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‘But you’re getting the new visa, right?’ He sounded slightly concerned. ‘There’s no problem?’
I took a deep breath in and pushed it out slowly through pursed lips. Crying wasn’t going to help. ‘There are a few different ones I could apply for, but, well, it’s not going to be as easy as I’d hoped it might be.’
‘Oh.’ He appeared at the bathroom door. Half naked and half asleep. Just the way I liked him. ‘Anything I can do?’
Marry me, marry me, marry me, marry me, marry me.
I leaned over to give him a light kiss, then turned back to the sink. There was no way I was leaving New York. Just no way.
‘What could you do?’ I asked.
Marry me, marry me, marry me, marry me, marry me.
‘I don’t know,’ he said, pushing my hair out of my face and giving it a tug. ‘There was this guy on our lighting crew once and he needed, like, letters of recommendation? I could write a letter.’
‘Recommending me for what exactly?’
He raised an eyebrow and gave me a heart-stopping smile.
‘Pretty sure that won’t count towards me being an “extraordinary alien”,’ I replied. ‘As far as I know.’
‘I think you’re extraordinary.’ Alex took my hand out from under the cold tap. I’d been so preoccupied with looking at his face, I’d forgotten it was there. ‘That’s got to count for something.’
Only if you marry me, marry me, marry me, marry me, marry me.
‘Counts for everything with me,’ I replied. ‘Not so much with the INS.’
‘Those sons of bitches.’
For a moment everything froze. Alex looked at me with his big green eyes, suddenly serious. I stared back with my baby blues, hoping they weren’t bloodshot or panda-like. He held my hand tightly and cleared his throat. I held my breath. Oh. My. God.
‘Angela,’ he started slowly. ‘I don’t want you to leave. You know that, don’t you?’
‘I do now,’ I squeezed his hand. ‘And you know I don’t want to leave.’
‘I do now,’ he said. ‘I want you here. With me.’
I nodded, a giant lump in my throat stopping any words from actually escaping. Probably my subconscious trying to stop me cocking this up. Clever subconscious.
‘I love you.’
‘Mm-hmm.’
‘This is it for me. You and me, this is it. Everything’s going to be OK, right? With the visa?’
This was it. This was my chance to show him the letter, to tell him I only had four weeks to find a way to stay. Simple as that. Except it wasn’t. My blood pressure soared and then crashed. It was too much pressure. It wasn’t fair. Basically, I was still too scared that he’d run for the hills. Brilliant.
‘Mmm-hmm.’
‘It’ll all be fine.’ He let go of my hand and pulled me into a hug. ‘You’ll find a way.’
I breathed out, gasping for air. He broke the hug and kissed me on the forehead.
‘Now, let me find some pants and we’ll go eat. Sound good?’
‘Sounds bloody brilliant,’ I replied. ‘Pants. Dinner. Done.’
He gave me a self-satisfied smile and sauntered off towards the bedroom.
Bloody hell.
‘And so we had to drag his ass out of there before her dad took his head off with a sword.’ Alex shook his head and inhaled another taco. ‘Seriously, the guy had a sword. After that, Graham didn’t let him out of his sight the whole trip. He was like, grounded for a month.’
‘Oh, Craig.’ I stirred my drink with my fourth straw. I’d already dropped two and snapped one. It was safe to say I was distracted. ‘He really shouldn’t be allowed out on his own, ever.’
‘Yeah, we should have known better than to take him to Japan. The groupies were insane.’ Alex expertly inhaled half a taco in one mouthful.
‘Wow.’
‘And since Graham is gay, I had to deal with all of them,’ he went on. ‘So many groupies. Seriously. I thought it was gonna kill me.’
‘Yeah?’ I stared out of the window of La Esquina, watching Williamsburg walk by, trying to commit it all to memory.
‘Yeah, sometimes there were a hundred a night.’
‘Wow.’
‘You’re just not listening, are you?’
‘What? With the what?’ It was possible that my inability to string a sentence together was going to damage my plan to get a visa based on my talent as a writer.
‘I thought I was the one who was supposed to be out of it,’ Alex said, looking towards my plate and giving me a hopeful look. ‘You gonna eat that?’
I pushed it towards him and leaned back in my chair. Jet lag made him into a complete pig. It was ridiculously cute. But no matter how happy I was to have him home and to be consuming my own body weight in Mexican food, I was distracted. I stuck my hand in my knackered MJ bag to check the time on my phone but instead found a text from Jenny.
‘911, call me!’
I looked over at Alex, who was happily truffling up my leftover fajitas. I had time to make a call.
‘Jenny wants me to ring her – I’ll just be a sec.’ I stood up as Alex nodded, merrily piling as much food as humanly possible into a flour tortilla. Happy as a clam. Not that I could see why stupid clams were so happy. Plucked out of the ocean where they were perfectly happy and dropped in some pasta sauce. Stupid saying. Stupid clams. Anyway, Jenny …
‘Hi, are you OK?’ I stepped outside into the chill night air and watched my breath appear in a bright white puff. ‘Is everything OK?’
‘It’s fine,’ she answered immediately. ‘Jesus, calm down.’
‘You said 911.’ I hugged my arms around myself. Jesus Christ, it was cold. I could actually hear my mum in my head asking where my coat was. Inside. On the back of my chair. As opposed to when I was sweating like a bastard wearing it in Jenny’s office. Sigh. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Yeah, the house isn’t burning down, I just need a favour,’ she said, yawning. ‘I’m running an event tomorrow night, just like a cocktail party for one of our fashion clients, and we’re down a waitress. Bitch I hired quit to go to some shitty audition.’
