2 Busy 4 Love

by Lucy Hepburn

  Christy giggled and clapped her hands. “Wonderful! How are you going to get there? Do you have money?” She rubbed her fingertips together and shrugged again.

  He looked confused for a second before pulling out his wallet and tipping out its contents into Christy’s hand. He had four dollars, seventeen Euros, and a crumpled photograph of a dumb-looking mongrel dog, which he shyly retrieved from her. He smiled at Christy, said “Thank you very much” in an exaggerated English accent, and made to walk away from her.

  She pulled him back by his arm, shaken a little when she felt the size of his bicep. “Whoa! Toni, I don’t want your money,” she handed it back to him. “But this won’t be enough to get you to Manhattan. How will you get there?”

  He mimed an exaggerated, enthusiastic walk, which made Christy smile again, her heart going out to him. How old was he—maybe twenty two? Definitely a couple of years younger than her; although he was so tall and gorgeous, he had the eager, innocent demeanor of a kid, stranded in a strange land. His clothes, on closer inspection, were tatty and worn—even though he wore them well. Maybe that was the fashion in Europe? Whatever, there was no way she was going to just let him head off out of the airport on foot. Central Manhattan was miles away. And she knew roughly where the modeling agency was located, so at the very least she could take him with her on the train and point him in the right direction.

  Glancing at her watch, she knew she needed to get going if she was to have any hope of staying on schedule. But first she’d need to work out what to do about the actual arrival of her actual future brother-in-law. She looked around the building, saw a familiar figure in the distance, and realized there might, just might, be a solution.

  “I can help you,” she said, turning back to Toni and pointing to herself and giving a thumbs-up, miming her message as best she could, “but can you please wait here for a moment?”

  She could see Roger Grace, about to leave the terminal building with the squabbling French family in his care, and she ran as fast as she could to catch up with him before he left. He beamed at her as she came panting into his view.

  “Um, Mr. Grace?” she began.

  “Roger,” he corrected.

  “Roger, I am so sorry to ask but, um, is there any chance you will be back here this afternoon?”

  His brow furrowed for a moment as he thought. “Sure…yes, definitely, in fact. I’m on bookings duty from two thirty till seven…how can I help?”

  It was strange for Christy to hear that question from lips that were not her own—or her mother’s.

  Her request tumbled out as though it was being chased by a buffalo. “…got the wrong Antonio…Right Antonio arriving this afternoon…got to leave deposit for apartment by noon or will lose it…sister’s engagement party…letting everyone down…need to take care of Wrong Antonio…someone needs to meet Right Antonio and explain when I get back…”

  Roger was smiling. “And…breathe, young lady. What did you say your name was?”

  “Christy. Christy Davies. I can’t apologize enough.”

  “Yes, you can. You have. And you can stop now. Give me the placard, I’m only too happy to help a damsel in distress.” He called over to the French family who were absorbed in a huddle, noisily going over their itinerary and checking their baggage. “Un moment, s’il vous plait.” They barely heard him.

  Swiftly scribbling “SANTORI” under “Antonio,” Christy handed over the placard. “You are so kind,” she mumbled. But then as she was about to go, another thought hit her, a possible way of letting Annie know everything was under control, without talking to her directly and giving away how out of control she actually was.

  Biting her lip, she wrote Annie’s mobile number on the back of the placard, and then she looked up at her new friend.

  “Roger? Please would you be kind enough to use one of your other phones to text this number—it’s my sister—to tell her everything’s okay with collecting Antonio?”

  He looked at her quizzically, frowned, and then stared pointedly down at the phone he’d lent her, which she was holding in her hand.

  She sighed. “I know. This looks bad. But I don’t want Annie to know how superbly I’m messing up. If she gets hold of a number where she can reach me, she’ll start interfering. You don’t know her…and it’s her engagement party tonight…”

  Roger raised his eyebrows. “Well, I can’t say I completely understand, but I’ll do it. Now off you go and get yourself an apartment.”

