Meet Me In Manhattan

by Claudia Carroll

  I remember the icy-cold air hitting me sharply in the face, instantly sobering me up a bit. We found shelter under a canopy while Mike tapped away at the Halo app on his phone till eventually a taxi pulled up alongside us. And I’m praying I imagined it, but I do have a dim memory that a few choruses of ‘White Christmas’ may just have been drunkenly warbled. Out of tune of course, and by me.

  Then somehow arriving back at the Roosevelt Hotel. Having a slight little fantasy flutter of hope that Mike might just make sure I got safely to my room by escorting me all the way up to the eighteenth floor.

  He didn’t though. Instead, ever the gentleman, he helped me out of the cab and I remember feeling a sharp stab of disappointment as he asked the driver to wait, that we’d be making two stops. Then his arm tightly round my shoulder, helping me up the giant staircase inside the hotel foyer and all the way over to the lift bank.

  Me leaning up against him while we waited for the lift. And Christ alive, then catching our reflection in the mirrored lift door and me coming out with something blatantly suggestive like, ‘Would you just look at the pair of us? Don’t we make a cute couple? You’re what we’d call extraordinarily ridey back home, you know!’ Then immediately wanting to claw the words back when I clocked the blank, impassive look on Mike’s face.

  Finally the lift arriving. Him steering me inside, then having to release the grip of my hand from his, because I just didn’t seem to be able to. Me insisting, ‘You have to come upstairs with me. I might just need help getting undressed.’ Him pressing the button to my floor then, in one fluid move, hopping out of the lift again, just as the doors were about to glide shut. And his last and final words to me.

  ‘Sleep well, Holly,’ he said quietly. ‘We’ll talk in the morning.’

  Then realizing that he’d gone and, even through my drunken haze, knowing that I’d blown it. Staggering to my room and taking ten full minutes to open the door with the pass key. Kicking off my shoes and collapsing on the bed. Too drunketty-drunk-drunk to even bother undressing.

  Merry Christmas, Holly.

  *

  Another night, another nightmare …

  Christmas Day when I was just ten years old and it was business as usual in our house. Mum and I always went to visit my granny in the nursing home in Blackrock, same as every other day. Mum always bringing her the same gift she did every Christmas: a plum pudding for the nurses, a deluxe set of Estee Lauder Youth Dew body lotion and a stack of magazines, all with Princess Diana on the cover. Granny apparently had a big thing about Princess Di. Hard to tell with her at times though because as I used to say to Mum, ‘She talks so funny’.

  Alzheimer’s, we’d been told, and Mum immediately set about pulling in just about every medical contact she had to get the best consultant there was on the case.

  ‘What’s Alice Heimers?’ I asked her.

  ‘It means that Granny is away in her own little world, pet, that’s all. But she’s happy there and she knows we love her very much, that’s the most important thing.’

  ‘But all she ever does is sing silly nursery rhymes and ads from the radio. I don’t even do that anymore and I’m ten! And why do we have to come here on Christmas Day, instead of tomorrow?’ I wailed at her, resenting every minute that I had to spend away from my brand-new toys. Even at that young age, I was able to pick up on the air of forced jollity that there is about any place of confinement on Christmas Day.

  ‘Shhh, sweetheart,’ Mum said gently. ‘Remember, even though she mightn’t be talking to us, Granny still knows we’re here and that we’ll always love her and come to see her, no matter what. She’s family and, remember, family always stick together.’

  Back home, Mum asked our neighbours, the McKays, in for dinner, as she always said, the more the merrier. Mrs McKay worked as a cleaner and had three terrifying sons a few years older than me who commandeered the remote control, slagged off the Queen’s Speech, then filched leftover wine from the table, even though Paddy McKay said it made him want to vomit.

  Then that blissful Christmas night, when it was just Mum and me on our own again. To this day, I can remember her coming into my room to switch out my light and giving me a warm cuddle, same as she always did. The smell of her: hospital mixed with clean almonds. How immaculately pin-neat she was, even though she’d been slaving away all day.

