by Ali McNamara
‘So, darling, what did you get up to today?’ Oscar asks after we’ve studied the sumptuous menu for a good few minutes and finally placed our order. ‘Were you a tad lonely all by yourself?’
‘Actually no, I had a lovely time strolling along Fifth Avenue in the morning, and then in the afternoon I met some people outside Tiffany’s.’
‘Oh yes?’ Oscar pricks up his ears. ‘Outside Tiffany’s, eh? Were they rich and dripping with diamonds?’
‘Hardly. They work in television.’
Oscar opens his eyes wide and blinks at me. ‘Television, how fabulous! Are they famous American stars?’
I laugh now. ‘No, they’re both from the UK, actually; they work for one of our breakfast TV shows.’
‘God, not the one you were banned from?’
‘I wasn’t banned! I was just asked to leave the building on that occasion.’
Oscar opens his eyes even wider. ‘OK, OK.’ He holds his hands up in submission. ‘I’m not going down that U bend with you now. So who are these TV types, then?’
‘They’re not from Wake Up Britain, they’re from the other one, Morning Sunshine, and they were filming a piece outside Tiffany’s. I helped them by answering some questions.’
‘Cool.’ Oscar takes a first sip from his glass of Serendipity’s infamous frozen hot chocolate that the waiter has just brought us both. ‘Oh my days, Scarlett, this is to die for. Quick, try yours, darling, it’s heavenly!’
I take a sip of my own frozen hot chocolate. An odd combination to achieve, you’d think. But Oscar’s right: it is indeed heavenly.
‘So what are they like?’ Oscar asks after we’ve enjoyed a couple of minutes of pure chocolate indulgence. ‘These TV bods.’
‘Really nice. They took me for coffee in Starbucks, and I told them all about the brooch and they’ve offered to help me.’ I tell Oscar what happened in Tiffany’s, and then what Jamie had said about his contact.
‘That’s good of them,’ Oscar says, his eyes narrowing. ‘What do they want in return?’
‘Nothing. Well, they might want to run a story about it, if it turns out to be anything interesting, that’s all.’
‘Hmm, I knew there’d have to be something in it for them. You can’t trust these televisual types, Scarlett; I’ve met them before. Especially not journalists.’
‘Jamie’s not a journalist, he’s a correspondent, and Max is a cameraman. They’re hardly tabloid hacks.’
‘Oh,’ Oscar says pointedly, his mouth forming a big O. ‘They’re both men, are they?’
‘Yeah, and what of it?’
‘Scarlett, you’re a pretty girl in a foreign town …’
‘That sounds like the tagline from a movie.’ I put on a deep voice. ‘She was just a pretty girl in a foreign town …’
‘Don’t mock me, darling. I’m only looking out for you.’
‘Oscar, they’re both harmless. Max is really down to earth and funny, and Jamie, he’s, well …’ I pause. How do I describe Jamie? I stir my straw around in the remnants of my chocolate for a moment.
‘He’s what?’ Oscar prompts.
‘He’s just all right, that’s all. I don’t know how I know this, Oscar, but I do.’
Oscar raises his eyebrows. ‘Scarlett …’
‘What? Look, you can come along and meet them when they get in touch next, if you want.’
Oscar nods approvingly. ‘I think I might just do that. My man radar is pretty accurate. Even with straight men. They are straight, right?’ he adds as an afterthought.
‘I think so. Funny, we didn’t really get around to discussing our sexual preferences.’
‘Didn’t you?’ Oscar looks shocked. ‘That’s usually one of the first topics of conversation when I meet a stranger in Starbucks.’
Eleven
Next morning, I’m up and out of the hotel early and heading towards the Empire State Building. As I stride happily along the streets, I think about Sean and the conversation we’ve just had on the phone. Sean had been very eager to hear all about my first day in New York and what I’d got up to. And I’d told him most of what I’d done, strangely skirting around the TV issue for some reason. I hadn’t not told him, I’d just been sparing with the details after what Oscar had said about Max and Jamie both being men. Instead, I’d given him much more to worry about when I’d told him all about Fleet Week in the city and the hordes of sailors we were expecting to see while we were here. And, as I’d suspected, that subject had immediately relegated any other topic of conversation to the bottom of the ‘non-urgent’ pile.
