Chapter 15

Chapter Fifteen

@ElissaJohnson

Don’t usually watch @SundayNightLive but I’m sure that the #watchmepiddle woman is based on vile menace who robbedme.

@ElissaJohnson

Had forgotten she was wearing a fannypack. Has anyone else encountered her? PlsRT.

Don’t be the police. Do not be the police.

I head over to the door and take a peek through the spy-hole. It’s a very short round woman of about sixty with silver hair down to her waist, and fifty-pence shaped glasses. She doesn’t look like po-po. She’s leaning on one crutch, a bandage wrapped around her knee, which is poking out from beneath the red and yellow polka dot nightdress she’s wearing.

I open thedoor.

‘Can I helpyou?’

The woman pokes her head in my flat and looks around nosily. ‘Are you all right? I can hear you crying through the walls!’

Her voice is lilting and melodic, her accent a cross between New York and Spanish.

‘Oh bugger, I’m so sorry!’ I say, wiping away my tears with a piece of toilet tissue. ‘I genuinely thought I was doing my quietcry.’

The woman shrugs a shoulder. ‘Maybe you were, but these walls are as thin as a water biscuit. I’ve complained to the building managers but, eh, they don’t listen to me. “Old Mrs Ramirez, complaining once more,” they say. They think that just because my rent is controlled that I’ll never leave no matter what. They think…’ she looks up and down the hallway with a confrontational expression, as if ‘they’ are listening ‘…that I don’t know they talk about me. But I know. I know everything that goes on aroundhere.’

I nod. ‘Oh dear. Well… I’m really very sorry. I’ll keep it down. I should probably stop crying actually. It’s nohelp!’

The woman looks down into my hand at the screwed-up loo roll and blows the air out from her cheeks, giving a little shake of herhead.

‘Come with me, cariño,’ she commands, promptly spinning around and marching across the hall into the flat oppositemine.

Hmmm. Perhaps it’s not such a good idea to enter into a second stranger’s house in the same day. But… this Mrs Ramirez looks harmless. I don’t think she’ll want to do my hair… God, I hopenot.

Not everyone in New York is a weirdo, Olive.

I pop my head outside into the hallway. She’s left her front door open forme.

I step out of my flat and tentatively cross the hall intohers.

As I enter, I notice that Mrs Ramirez’s studio is exactly the same as mine, only everything’s the other way around.

Her walls are filled with framed pictures of landscapes and seascapes and mountainscapes and there are little ornaments dotted here there and everywhere. Glass ducks, and matryoshka dolls, tiny cactuses and exotic-looking bowls and vases.

‘I’ve travelled,’ Mrs Ramirez explains, noticing me taking it all in. She sits herself down on a comfy-looking armchair and props her crutch up beside her. ‘I like to bring something back from every place I’ve visited. Come.’

She ushers me in from where she’s sitting and holds out a small handkerchief embroidered with wispy swirls of red, gold and silver. I sit on another armchair opposite her. She places the handkerchief into my hands.

‘It’s beautiful!’ I remark, marvelling at the elaborate stitching.

‘I got it from a fabric market in Bali,’ she says. ‘It’s yoursnow.’

She gives me a kindly smile. And despite my fed-up mood, I can’t help but smile back, touched.

‘Now, I’ll take that.’ She plucks the toilet tissue from where it’s bunched up in myhand.

‘I can’t actually use this handkerchief on my nose!’ I say. ‘It’s much too precious.’

Mrs Ramirez dismisses me with a quick flick of her hand. ‘Oh, my pobrecita, what else are you gonna do with it? Go aheadnow.’

She’s pretty forceful, like a mum telling off her toddler. I press the soft square of fabric against my eyes, and remove the last of the teardrops.

‘Isn’t that better? Now, what will you have to drink? How about a soothing Salabat tea? I brought it back last year from the Philippines. It’s something special, I’ll tellyou.’

Salabat tea? What the hell is Salabat tea? I don’t like the sound ofit.

‘Oh, don’t go to any trouble. I’m okay, I promise.’

‘It’s no trouble for me. I need you to make me one, so you may as well have one yourself.’

‘Excuseme?’

‘It’s the middle of the night! You woke me up!’ She points at her bandaged leg. ‘And I’m recovering from a sprained knee. The least you can do is make me a soothing tea,’ she says it with a smile, but she definitely is not joking.

Tucking the handkerchief into my dressing gown pocket, I potter over to Mrs Ramirez’s kitchenette area. All of the fittings are exactly the same as in my room, but the space looks completely different. The counters are covered with spice jars and cookbooks and exotic-looking knick-knacks from who knows where. There’s even a big wooden sculpture of a face hanging on one of the cupboard doors. I reach out to touch it. It’s rough and primitive looking. It’s so unusual.