  ‘Happy Christmas my little Holly,’ she said, as I curled into her for a night-night hug. ‘You came to me at Christmas and I even named you after a Christmas flower. So just remember, pet, whatever happens, Christmas is and always will be a time for you and me. It’s our special time. Always.’

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I don’t so much wake up as come to, to the soundtrack of loud hammering going on right outside of my room. In my groggy, hung-over state, I’m about to fling on a dressing gown and step out to the corridor to tear strips off whoever’s causing such an almighty racket … then realize it’s actually all happening inside my own head.

  Not the best start to the day.

  Memories from last night start to pile in on top of me, in horrible fragmented shards, with one in particular a highlighted standout. Practically coming on to Mike in the lobby downstairs and coming out with God knows what suggestive, drunken shite to him. I think I did everything but sexually harass the poor guy.

  And then his reaction, or rather his non-reaction. The calm way he just saw me safely to the lift and bid me a polite goodnight.

  No question about it. I made a holy mortifying spectacle out of myself. The guy probably ran back home thinking he dodged a bullet. And the killer is I thought he was interested, I genuinely did, but now I have to accept that through a drunken haze, I must have misread all the shagging signs.

  That’s it, it’s official: I am never drinking again.

  I slump back onto the pillow, groaning and with my head walloping. My mouth feels like carpet underlay and, not to put it too finely, we have a knife-edge stomach situation going on here. In fact, if I don’t get a carb into me fast, I’m in for the official Day of Hell. I stagger over to where I dumped my handbag from last night, rummage around in the bottom of it and by some Christmas miracle come across a half-eaten bar of Dairy Milk and a packet of Tic Tacs. Feck it anyway, I’ve had more unappetizing breakfasts.

  Then as I’m waiting on the sugar hit to weave its magic, I pull back the bedroom curtains and chance a peek down to the outside world.

  And almost pass out with shock. Because sweet Mother of Divine, the snowfall throughout the night has been so thick and heavy, it’s a complete and utter white-out now. The pavements look almost impassable and there’s not a car to be seen, as the snow seems to have fallen to an incredible knee-height overnight.

  From my eighteenth floor window I can even spot two hardy souls outside, one wearing sensible galoshes as he navigates a path through the snow, the other a youngish guy who, I’m not joking, is wearing skis, actual skis, and is weaving his way down 45th street. Clever guy, is all I can think.

  Snowmageddon! The TV channels are all screeching and, I swear, each weather report is worse than the one before it. If nothing else sobers me up and shocks me out of my hangover and all the mortification of last night, then this is doing the trick very nicely thanks.

  ‘Freak snowstorm has led to road and rail closures …’

  ‘Travellers face a few days of chaos ahead as the snowstorm effectively brings the entire city to its knees …’

  ‘All bridges into and out of Manhattan will remain closed till further notice, by order of the Mayor’s office …’.

  ‘For anyone just tuning in now, you’re being advised to stay indoors and to make no unnecessary journeys …’

  ‘This is, in fact, the single worst snowstorm to have affected the New York Tri-state area in over thirty years …’

  ‘All major department stores, galleries, museums and tourist attractions in the city will remain closed until further notice …’

  And then the one that I’ve
been waiting for, with a mixture of anticipation and dread:

  ‘JFK International airport will remain closed for the duration …’.

  JFK. Where I’m due to be flying out of at 6 p.m. tonight.

  Low-level panic suddenly driving me, I grab my phone, go online and get straight onto the Aer Lingus website. And sure enough there it is. A brief, to the point notice saying, ‘list of flight cancellations from North America on 26th December, due to adverse weather conditions’. Sure enough, flight EI104, my return flight home, is one of those listed. There’s a tiny footnote ‘advising passengers to check in with the airline in twenty-four hours’ time’, but other than that, nothing. They’ve washed their hands of me. And I’m effectively stranded in Manhattan until further notice.

  With my head still pounding, I immediately call down to reception and a lady with a warm, friendly voice called Sabah answers, so I explain to her the predicament that I’m in.

