Page 10 of Meet Me In Central Park

‘Listen, these four virtually push me out of my own bed at night and they get plenty of treats, just not cheesecake.’ She sat down at the table with everyone else. ‘They already leak more hot air than a Con Ed steam pipe as it is!’

‘A what?’ I had no idea if I’d even heard her right and I instinctively looked across at Harry for clarification.

‘They’re the orange and white pipes you see on the roads; they release the steam from the heating systems in the buildings.’ He smiled. ‘It paints quite the picture of the dogs’ gas problem, doesn’t it?’

‘It certainly does.’ I returned his smile as the conversation amongst the group continued. It wasn’t just Harry I felt an unexplained connection with. It was strange how at home I felt with these people who I’d only known for days, hours in Paula’s case – but they already felt like friends. Maybe it was because I’d spent all my time with my grandparents’ friends over the last couple of years, feeling like a spare part and knowing they all felt sorry for me. Whatever the reason, I’d forgotten how much fun just chatting could be and it had been worth coming to the art class for that alone.

‘I’m glad you’re all still here!’ A girl who looked like she was in her mid-twenties came into the café, and you could almost feel the energy coming off her. Looking to my right, I saw Rob slide down in his seat.

‘Abbie, this is Libby and Madison. I think you’re the only ones who haven’t met.’ Karly pulled a chair out for Abbie as she spoke, but the younger girl didn’t take it. It was almost as if she had too much energy to sit down.

‘Nice to meet you!’ She looked around the table. ‘So, how many tickets should I put you all down for? Karly said she gave you the info.’

‘Is the play going to be as weird as the flyers make it look?’ Paula said what everyone else was almost certainly thinking and I had to fight to stop the corners of my mouth from turning up the way they were so desperate to do.

‘Do you want to end up having to look for somewhere else to run your colouring-in classes?’ It turned out that Abbie could give as good as she got, and they both laughed. ‘Come on, people, all the funds are going to keeping this place open, and keeping these pugs in the lifestyle they’ve gotten accustomed to. Where else is Karly gonna find a job where they let her take the four dogs in to sleep on the couch all day? This is an important cause, and you’re not getting out of it. That includes you, Rob.’

‘As if I’d miss a play about’ – Rob picked up one of the flyers – ‘the emancipation of millennial woman.’

‘What about you, Libby? Are you up for experiencing some off-off-Broadway avant-garde theatre?’ Harry’s dark eyes twinkled and, if I hadn’t known better, I’d have sworn he was flirting with me. I shot a furtive glance towards Paula, but she didn’t seem at all bothered. She obviously had as much trust in him as he did in her.

‘Well, if everyone else is going…?’ Okay, maybe a play about the liberation of modern women was never going to be top of my New York wish list, even if it was a stepping stone to being able to watch a Broadway show without Mum by my side. But, despite my doubts, I’d had a great evening at the art class, so I was willing to give it a go. And one thing was for certain, I was learning to make friends again, which had to be a step in the right direction.

‘That’s settled then.’ Abbie finally sat down and helped herself to the last slice of cheesecake.

‘You have no idea what you’ve got us into,’ Dannie whispered into my ear as Abbie started handing out the tickets, ‘but you definitely owe me that Swarovski bauble now.’

I caught Harry’s eye again. Seeing the show would give me another chance to work out why I was hit by déjà vu every time he looked in my direction, and I’d have been happy to part with a dozen Swarovski baubles for that.

5

Aunt Dottie was only just over five-feet tall, but she seemed to take up half the shop when she was in there. By the third week of November, she’d managed to ditch the scooter and was walking with a stick. She still wasn’t up to working a full shift in the shop, but that didn’t stop her popping in on a regular basis to check up on us.

‘So how are the fall lines selling? It’s only a week to Thanksgiving, so we’ve got to shift as much of it as we can.’ Dottie wasn’t telling us anything we didn’t already know. One wall of the shop was decorated with the range from the fall line, with hessian bunting spelling out ‘Happy Thanksgiving’, tea-light holders with orange glass, and wreaths decorated with dried flowers and miniature pumpkins.

‘We’ve sold about three quarters of the stock.’ If I’d expected a pat on the back from my great aunt, I was in for a disappointment.

‘Well then, you need to keep pushing it hard over the next few days. No one who comes in here for a Christmas decoration should leave without something from the fall line too.’ Now I knew how she’d managed to keep a shop running on Seventh Avenue. This was no location for the faint-hearted, and I knew how much needed to go through the till, just to cover overheads.

‘We’ll give it our best shot, won’t we Madison?’

‘Of course. We always do.’ She was making her second attempt at sticking together a gingerbread house, but it already had more frosting than gingerbread on it, and I didn’t think any amount of extra icing could salvage it. We had a stack of gingerbread-house kits to sell, too. And we had to put one together to show customers what it would be like, but these things were always more difficult than they looked and not even DIY SOS could have salvaged this place.

‘How are things with Brian?’ It was time for a change of subject, and Aunt Dottie’s face lit up when I mentioned his name.

‘Very good, actually. It was Brian who suggested I go for a fall colour in time for Thanksgiving.’ Dottie patted her hair. It wasn’t quite pumpkin-orange, but ‘vibrant’ would have been an understatement.

‘It’s striking.’ I caught Madison’s eye and had to glance down at the order book for a minute to stop my face from giving me away. I loved the fact that I’d wanted to laugh so much more since I’d arrived in New York, but it could have its downsides. ‘We’ve had a lot of big orders in, since we started the shipping service.’ I’d suggested offering to ship ornaments back to customers’ home countries, during the first week I was working in the shop. We already offered online mail order for some of our lines in the US, so it seemed like a natural extension of the service. People were definitely willing to order more, once they were sure they could get it home safely and not open their suitcases to discover the beautiful glass bauble they’d bought, as a memento of New York, had been shattered into a thousand pieces.

‘It was a good idea, I suppose.’ Dottie’s praise might have been grudging, but it meant all the more because of that. No one could describe her as gushing – if she paid you a compliment, she meant it and that was quite something.

A group of French tourists came into the shop, and Aunt Dottie mouthed the words ‘fall line’ in a really over-exaggerated way. I didn’t rate our chances of selling much of the Thanksgiving merchandise to people who didn’t even celebrate it, but I was willing to give it a go.

‘I’ll see you later then, girls.’ Aunt Dottie squeezed past the customers as I went over to see if they needed any help. ‘Brian’s promised me a neck and shoulder massage, and I wouldn’t want to be late for that little treat!’

Hoping our French customers didn’t speak good enough English to pick up on how loaded with innuendo Aunt Dottie’s words were, I watched her go outside and hail a cab like a pro. Smiling to myself, I wondered if I’d have half her chutzpah when I was in my seventies, and then I felt that twist in my stomach again – my parents hadn’t even made it out of their fifties alive. What right did I have to imagine an old age, when they’d been robbed of theirs?

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