Kitabı oku: «The Three of U.S.: A New Life in New York»

MAY
MANHATTAN
Friday, 1 May Joanna

The test is negative. There is no pink line in the second box on the tester stick, but I’m sure I am pregnant. I haven’t done it wrong either. Over the years I’ve done enough of these tests to know exactly how to use them; how to pee in a squatting position without splashing all over the tester stick and precisely how long to wait before looking for the tell-tale sign. Sometimes they use a red tick to indicate you’re pregnant; sometimes it’s a blue cross. With this one, the Answer Test, a positive answer is indicated by two pink lines. But there is only one. The other box, the important box, remains clear, white and unambiguous. I am not pregnant.

Friday, 1 May Peter

I have just returned from the doctor, who has managed to convince me that 1 am dying. The cause of my premature death will be the polyp that has developed under the skin of my left elbow. I became aware of it a few days ago as I walked along Hudson Street from the Printing House gym, favoured exercise yard of the West Village literati, back to our loft on Horatio Street. My polyp is hard to the touch, like a walnut, and curiously mobile. I fiddle with it constantly, my own internal worry bead.

At first I thought I had overdone it with the free weights. Although in denial about my own competitiveness, I am loath to lessen the weights when alternating on a machine with someone else of comparable size. Over the years I have sustained various injuries to ligaments and muscles due to such hubris, and this elbow polyp, I figured, was simply the latest. But there were worrying differences: the suddenness of my polyp’s first appearance. One minute nothing, the next a subcutaneous walnut. The lack of surrounding swelling. And the fact that it didn’t actually hurt. Finally, when the walnut refused to diminish on its own, I went to the doctor.

Under the American health insurance system my family doctor is, as far as I can deduce, a gatekeeper. He is there to prevent me from having access to specialists. The more often he can stymie my attempts to reach the doctors who really know what they’re doing, the expensive doctors, the more lavishly he is rewarded by our insurers.

Dr Epstein has a practice on 14th Street, between 8th and 9th Avenue. It is one of the most depressing streets downtown – not quite Chelsea, not yet Greenwich Village – strewn with tacky shops selling cheap plastic luggage and knock-off trainers, polyester clothes and tinny boom boxes. Many of the shops urgently proclaim that they are in the throes of closing-down sales, EVERYTHING MUST GO, their banners read. Several announce that they are going bankrupt and in POSITIVELY OUR VERY LAST WEEK. But in all the months I have traversed the street, none of these shops has actually closed.

The other patients waiting in Dr Epstein’s reception are all longshoremen – wide men in steel-toed boots, checked flannel shirts and jeans. For Dr Epstein’s practice is above the Longshoremen’s Union headquarters. My appointment comes and goes, but my name remains uncalled. Perhaps, among these giants, I am not big enough for my physical presence even to register.

‘Mr Gobwun?’

‘Godwin. It’s Godwin, actually.’

‘Whatever. Dr Epstein will see you now.’

Dr Epstein is small and hairy and rotund. He is evidently suffering from a terrible cold and his voice is clogged with catarrh. After taking a brief medical history, he places two stubby fingers on my polyp and chases it around my elbow. ‘Hmm,’ he muses. ‘Odd.’

Odd? I am a doctor’s son and I know that ‘odd’ is not good.

‘Does it hurt?’ he asks.

‘Not really.’

‘Is it growing?’

‘No, it was that size when it arrived.’

Dr Epstein rapidly fills out a large form. It is latticed with boxes, most of which he is ticking.

‘Tests,’ he explains. ‘You need tests, a lot of ’em.’

I feel like I’m in an opening sequence of ER, with the first plot line being wheeled in on the gurney while Dr Ross or Dr Green rattles off a battery of acronyms.

‘What seems to be the problem?’ I ask, realizing this should be his line.

‘Let’s just wait until the test results come in, shall we?’

‘But what kind of thing might it be?’ I insist.

‘Well, I’m really not sure, but …’ He trails off.

