by Paul Carr
The girl sitting at the next table in Starbucks didn’t laugh. ‘That’s inappropriate,’ she said and returned to her book. Until then she’d been giving me an enthusiastic verbal tour of the city after overhearing my accent as I ordered coffee.
I smirked to myself and opened my laptop to email Robert. He and I had a long-running competition – now entering its third or fourth year – to see which of us could elicit the words ‘that’s inappropriate’ the most times from American girls. The concept of ‘appropriateness’ is much more real to Americans than it is to Brits, despite us being the ones who are supposed to be stuffy and formal. I’d noticed it a lot with swearing: while Brits of both genders will be quite happy, among friends, to use the word ‘fuck’ – as a verb, a noun and adjective or an adverb – a surprising number of young Americans blanch at the idea. Rather, they’d talk about ‘dropping the F bomb’, as if four letters were capable of levelling Nagasaki. Why actually use the word when the very threat of it was enough? Worse, of course, was ‘the C bomb’, which I took particular delight in dropping at every available opportunity. Perhaps it’s the fact that my dad’s family hail from Glasgow but, used outside of its gynaecological sense, it’s always been one of my favourite words.
Actually, that was one of the many reasons I liked Hannah: being Canadian, she had all of the spark and energy and attractiveness – and accent – of an American, but with none of the silly coyness. We’d only met once before and yet she hadn’t hesitated to call Sarah Lacy a cunt.
As if summoned across two continents by those thoughts, five minutes later an email arrived with Hannah’s name in the ‘from’ line. I’d sent her a short note from the train, using my phone – nice to run into you again, we should catch up when I’m back in London, all that bullshit – but I hadn’t really expected her to reply. And yet …
From: Hannah
To: Paul
Hey – sorry for the slow reply. I had to talk my way out of jail or deportation during a five-hour interrogation at Gatwick, break up with my boyfriend and drink a bottle of Bourbon. So it’s been a busy week. I could hardly do justice to these stories over email. If you’re coming back to London one day I suggest you buy me a gin martini or two in exchange for a story of terrorism and drama.
Hx
This was unbelievable. She’s single again, and I’m in Chicago. ‘Cunting fuck shit,’ I cursed to myself. The girl at the next table let out a loud sigh. So inappropriate. I tapped out a reply, something casual.
From: Paul
To: Hannah
Hey!
Sorry to hear about the breakup.
No, wait, that’s probably the most disingenuous thing I’ve written all week. No man is really all that sorry when he hears that a pretty girl is single. Let me rephrase: I’m sorry to hear you had to go through a breakup; they’re never fun. I’m back in London towards the end of April. The gin martinis are on me.
Px
It took me about forty minutes to get the casual, spontaneous wording just right. After I clicked send and my email began its journey across two continents, I noticed another message had arrived – this one from Eris. You wait all year for a pretty designer and suddenly two come along at once.
Eris had been looking at my blog and had read a post I’d written on the train from Dallas about how it wasn’t really a city that I could see myself spending a huge amount of time in. It was just too spread out, too nondescript. It just seemed to lack character. Of course, I’d decided all of this during a twelve-hour stay, much of which I’d been either drunk, asleep, in bed with a pretty blonde girl or all of the above.
From: Eris
To: Paul
Dallas. I never felt like I really belonged there, either (and I lived there for 10+ years). I found small places that felt like me, but navigating through the city as a whole made me feel very disconnected. I think I left as an act of self-preservation.
I got the call offering me a job in San Francisco. I told them I’d be there in two weeks, and I was. I packed up everything that was important to me at the time (computers, cats, books, some clothes), put it in my car and drove halfway across the country. I didn’t look back, I didn’t think how not-very-smart it was for a 24-year-old girl to drive by herself through the middle of nowhere. I just knew I had to leave.
I know many people with similar stories to this one. I have two friends from Chicago, for instance, who were overcome with the desire to leave that city. With all the cities you visit, there’s someone who left them. Fled. These stories are fascinating, and somehow we’ve all found one another and found salvation in San Francisco.