  “Thank you so much,” she said with feeling, relief flooding through her. Maybe everything would work out after all.

  Back with Toni and heading for the metro station, they stepped out from the airport into the blinding sunshine. A gust of summer wind blew up and tousled Christy’s hair, so it was all out of place. “Oh!” she figured that she probably looked a wreck and raised her hands to smooth it down again.

  Toni stopped her with a pointed finger. “Like you’ve just stepped out of the salon.”

  “Oh, thank you.” Flattered, she left her hair untouched. “It needs a trim, actually, but I don’t dye it or anything—ever seen a dye bottle with ‘dirty blonde’ written on it? Me neither…anyhow, thank you.”

  Toni smiled back. He had not understood that, she could tell. But he was fulsome in his mimed gratitude that she had paid for his metro ticket and seemed to understand that she would help him reach his destination. First, though, she took out the hastily scrawled itinerary that Will had dictated to her during that cringe-inducing phone call.

  “First, I must go here, okay?” She pointed to the Brooklyn address of Mr. Simpson’s apartment block. Before noon?” She tapped her watch. “So I need to get there right now or I will lose my apartment. It’s perfect, right in my old neighborhood. I can’t wait to get back there—hey, I’ll show you…oh, no, I won’t…”

  She tailed off. Normally she’d whip out her iPhone, call up the address on the map function, show Toni where they were going, and then probably regale him with photographs of the neighborhood she couldn’t wait to get back into. Instead she sighed heavily, sat back, and whispered, “It’s beautiful. Trust me. I just don’t know if we’ll get there in time. It looks impossible.”

  Very gently, Toni took her hand. “Christy,” he murmured, “impossible is nothing.”

  He was being so full-on that it made her giggle, but she was touched by his sincerity, despite herself. Who was this person? He was putting his trust in her. She tried not to let on to Toni how much of a struggle she’d just had finding the right metro train and platform without the help of her iPhone. Normally she’d program in where she needed to be, check the little screen, and stride right on ahead, not looking to the left or right—like a proper New Yorker. Today, relying on real-life maps and information boards, she felt like a tourist, a first-timer in her own city. Was this how Toni was feeling?

  There was no reception on Roger’s phone, so Christy couldn’t call Mr. Simpson to let him know she was on her way. She didn’t have his number anyway. Nor did Roger’s phone have train functions for her to check which stop to get out at, or a map application for her to find the quickest route to the apartment building…realization came crashing in on her and she wanted to scream in exasperation. Real life was so complicated without her brilliant phone. Anxiously she checked the overhead map. One of the stops—Newkirk Avenue—seemed vaguely familiar, and it was definitely in Brooklyn. That would have to do. Maybe they would find a policeman and ask directions. She and Toni would get off the train and hope for the best.

  So she sat back and tried to relax. Rush hour was well and truly over; at least this train wasn’t packed out like the earlier one had been. But as it rumbled on between stations, a menacing noise from the next carriage jolted her back to the present. It sounded like some sort of gang chanting, and the sound was growing closer. Everyone on the carriage seemed to tense, apart from Toni, whose entire body radiated tranquility. He only flinched a little bit when t
he door leading to the carriage burst open with a noise like an explosion, and six or seven large, loud teenagers poured in, all wearing massively oversized jeans and hoodies and baseball caps that all but obscured their faces, shattering the calm.

  They were bellowing out some rap number. One of them would chant a line and the others would follow, shouting and gesturing, dipping and dancing to their raucous rhythm. Christy sank low in her seat, determined not to make eye contact and inadvertently offend one of them, yet she tried to keep fully alert, adopting her best survival strategy. On and on thumped the song. The teenagers were rattling the lyrics out so quickly that Christy could hardly make any out. She longed again for her iPhone; she could have plugged in her headphones, put on some of her own music, and taken herself off to another world without leaving her seat. Fleetingly she wondered about jumping out at the next station and picking up a different train in order to escape the gang, but there just wasn’t time.

