Facetime.’
‘Oh, ignore it. Actually, no. They’ll think we’re dead. I’ll talk to her really quickly.’
I hurry out and answer, and Mum and Bobbi’s faces appear on the iPad.
‘Anna! How is it going?’ They are holding the phone at the worst angle, as usual, letting me see basically their necks and chins and not much else.
‘Can you angle it up a bit?’
‘Yes, darling. How is it going?’ Mum says.
‘Good! I went to the Met and Central Park today.’
‘Oh send us pictures!’ Bobbi says.
‘I will.’
‘Who is that?’ Mum says.
I realise the tiniest edge of Mac’s shoulder must have come into view very very briefly. Mum could solve a murder case in two hours. She misses nothing.
‘Nothing. No one,’ I say. Mac looks at me weirdly when I say this.
‘There’s a man in your room,’ Mum says.
‘It’s Luke’s friend Mac. You remember, from the wedding. He’s been showing us around.’ I turn the iPad to face him and he waves.
‘Hi Mac,’ the mums chorus.
‘Where’s Hayley?’ Mum says.
‘She’s still at her conference.’
The mums chat to me for another minute or so, and then my mum says, ‘Anna can you take me off speaker for a sec.’
‘Sure.’
I plug in my airpods and head into the bathroom.
‘Do you have pepper spray? You know it’s legal there. And other weapons of that sort,’ Mum says.
‘I don’t have any weapons with me, no.’
‘Did you give Mac a key to your room?’
‘No.’
‘Because you shouldn’t give anyone access to your room.’ When I’m travelling, Mum goes into panic mode and forgets she ever encouraged me to date or meet new people.
‘No one has access to our room,’ I say.
‘Is there something going on between you and Mac?’ Bobbi asks. Gossip is still her focus.
‘No, we’re just friends.’
‘Anna, be really careful,’ Mum says.
‘Mum, I need you to remember I am an adult woman on a holiday in a major city that is probably safer than Melbourne.’
‘I just get nervous when you’re on the other side of the world, honey.’
‘I know. And I have to go.’
‘Go somewhere crowded,’ Bobbi says. ‘It will ease your mother’s mind.’
‘Not too crowded,’ Mum adds.
‘Why?’
‘You can be crushed to death if there’s a panic or a fire,’ she says.
‘On that happy note, I’ll speak to you both tomorrow.’
‘I love you so much and so does your father,’ Mum says.
‘Where is he?’
‘Doing his sudoku on the toilet.’
‘Okay, I really have to go. Bye.’
I hang up.
‘Do they think I’m a bad influence?’ Mac asks, when I emerge from the bathroom.
‘Worse. A potential murderer.’
‘But I’m wearing a Christmas jumper. Did they see my Christmas jumper?’
‘That would make you less trustworthy in their eyes.’
‘Why?’
‘You look like you’re trying to appear innocent.’
‘Of what?’
‘Everything.’
‘I am innocent!’ he says.
‘You don’t have an innocent face,’ I say, and he smiles.
‘I’ll work on it.’
I decide to wear the long dress of Hayley’s. I feel good in that dress, and I want to feel good right now.
Mac’s eyes are on me when I come out of the bathroom.
‘Shall we go?’ I say.
‘Will you be warm enough?’ he asks.
‘You sound like my mother,’ I say, smiling. ‘It’s thick material.’
He reaches out and touches the dress, resting his hand on my hip.
‘I’m warm,’ I say.
He moves his hand to my bare arm.
‘You are,’ he says. He’s sitting on the bed and I’m standing in front of him, and there’s a moment, with his hand on my arm, and the bed behind him, and I imagine myself gently pushing him back onto it. I can imagine all sorts of things. I can hear my breathing, and I can hear his.
But then he moves his hand, and the spell is broken. I step back, and put on my unsexy giant puffer jacket, and my big boots, and I grab my bag, and we’re off, just friends. It was one thing for me to flirt at the dinner table, but not making a move during that moment, when we have a whole hotel room to ourselves, that really sends a clear message.
Nothing is going to happen.
This thought lands like a thud in my guts. I knew it last night, intellectually, and accepted it this morning, but now it’s real. It hits hard. Because, for all my New York excitement, my white Christmas enthusiasm, my packed schedule of touristy experiences, I came here most of all for him.
We get the subway to the show, which I find thrilling to a degree I shouldn’t, since I get trams and trains every day in Melbourne, but the New York subway is more magical somehow. More glamorous. I’ve seen the subway on so many TV shows. When I tell Mac this, he laughs.
