Spooning (41 page)

I
nvigorated and renewed, Tara and I decided to head downtown to scour the knockoffs on Canal Street. At least on Chinatown's Canal Street I knew exactly what I was getting. And so did most city tourists. Busloads of women from the Midwest roamed the streets with their big bouffant hairdos and high heels carrying huge garbage bags full of knockoff handbags and accessories. You could buy everything from faux Louis Vuitton and Prada, to faux Gucci and Versace. The reason these hot items were in such demand was that no one, especially in small-town USA, could tell the difference between a real and a fake bag. That's how good the knockoffs were on Canal.

As Tara and I pushed our way through the swarms of people, we could hear the potential buyers negotiating deals bigger than those in the corporate boardrooms of the financial district. They carried wallets stuffed with twenties and singles ready for business. They were the masters. They would grab six bags for under one hundred dollars! Then, with the aura of success wrapped around them like a fake pashmina, they would heft the bags through the crowded street. And crowded it was. Even the tourists learned quickly how to walk and push like a New Yorker down here. Elbows out, head down. I was being jostled back and forth as I blindly followed Tara's jacket.

“Ouch!” I cried as I was struck by the rubber wheel of a baby carriage.

In New York people with babies think they rule the city streets. I had seen more than one mother/nanny shove a baby carriage, complete with baby, off a street corner into traffic as if they assumed the cars would stop and the streetlight would change. The babies would squeal in glee at the colors flying
by—yellow taxis, green delivery vans, red sports cars, and blue bike messengers.

“God, who would bring a baby to Canal Street?” I asked Tara as I narrowly avoided being sideswiped by a cart loaded with knockoff T-shirts. Unfortunately, the woman with the baby carriage overheard me.

“A woman who has a baby, that's who!” she spat as she maneuvered her carriage, its wheels obviously designed for the high trails in Lake Tahoe rather than the New York streets.

We stumbled into the first few makeshift shops and found that most of the walls were covered in sheets—a sign that undercover cops were attempting to crack down on the hot merchandise. In order to avoid any confrontations, the sales- people usually just covered up the goods until they knew the coast was clear. It is illegal to sell knockoffs, but that doesn't scare them straight; money is what talks down here. Tara tried to peek under one sheet and immediately had her hand slapped by a five-foot-tall Chinese woman.

“No look! No, no!” she chastised. Tara shrugged.

“Do you have any white Louis's?” she asked casually.

“No, no have.”

“Come on,” she said sweetly giving the irritated woman a wink. “I know you have them,” she pressed, then turned to me. “My friend Sara got one down here last week.” The woman's expression didn't change. Tara spun in a two-foot radius littered with about a hundred bags. She picked up a blue tote with tan plastic straps.

“Can you put a Kate Spade label on this?” she asked.

“No, no do labels.”

“Yes, you do!” argued Tara.

“No, never.”

“No, never,” mimicked Tara. She let out a dramatic sigh, annoyed at the stalemate. We walked out and headed to the next shop. Again, all the “expensive” bags were covered with sheets. There must have been a big raid down here recently. With every step we took, my J. Lo high was being squashed by a lack of Canal Street success. One woman stood by the door of her store rattling away on a walkie-talkie. Her eyes were darting back and forth faster than the city traffic. All of a sudden a loud command barked through the walkie-talkie. The undercover cops must have been prowling nearby. The woman leapt into the air like a professional ballerina and grabbed the metal gate that covered the storefront at night. As it came rumbling downward, we bent over and ducked into the store. The door crashed to the ground.

“Oh no you don't!” screamed a bleached blonde with a southern accent who was already inside. “You are not locking me in here!” She ran full tilt toward the descending gate. “You are not trapping me in here!”

“Quick! Over to the back wall!” Tara commanded. We both knew that this dark den could be a blessing. With the gate down and the cops at bay, the shopkeepers would likely be more willing to show us the really hot items. As the southern blonde fumed, Tara sidled up to the leaping saleswoman and casually asked, “So, do you have any white Louis's?” Not that she really wanted a white Louis Vuitton handbag, but Tara knew those were the magic words these days on Canal Street. That one phrase meant that you, the consumer, knew your fake bags. You were asking for the newest item on the line. However, given the mysterious inner workings of Canal Street, white Louis's were probably already passé. The woman paused, looked us up and down, then motioned for us to follow her.