‘But what?’ I prompt.

‘It might be a lymphoma.’

Lymphoma, I know from ER, is American doctor-speak for cancer, and I return to our apartment in the West Village convinced that my future is mostly behind me.

Saturday, 2 May Joanna

I am more than a week late now. On the back of the packet it proclaims the Answer Test is so sensitive it can detect pregnancy within twenty-four hours of an overdue period. On the front it claims to be ‘99 per cent accurate!’ so I think perhaps the test is past its sell-by date. I didn’t much trust the pharmacist who sold it to me. He looked shifty and I had to wait for ages while a tall, balding man was interrogating him about Viagra, Pfizer’s wonder drug to overcome ‘erectile dysfunction’.

‘How much is it?’ he asked in a heavy Hispanic whisper.

‘It’s about ten bucks a shot, but you can only get it on prescription,’ said the pharmacist.

‘Ten bucks? Each tablet is ten bucks?’ demanded the man, louder and alarmed.

‘Yes, but it’s only available on prescription,’ the pharmacist repeated, tidying the breath mints by the till. ‘I can’t just sell it over the counter, you need a doctor’s recommendation.’

‘Oh it’s not for me,’ said the customer hastily. ‘It’s for my friend.’

‘Then you tell your friend he has to see a doctor before he can get some.’

‘But this is not possible,’ the customer replied. ‘My friend, he is in Brazil. He is desperate …’

‘Tell you what,’ said the pharmacist, lowering his voice, ‘come back around seven p.m. when things are a little quieter round here, and I’ll see what I can do for you, OK?’

‘Seven p.m. today? I’ll be here, seven p.m. Thank you, thank you.’

‘But you better tell your friend how much this stuff is gonna cost him, OK?’ said the pharmacist.

‘I tell him, I tell him exactly,’ said the customer, giving him a discreet thumbs up and hurrying out of the store.

Sunday, 3 May Peter

I am preoccupied with the wait for my test results and I cannot possibly concentrate on my novel. Despite a recent spurt, my book is going terribly anyway. Dog metaphors besiege me when I try to describe its progress. Sometimes I feel like a dog that circles interminably around something unknown, something it hasn’t quite got the confidence to confront. Sometimes when I approach passages which cry out for major rewriting, I feel a nauseating déjà vu, like a dog returning to its own vomit.

The truth is I have had writer’s block for months, but I cannot bear to admit it. It seems I need the Zimmer frame of non-fiction on which to rest the body of my imagination; I am crippled without the firm aluminium stroller of fact. Scared by the multitude of options out there, I have to impose a false horizon, a fake polystyrene ceiling, on my literary ambitions.

It’s like loft living. We thought that this loft we now inhabit, with its vast, high ceilings, would be the most aesthetic living machine possible; a white-walled, parquet-floored, 2,000-square-foot playground for adults. But soon a strange attitude developed. We found ourselves delineating areas. At first it was just in our minds, as defined by clusters of furniture, the dining-room table, my study desk, the TV. But then we began, little by little, to cordon off areas with bookshelves and sofas and filing cabinets, trying to create a conventional apartment out of our soaring, unfettered space. Such, I have begun to fear, is the story of my literary imagination too.

I have printed out a sign which says: THIS IS YOUR JOB. It is supposed to urge me to take writing more seriously and to remind me that the novel is now my main source of income – because I have virtually no other source. I have blown up the message in 29-point Times New Roman bold type and affixed it to the pillar opposite my desk with a blob of chewing gum. I know I am far too old for gum, but it seems to alleviate the headaches that have been plaguing me.

Sunday, 3 May Joanna

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 snow-capped 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.

‘Thirty-six.’

