The Three of Us (2 page)

Wandering over to Peter's desk, I stretch my right leg out on the window sill as I imagine the dancer Sylvie Guillaume might do to stretch her astonishingly long hamstrings, and announce, ‘I'm not pregnant.'

‘What do you mean?' he says, hunched over his Powerbook without looking up.

‘I mean I've done a test and I'm not pregnant.'

‘That's good,' he says, tapping the space bar and still not looking up. ‘Did you think you might be?'

‘Well, it's very odd because I'm late and I'm never usually late. But the test is negative, so I can't be pregnant.'

There is a short pause. ‘Good oh,' he says cheerfully.

Sunday, 3 May

Peter

Joanna is behaving very oddly. Suddenly she announces that she's not pregnant. I hadn't even realized that she might be. I assume that being unpregnant is the standard template, one that doesn't require confirmation by way of regular bulletins. In any case I am relieved by the all clear.

Later, on my way to buy groceries at D'Agostino's on Washington Street, I pass a man unloading boxes from a truck into the twenty-four-hour City Deli at the corner of our building. On the side of the truck is painted the name of the company: ‘Lo Boy Foods'. Underneath it advertises ‘Individual portions of meats and fish'. An entire company devoted to the catering needs of solitary diners? Maybe that is my fate, sitting alone in middle age, eating individual portions of meat and fish from ‘Lo Boy Foods'.

The prospect of Joanna being pregnant suddenly doesn't seem so unpalatable, well, no less palatable than a future fuelled by ‘Lo Boy Foods'.

On my return from shopping, on the corner of Bank and Hudson, the old folks are sitting in their wheelchairs on the pavement in front of the Village Nursing Home, rolled there by the white-uniformed nursing aides for some ‘fresh air'. Their the worn-out bodies will slowly toast the morning away in their wheelchairs, empty eyes staring out at the traffic.

And I notice, yet again, the smartly dressed middle-aged man sitting on a bench to one side, with his mother. He reads the
New York Times
intently, while she sits twitching next to him, one leg crossed tightly over the other, bony knuckles clenched over the armrests of her wheelchair. She is unable to talk or even to listen, it seems. I'm sure she wouldn't notice whether he's there or not, but that doesn't dissuade this conscientious son from his daily vigil. His dedication to his uncomprehending mother makes me feel ashamed of myself.

And again a baser thought worms its way into my mind. Maybe it's just as well to have kids around in case I happen to survive into my own dotage.

Friday, 8 May

Joanna

My period is now two weeks late, though every day it feels as if it's about to start. I can't face the uncertainty of another home test, so I am sitting in the offices of my Murray Hill gynaecologist. I am thirty-six and this is the first time I have ever visited a gynaecologist. At home, in England, I relied on the GP for everything, but in New York everyone has a different doctor for every part of the body. Americans recommend them to each other as a sign of trust and friendship, like hot stock-market tips. I remember asking Kelly, shortly after we'd met and we were sitting in Bar Pitti on Sixth Avenue, if she could suggest a good doctor.

‘What sort?'

‘Well, you know, a good family doctor, a generalist.'

‘You know, that's kinda hard and I really wouldn't recommend mine,' she said, pushing a manicured index finger around the salt-fringed rim of her margarita so it made a dry, squeaking noise. ‘I really don't think he's very good. He won't diagnose over the phone, so you have to go to his office every time you need him. But I do have a very good dermatologist, my gynaecologist is excellent and I have a truly excellent podiatrist. But he may be full, I was lucky, he was mentioned in
New York
magazine's top ten doctors, and now he's got a waiting list longer than the Coney Island boardwalk…'

‘Honey, you should tell her about our neurologist too,' interrupted Jeff, her husband. ‘And somewhere', he added, fishing out his Palm Pilot and whipping the stylus over the screen, ‘I have the number of a very good orthopediologist. How much do you pay for insurance?'

‘Three hundred and eighty-nine dollars a month. Each.'

‘What? Are you nuts? Three eighty nine! We only pay two hundred and fifty each.'

‘It was the cheapest I could find that would take us on,' I protested.