She pushed against the back wall and a door popped open as if it were a magic passageway. We ducked down and passed into the inner sanctum. Around us were bags piled high, made of see-through plastic, clothlike plastic, and faux leather (aka plastic). Like bunches of brightly colored balloons, they even hung from the ceiling above. Party time! But the woman didn't stop there. She wiggled her finger again, and pushed against another wall. This time we passed through a door about three-feet high and beyond was the room of all rooms. Everywhere we looked we saw bags made of faux skins, with real brass buckles and flexible straps (not hard ones). Paradise found! Yet with a foray into Utopia came complications— decision-making time; something I had to become better at.

“Got one!” called Tara shouting across the closet sized space. In her hand she held an odd shaped bag—part hobo, part clutch, with a twist of a tote. It was classic beige—good for spring or fall.

“Can you put a label on this?” she asked the saleswoman as she pealed out a couple of tens.

“You want Gucci?”

“No, I want Kate Spade,” Tara answered.

“You give me bag.” Tara turned over her new possession. Then she said, “You meet me outside.”

“What?”

“Outside now.” We scuttled back through the shop and out the door like mice from a city sewer. We stood being jostled on the corner as the woman reappeared, walked outside, and motioned for us to follow. Halfway down the block she handed the bag off to her cohort and ducked into a side alley. About ten more steps down the street, the mystery man stopped and handed us the purse in a brown paper bag.

“It's like an illicit drug deal,” I whispered to Tara. She shushed me immediately, I guess fearing that I would jinx the transaction. Seconds later, the guy was gone and we were left standing with our prized possession.

“Ah, I feel so complete,” Tara sighed.

“And it only cost you twenty bucks,” I replied as we walked back to the main strip.

Happy that we had made at least one deal, Tara and I continued our bag quest or so we thought.

“You want? You want pet?” A man shouted at us.

“Oh look! Turtles!” I squealed with glee. We crouched over a bucket with about an inch of water in it, full of inch-long turtles. Bright green little suckers. They were clambering over each other in an attempt to escape. They knew that if they didn't make it to some rich kid's Upper East Side apartment for a life of luxury, they'd be dumped into a park puddle or into a pot of boiling water at some sketchy restaurant. Bags weren't the only things you could buy on Canal Street; alongside the fake stuff, you could get the real stuff too. Between live clucking chickens and smoked whole ducks, and a sea of assorted fresh fish and itty-bitty turtles, Canal Street went from one extreme to another in a matter of blocks.

Now a pet was a luxury in this city. I couldn't have a cat—it was against single girl protocol. And New York dogs were pampered more than the socialites on Madison Avenue, which led to expenses that city newcomers like myself could not afford. During the winter, their precious paws were covered in cloth (probably mink lined) to protect their pads from the salt-covered, icy sidewalks. And during the summer, the dogs congregated on the street corners waiting for Doggie Day Camp to begin. Vans would arrive to take them for a ten-hour romp in the countryside.
Then, after their fun-filled day, they would be returned to their owners—the ultimate door-to-door service. Not to mention organic dog food, real leather collars, and vet bills. So what did that leave for the young girl starting out in the city?

A man was waving a green net in my face. I followed the fluttering mesh and must have made a nodding motion because next thing I knew, I was holding a water-filled baggie with a turtle in it.

“I'll love him, and hug him, and call him George!” I whispered.

“Now what the hell is that? I was saying that you should get a green bag, not a turtle,” Tara pointed out.

“Meet George,” I announced and held the bag up proudly.

“No way in hell. Do you know what kind of diseases those things carry?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like hot tubs, turtles are silent carriers of deadly bacterial … bacterial stuff,” Tara cried.