  ‘Well that’s not a problem for us here at the Roosevelt Hotel, Ma’am,’ she says sweetly, and I almost want to hug her for being so lovely about all this. ‘We’re not full here over the next few days, so I can offer you the room you’re already in at the same hotel rate. How much longer do you think you’ll be with us for?’

  ‘You see, that’s the thing,’ I explain. ‘Right now, I’ve absolutely no idea. It just depends on how soon the airport reopens.’

  ‘And you know, even at that, you still got no guarantee of getting home,’ she explains to me. ‘Remember, the airlines will have a massive backlog of flights to get through first, if and when they do reopen.’

  Very comforting. But at least I’ve got the roof over my head sorted for the moment, so thanking God for that, I make a mental note to call the travel insurance company and only pray that they’ll somehow cover some of this extra expense. Then I call Joy at home, who turns out to be with her brothers on one of their annual Saint Stephen’s Day ‘work off the calories’ hiking fests, so it’s fairly hard to hear what she’s saying with the high winds blowing all around her. Though it did sound a helluva lot like, ‘You jammy bitch! Why can’t I get stranded in New York instead of stuck back here in howling gales and pissing rain?’

  I ask her to call me back when she’s not halfway up a mountain as I’ve loads to fill her in on, then immediately hit the shower. I spend an indecent amount of time in there and as the scalding hot water gushes all over me, thank Christ, the dull pounding at my head slowly starts to lift a little.

  A missed phone call by the time I get out of it and it’s from Mike. No voice message though. Good sign? Bad sign? Hard to tell. So soaking wet and with the towel still wrapped around me, I call him back immediately, all set to apologize for last night and hopefully do a bit of damage limitation.

  ‘Beautiful fine sunny weather we’re having, aren’t we?’ he says cheerily, sparing my blushes by not even referring to last night. Just gliding over it like it never even happened.

  ‘You mean you’re the only person in New York who isn’t aware that they’re calling this Snowmageddon?’

  ‘You know something, Holly?’ he says lightly. ‘It’s almost like the universe is conspiring to keep you here in Manhattan, whether you like it or not.’

  Which chimes in exactly with what I was starting to think myself.

  ‘So tell me,’ he chats on, sounding completely unperturbed at this turn of events. ‘How are you feeling this morning?’

  ‘Ermm … you mean, after …’

  ‘I think it may have been best if you’d stuck to sparkling water towards the end of the night.’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ I say in a tiny voice. Please Don’t Tell? Should be renamed Please Don’t Bloody Remind Me.

  ‘Still though,’ Mike chats on, ‘every cloud has a silver lining and all that.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, here you are with at least an extra day or two on your hands. So have you thought about what you’d like to do?’

  ‘Oh you know, maybe hit the sales, stock up on sunscreen and flip-flops …’

  ‘Seriously,’ he says, and I can almost hear the smile in his voice.

  ‘Well, messing aside … isn’t everything closed today?’ I ask him. ‘It was on the news just now; all the big department stores and tourist attractions are due to stay shut until further notice.’

  ‘And do you want to know what we do in this city when Mother Nature takes over and says, “You know what guys? Actually, I’m the one running the show round here?”’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘Winter sports in Central Park, that’s what. So come on then, are you in or out?’

  ‘Winter sports? Are you joking me? In the state I’m in right now?’

  ‘Stupid question, of course you’re in and I won’t take no for an answer. OK, here’s the plan. Why don’t you make sure to get a good carb-heavy breakfast inside you and I’ll pick you up at your hotel in exactly one hour. Fresh air and lots of it, that’s by far the best tonic for you right now. Trust me, you’ll be a new woman in no time. Now how does that sound?’

  Apart from the winter sports bit, it actually sounds too good to be true. It’s like he’s just decided to tactfully delete the latter part of last night and pick up where we left off, minus the booze. Suddenly my throbbing temples don’t feel quite so minging now and I’m thanking my lucky stars that someone like Mike came along to brighten this whole trip up for me.

  Whatever his motives, an annoying voice reminds me. Remember, this whole charm offensive could be for no other reason than to bury a story, and nothing more.