‘Health care in this country is screwed,' said Jeff, tapping his margarita glass and mouthing ‘Three more, please' to the bartender. ‘Hey, is that Madonna over there?' Outside the bar a white stretch limo had pulled up and the singer, accompanied by another woman, got out and disappeared into the bar next door.

‘Well screw her,' said Jeff, who, I have noticed recently, can get pretty angry over nothing much at all. ‘Screw her and her slutty friends. We don't want them in here anyway.'

‘Doctors?' I murmured trying to bring the subject back.

He shook his head. ‘You want a general doctor, right?'

‘Yes,' I said, thinking back to Dr O'Reilly in Notting Hill, whom I had chosen because, like every other GP I have ever been to in my life, she was the nearest.

‘Well, it all depends. Do you self-medicate?' he demanded.

‘Self what?'

‘Self-medicate. You know, self-diagnose, call your doctor and self-prescribe?'

I confessed this was not a common practice in Britain.

‘Oh it should be, it saves them time and you can just pick up the prescription … I mean three years ago I was going through a bad time – before I met you, honey,' he grinned at Kelly. ‘And I knew I was having a depression. So I phoned up and self-prescribed Prozac.'

‘Really?' I exclaimed, imagining how Dr O'Reilly – a taciturn Irish woman whose sole driving force appeared to come from resisting local pressure to become a GP fundholder – would have reacted if I had phoned and casually self-prescribed Prozac.

‘Yeah, well, as it turned out I didn't suit Prozac at all, in fact it made me a little paranoid. But then I did go to see my doctor and she switched me to Zoloft, which has been great. It's a much better drug for me in fact. Still is.

‘Whatever, you'll love my doctor,' he added, retrieving a pen from his wife's Prada Kelly bag. ‘Give her a call and say I recommended you. Leah Falzone, she's over on Union Square.'

Friday, 8 May

Peter

It is nearly midnight and I'm in my customary position, slumped at my desk staring out of the window. The meat trucks have just started their deliveries outside, so instead of going to bed and lying awake, fretting about my test results, I am trying to work. Our apartment block is in a supposedly ‘happening' area called the Meat Packing District, and we are surrounded by giant meat warehouses that supply New York's restaurants and hotels. Unbeknown to us when we moved in, the Meat Packing District is deserted during the day, beginning its work each night at about midnight, when convoys of huge refrigerated trucks arrive from the Mid-West to unload chilled carcasses of cows, sheep and pigs. These trucks back up into the warehouses emitting a continuous screech of warning beeps, a sound specifically designed to penetrate. And penetrate it does, right through our storm windows and over the roar of the air-conditioner.

So I sit at my desk, trying to work and looking out at the view. It is an interesting view, more interesting than the stale words of my novel. To the north it takes in the illuminated ribbons of traffic of the West Side Highway, busy at any hour; a vast floodlit billboard of the Marlboro cowboy lighting up against a bucolic Montana backdrop; and a large black ‘V' sign on an orange background, which marks the entrance to the Vault, which bills itself as New York's favourite S&M club.

Across to the west is the chimneyed husk of the decommissioned Chelsea branch of the New York Sanitation Department, now used as a parking lot for city garbage trucks; a broad band of the Hudson River and the twinkling lights of the condo towers that have recently risen from the New Jersey shoreline. In the strip of wall mirror at right angles to the window, I can see the reflection of the massive mausoleum of the Port Authority Terminal and across to the Empire State Building.

Six floors below me are the uneven Belgian cobbles of Gansevoort Street, which, the real estate agent forgot to mention, is a main night-time drag for transvestite prostitutes. They patrol up and down among the warehouses, conforming precisely to the meat-market metaphor.

All of them are black and tall, even taller as they totter on their high heels up and down the broken sidewalk, sashaying for the headlights of potential customers who drive by, often twice or three times, checking out the goods before pulling over. The deed is usually done right there, behind a skip of offal, under a fire escape or between parked meat-delivery vans. This might obscure them from casual passers-by (there are none), but it leaves them totally exposed to my gaze. Curiosity about the details of who does what to whom has overcome my initial distaste at the scene below and I remain in position, a voyeur from our own home.