With Dallas and Chicago and most of the rest of America, you’re basically taking a tour, not of cities, but of disappointment. And when all that’s done and you come to San Francisco, we’ll be here.
Eris
I read the email twice. Her story about feeling like she didn’t belong in Dallas and knowing she had to leave was very similar to my feelings about London. I mean, I absolutely loved the city, but I also knew I couldn’t live there. All the drinking and the memories and the drudgery and the cost just ground me down. I could see how, as an interactive designer, San Francisco was the obvious place for Eris to go: it’s the heart of the technology industry and a city packed with artists and creative people.
For me, the whole world was my San Francisco. I wanted to keep travelling and experiencing new things and knowing that, if I ended up in trouble, I could always hop on a plane or a train and head somewhere else.
I was suddenly aware of a figure standing over me. Tall, skinny, about eighteen years old and wearing a Starbucks apron. I looked up. Yes?
‘Excuse me, sir,’ he said, with a pomposity that belied his years. ‘One of our customers has complained about your use of “language”. I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave. There is a bar next door if you’d like to curse.’
‘My use of language? Oh, for fuck’s sake.’ The girl at the next table was looking over, a self-satisfied smile playing around her lips.
It was time to head somewhere else.
Chapter 700
Diss me, Kate
I slept quite a lot of the way between Chicago and New York, taking care to put all of my valuables into my laptop bag before wrapping the strap around my feet and pushing it under the seat in front. The people on the train looked like a trustworthy bunch, but you can never be too careful. I’m quite a light sleeper, which made the subsequent theft of my iPod, my phone and my USA by Rail book somewhere between Charleston and Cincinnati all the more mysterious. The thief must have crawled under the seat. For some reason, though, he’d left behind my laptop and charger.
The loss of my phone was sort of a mixed blessing – God only knows how much of an international roaming bill I’d racked up in the past couple of months. I’d realised back in LA that I hadn’t given my phone company in the UK a forwarding address – mainly because I didn’t have one – so there was no way for them to bill me. I figured I’d just use the phone until they cut me off and try to fix things when I was next in London.
But still, as the Cardinal service pulled into Penn Station, the absence of wifi on board – score one for British inter-city trains – meant that I’d been out of touch with the outside world for twenty hours. I knew how those smokers back in Poplar Bluff felt.
When I finally found a bar with a decent Internet connection, there were no more messages from Eris, which was disappointing as I’d got used to her daily cajoling to get on a plane to San Francisco. There was, however, an email from my friend Caroline, a comedian from New York who also happens to be Joan Rivers’ niece. She is precisely as much fun as you imagine that person to be.
From: Caroline
To: Paul
Hey, I see from your blog you’re heading to New York. Are you going to be here on Saturday? If so, you’re coming with me to the screening of 21 (new Kate Bosworth/Jim Sturgess flick), and then celeb-spotting at the after-party.
; A quick check on the Internet Movie Database told me that 21 is the movie adaptation of Bringing Down the House, Ben Mezrich’s book about a group of MIT students who applied their geek maths skills to count cards in Vegas. I’d read the book back in London and so was definitely keen to see the movie, even though I didn’t have the first idea who Kate Bosworth or Jim Sturgess were.
The only thing stopping me was the fact it was already Saturday evening, I hadn’t booked a hotel room and the screening had started an hour ago, halfway across town. Ah well, at least I could get to the after-party early and avoid the queues.
Rather than trying to check into my hotel before the party, I decided to leave my bags in storage at the station and collect them afterwards. Or at least that was the plan until I learned that Amtrak will only store bags for passengers who have an outward ticket. I showed the man at the baggage check my rail pass – still valid for three whole weeks – but he shook his head. I had to be actually booked on to another train. ‘It’s to stop terrorists leaving bombs here,’ he said, with the look of a man who knew he was enforcing a ridiculous policy.
Exploiting what seemed to be a reasonably obvious loophole in Amtrak’s plan to foil terrorism, I dragged my suitcase to the ticket office and used my rail pass to book myself a free ticket on to a train back to Chicago. They gladly accepted the bag. Now all I had to do was remember to collect it before 6.55 the next morning, otherwise all of my possessions would be on their way back west without me.