‘I saw a rat on here yesterday.’
‘Still magic.’
‘And look, there’s a magic puddle of an unidentifiable liquid.’
‘You cannot shake my New York high. I welcome all unidentified liquid substances.’
And because the universe finally wants to reward me at this moment, a group of slightly drunk people get on, wearing Santa hats, and they start singing Christmas carols at the top of their lungs.
I look at Mac wide-eyed and he grins. We are squished together on a seat, and I feel a shot of pure happiness surge through me. We goofily smile at each other and I join in the singing.
The magic show we are going to is not a traditional magic show. It’s a literary magic show, is the best way I can think to describe it to Mac. A kind of memoir in words. It’s classy, I assure him. I first heard about it on an NPR podcast.
‘I don’t like my emotions being manipulated,’ he says.
‘You’re an actor .’
‘I mean by a magician.’
‘Why are you resisting? Today is all about the beauty and brilliance of art.’
‘We’ll see.’
‘What did a magician ever do to you?’
‘Took my hat.’
‘Oh wow, you actually have a history with a magician?’
‘I do, yes. A serious history. When I was thirteen. Luke and I went to a magic show, I can’t even remember why, and the magician used my hat for a trick and he never gave it back.’ ‘That is serious.’
‘It was a really good hat. It was the cap I wore everyday, it was part of my trademark look at the time.’
‘You should have sued.’
‘I should have.’
‘Thank god you’re not wearing a hat tonight,’ I say, and he grins.
‘He’ll probably go for my Christmas jumper.’
When we walk in, we are greeted with a huge wall of square white cards. There are hundreds of them, and each one has the words I am at the top, and then at the bottom, they each have a different ending: I am a game changer, I am an introvert, I am the life of the party, I am a doctor , and so on. We’re told to pick a card that represents who we are. I hover; it’s overwhelming. There are so many options. I could go with an obvious one— I am a writer and I am a novelist are both there. I see Mac standing in front of I am an actor , but then he moves on. I want to pick something other than my career too, even though writing feels bigger than a job to me, it’s one of the things that make my life worthwhile and meaningful. It anchors me to the world, it makes me feel like I matter. But still. I want a card that captures that, and more. I want a card that captures everything I am still hoping for, that I haven’t given up on and more, even if I don’t know what the more is.
I see I am a dreamer , and I pick it up.
I watch Mac take a card, but I don’t see what’s on it, and he doesn’t show me. We’re instructed to rip the card in half, and keep only the I am top half. The bottom half, with the description, goes in a pile on the stage.
The show goes for an hour and a half, and I’m mesmerised. The magician is an excellent storyteller. I want to take notes, the way he reveals parts of a story and withholds others. I can tell Mac feels the same way about how he holds the crowd’s attention. It’s like a beautiful, intimate one-man play about identity, and longing, and figuring out who you are. He also does really good card tricks.
At the very end, he asks the audience to stand up if the card you chose at the beginning really meant something to you.
I stand up. I look at Mac. He is hesitating—the same thought occurred to me, if we stand up, then we might be sucked into audience participation of some kind, a lose-your-hat moment—but also it’s not that kind of show, and we’re at the very end. Mac stands up next to me.
The magician then points at each person, looks through the pile of torn-off cards, and accurately chooses the card they picked at the beginning. ‘You’re a risk taker,’ he says, holding up the card, ‘You’re a mother,’ ‘You’re a loner,’ he says, going along the line, and it feels powerful in a way it’s hard to explain, like he can see into our true selves. He reaches our row and I stare up at the stage. He looks at me, and flicks through the cards he has left. He stops on one.
‘You’re a dreamer,’ he says, and smiles, and I nod and try very hard not to cry, because I really can’t cry again today. Why is it so emotional to be seen, in any capacity? And you, he says, looking at Mac. He pauses. Thinks. Looks at the cards. Mac is staring back at him, his face unreadable. ‘You’re a survivor,’ he says.
Later, as we leave, we chat about the show and the way we think he did the magic, but neither of us mentions the I am cards. It feels too personal.
Mac says he’ll walk me back to my hotel.
‘But your apartment is so far away. In the opposite direction. You’ll have such a long trip back home.’ I say. ‘I’ll just get a cab.’
‘Let’s walk. The Christmas market might still be open,’ Mac says.
We chat and walk through the dark snowy streets, and I have the feeling this might be one of the most perfect days of my life. I make Mac stop and take photos whenever I see anything that feels iconically New York.