It is a strange business. Oral sex plays a prominent role, but so do masturbation and other variations which remain irritatingly just out of sight, behind jiggling bodies. What occurs to me is how brief it is, spectacularly so. I suppose this is because of the furtive nature of the transaction.

Surprisingly soon it has lost its capacity to shock us, it has become mundane, just part of the local scene. We now recognize the different ‘girls'. Tonight I have spotted Ru. We have nicknamed her Ru, partly because she is the most diligent streetwalker, and partly after the black transvestite celebrity Ru Paul, who now has her own television talk show.

We find that we have started to worry about the girls' safety, fearing that one may be beaten up or killed. We have become invisible guardians, ready to dial 911 at the first sign of trouble. But all goes smoothly; there is a well-worn ritual to the transaction. Even the price appears to be pre-set, with a quick transfer of notes before business is initiated.

Joanna emerges sleepily from the bedroom.

‘What you doing?' she slurs.

‘Being a peeping Tom,' I reply dryly.

Just then a yellow cab stops beneath us, and its Sikh driver gets out and walks round to check one of his tyres. He kicks it a couple of times and then has a leisurely piss against the wall. As he is waggling to a finish, Ru strolls nonchalantly past him. We can see them having a conversation, but we cannot hear it. It is very brief, he utters four or five words, and she gives a similarly terse reply.

Then the Sikh reaches out and very deliberately squeezes Ru's left breast, like a farmer at a livestock market checking the consistency of a dairy cow he's considering purchasing. He climbs back in his cab and drives away, and Ru continues her lonely patrol. Whatever has occurred was clearly consensual.

‘What do you think they said to each other?' asks Joanna.

I imagine he asked her, ‘What are they made of?' or even, ‘Are they real?'

And Ru replied, ‘Check 'em out for yourself, darling. On the house.'

Monday, 11 May

Joanna

The gynaecologist's office recommended by Dr Falzone is far smarter than anything I have encountered in the British Health Service. With black-leather seating and the latest editions of
Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Elle, National Geographic,
the
New Yorker
and
Time,
the reception is more like a discreet hotel lobby. The walls are quietly green, decorated with soothing scenes from Yosemite, each framed in black; thundering waterfalls and proud snowcapped mountains. Each one is accompanied by a motivational slogan: ‘The bend in the road is not the end of the road – unless you fail to make the turn'; ‘Some people dream of success – others wake up and work at it.'

Indeed, there is nothing in our surroundings to suggest we are in a doctor's waiting room at all, until I notice a discreet plastic box of leaflets dispensing advice on how to avoid genital herpes: ‘Genital herpes. One in four American adults suffers. There is no cure!'

‘Ms Coles?' one of a troika of receptionists calls, beckoning with a silver-polished nail so long it has curled round on itself like a miniature dough hook.

‘Your insurance card?' I hand over the blue plastic card which I have learned to keep alongside my credit and social security cards at all times in case of emergency. ‘Please fill these forms out and give them back to me before you see the doctor.'

There are four pages of intricate forms demanding my entire medical history, that of my immediate family, and then another sheet demanding my signature to take full responsibility for payment should there prove to be a problem with my insurance.

‘Ms Coles,' a bouncy-haired woman in a white coat with a badge on indicating she is Beth, and whom I assume to be a doctor, waves a clipboard at me and I follow her into a large wooden-panelled office, where several impressively framed certificates compete for wall space with more motivational photos of Yosemite.

‘So, Joanna, I'm Beth. This is the first time you've been to us?'

‘Yes.'

‘And you've filled in all the forms and we've seen your insurance card, right?'

I nod.

‘Great. So, what can I do you for today?'

‘Well, I'm ten days late and I'm never normally late. So I did a home pregnancy test, but that was negative. But I think I'm pregnant anyway.'

‘Why do you think that, Joanna?'

‘Well, I just sort of feel it. You know, painful breasts, prolonged period pain…'

‘You know what, I'm gonna give you a blood test, but it doesn't sound to me as if you're pregnant. Those shop tests are pretty accurate. How old are you?' She glances down at one of the sheets I've filled in.