She pulls a face, then shrugs. ‘Thirty-six? The female body starts winding down, hun. Tell you what I’m gonna do …’ And she takes a deep breath. ‘I’m gonna prescribe you Provera which you gotta take for seven full days, that’ll bring your period on, but don’t take it until we have the results of the blood test, just to be sure, OK? Go down the corridor and ask for Donna, the lab technician, she’ll take your blood and then call me on Thursday between 12.30 p.m. and 1.30 p.m., and we’ll give you the results, OK, oh and leave a urine sample too, if it’s negative, your system’s probably adjusting itself to being thirty-six; sorry but that’s the way the cookie crumbles, and you take the Provera.’ Another breath: ‘If it’s positive, well, you make another appointment to see an obstetrician.’

Down the corridor, Donna, the technician, snaps on skintight cream rubber gloves, ties a rubber tube round my left arm and flicks at my veins like I’ve seen junkies do in movies. ‘You do look a little peaky,’ she observes, withdrawing the needle with one hand and skilfully unpeeling a Band-Aid with the other. ‘Could be a sign. I’ll keep my fingers crossed for ya.’

Tuesday, 12 May Peter

Our curiosity piqued by the outsize V sign in our view, Joanna has asked me to phone the Vault, which, she suggests, we should visit. I refuse. S&M is not really my scene. I am a coward. I treat pain as an enemy and go to great lengths to avoid humiliation.

‘But it’ll make a great story,’ she wheedles. She is always desperate for column ideas.

Later in the day, running short of work-displacement activities to divert myself from my book, I pick up the phone and dial the Vault.

‘Welcome to the Vault,’ says the earnestly perky male voice on the answering machine. ‘America’s most popular S&M club. Please listen to our upcoming attractions:

Friday is our bare buns contest;

Saturday is our foot fetish night;

Sunday is the finals of our bald beaver competition;

Monday is our popular schoolgirl evening;

Tuesday features hot-wax branding;

on Wednesday our weekly slave auction takes place;

join us Thursday for Shiatsu bondage;

and next Friday is our speciality dental ‘n’ head restraint.

We supper at the garage-like Café Braque, voted New York’s coolest summer hangout, full of slender models nibbling tiny organic mesclun leaves, and I tell Joanna of the varied fare offered by our neighbourhood club. ‘What do you fancy being entered for,’ I enquire. ‘Bare buns? Perhaps a little hot-wax branding?’

‘What really intrigues me,’ she confides, ‘is the speciality dental ‘n’ head restraint. What on earth could that be?’

Thursday, 14 May Joanna

Though my period has still not arrived, all other symptoms have disappeared. I don’t feel sick and I’ve lost two lbs, but I spend the weekend imagining I may be pregnant. And, as my friends constantly remind me, I am thirty-six and it’s about time.

At exactly 12.35 p.m., as instructed, I phone Dr Beth’s number and am immediately plunged into another curse of contemporary America: voicemail hell.

‘Please listen to the following information BEFORE pressing your relevant number.

‘If you are an existing patient press one to hear a series of options.

‘If you are a new patient wishing to register with us, please have your insurance number ready to enter via your keypad.’

I press one.

‘If you need help with our fax number, website or e-mail address, press one followed by the pound sign.

‘If you would like to book an urgent appointment press two.

‘If you would like to make a routine appointment press three.

‘To cancel an appointment press four.

‘For all queries about billing or to review your account press five.

‘For all other enquiries press six.’

I press six.

‘To book a pap-smear test press one.

‘To receive results of a recent pap-smear test only, press two; do not press this number if you require results from any other test.

‘To book a hospital appointment needing your doctor’s consent press three.

‘To change the date or time of a hospital appointment press four.

‘To request a repeat prescription press five.

‘To request a new prescription press six.

‘To request information for legal reasons which may be confidential from your personal file, press seven.

‘All those needing to speak with an operator press eight and stay on the line.’

I press eight to be greeted by a short burst of Barbra Streisand singing ‘Evergreen’, quickly interrupted by another message.

‘Thank you for calling. All our operators are busy. Please call back later. Our office hours are from 9.30 a.m. until 5 p.m.’

I phone back again. And again, swearing as I hit the redial button. Would it be quicker to walk there? At 1.28 p.m. I finally get through and ask for Donna, the technician.