As I find myself on the junction of East 34th Street and Fifth Avenue, I see the Empire State Building towering up before me in all her glory. A doyenne of the New York skyline for so long, it’s odd to see her standing here squeezed in among all the shops and restaurants that line the streets below. I feel as though something as prominent and important as this should be set aside away from everything else, so that she can be admired for all her art deco beauty, not squashed at the corner of a busy street for dogs to pee on and litter to be scattered at the foot of.
I enter through the door at the foot of the building and am at once surrounded by yet more art deco wonder, immediately drawing me back to a bygone age of Hollywood splendour, of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire swirling around a dance floor.
‘Excuse me,’ a woman with a foreign accent says, barging me out of the way as she pushes past and heads for the ticket desk.
I suddenly remember why I’ve got up so early to get here. I need to do all the big tourist attractions in New York early, or the queues will get really long later on. I break away from waltzing with Fred and hurry along behind her, following her up to buy a ticket on the first floor. We wind our way around a long series of roped areas, reminding me very much of the queueing system at Disneyland Paris, and I’m thankful again for setting my alarm early this morning when I realise just how long the queues can get here. After I’ve paid for my ticket, there’s yet another set of ropes and a small queue to wait for the lifts to take us up to the observation deck.
The lifts are tiny, and as we all excitedly squeeze into one and whizz up to the eighty-sixth floor, I watch in amazement as the numbers flash past on a little counter above the doors, measuring our journey to the top. When we arrive and the doors part for us to exit the lift, I’m surprised at just how small the observation deck seems. I’ve watched Sleepless in Seattle more times than I care to admit, and Meg Ryan would have whizzed around in a couple of minutes and immediately known Tom Hanks wasn’t up here waiting for her.
Even though it’s still early, the deck is already pretty packed with tourists. Thankfully today, unlike when I ventured to the top of the Eiffel Tower last year on my own, it’s not filled with loving young couples canoodling in every corner. In fact, as I gradually make my way around each side of the observation deck, it becomes increasingly noisy and boisterous. I turn a corner onto the east side of the deck and am stunned to see a gang of young men in the process of stripping off their clothes and folding them neatly into piles on the floor.
I can’t help but stop and stare at them as one by one they pull from their bags what look like big black hairy rugs. I’m not the only one: they’re starting to draw a small crowd of onlookers who, for a few minutes, are distracted from gazing out at the incredible views of Manhattan and the surrounding area and are watching what’s going on on the observation deck itself.
The men begin to pull on the rugs, and I realise they’re not rugs at all but costumes, monkey costumes – no – as one speedy chap get his head on first, gorilla costumes.
‘Do you know what they do?’ an elderly oriental woman standing next to me asks.
‘Yes,’ I smile knowingly. ‘I do, actually. They’re all dressing up as King Kong.’
‘But why they do that?’
‘Because of the movie,’ I explain. ‘You know, the part where King Kong climbs to the top of the Empire State Building and then battles with all the pl
anes?’
She looks at me with uncertainty. ‘King Kong, he is a monkey?’
‘No, he’s a gorilla, but a really big one. Oh, I need to get photos of this. It will look great on Twitter!’ I begin snapping pictures of the dozen or so men now all dressed as King Kong.
‘You guys need a girl,’ someone shouts from the crowd. ‘To kidnap!’
The apes all beat their chests in agreement and begin lolloping around the assembled crowd in search of an appropriate victim. Thank God I don’t have blond hair, I murmur to myself, thinking of Fay Wray in the original movie, and oh, who was the actress in the recent remake?
While I’m desperately trying to think of her name, I realise three gorillas are now poised in front of me, beating their chests.
I shake my head and point at my black hair.
Gorilla number one pulls a curly blond wig from behind his back.
I shake my head again. I’m not sure why I don’t just speak; it’s as if I think they’re real gorillas, incapable of understanding English.