I pursed my lips. ‘I don’t see how this relates to me.’
‘Because you’re broke as shit?’
I was broke as shit.
‘You want me to waitress for you?’ Was this a brilliant friend doing me a brilliant favour or a new low? I wasn’t sure. ‘At a cocktail party?’
‘Yeah,’ Jenny confirmed. ‘It’ll be great. It’s super-low key, just a couple of hours in an awesome apartment in Tribeca. It won’t even be like work. You’ll just be hanging out with super-cool people including moi for a couple of hours and leaving with a couple of hundred dollars in your back pocket.’
Brilliant favour?
‘And it’s a Christmas party. You love Christmas, right?’
OK, brilliant favour.
‘It’s just handing out champagne when people come in. Literally. That’s it.’
Still a favour, though.
‘And, uh, I have something I need you to wear.’
Ah-ha.
‘It’s cute, though.’
‘What is it, Jenny?’
‘It’s super-cute. Just say you’ll do it. You’ll be saving my life.’
I tried to think back to when I’d seen waitresses in super-cute outfits but kept coming up with blanks. Mostly because I’d never seen a waitress in a super-cute outfit. But Jenny needed my help and I needed the money – there really was no other answer.
‘Of course I’ll do it,’ I said, ignoring her slightly too loud expression of surprise. ‘Just text me the address and I’ll be there.’
‘You’re my favourite,’ she sang down the phone. ‘Tomorrow at six – I’ll send you all the deets. I love you, Angie. Fuck it all, I’ll marry you. After the cocktail party.’
‘Thanks.’ I rubbed my semi-bare arm and stared in through the window of the restaurant. Alex was still chomping away as though he hadn’t seen food in a month. He wasn’t a big sushi fan, and God knows how long he’d lived on ramen before the band made money. Japan must have been a little bit tricky for him. ‘Have you talked to him yet? Has he proposed? Can I book the venue?’
‘Jenny.’ I used my stern voice. ‘Leave it.’
‘I still think it’s worth talking about. How many times are we going to discuss your issues with communication?’
‘How many times are we going to discuss your issues with keeping your nose out?’
Jenny laughed in response. It was almost impossible to piss her off when she was getting her own way, which was always, and therefore massively annoying. ‘OK, lover, we’ll talk tomorrow. I have to go ravish my Viking.’
‘Sigge is from Sweden, not Norway,’ I pointed out. Given that she’d been shagging him for almost four months, you’d think she’d have basics like geography down.
‘There’s a difference?’ she asked. ‘Anyway, got to go. Sigge wants to make dinner. It had better not be freaking fondue.’
‘And that’s Swiss,’ I sighed. ‘Talk tomorrow.’
‘Everything OK?’ Alex asked as I shivered back into my seat. ‘Did she burn the place down yet?’
‘Not yet.’ I pulled my coat around my shoulders. This was my punishment for wearing a T-shirt just because it made my boobs look nice. ‘She wants me to waitress at a party tomorrow night.’
‘Do they make a waitress visa?’ He rubbed his denim clad leg against mine under the table. ‘I’d leave you really great tips.’
‘I don’t think so.’ Wow, I’d managed to go a whole thirty seconds without thinking about the V-word. I bit my lip for a moment, watched him shove in another mouthful of chicken, and then went for it. ‘Jenny says she’s going to marry me. For the visa.’
‘I’ll buy you soundproof headphones as a wedding gift.’ He speared a red pepper and popped it into his mouth. ‘But if it’s the only way for you to stay, I could totally get behind you two hooking up. You marry Jenny? Hilarious.’
I threw back a mouthful of icy water and tried to ignore the brain freeze.
‘So I should marry Jenny, then?’ I asked.
‘Angela, I would drive you down to City Hall myself,’ he replied.
Well, at least I could ride the elephant in the room all the way back to the apartment.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘Are you shitting me?’
Jenny stood in front of me with a hopeful smile on her face and a PVC French maid’s costume in her hand.
‘I thought this was supposed to be a fashion party?’ My arms were folded tightly, hugging my satchel to my chest, hoping the holy presence of Marc Jacobs would protect me from the ensemble Jenny was waving at me. ‘Have you got a fluffy tail and a pair of ears to go with that?’
She cocked her head to one side and looked at the outfit as though it were entirely defensible. ‘Would you believe it’s a last minute demand from the designer?’
‘Is this why the other waitress quit?’ I asked, gingerly rubbing the wipe-clean fabric between my thumb and forefinger. As soon as I touched it, Jenny let go. Great. Now it was all mine. My precious.
‘No.’
‘Jenny, I know when you’re lying to me.’
‘Fine. Yes. She said she was an actress, not a whore.’ She flicked her smooth, straightened blow-out over one shoulder. Without her trademark curls, Jenny didn’t look herself, but she did look intensely polished and professional. Something that would be difficult to pull off in a French maid’s costume. A red PVC French maid’s costume. ‘I did try to explain that she’s a waitress, not an actress, but that just seemed to make her even more pissy. It’s the designer – he’s kind of a, um, enormous sleaze. Angie, you have to do this for me. I’ll make it up to you. Please.’
I gave her the look.
‘For Erin?’
I closed my eyes.
‘For Christmas?’
Now that was a low blow. That was practically ‘If you loved me you’d wear it’, and I had no defence against that.
‘If you loved me—’