701
Sure enough, there wasn’t a queue at the after-party. There was, however, an officious-looking woman with a clipboard.
‘Hello,’ I said, ‘I’m here for the 21 party.’ The clipboard woman looked me up and down – I looked like a man who had been on a train for twenty hours – and instantly made her judgement.
‘Are you on the list?’
‘I honestly don’t know, I was supposed to be with someone. My name is Paul Carr. I’m with the Guardian in London.’
That, as it turns out, was precisely the wrong thing to say. She gestured to a gaggle of photographers standing next to a black SUV, waiting for the first of the celebrities to show up.
‘Oh, no, I’m not here to cover the party. I’m a guest,’ I said.
‘You’re not on my list,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. It’s a very strict guest list tonight. Fire regulations.’
I felt like an idiot. My ‘I’m a journalist’ card might work to get past a bouncer in Austin, but it certainly wasn’t going to work with a professional celebrity PR in Manhattan. This woman probably spent half of her life keeping journalists out of things, citing fire regulations. I’d have had more luck if I’d claimed to be a fireman.
I shrugged and headed back down the street; I’d just have to wait an hour or so for Caroline to show up. But then, as I trudged forlornly away, one of the photographers who had been watching my unsuccessful blag shouted behind me: ‘nice try!’
You know in Back to the Future, when someone calls Marty McFly a chicken, and his ego just can’t stand it?
Yeah. That.
Fuck you, I thought. I knew I should keep walking; that I’d get into the party eventually if I just waited for Caroline. But now I wanted to make a point: show that photographer what a ‘nice try’ really looked like. I turned and twisted my face into my well-practised ‘little boy lost’ face. Combined with the English accent that one of my female American friends had described as ‘kryptonite to American women’, it had worked in most situations like this before. The question is, would it work with a hard-nosed New York PR? It had better do, otherwise I’d be laughed away from the party permanently.
‘Yes?’ said the PR.
‘I’m sorry to bother you again – I know you’re very busy,’ I lied. Twice. ‘I just wondered if you could give a message to Ben for me? Just tell him Paul said he was sorry he couldn’t get in, but that I’ll call him tomorrow.’
‘Who is Ben?’ said the PR.
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ I said, feigning shock that there might be some other Ben at the party, ‘Ben Mezrich. Assuming, of course, that he is on the list. We worked together at The Times a couple of years ago. He said to swing by if I was in town tonight.’
I was gambling on a number of things here. Firstly, that Ben Mezrich – who I’ve never met – was still trapped in the screening and so was uncontactable in person or by phone. Had the PR checked my story, I’d be completely screwed. Second, I was gambling that, by choosing the writer of the book that inspired the film as my friend rather than one of the stars, my story would be inherently more believable. I mean, who would claim to be friends with a writer? And thirdly, I was gambling that the PR knew so little about Mezrich, or journalism, or anything but Hollywood stars, that she wouldn’t know that Ben Mezrich has never written for The Times – either the one in London, or the one in New York.
‘Yeah, no problem,’ said the PR. ‘I’ll give him the message.’
Shit. She was calling my bluff.
Then, a sigh. She looked again at the dishevelled figure standing in front of her, holding a laptop bag. I certainly looked like a journalist.
‘Ben’s not here yet,’ she said, ‘but you’re welcome to wait for him inside if you want.’
‘Oh, that’s very kind of you,’ I said, and walked inside, pausing only to give the finger to the photographer by the black SUV.
Nice try indeed.
702
An hour of so later – enough time for me to drink about half a bottle’s worth of free champagne – the party had started to fill up with familiar faces. If the secret to meeting A-listers is to act like you don’t even know that they’re famous then my terrible ability to recognise faces puts me well ahead of the game. I have good friends who I’d met five or six times before I finally stopped introducing myself. Tom Cruise and Angelina Jolie could walk up to me in the street and I’d probably shoo them away, telling them that I had no spare change.