The crowd begins to clap, slow rhythmical claps supposed to encourage me to join in with this nonsense. ‘Come on, gorgeous,’ someone shouts, ‘play nice and put on the wig. The guys have gone to all this trouble, they need a girl to finish the job off properly.’
What did he think they were going to do up here? Hang over the edge of the viewing platform with me dangling under one of their hairy arms, about to fall to my doom?
‘All right, I’ll wear the wig so you can take a photo, but that’s it, OK?’ I grab the blond wig from the gorilla and tuck my long black hair underneath it. Then I shove my camera at the guy that shouted out. ‘Can you take a photo for me then, since you were so keen for me to do this?’
I stand with the King Kongs and have my photo taken in a traditional pose. Then one of them whispers through his mask, ‘This is all for charity, ma’am. Do you think we could pick you up and make it look like we’re running off with you?’
‘What charity?’ I whisper back into his wrinkled rubber face.
‘A children’s home in the Bronx.’
I sigh. ‘OK then, but make it quick.’
I let the gorillas lift me up and hold me sideways across their hairy arms, like one of those bridal shots of the male wedding party all holding the bride up. Then we do a couple of photos of me pretending to run away with a pack of hairy gorillas chasing after me, and me pretending to scream while they lift me up in the air above their heads. By the end of it I’m actually quite enjoying myself, but I don’t let on.
When we eventually come to the end of the photo shoot, one of the gorillas pulls off his head and passes me back my camera. The chap I’d given it to originally had got bored after the first set of photos and moved on.
‘Thank you, ma’am,’ he says, smoothing his cropped blond hair. ‘You’ve really helped us out. We were offered more sponsorship if we found a willing young lady to take on the Ann Darrow role. The guys back on the ship will have to pay up big time now.’
‘The ship?’ I look back at him enquiringly. Then I notice the other King Kongs are now stripping off their costumes and dressing in naval uniforms. I’d been so surprised to find men undressing at the top of the Empire State Building, let alone fit-looking ones, that I hadn’t really noticed what they were undressing out of. ‘Oh, you’re sailors!’
‘We sure are!’ he gives a small salute. ‘Seaman John Jeff erson at your service, ma’am. We wouldn’t have been allowed to do this here today if it wasn’t Fleet Week, and our small stunt was for charity. The city’s many fine landmarks are very accommodating to us sailors during Fleet Week.’
‘That’s very good of them.’ I can’t help breaking into a smile at his courteous manner. He’s like a caricature of a movie sailor, standing in front of me and saluting like that. Now I can see the others dressed in their uniforms, I can just imagine him in his full crisp white shirt and trousers, doffed hat held in front of him, calling me ma’am. ‘They certainly seem to welcome you to the city.’
‘They sure do,’ he says as he pushes the gorilla suit down off his torso so it sits around his waist, revealing a white vest and a pair of extremely muscular arms. ‘It’s my third time here in NYC for Fleet Week; we always have a whale of a time.’ He regards me for a moment. ‘No …’ he says, and he shakes his head.
‘What do you mean, no?’
‘Well, I was just wondering something, and then I thought, John Jefferson, this ain’t the sorta lady that you ask that kinda thing of.’
‘Ask what kind of thing?’ I just can’t help but smile coyly at him. He looks so cute standing there, his top half all squeaky-clean and polished-looking with his blond hair all neat and a twinkle in his bright blue eyes, his bottom half still clothed in the hairy gorilla suit.
‘There’s a big party tonight at one of the bars downtown, and I wondered if you’d like to come along? I mean, you can bring your boyfriend or … or your husband, if you have one with you on holiday?’
‘How do you know I’m on holiday?’
‘I’m just guessing, since you talk the way you do and the fact you’re at the top of the Empire State Building. Not many locals do that on a Monday morning.’
‘That’s true. Yes, I am on holiday. But no, I’m not married or here with my boyfriend,’ I’m careful to say.
‘I see …’ he replies, considering this. ‘So, do you wanna come to the party? You can bring a friend?’