  Then she became aware of Toni beside her, moving his shoulders in time to the beat. She glared at him. He looked at her and grinned, his lips moving in an approximation of the lyrics as he did so. Other passengers were either heading to get off the train, or doing what she was doing and trying to pretend this wasn’t happening.

  The rapping got louder, the gesturing wilder, as the train, in the middle of a tunnel, began to slow down.

  The biggest rapper, a giant of a boy dressed head to toe in black, crouched down close to Christy.

  “Gonna love you foreva, neva gonna stop…”

  Then he did stop. He frowned, looked at his band mates, and scratched his head. The rapping and finger-snapping tailed off. He tried again.

  “Gonna love you foreva, neva gonna stop. You make me…”

  “C’mon, what’s next?” he growled at his comrades. “Gonna love you foreva, neva gonna stop. You make me…”

  But help came from an altogether different source. “You make me snap, crackle, and pop!”

  “Toni!” Christy’s hands flew to her face.

  Toni had leapt to his feet and finished the rap, to thunderous applause, whoops, and back-slapping from the gang of hoodies. He bowed, high-fived each one in turn, then sat back down, beaming.

  “You’ll get yourself killed!” Christy hissed, mortified. “Never talk to strangers. Especially not on the subway.”

  He touched her shoulder reassuringly, still beaming at his new friends. Meanwhile, the train had ground to a complete halt, and the rappers were enthusiastically trying out the new lyric, giving thumbs-up gestures to Toni.

  An announcement rang out that the train would be stationary for four minutes to clear congestion further up the line. The teenagers stopped rapping, and started mumbling and cursing instead. Everyone else on the carriage muttered impatiently, too, and then an eerie silence fell. Toni looked at her quizzically.

  “Um, four minutes,” she said, “then I need to find Candy Street in Brooklyn. I have no idea how to get there, but maybe we can ask—”

  “You want Candy Street?” The huge rapper stood in front of her so that his face was inches from hers. “Hey, my grandma lives on Candy Street. You wanna get off two stops down the line, cut across Prospect Park, go right at the County Hotel, and bull’s-eye—you’re there. And if you see Grandma Lomas, tell her that Dwayne says hey. You got that, gorgeous?”

  “Oh!” It was like a lightbulb going on in her head. Of course! She knew Prospect Park and the County Hotel—it’d be easy!

  Cautiously she looked into the rapper’s dark, friendly eyes. “I got it,” she beamed. “And thank you so much.”

  “No problem! Any pal of this guy is all right by me.”

  She turned to say something to Toni, to thank him, too, but he was oblivious—clearly he thought nothing unusual about engaging with a gang of noisy hoodies on a New York metro train.

  The next four minutes felt like twenty. Traveling two stops felt like traveling fifteen. But eventually they got to the stop the rapper had suggested, yelled goodbye to the boys, and raced through the station.

  Back on the surface of the world, Christy blinked in the bright sunshine, nervous about having to find her way around using landmarks and street names rather than her phone’s map and GPS functions. But even so, she couldn’t stop a new smile spreading right across her face. Brooklyn. She loved, loved, loved Brooklyn! And to think, by the end of today, she’d own an apartment here. It would be…a homecoming.

  Her heart twanged with half-buried memories. She’d lived here till she was twelve, when her life had been turned upside down. Her father, a construction supervisor, had walked out, leaving her, her mother, and fourteen-year-old Annie heartbroken. Homeless, too, as their apartment had belonged to her dad’s employers, and they’d made it clear that there was no way the family could go on living there. So their shocked, grief-stricken mother had moved her girls out of town and devoted herself to making a new life, without ever receiving a cent from Christy’s dad. It had been tough, and they’d only just pulled through.

  But Christy had never blamed the city. She loved it and had always known, deep down, that her heart was here, along with her precious memories of the good times when they were all together. She had promised herself she’d get back here one day and make a life for herself in Brooklyn, whatever it took.

  And today was the day.