‘I got that from Papua New Guinea,’ Mrs Ramirez says. ‘Wonderful place. It’s a ceremonial mask, made by the craftsmen of the Sawos people.’

I nod, not wanting to admit that I’ve never even heard of Papua New Guinea, never mind the Sawos people.

‘You must go sometime!’

‘Maybe I will!’ I say. I neglect to tell her that that I am a twenty-seven-year-old woman who left her home country for the very first time less than forty-eight hoursago.

‘The tea is in the jar on the middle shelf of the cupboard on the right,’ she pointsout.

As I make two cups of this tea which smells like lovely cosy ginger, Mrs Ramirez tells me about her bad leg and how it’s kept her indoors for the last two weeks, how she hates being stuck inside. She tells me about how she has lived here for twenty years and she knows all the comings and goings of the various Airbnb guests next door. ‘None so pretty as you. Or crying so noisily and with so much self-pity.’

All right, jeez.

‘It’s just been a crazy, crazy day,’ I say, taking a sip of thetea.

Mrs Ramirez nods, slurping from her cup and making an ‘aaaaaah’ noise. ‘What happened?’

I must really need to get it out, or maybe it’s this tea making me relax a little, but I tell Mrs Ramirez –a total stranger– everything. I blurt about the flight and Seth, about Anders and the Gramercy Park getaway, and then about that wretched sketch on Sunday NightLive.

When I’ve finished telling her, I take a breath. ‘And that’s why I’m crying. I’ve never experienced this many emotions in such a short space oftime!’

‘New York can be… a little challenging,’ Mrs Ramirez remarks. ‘But it is the most magical place in the world. Anything can happen here – as you are finding out. Most people dream of coming to NewYork.’

‘Oh. Well, yeah. I never expected to be here. I’ve come for my friend. Birdie. She’s dying and wants me to deliver a letter to a man called Chuck.’

Mrs Ramirez’s hands fly to her mouth. ‘Oh my goodness. How terrible. What is wrong withher?’

‘It’s lupus,’ I say. ‘She’s had it for a while. It’s just a matter of time now until it gets the better of her. She’s a had a few close calls and she’s gotten through them. But she’s starting to get poorlier as the months goby.’

Mrs Ramirez narrows her eyes. ‘It is very interesting how bluntly you tell methis.’

I frown. ‘How do youmean?’

‘Like… it doesn’t bother you. You are so matter-of-fact about your friend dying.’

I wave her away. ‘Of course it bothers me. I just don’t think about it too hard. I can’t, because if Ido…’

I trail off, not bearing to even think aboutit.

Mrs Ramirez gives me an odd sort of look. Like she’s trying to work me out. ‘Forgive me. I just… grieving is very important.’

‘Birdie’s not dead yet,’ I say heatedly.

Mrs Ramirez’s soft tanned cheeks flush pink. ‘Of course. I’m sorry.’

There’s an awkward moment.

‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to get grumpy. It’sjust…’

‘I know, chica,’ Mrs Ramirez says, leaning across to pat my knee. ‘Iknow.’

‘I should probably let you get back to bed,’ I say, talk of Birdie’s illness lodging like a stone stuck into my throat, neither coming up nor going down. Just there. Waiting for me to confrontit.

‘Wait!’ Mrs Ramirez says as I stand up to leave. ‘Why don’t you just call this TV show and tell them you don’t like what they said aboutyou.’

I fight the urge to laugh. For someone so well-travelled Mrs Ramirez doesn’t seem to have a great handle on how these thingswork.

‘You can’t just phone a TV show. And even if you can, they won’t do anything. It’s already happened! It was liveTV!’

‘I suppose…’

I approach the door when Mrs Ramirez calls me again.

‘Will you do me a kindness? My knee is not quite healed and I need to post these letters to my pen pals. They have been sitting on my dresser for two weeks and I would very much like to get them in the post. Do you think you might take them forme?’

‘Oh, sure,’ I say. ‘No problem.’

She stands up, leaning on her walking stick and hobbles over to a large mahogany dresser where a small stack of postcards are arranged neatly in a pile. She picks them up and limps her way back over tome.

‘You have a lot of pen pals,’ I remark, taking them fromher.

‘I met them on my travels,’ she says. ‘My friends come from all over the world! I’m very lucky! Maybe you will meet a special friend in New York City!’ she says with a chuckle.

‘I’ve met you!’ I smile at her. ‘Thanks for the tea and the chat. I really neededit.’

‘It was my pleasure,’ she says, pulling me in for a spontaneous hug that, to my surprise, makes my heart swell. ‘You come see me again anytime?’

‘I will,’ I say, hugging her back, her soft round body comforting and oddly protective. ‘I definitelywill.’