‘This is just a pile of dirty snow.’
‘No, it’s a classic New York sidewalk.’
‘Oh, we should go to the High Line tomorrow,’ he says.
‘We?’ I say.
He looks a little embarrassed.
‘I mean, you should.’
‘Do you want to hang out again tomorrow?’ I say.
‘Do you?’ he says.
Our arms have brushed together, which is nothing with thick coats on but, still, I notice it, I feel it.
‘I would love to,’ I say, because it’s dark and feels safe to say anything right now—the words will just float away like snowflakes.
‘Me too,’ he says.
The Christmas market is still open. We wander around and I buy several tacky items that I will absolutely regret when it comes to fitting them in my bag to go home, but right now, they feel like the most precious things I could possibly own. A snowglobe of the New York skyline with the Empire State Building looking slightly warped. A hanging Christmas-tree ornament of a vintage yellow taxicab being driven by Santa.
We’re almost at my hotel, when I say, ‘Why did you pick survivor. On the cards?’
‘Oh. Well. It’s kind of nothing,’ he says. ‘It was my family nickname, a joke. Cormac the Survivor. I was a bit of a daredevil as a kid, and I would just climb things, throw myself off things, dive into things. I had no fear.’
‘Cormac the Survivor,’ I say. ‘Does your family call you Cormac?’
‘Mainly just my mum did. I miss it.’ He glances at me, and we keep walking. ‘The survivor thing, it stuck with me. I wasn’t good at school, but I would tell myself, you can survive this. And then, when I moved here, I knew I wasn’t going to be instantly famous or anything, I knew how hard it was going to be, how much work and how long it would take to get anywhere, if I even could. I knew it was going to be tough, the industry is ruthless. And I always thought to myself, just keep surviving. Like a cockroach. Don’t let them squash you. Just get through the first few years. And I did. And then, after Mum died, I went back to that thought again. Just get through it. Just survive it.’
‘And have you?’ I ask. ‘Survived it?’
‘I guess. I mean, yeah, I have.’ He doesn’t sound so certain.
We walk in silence for a moment, and then he turns to me. ‘What about you? Why did you pick dreamer?’
‘Oh.’ I pause. ‘I guess it’s a bit like yours. I was a daydreamer as a kid. And I still am, in lots of ways. And it’s…I don’t know. In my head, it felt like a way to represent all the things I still want.’
‘Which are?’ he asks.
‘You know. All the boring, conventional things. A partner. A house. A dog. A child. And creative stuff. To write more books. Make art. Get a day job I actually like.’
‘You don’t like your job?’
‘I used to. I’ve had some fun creative marketing roles. And made lots of friends. But what I’m doing right now, for a health-insurance company, is very safe, and stable, and it pays pretty well, but it’s so dull. And I got a new boss a year ago, who is just awful.’
‘Why are they awful?’
‘His name is Marco. And if someone calls out his name, he’ll always say ‘Polo!’ in response, and he expects everyone to laugh every single time. It’s very annoying. Also, he makes half the staff cry on a daily basis.’
‘A real charmer.’
‘Right.’
‘You should leave.’
‘I should.’ I have thought that a hundred times this year, but I always hear my mother’s voice in my ear: don’t quit a job until you have a new one lined up, especially in this economy.
‘What’s your dream day job?’
‘That’s the problem. I have no idea. I guess a marketing or communications role, I don’t know how to do anything else. I worked in local government before, I could go back to that.’
‘That doesn’t sound like your dream role.’
‘Maybe not. My dream is writing books. My day job just needs to pay for that.’
‘I think you can do better than Marco.’ He nudges me, smiles.
We’re standing outside my hotel now, and I lean forward and hug him. He hugs me back, tight, and we stay like that and I let the side of my face press against his neck, even though I shouldn’t, even though it’s not good for my heart.
‘Thank you for today,’ I say. ‘See you tomorrow?’
‘I’ll be here.’
In bed that night, while Hayley is asleep, I am buzzing. I open my laptop, thinking I could work on my book, fiddle with the ending, but I find myself thinking of my I am a dreamer card. And suddenly I’m typing a resignation email. I’m not going to send it, obviously not, it just feels good to actually write it. I draft and redraft it, smiling to myself, because I’m in New York, I’m free on the other side of the world. Screw you, Marco. It’s sitting there, in my drafts, and I’m about to close the laptop lid when I think, just do it .
And I hit send.