  “Con…ven…ti…on…Street,” Toni sounded out as they crossed the road, heading toward Prospect Park.

  An alarm went off in Christy’s head. “Convention Street?” she echoed, glancing up and reading the signpost. Then she whipped out her notebook. “Hey! I can’t believe I didn’t realize—we’re right next to the O’Neill Tower. I can drop off Mr. O’Neill’s plane tickets now, if we hurry, and still get to seal the deal on my new apartment in time. Woo-hoo, thank you hoodies, thank you Toni, thank you fate.”

  Maybe, just maybe, her streak of bad luck was breaking.

  Chapter Five

  CHRISTY

  11:15 a.m.

  Before noon Drop off check with Mr. Simpson – on schedule

  12:30 p.m. Pick up Mrs. Dallaglio’s dry cleaning – on schedule

  4:00 p.m. Drop off Mr. O’Neill’s tickets – waaaaay ahead of schedule

  O’Neill Towers wasn’t just any old New York skyscraper. It was one of the largest, newest, and most hi-tech in the whole city. And it looked good, too.

  Mr. O’Neill wasn’t just any old Mr. O’Neill. He was Mr. Henry O’Neill, Chief Executive of O.N. & O.N., the biggest construction conglomerate in the state. He was never out of the Fortune 500, and he was feared by many wherever he went. Nonetheless, he had a reputation for fairness, even if O’Neill fairness was conducted with a distinctly hard-hitting, no-nonsense, no-time-to-waste business edge.

  Christy’s connection with him had started out the previous year with what she had thought would be a one-off assignment. After all, with a staff of thousands, Henry O’Neill had more than enough assistants and associates falling over themselves to do his bidding. But last year, he had wanted to arrange Christmas gifts for his closest staff members and didn’t want a single one of them to miss out on the surprise.

  So his wife had put him onto Christy: Mrs. O’Neill had been seated next to Delilah Dallaglio at a wedding in the Hamptons in the recent past, when Mrs. Dallaglio had been singing the praises of efficient Christy Davies of Doorman dot com.

  Christy still blushed as she stood with Toni in the reception area, remembering how she had persuaded Mr. O’Neill to dress up as Santa Claus to deliver the gifts in person—with her, resplendent in green and complete with pointy ears as his helpful elf, making sure the right gift made it safely into the right hands.

  But the rest was history. The stunt had been a staggering success, and since then Mr. O’Neill had been entrusting Christy with regular personal assignments.

  “I’m sorry, but are you sure he’s on
his way?” Christy asked the immaculately made-up receptionist, whose silver chain earrings extended all the way to her Armani-clad shoulders. They had been made to wait for what seemed like an eternity, and Christy was growing nervous. She kept glancing across at his private elevator, the digital display of which was resolutely stuck at 55, the very top of the building.

  She was rewarded with a withering look. “As I said, Mr. O’Neill is making his way down to talk to you personally.”

  Christy’s heart sank. Could there be some sort of problem? She had anticipated simply leaving the tickets at the reception desk, or at most, rushing up in the elevator to the fifty-fifth floor penthouse office suite to deliver them to Gardenia, Mr. O’Neill’s Personal Assistant. This was already taking too long, and Mr. O’Neill, when he eventually showed, was not the sort of man you could just run out on.

  Toni had wandered off to the open-air marble atrium in the center of the building. Christy watched him stroll languidly among the huge, avant-garde sculptures and installations, all taken from Mr. O’Neill’s private collection, stroking his chin thoughtfully, and despite her anxiety, she smiled at the beauty of the scene.

  54

  53

  52

  At last! The elevator was on the move—he was on his way.

  46

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  Christy cleared her throat, adjusted her waistband, and smoothed her hair.

  39

  38

  37

  She fished the airline tickets from her bag and began to think what she might say.

  30

  29

  28

  Mr. O’Neill, I thought you might appreciate having these tickets earlier than scheduled.

  24

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  22

  That might do.

  19

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  She checked her watch. It was past eleven thirty.

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