But even with my limited facial recognition powers, the 21 party quickly started to make me feel star-struck. Helena Christensen was the first A-lister I saw – and for the next five minutes I couldn’t stop staring at her. She was about to turn forty and yet still looked as beautiful as the girl my friends and I had gawped at in FHM when we were at school ten years earlier. Next, from the other end of the A-list, and age range, came Katrina Bowden from 30 Rock chatting to Meryl Streep’s daughter, Mamie Gummer, and a stream of other starlets. There was an Olsen. I’m not sure which.
Even the waitresses were stunningly beautiful. One in particular stood out, a tall blonde girl holding a tray with two glasses of champagne. I wondered what she was thinking as she looked around the room: she was at least as pretty as the celebrities at the party and yet here she was, working as a waitress, serving them champagne, probably to pay her way through college or something. She was way – waay – out of my league but I figured everyone else would be hitting on the celebrities – trying to bag an Olsen – so for once I might have a shot. And, of course, the great thing about hitting on waitresses is that you don’t need an excuse to approach them.
‘Can I take one of those?’ I asked, pointing at the glasses on her tray.
‘Actually, they’re for this table.’
‘Oh,’ I said, impressed at my own ability to be brushed off by beautiful waitresses just as aggressively as all other beautiful women, ‘are you going to get any more?’
She looked at me as if I’d just insulted her mother. ‘The bar is just over there. It’s free, help yourself. Excuse me …’
And then she walked away. Wow, a new low – great work, Paul; you really must look like a guy who slept on a train last night. Fortunately my embarrassment had witnesses – I looked over at the bar and saw Caroline had arrived and was laughing her arse off at my ineptitude. She beckoned me over with a drink.
‘Hey!’ I said, kissing her on both cheeks while simultaneously taking the drink.
‘Hey! So what were you saying to Kate Bosworth?’
Oh. Shit.
’… uh, you don’t mean Kate Bosworth, the tall blonde girl over there with the champagne, do you?’
‘Duh, yes. The Kate Bosworth that you’d have recognised had you made it to the damn screening. Tell me you didn’t say anything bad to her.’
‘I just asked her to get me a drink. I thought she was a waitress.’
Caroline screamed and then burst into even louder howls of laughter. When she finally regained her composure she put a pitying arm around me.
‘Well, it’s fair to say not many men will use that line on her tonight.’
Having insulted the guest of honour, my work at the party was done. It was time to get drunk. ‘But just to be on the safe side, Caroline,’ I asked, ‘can you warn me who else is here just so I don’t have a repeat performance?’
‘OK,’ she said, leaning in, ‘well, Clive Owen is here – he’s …’
‘I know who bloody Clive Owen is,’ I said, probably slightly too loudly. ‘He’s British. The guy who was in those awful BMW web ads, and Inside Man. Jesus Christ, that was a shit movie. Don’t worry, I watch a lot of shit movies, I’ll definitely recognise Clive fucking Owen …’
Caroline was staring at me.
‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘I’ll stop ranting now.’
She was still staring.
Oooohh. I looked in the mirror behind the bar. There, right behind me, talking to Caroline’s friend – was Clive fucking Owen. He’d heard every word.
For the remainder of the evening, I avoided insulting anyone, mainly because I was sure to treat everyone like they were a celebrity. Caroline introduced me to Jeff Ma – the maths wizard on whose life the book was based. He was standing next to Jim Sturgess, who played him in the movie. I’d love to have been in the meeting where someone said – ‘OK, who can we get to play an Asian American math geek?’ to which the reply came – ‘Well, there’s this white English guy who looks like he should be in the Arctic Monkeys.’ I also met Kevin Spacey’s partner – ‘production partner’ he kept saying as if for some reason people often thought differently – and took the opportunity to pitch him my brilliant idea for a John McCain biopic starring John Travolta. ‘It’s brilliant,’ I said, ‘Travolta can do all the flying himself – I mean, apart from the crashing part, of course.’ He excused himself and went off to talk to someone famous. And less drunk.