Jamie meets me in Bendel's and we brave the crowds on Fifth Avenue where we try to find a coffee shop eventually settling for a place the size of a shoebox with a stools at a counter redolent with the smell of French toast and home fries. The wait staff are Spanish and a man with a cold sore is on the cash register. Funnily enough, neither of us are hungry. We order iced tea (tepid brown water) and catch up. She's moved back to the states with her son who is an internationally successful model and her husband - who commutes to Washington - and is in the process of buying an apartment in Chelsea so they can escape their home in rural Connecticut where she is slowly going crazy.
Just that last sentence makes me crazy.
Before she moved here she lived and worked in Hammersmith where her kids went to school and where her husband stayed home all day and cooked. How do you cope with such an upheaval after twenty five years in England? A house husband in Hammersmith one day to manless in Manhattan the next? I wonder this aloud, as the squat waiter reaches over my head and takes a plate of bacon and scrambled eggs over to a well dressed man in a business suit who is reading the New York Times. On the other side of me a guy in worker's overalls, boots and a hard hat is eating a BLT. An old lady with lipstick over the edge of her lips is drinking coffee in one of the booths.
I'm having culture shock and I'm just a tourist.
Earlier I took my courage in both hands (no easy task when they are already full of shopping bags from Bloomingdales, Crate and Barrel and Williams Sonoma) and braved Abercrombie and Fitch where in my naiviety I thought I'd pick up a sweat shirt for one of my kids. Inside it's darker enough for braille garment tags and loud music booms out at deafening volume so that you have to yell at the sales assistants who are difficult to find since the shop is simply packed with foreign visitors speaking in French and Italian and Russian. It's Babel with plaid shirts. I pick one up and look at the price. Eighty dollars. Eighty freaking dollars for a check shirt that looks preworn? I put it down again and walk round in a trance until I find a t-shirt. I approach a young God whose shirt is unbuttoned to his crotch, and then thinking better of it, find a female who at least seems to wearing underwear and ask her if she has this in another colour. She tells me that they are all around the store. I look into the heaving mass of bodies and see that indeed the store seems to be colour coded and that if I want to get it in blue and pink I have to walk round to each individual area and find it. I drop it on the counter (in the orange section though it's blue) and head for the door. I'll take mail order over male model order any day. I am getting old.
Jamie has been to Barney's where twenty sales assistant leap on you and ask you how you are today before the door has even closed behind you. I've had much the same treatment at Victoria's Secret where a girl accosted me on entering and said: 'Buying pandies today?' as I tried to find some for my daughter. It is my ambition to go to my grave without anyone ever asking me this question in public ever, ever again. Particularly since I don't think there are any in the ruddy store that fit me (ergo pitying look). I find myself stammering no as I back out the door. Daughter is not getting pandies for Christmas. Or a t shirt from Abercrombie and Fitch. I'm wondering how she feels about a set of non stick spatulas from Williams Sonoma. It's quiet in there. They give you Christmas tea...
In the diner, I duck again for the chicken pot pie and fries and the check is slapped down unceremoniously on the table - it might be time for Jamie and I to say goodbye. She picks up the tab. It's four dollars. I want to frame it. Four dollars is the tip I gave the cab driver on the way here.
'I love your hair..' She says as I gather up my bags.
'Yeah, thanks. It's the most expensive blow dry I have ever had in my life,' I say as I toss my glossy curls outside in the street, and now, I think it probably smells of grease. We kiss goodbye and she goes off to meet her sisters to see a play. Next up I have a manicure and a pedicure. At seven thirty there are fifteen guests arriving at the house for the party. This morning ten boxes of orchids, roses and anenomes were delivered and, as I speak, the florist is arranging them into elaborate displays. And, though Natasha the cook has made two birthday cakes, apparently she isn't cooking for the party and instead a team of caterers will be there at half past six.
As I said, I'm only a tourist. But what a way to travel.