“Oh,” I said. George pushed himself against the bag. He must have seen the bling-bling on the table next to us. “Oh.”

A
bout an hour later, none the handbag richer, I decided that I had to head back uptown, “Or else George will roast,” I rationalized. The water in the bag was quite tepid. And George was no longer pushing against the bag so ferociously. His lack of luster mirrored my own lethargic state. One had to be in top form for Canal Street, and I was fading fast when my cell phone rang. I didn't recognize the number.

“God, could you not have ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas' playing as your ring in June?” Tara groaned.

“Hello?” I couldn't hear anything above the local din. “Hello?”

“Hey.”

My stomach dropped. It was Mr. J. P. Morgan. I almost stumbled into the pretzel cart.

“What's wrong? Your face is ghost white. Are you going to be sick?” Tara asked. I covered my right ear and attempted to shove the phone into my brain. I waved her away.

“Hey,” I repeated.

“How have you been?” It was incredible how such a simple phrase could make my stomach do a complete nose dive. For God's sake, I'd almost dropped George. I tried to think of all that had happened since February.

“Good. I've been good. I bought a turtle!” I said in a sickly cheerleader voice. A turtle?

“A turtle?” Tara mouthed.

Pause pause pause
. I panicked, wondering what to do. J. Lo's words of wisdom echoed through my mind: “Just because something looks pretty on the surface doesn't mean it is a solid investment for your future. A discerning eye is important in all areas of life.” I should let him make the effort, right? I stared at Tara, trying to send her mental SOSs but she backed away, obviously still thinking I was going to be sick. And she was nearly right.

“U-ahh-hack,” I cleared my throat, a compromise of sorts.

“Have you been sick?” he asked. Sick? It was June! Anger crept up inside me. He should have been wondering about my physical well-being during the flu season. And here he was, suddenly concerned in June?
Pause pause pause
.

“You don't sound good,” he reiterated. He might as well have said that I didn't look good. I turned to face a dim sum
window. My hair was a bit frazzled from the heat, I glowed a bit from our shopping efforts, and the circles under my eyes were a tad dark but I might have simply smudged my mascara. All in all, not too bad, really. And this time, I wasn't going to let him rattle me.

“No, I'm fine—fabulous in fact!” Why settle for mediocrity?

“You seeing anyone?” And with a thud, there it was. Why are guys so direct? We girls would have chatted about the weather, the upcoming sale at Barneys, and the newest reality star or celebrity scandal before asking the loaded question.
Pause pause pause
. Shit! Now I'd paused too long for credibility on the boyfriend story.

“No, um, no. Been dating, but no dance stars yet.” He laughed. Ohh, I was being witty.

“So Charlie, wanna grab some dinner? I miss seeing you.” Wait. I grabbed Tara's hand. She promptly pulled loose to look at a tray of watches. He missed seeing me—in terms of how I looked? I'd been told I was cute before. Or did he miss me, meaning my intellect and conversational skills, my overall depth of character? We never did talk much though. Did he miss the whole package? Was I a package deal? I thought frantically about what to do. I knew I should keep him guessing, make him beg—

“Okay!” Partly out of curiosity and partly on account of that undeniable tug he always seemed to have on me, I gave in. Screw it. So much for my game plan.

We decided to meet later on at a new spot in the Meat Packing District. Sitting quietly next to Tara on the subway home, my mind whirled. I was still in shock. It had been months since I'd seen J. P. Why had he called? Could it be that finally, after all those months of hoping and strategizing and trying to make it
work, he had finally realized that I was the best thing that had ever happened to him? My heart convulsed, my stomach tightened, and my fingers twirled the top of George's bag in an old nervous habit. Sensing that I was in no state to deal with the future of a turtle, I handed him off to some cute kid on the train. He grinned like I was Mrs. Claus and despite my toe-tapping jitters, I couldn't help but smile. I felt a surge of hopeful empowerment. This time I was in control. I was the one with the discerning eye. My fairy godmother had come a-visiting this morning, and I was Cinderella on her way to the ball. Yes, I was a fucking princess and I was going to get my prince!