Rosie Nixon - Amber Green Takes Manhattan

‘How wicked is this?’ Rob nudged me, not taking his eyes off a third dancer who was walking through the carriage on his hands, legs bouncing in time to the beat, and then finished off his routine by flipping off his friends with a flourish of perfectly choreographed backward somersaults. Without breaking anyone’s toes! I wonder if my insurance would cover that, Dad . Finally, as we sensed we must be nearing the next stop, all three began spinning on their heads, gliding with ease through at least fifteen rotations, before jumping back onto their feet and holding their headscarves in their hands for a quick whip-round from their audience. Some of our carriage mates coughed up a few coins, while others just sat there coolly, hands in pockets, as if this happened every time they took the L train to work.

‘Only in Brooklyn,’ a guy next to me commented, as he seemingly reluctantly tossed a five-dollar bill into a sweaty headscarf. I tipped all the change I had in my purse into the dancer’s hands and swiped a card from a fan poking out of his top pocket.

Seconds later the train came to a halt, and one of them picked up the ghetto blaster and they were gone, probably darting into the next carriage to entertain all over again.

Rob and I were buzzing.

‘So we might be moving into a shoebox—’

‘Make that a children’s shoebox,’ I interjected.

‘Okay, a shoebox for a millipede – whatever you want to call it – but I really don’t care, because I’ll be living there with you and I couldn’t love you – or this city any more right now,’ he said, sighing. ‘You’d never get that in London.’

I had to agree. ‘And we’ll make our little millipede box the cosiest home ever. It’s going to be great. And you’re clever for sorting it out. I love you too.’

The next day, after cleaners had made the place smell of lemon disinfectant, rather than someone else’s toilet, and a year’s worth of burnt cheese had been scrapped off the microwave, we took a taxi across town with our suitcases of belongings and moved in.

On our first night in the flat, we were woken up listening to our next-door neighbours having very loud sex. She was a screamer, he a shouter. We might not have known their names before, but we certainly did now: Max and Tina . In between the thumps on the wall and the shouts, any chance we had of sleeping was put to an end by the fact we had so far failed to notice that we lived opposite a fire station. A whirring siren sound went off a couple of times just in the hour that we were trying to get to sleep.

On the second night, Max and Tina held a dinner party with some equally shouty friends. We opened another bottle of beer each and pretended it wasn’t as loud as it was, already feeling like an old married couple in our late twenties. Then we turned up our own music and tried to have sex on the sofa, but the noise from next door was too distracting. So we went out and got drunk on tequila and more beer at our new local, passing out back home, some time after the dinner party had finished.

On the third night, we wore earplugs and managed to sleep reasonably well, save for the strobing orange light from the streetlamp positioned directly outside our bedroom window and the occasional siren from the fire station.

‘Blackout blinds,’ Rob muttered woozily.

But, to be honest, when the light buzzed on for long enough for me to admire my boyfriend’s matinée idol profile on the pillow next to me, I didn’t really mind. And I knew I’d get used to the sirens.

There was something kind of pretty about the way the light hit our bed and bounced off the 1970s I HEART NEW YORK print we found in a thrift store earlier that day and which now hung on our bedroom wall, covering the brown marks. The only picture to grace our walls so far.

In the next blast of orange, I captured the image and uploaded it to Instagram; Rise filter; caption: ‘Goodnight Williamsburg #NYC #stylist #newhome’

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.