‘Yeah, I’ll come,’ I say, a grin spreading across my face. ‘And I know just the friend who’d like to tag along with me.’
Twelve
‘Praise the Lord that is Jimmy Choo!’ Oscar hails, raising his arms in the air. ‘We’re going to a sailors’ party! I need to leave you alone more often, Scarlett.’
‘We don’t have to go,’ I tease. ‘It might not be that much fun …’
‘Are you kidding me?’ Oscar looks like I’ve just suggested we don’t eat for a fortnight. ‘This is like, Season Five, Episode 67, Anchors Away! The one I was telling you about in the taxi, where the girls are invited to a sailors’ party. Oh my God, Scarlett,’ he squeals, clapping his hands manically like a performing seal. ‘This is beyond my wildest dreams, I’m actually living Carrie Bradshaw’s life!’
Later that evening, we arrive at the bar where the party is being held. The place is huge, and teeming with white uniforms filled with surging male hormones. They spill out onto the sidewalk, and lean casually up against the stairway so we have to squeeze past them to make our way up to the main entrance. Oscar doesn’t even try to hide his joy at this minor inconvenience.
‘Hi,’ I say to the sailor manning the door.
‘Good evening, ma’am,’ he nods at me, and raises a smile at Oscar who has come dressed tonight in his own version of naval uniform: a tight navy and white striped long-sleeved top, white trousers, braces and a bright red neckerchief tied jauntily around his neck. He’d wanted to go out and buy a peaked sailor hat this afternoon to complete his look, but I’d managed to stop him just in time by reminding him of the old adage ‘less is more’.
‘Seaman John Jefferson said for me to come along tonight?’ I mention hopefully.
‘Ma’am, you don’t need no names to get in here looking like you do.’ He looks appraisingly at my choice of dress; it’s crimson, with a long slit up one side. ‘And your friend’s outfit is mighty fine too.’ He winks at Oscar, and Oscar nearly passes out on the spot.
‘Thank you, sir,’ I beam at him. I grab hold of Oscar’s arm and drag him away from the sailor and in through the doorway. Inside is a huge bar on three levels, and every level is packed to the brim with uniformed seamen of differing ranks. It’s like a huge sea of white has washed over the bar. It’s occasionally broken by a tiny dash of colour from a shimmering dress or a sparkly handbag decorating the women that mingle among the sailors.
‘Well, kiss me Hardy, it’s Christmas come early!’ Oscar says, spinning around when his head can no longer spin far enough for
him to take in the whole panorama. ‘Scarlett, I’m diving in! Get the drinks in, darling; I’ll be back in two shakes of a duck’s tail. Or would that be shag, seeing as we’re in a room full of men of the sea.’ He turns back briefly and winks. ‘And if I can’t get one of those tonight, then my name’s not Oscar St James, master of seamen everywhere!’
‘Oscar, wait!’ I call as he disappears into the sea of white. ‘What am I …’ But he’s gone.
I make my way over to the bar, and try not to look too conspicuous as I stand there waiting to be served. Suddenly, coming to this party doesn’t seem like such a good idea after all. The sailor standing next to me leans over in my direction.
‘Buy you a drink, ma’am?’
‘Er, no thanks. I’m getting them in for me and a friend.’
‘I’ll buy your friend’s too. What’s her name?’ He grins at me through yellowish teeth, and I can smell the alcohol fumes wafting from his breath.
‘Oscar, and he just loves sailors!’
This line seems to work, with not only this sailor but a few others that try their luck with me in the minutes afterwards. Eventually the barman sees me and drifts over in my direction.
‘What’s it to be, miss?’
‘I’ll get these,’ a voice behind me says.
I’m about to turn around and bat back yet another unwanted advance, when I realise I recognise this voice.
‘Jamie!’ I say in relief as I turn around. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’
‘Trying to get a story, for my sins,’ he says, grinning at me. ‘We’ve been asked to do a piece on Fleet Week, and I’m looking for a different angle to just ships and sailors parading up and down in straight lines.’
‘Well, this is certainly different.’
‘Do you guys want serving or not?’ the barman calls from behind us.