Before You Knew My Name (5)
And then.
‘Here.’
‘Wha—?’
The car stops suddenly, and the cab driver half-turns toward Ruby.
‘You say, here.’
He points to a five-storey apartment building on his right. Scaffolding one floor high runs alongside the fa?ade, and a series of wrought-iron fire escapes snake up to the roof, giving off the impression of a building under perpetual construction. Ruby sees that the numbers above the wide front door match those she read out to the driver back at JFK.
Scrambling for her wallet, Ruby over-tips for the ride, and the driver finally looks at her now, shakes his head slightly, before he pops the trunk and hoists her suitcases onto the street.
As Ruby watches him speed away, she fights the urge to wave him back to the curb and ask to be returned to the airport. Instead, as the yellow cab disappears from sight, she struggles her suitcases up the concrete steps that lead to her new home, before using her elbow to hit a buzzer that says Press Here. She hears the echo of her arrival on the other side, as she waits, trembling, for the door in front of her to open.
Mine opens with a knock.
As Ruby Jones was delivered to her new front door, I was following the blue dot of my phone all the way to the edge of Central Park, then veering around it, just like the map told me to. Keeping the Hudson River on my left, there were soon more apartments than stores and hotels, and bags of household rubbish began to appear on the curb. Rows of thin, leafless trees started to grow up out of the pavement, shin-high fences made of iron turning each one into tiny, walled-off gardens, and it was clear, strange as everything seemed to me, that I had reached the streets where people lived. The frantic pace of Midtown seemed a world away up here on the Upper West Side, the night sky pressing down on my shoulders, the residential streets all but empty. I wasn’t worried though, you could still feel the presence of people on nearby streets, sense all the living going on around me. Other than a small, involuntary jump when a man smoking in a doorway whistled at me, I felt oddly calm as I approached Noah’s apartment building.
Still. My heart is in my throat when I knock, as if the gesture is pulling all my courage up out of me. I am sweating slightly after being buzzed in from the street, a set of narrow stairs climbed, the Leica pressing against me. Rows of doors remain closed to me, and then the one I have been looking for is right there in front of me.
Own bed, shared bathroom. $300 P/W—all included …
Yes, I’ll be paying cash …
No, I’m not allergic to dogs …
Here is the full address, if you’re taking the train the closest stop is 96th and Broadway …
I’ll be coming by bus, I should arrive by 9 …
As you will.
As you will. A strange sign off, I thought at the time. But I appreciated this Noah’s efficiency throughout the process. Deal done inside a few text messages, hardly any questions asked. No unnecessary niceties or chit-chat. I don’t even know what his voice sounds like, I realise now, as my knock echoes on the wood between us. The door to Noah’s apartment creaks open and I see one blue eye first, then the peak of a dark blue cap. A polished black shoe. And then something cold and wet brushes against my hand. Before I have time to pull back, a large, brown dog pushes through the half-open door and lunges at me.
‘Franklin!’
Noah appears in flashes between paws and chocolate fur, pulling at the dog’s collar, and the three of us stumble through the door together, a laugh bubbling up out of me from a source I never knew existed. It has an immediate effect, like cool water on a hot day. Any tension I felt slackens, like the strap of my bag as I let it fall to the floor. For a second, Noah and the dog disappear, and it’s just me, standing in the most beautiful room I have ever seen. The polished wood under my feet gleams, and tall, wide windows above thick-cushioned seats give way to walls of books and couches big enough to lie flat on. I can see small, brightly coloured toys, bones and rubber chickens and tennis balls, all scattered across the floor and—my mouth drops open—a shiny black piano sits on the other side of the room. Above the piano is a huge, glittering chandelier, something I have never, ever seen in real life. Each piece of dangling crystal is so delicate, so perfectly formed, that I think immediately of raindrops. Or tears.
A strange thought comes to me, lands on my shoulder like a feather. How much sorrow has this room seen?
And now I am aware of Noah holding the collar of the dog, both of them watching me. With my eyes and mouth wide open like a fish in the sand, I know that I have just given myself away. I might as well have pulled out the six hundred dollars cash I have in my purse and admitted this is all I have in the world. I am not, and this must be perfectly obvious, even to the big old dog, someone who is accustomed to nice things. I turn to look, really look, at the man who lives here, the owner of the piano and the chandelier and the books and the dog. He is staring just as hard back at me, a half-smile pulling up the left corner of his mouth. I see now that he is old. Like grandfather old, maybe sixty-five or seventy, and shorter than me, just. He’s wearing one of those fancy polo sweaters, the ones where you can see a neat shirt collar poking out from underneath, and it looks like he has no hair left under his Yankees cap. Tufts of eyebrow, pale blue eyes. That half-smile of his, and long, fine fingers reaching for mine.
‘Hello,’ he says, ‘Alice Lee. It’s very nice to meet you. Franklin’—Noah gestures to the big, brown dog now straining toward me—‘obviously concurs.’