  Although, to be perfectly honest, ever since my heart-to-heart with Harry, I’m actually starting to waver about broadcasting his story at all. Maybe Mike is right? Maybe he’s just a thoughtless kid who got in too deep. Right now, the jury’s out, but I know that decision is just waiting for me and that I’m going to have to make that call soon.

  Anyway, fuelled on with fresh energy, I get dressed fast and pull on the warmest clothes I’ve brought with me: jeans, thermals and two thick woolly jumpers, along with the most comfy pair of boots I own, which will doubtless be a soggy, leathery wreck by the end of the day. All the while thinking … me? Winter sports? If my friends could see me now, etc.

  Half an hour later I make my way downstairs to the Roosevelt’s breakfast restaurant and soon am tucking into a hearty ‘heart attack on a plate’ feed of eggs, sausages and delicious hash browns, with a good strong pot of coffee on the side to really perk me up a bit. It does the trick though, because instead of wanting nothing more than to dive back into bed with a jar of Nutella and a box of Pringles to hand like I normally would with the hangover from hell, I now feel vaguely ready to rejoin the human race.

  Just as well too, because right on the dot of when he said, Mike is here waiting for me at reception, although he’s wearing so many layers of clothes I giggle a bit when I see him. He’s wearing a beanie hat too that makes him look years younger. Just adorable.

  ‘There he is, the Michelin Man himself!’ I grin as he looks back at me puzzled.

  ‘European reference,’ I tell him while he helps me into my long, puffy fleece jacket.

  ‘I’ll have to take your word for it,’ he says, twisting his mouth into a half-smile. ‘Anyway,’ he goes on, as he steers me down the main staircase and out onto the street outside, ‘it’s good to see you looking well and perky. I think last night you were what we euphemistically refer to as somewhat under the weather, here in the States.’

  ‘Or trolleyed, as we say in Ireland,’ I manage to smile back, trying my best to make light of it and only praying that he’s forgotten the worst.

  ‘Trolleyed?’

  ‘Plastered. Pie-eyed. And by the way, I’m placing the blame for that squarely on you, McGillis.’

  ‘You’re on vacation. And it’s Christmas. It’s allowed.’

  ‘Bastard. Spoken like someone who drank water for the last three rounds, while practically clamping open my jaw and pouring cockt
ails down my throat.’

  ‘Well someone is in need of fresh air and a bit of perking up, I see,’ he twinkles back at me. ‘So it’s just as well you’re wrapped up. You’re gonna need every single one of these layers today, let me tell you.’

  He’s not joking either. It feels about twenty below zero when we do step onto 45th Street, and because there’s not a car or a cab in sight given how deep the snow is, we’ve no choice but to walk all the way up to Central Park.

  ‘Wow, I wish I had my camera with me!’ I say as we slip and stumble our way up an almost deserted Fifth Avenue. It’s stopped snowing for the moment, the sun is shining, and apart from having to take giant steps because the snow is knee-height, it’s actually starting to be pretty good fun wading our way through this together.

  Mind you, walking anywhere with Mike counts as a great laugh because the guy is just one of life’s natural entertainers. He never lets up either, not for a minute; either he’s filling me in some more about his favourite buildings all along Fifth or else he’s back to belting out old Christmas songs, and the cheesier the better.

  ‘Come on, Holly,’ he says encouragingly. ‘How many times do you get to sing your lungs out right on Fifth Avenue when there’s absolutely no one around to hear?’

  So I join in on the chorus of ‘It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas’, and before we know it, we’re at the entrance to Central Park and heading for Pilgrim Hill.

  Pilgrim Hill, by the way, turns out to be a steep slope leading down to an even wider snow-covered space below, and sure enough, there’s Harry already here ahead of us, with an actual sled tucked under his arm. Barely recognizable underneath all the layers of North Face gear, and even wearing a pair of snow goggles.

  ‘Harry, hi!’ I say, feeling an awful lot better about being around him again than I ever thought I would.

  ‘Good to see you,’ he says, blushing a bit. ‘And – you know, thanks.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For yesterday. It was great to talk to you and – well, I’m really glad you came.’