Zadie Smith: NW

Specially when he looks like yours. And he’s so lovely.

He’s so lovely your Meeshell. Lovely way about him.

Bev, d’you remember when we was round Leah’s that time and my car window weren’t working and Meeshell got on his knees with a wire coat hanger? After I’d been telling Leon about it for a MONTH.

He’s proper sensitive. Proper family orientated.

Whenever I’m thinking: where did all the good brothers get to? I think, breathe: at least there’s Meeshell.

Yeah but they’re all already taken!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA By the white girls!

Nah, don’t be like that. Leah she’s only messing with you.

Don’t mess with Leah! Not her fault Leon’s a useless bastard.

Leon’s all right.

(Bloody useless. “Leon, what you doing tonight? “Chillin with my man dem.” He’s always bloody “chillin.”)

Leon’s all right. Seriously tho, you’re lucky.

She gets a blow dry thrown in!

A man who can do your hair . That’s paradise right there. He can do cain row, he can do extensions…

Kelly, what she need cain row for? She’s not Bo Derek.

HA! (Nah, Leah, no offense — sorry that’s funny tho.)

I’m talking about he’s a professional. I’m talking about he can do any kind of hair.

And he’s straight. Innit!

Innit! Hahaha Innit, yeah. (He best be!)

That’s what kills me! Best of both worlds! You have though. You don’t know you’re born.

She doesn’t, she doesn’t know she’s born.

You don’t know you’re born.

You don’t. You don’t know you’re born.

Finally, five o’clock. Leah looks up. Kelly slaps the top of her desk.

— Quittin’ time!

Same joke every day. A joke you can make if you are not Leah, if you are not the only white girl on the Fund Distribution Team. In the corridor the women spill out of every room, into the heat, cocoa buttered, ready for a warm night out on the Edgware Road. From St. Kitts, Trinidad, Barbados, Grenada, Jamaica, India, Pakistan, in their forties, fifties, sixties, and yet busts and butts and shiny legs and arms still open to the sexiness of an early summer in a manner that the women of Leah’s family can never be. For them the sun is fatal. So red, so pale. Leah is wearing long white linen everything. Looks like a minor saint. She falls in step. Passes the scene of the crime, a wastepaper bin filled with vomit and tucked behind a pot-plant in the break room because the bathroom was too far.

From A to B:

A. Yates Lane, London NW8, UK

B. Bartlett Avenue, London NW6, UK

Walking directions to Bartlett Avenue, London NW6, UK

Suggested routes

A5

47 mins

2.4 miles

A5 and Salusbury Rd

50 mins

2.5 miles

A404/Harrow Rd

58 mins

2.8 miles

Turn left on Yates Lane

40 feet

Head southwesttoward Edgware Rd

315 feet

Turn rightat A5/ Edgware Rd

1.6 miles

Continue to follow A5

Turn left at A4003/Willesden Ln

0.7 mile

Turn leftat Bartlett Avenue

0.1 mile

Destination will be on the left

Bartlett Avenue, London NW6, UK

These directions are for planning purposes only. You may find that construction projects, traffic, weather, or other events may cause conditions to differ from the map results, and you should plan your route accordingly. You must obey all signs or notices regarding your route.

From A to B redux:

Sweet stink of the hookah, couscous, kebab, exhaust fumes of a bus deadlock. 98, 16, 32, standing room only — quicker to walk! Escapees from St. Mary’s, Paddington: expectant father smoking, old lady wheeling herself in a wheelchair smoking, die-hard holding urine sack, blood sack, smoking. Everybody loves fags. Everybody. Polish paper, Turkish paper, Arabic, Irish, French, Russian, Spanish, News of the World. Unlock your (stolen) phone, buy a battery pack, a lighter pack, a perfume pack, sunglasses, three for a fiver, a life-size porcelain tiger, gold taps. Casino! Everybody believes in destiny. Everybody. It was meant to be. It was just not meant to be. Deal or no deal? TV screens in the TV shop. TV cable, computer cable, audiovisual cables, I give you good price, good price. Leaflets, call abroad 4 less, learn English, eyebrow wax, Falun Gong, have you accepted Jesus as your personal call plan? Everybody loves fried chicken. Everybody. Bank of Iraq, Bank of Egypt, Bank of Libya. Empty cabs on account of the sunshine. Boom-boxes just because. Lone Italian, loafers, lost, looking for Mayfair. A hundred and one ways to take cover: the complete black tent, the facial grid, back of the head, Louis Vuitton — stamped, Gucci-stamped, yellow lace, attached to sunglasses, hardly on at all, striped, candy pink; paired with tracksuits, skin-tight jeans, summer dresses, blouses, vests, gypsy skirts, flares. Bearing no relation to the debates in the papers, in parliament. Everybody loves sandals. Everybody. Birdsong! Lowdown dirty shopping arcade to mansion flats to an Englishman’s home is his castle. Open top, soft-top, drive-by, hip hop. Watch the money pile up. Holla! Security lights, security gates, security walls, security trees, Tudor, Modernist, postwar, prewar, stone pineapples, stone lions, stone eagles. Face east and dream of Regent’s Park, of St. John’s Wood. The Arabs, the Israelis, the Russians, the Americans: here united by the furnished penthouse, the private clinic. If we pay enough, if we squint, Kilburn need not exist. Free meals. English as a second language. Here is the school where they stabbed the headmaster. Here is the Islamic Center of England opposite the Queen’s Arms. Walk down the middle of this, you referee, you! Everybody loves the Grand National. Everybody. Is it really only April? And they’re off!

So close to home, just on Willesden Lane. Strange convergence. She is leaning into a broken phone box, chewing the stick of an ice-lolly. Thick shattered glass, cuboid shards, all around. A few yards from Cleopatra’s Massage Emporium. Leah opens her eyes wide to store the details for Michel, which is one of the things marriage means. Drawn to the wrong details. Baggy gray track bottoms, off-white sports bra. Nothing else, no top. No shoes! Breasts small and tight to her body. It’s difficult to believe that she has had children. Perhaps that was a lie as well. A neat waist you want to hold. She is something beautiful in the sunshine, something between a boy and a girl, reminding Leah of a time in her own life when she had not yet been called upon to make a final decision about all that. Desire is never final, desire is imprecise and impractical: you are walking toward her, at great speed you are walking toward her, and then what? And then what? Leah is quite close before she is spotted in return. It’s been three weeks. Shar drops the receiver and tries to cross the road. The traffic is rush hour frantic. At first Leah is grateful to be without Michel. Then her face turns into his face and his voice comes out of her throat or this is a marital excuse and it is her own voice in her own throat: