Chapter 20

Chapter Twenty

Email from [email protected]:

OMG. Doctor BJ heard you talking about his peen! I had to turn my phone off, so I couldn’t text back last night but I am mortified! He came in, his voice all stuttery and his face all red. He said: ‘Do you have something you wish to discuss, Birdie.’ And so I just told him that my friend – you – has a major crush on him. I know you’ve never even seen him, but he doesn’t know that. I’m sorry, Brewster. I had to throw you under the bus to save myself!! I apologise for being glib about you feeling so embarrassed re. Sunday Night Live. I have had a taste of my own medicine fo sho!!! Argh! Good luck getting Chuck’s letter back today!

As I stepoff the ferry with wobbly legs, I stand for a moment with closed eyes, feeling immensely grateful to be back on solid ground.

I follow Seth as he walks confidently out of the large bright terminal and purposely down the street, not even looking at a map on his phone.

‘You know this place well?’ I ask, walking quickly to keep up with his long-legged strides.

‘I grew up here, actually.’

As an ominous roll of thunder booms above us, the rain starts pelting down once more. I put up my umbrella and quicken my walking speed.

‘Can I get under there with you?’ Seth asks, crouchingdown.

‘Seriously? It’s been raining for two days straight. How do you not have an umbrella of yourown?’

Seth shrugs. ‘I forgot, I guess.’

I wonder how someone can just go through life not being prepared for anything. I bet he thinks he can just charm his way out of any trouble he might get himself into. Jumping queues because he didn’t charge his laptop, getting under other people’s umbrellas in the rain, avoiding getting kicked in the goolies by women he publicly humiliated for a laugh.

Above us a huge roll of thunder booms out of the sky. I decide to be generous.

‘Well, you’ll be no use to me with hypothermia,’ I say, handing the umbrella to Seth so he doesn’t have to crouch, and getting under it withhim.

‘We’re about five minutes away from the Post Office,’ Seth shouts over the sounds of the rain spattering onto the brolly aboveus.

‘Cool,’ I reply, feeling strangely self-conscious as we try to walk in sequence under the umbrella, our arms bumping up against each other.

Eventually we reach the Post Office building – a big tan-coloured structure that looks like it was airlifted in straight from the nineteen-seventies. Seth pushes open the glass door and holds it forme.

The décor inside is beige and drab – a bit like how Donna decorated the living room at our house in Saddleworth. Thankfully it’s pretty quiet and we don’t have to wait too long to see someone. My balloon is popped, though, when I realise that the man assigned to help us is a real jobsworth who doesn’t seem to want to help atall.

‘You posted an unaddressed letter?’ he says for the millionthtime.

‘It was an ACCIDENT,’ I reply for the millionthtime.

As the man rants and raves about the amount of stupid people in New York who don’t send mail correctly, I make a kind of snarly noise. Beside me, Seth laughs, which doesn’t help atall.

‘Well, of course you will need to submit a formal request in writing,’ Jobsworth says, running his hand up and down his tie. ‘And then that will have to be processed. Could take a week. Could take a month. You never cantell.’

I put my head in my hands. ‘Dude, can’t you just go into a back room and search through the lost and found? I only sent it yesterday!’

The man folds his arms. I think he’s getting mad atme.

‘Do you watch Sunday Night Live?’ Seth asks suddenly, leaning his elbows onto the counter and smiling at the man in a chummyway.

I roll my eyes. He’s so arrogant. Expecting that he can just charm his way around any problem, like he did with the check-in assistant at the airport.

‘Of course,’ the man says, as surely as if Seth had just asked him if he had anose.

Seth lowers his voice. ‘I work on thatshow.’

The man frowns. ‘I don’t recogniseyou.’

‘I’m not a cast member – not yet at least – I’m a writer for the show and if you can get me this letter, I have two tickets for you. Frontrow.’

The man studies us both with an expression of deep distrust. ‘I don’t believeyou.’

Seth reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a worn, childish-looking wallet. It looks like the kind of canvas wallet Alex had when he was about thirteen. Seth slides out a lanyard. I peer atit.

Seth Hartman Senior Writer – Sunday Night Live. Rockefella Centre.

The Post Office man goggles. And immediately disappears into a backroom.

Twenty minutes later, he returns brandishing the letter like it’s the golden snitch. I grab it off him and immediately burst into tears, hugging the letter to my chest.

‘Thank God, thank God, thank God!’ I whisper, kissing the letter, my hands shaking. I hadn’t quite realised how terrified I’d been about losing it untilnow.

‘Thanks to you!’ I say to Post Office guy, reaching up to give him a kiss on the cheek.

‘Thanks to you!’ I say to Seth, not kissing his cheek but holding my hand out to formally shake his again.

Why the floop do I keep doingthat?

* * *

I knowI said I would go to lunch with Seth, but now I have the letter, I just want to get it safely into Chuck Allen’s hands as quickly as possible. Plus it’s only elevena.m.!

I’m about to suggest we just head straight back to the ferry terminal when Seth casually mentions that he only gets six tickets a year to give away to friends and family. He used two of those to get my letter back? To be fair, it is entirely his fault that I accidentally posted it. But still, it’s another forty-five minutes until the next ferry and he is offering free pizza. I would be a true moron to turn thatdown.

Following a five-minute walk, the pair of us once more clumsily squished beneath my brolly, we arrive at what looks less like a respectable pizza place and more like a bar. I glance at the flashing neon pink sign in the window. This place is called ‘Trickys’. No apostrophe!

‘Abar?’

‘I didn’t say it was a pizza restaurant, just that it did the best pizza. Come on!’ Seth beams, showing teeth as white and American as Birdie’s. It occurs to me that it’s the first time he’s properly smiled since I met him. This must be some top-drawer pizza.

I follow him in. Yep. This is a bar. What might be kindly termed a ‘dive’ bar. The floor is dusty, there’s a TV blaring high behind the bar, competing with the sounds of blues music coming from the vintage jukebox. My eyes widen. Never in my life have I been in a place like this. And Greater Manchester is full of dubiouspubs!

It’s busier than one would expect, it being pre-lunch on a weekday and all, and everyone in here is drinking beer. Morningbeer.

At the back of the room is a pool table being used by a man and a woman in brightly coloured loungewear. The woman’s loungewear has the word ‘sweetcheeks’ written in a cursive script across her backside. I can’t help but admire her confidence and, indeed, her sweet cheeks.

‘This place is…’ I trail off, unable to find just one word to describe this subterranean boozetastic roadhouse. My eyes goggle at the fact that just off that quiet little street, this place exists. And I’m in it. I suppress a giggle thinking about what Donna would make ofit.

‘Lil’ Hartman, baby!’

The woman’s voice is very loud – it would have to be to be heard over the hullabaloo.

‘Phyllis!’ Seth yells back, so raucously that it makes me jump. He embraces the extraordinarily skinny woman so tightly I’m afraid she might crack. Her hair is bright red. Not in an elegant ginger way – in an actual crimson red way. It’s piled atop her head in a very high bouffant. Her black eyeliner is expertly smudged heavily around her wrinkled blue eyes and she’s wearing a gold chain with the words ‘fuck you’ written out in an incongruously pretty font. ‘Hey, less of the ‘little, please?’ Seth laughs, kissing her on the cheek.

‘You’ll always be a baby to me.’ She reaches to ruffle his hair. ‘Who are you?’ she says, turning to me. ‘Another girlfriend? What happened to Blondie?’

‘Not girlfriend,’ I say at the same time as Seth says, ‘Not my girlfriend, Phyllis. This is my friend Olive. She’s engaged.’

I screw my face up as I shake Phyllis’s tiny hand. Engaged?

‘Good for you, honey,’ she says. ‘What’s his name? Is he from Staten Island? I might know him. Is he as handsome as our lil’ Hartmanhere?’

I blink for a few moments, not believing just how out of hand this whole fake engagement has become.

Phyllis pulls a face at Seth as if to ask, ‘who the heck is this moron?’

‘I believe her fiancé’s names is Colin Collins,’ Seth explains, throwing me an oddlook.

‘Yes, yes of course!’ I stammer quickly. ‘Colin. Colin! He’s very handsome. He… has sideburns.’

I allow myself a brief second to think of Colin’s lovely sideburns and his pleasant text messages.

Phyllis pats me on the arm. ‘Very nice. Now you two kids take a seat, what can I getyou?’

‘Two beers and a meatball pizza,’ Seth says, as we slide into one of the three booths opposite the bar. He turns to me. ‘Sorry, I don’t mean to be the jerk who orders without asking, but I promise you the meatball pizza is outta this world.’

‘Great,’ I say, the thought of meatballs and pizza together making me feel both nervous and excited. ‘I’ll just have a water, though,’ I say. ‘Bit early forme!’

‘We don’t serve water,’ Phyllis says stonily. I look to Seth to see if she’s joking but his face is as straight as hers. She might be old and skinny but she’s also kind of terrifying.

‘Um. Okay. A beer,’ Isay.

Phyllis, wiggles off to the bar, telling a rowdy customer to ‘go and fuck himself’ as she does so. The guy, a very large, bald-headed man immediately apologises for whatever he’s done to upsether.

‘How do you know Phyllis?’ I say, fascinated by this small fierce woman.

‘She was a groupie of my dad’s.’

‘A groupie?!’ I look over at Phyllis. I can see it actually. The loud pink dress, the clashing red hair, the big earrings. She looks like a rock chick. ‘Your dad was a musician? That must have beencool.’

‘He was a stand-up comedian, actually.’

I raise my eyebrows. ‘That’s even cooler.’

Seth smiles, almost to himself more than to me. ‘It was. He was amazing.’

‘Would I have heard ofhim?’

‘Nah. But he was pretty popular around Manhattan, at the Comedy Cellar and Dangerfield’s. He even did a spot on the Letterman showonce.’

‘Wow.’

‘Yep. But he never quite made it big.’ Seth shrugs. ‘And now he’s in a nursing home upstate, making the other residents laugh in their oldage.’

A short, stocky dark-haired fella treads over to the booth and plonks down two bottles of beer so enthusiastically that they foam up, spilling out of the bottleneck.

‘Thanks, Sonny!’ Seth says, giving the man a biggrin.

‘How’s it going, hotshot? How’s the fancy life? Clearly treating you pretty well.’ Sonny nods in my direction. I give him a smile.

‘Yeah, it’s all right!’ says Seth, his cheeks turning a littlered.

‘Will we actually see you on TV at any point? Or they still keeping you locked up behind the scenes. Ain’t no one wanna put your ugly mug on screen!’ The guy punches Seth’s shoulder jokily.

‘I have an audition tomorrow actually,’ Seth tells him. ‘For a cast member position.’

Sonny’s eyes widen. ‘Oh wow! Seth, that’s amazing.’ He clears his throat, his face turning serious. ‘Your pops would be proud.’

Seth shrugs a shoulder. ‘We’ll see… Keep your fingers crossed forme.’

When Sonny has returned to the kitchen to get our food, I look at Seth curiously.

‘You have an audition tomorrow?’ I ask. ‘Shouldn’t you be preparing rightnow?’

Seth waves me away. ‘Ah, I’ve auditioned a gazillion times before,’ he tells me. ‘I never get it. They like me as a writer, but I always flake out on the stage.’

‘Flakeout?’

‘I forget my lines.’ He pushes his glasses up his nose with his forefinger. ‘Which is crazy because it’s the same routine I’ve been doing for years.’

‘Well, do you prepare? Do you practise?’

Seth laughs. ‘That’ll take all the fun out ofit!’

I shake my head, horrified. ‘Do you even want to be a cast member?’

‘Sure Ido.’

‘Maybe you should prepare. So you won’t flake out thistime?’

Seth puts his arms behind his head and leans back against the booth. His top rides up a little, revealing a tiny bit of stomach. I think of James McAvoy and Keira Knightly in the library. I swipe the image quickly away. ‘What will be will be, I guess.’ Seth sighs.

‘What will be will be?’ I say incredulously. ‘That sounds like an awful way to live.’ I shudder at the very thought. ‘I like to know exactly what’s going to happen. In the words of Radiohead, No surprises, please.’

‘Where’s the excitement in that?’ Seth argues, taking a gulp of hisbeer.

‘Who says I’m looking for excitement?’

‘Aren’t weall?’

I think of Mum leaving our family in her selfish bid for excitement. Of Alex and me sitting in the kitchen, crying because Dad was so sad and we didn’t know how to help him. I think of the past few days in New York. They’ve been what most people would call exciting. But I am technically on the run from the police and semi-famous for pissing in front of a stranger. That is not a positive thing.

‘Excitement is overrated.’ I lift my chin and take a small sip of beer. ‘Excitement is just terror with PRspin.’

‘You’re nuts,’ Seth laughs lightly.

‘Maybe I’m the sane one,’ I counter, tucking my hair behind myear.

‘So… how is the prepare for every eventuality approach working out for you, huh?’

‘In general, absolutely fine.’ I fiddle with the strap on my satchel. ‘Obviously the past few days have been… complicated. But that’s only because I’ve been completely unprepared. I’m sure if I’d have known earlier that I was coming to New York, if I’d had time to arrange and organise everything, things would be going a lot more smoothly rightnow.’

‘Oh really?’

‘Yes! I mean, I only knew I was coming here hours before I flew out. I had no time to psyche myself to get on a plane, to get hold of Xanax, or whatever it was you suggested. If I had been adequately prepared I wouldn’t have acted so mental. Then I wouldn’t have been parodied on TV by an unscrupulous writer. Then I wouldn’t have had to collar you in the street, accidentally posting Birdie’s letter.’

‘And we wouldn’t be here enjoying this beer, about to have the world’s best meatball pizza,’ Seth adds with a lopsided grin. He rests his chin on his hand. ‘I think if you prepare too much in life, you end up stifling yourself, stifling your creativity. You leave no room for anything amazing to happen unexpectedly.’

I scrunch my nose. ‘Unexpected things happening is my worst nightmare.’ I take a sip of my beer, enjoying the light pop and fizz of the bubbles on my tongue. ‘Surely a show like Sunday Night Live takes massive preparation. It’slive!’

‘Sure, it does. Most of the sketches are written on a Wednesday night. We work on them off the cuff, sometimes responding to news stories that have only just broken, or celebrities that have just said something ridiculous on Twitter. But things constantly change. So even if I prepared a perfectly written sketch, there’s a huge chance that it’s going to get rewritten and changed multiple times before the show. Sometimes things change even seconds before they’re due toair.’

I wince at the thought.

‘And,’ Seth continues, slurping back his beer and following it with a highly satisfied ‘aah’ noise, ‘the best moments the show has ever had have come out of the unprepared moments. When cast members improvise, or break character, or a musical guest does something controversial. That’s what people love themost.’

I nod. ‘I get it. But if you’ve auditioned so many times to be on the cast and you’ve never gotten it, doesn’t it make sense to try something you haven’t done before – like practising? So you don’t flakeout?’

‘I probably won’t get it anyway.’ He looks down at the table for a moment. ‘If I prepare and build it up too much, it’ll feel even shittier when it doesn’t work out. And I like being a writer. It’s almost my dream. And having that is pretty good going, youknow?’

I nod, thinking about what my dream is. Am I close to it? It takes me a few seconds to realise with a jolt that I don’t really have a dream. Not even an almost dream like Seth. No real goals I want to reach or heights to aspireto.

Hmmm. Do I need a dream? Why do I need one? Can’t I be content with a steady life, a steady job, maybe a future with someone sweet like Colin. It might not set the world alight, but I’d be happy enough.

Wouldn’tI?