‘Hello, Jo-wanna,’ she says, uncertainly. ‘How you doin’ today?’

‘Oh fine. I was just calling to get my results from the blood tests on Friday.’

‘Right, just hang on, Joanna, I’m gonna get Dr Beth to explain them to ya. Stay right where y’are.’ And before I can say anything I hear her pick up another receiver. ‘Dr Beth? Ya gotta minute? I got Joanna Coles on the line, you said to call you when she got through?’

‘Hi, Joanna,’ says Dr Beth. ‘It’s not good news I’m afraid.’

I feel my insides deflate.

‘To be honest with you, hun, I don’t know exactly what’s going on, you’re certainly something – but it’s not pregnant. We need you to come back and have another blood test. Can you come in soon, like this afternoon?’

‘How do you mean it’s certainly something?’ I ask, feeling weak.

‘Are you OK, hun?’ asks Dr Beth.

‘Um, yes, just a bit disappointed,’ I mumble. ‘I could be there in about ten minutes? Do you think it’s something serious?’

‘Nah, probably not, but we need to make sure, OK? I’ll tell Donna to expect you,’ she says, before adding gently, ‘I’ll speak to you tomorrow, when we’ve got the new results in. And take care, OK?’

I call Peter, but he’s out so I leave a message. ‘I’ve got to go back for more blood tests,’ I say melodramatically. ‘But apparently I’m still not pregnant.’

Ovarian cysts, cancer, fibroids, early menopause … I run through the list in the cab as we hurtle down Fifth, past New York’s glorious Public Library, which my mother once compared unfavourably to Leeds Town Hall, and swing onto 30th Street in front of the surgery.

After taking a photocopy of my insurance card, the receptionist sends me straight through to Donna. ‘Did you wanna be pregnant?’ she asks sympathetically.

I nod, suddenly realizing that after years of denying it, I really do.

‘What do you think is wrong?’ I manage.

‘Well, a reading of under five is definitely negative. Your score was eleven, which is too low to be positive but too high to be negative, so that’s why we’re doing you another test. Do you feel pregnant?’

I shrug, suddenly exhausted, as she snaps on her gloves again and taps my arm. ‘This time call me on my direct line and I’ll give you the results myself,’ she whispers, handing me her card.

Friday, 15 May Peter

I am determined not to allow the wait for my test results to paralyse me into a state of limbo. I must keep active. Physically active. Today I decide to go rollerblading along Riverside Walk. This stretch of sidewalk from Chelsea Piers down to Battery Park must be one of the most congenial rollerblading courses in the world. It is a safe, level, cement strip with views on one side across the Hudson River and on the other over to Greenwich Village then TriBeCa, City Hall and the World Trade Towers.

I am a reasonable blader, about intermediate level, I think. I very seldom fall, but I take no chances, strapping myself into my matte black safety gear: helmet, elbow pads, wrist protectors with Velcro fasteners and plastic reinforcers, mittens, and knee pads with black plastic cups over the joints themselves. Thus attired, I can blade for about fifteen minutes before I need to rest, or else I risk cramping up. I think there is something wrong with my blading posture. I have even been to blading school at Chelsea Piers, once. I went to the intermediate class, where I found myself surrounded by large middle-aged women and small children. I was the only adult male. Since then I have tried to self-tutor by watching other, more advanced bladers and attempting to ape them, straightening my back and assuming a more open, balletic posture. Invariably I soon revert to my clenched, bent stance.

There is one physical barrier that seriously blights my blading enjoyment. It is the West Side Highway, the eight-lane stream of traffic that I am forced to cross to get to the river walk. Although there is a pedestrian crossing, the flashing green man has been wrongly adjusted by the Traffic Department. For intermediate bladers like myself, he provides an inadequately fleeting window of opportunity in which to blade across, and the impatient traffic sits on the line revving up for their green, like racing cars waiting for a chequered starting-flag to fall. Nor is it unknown for them to jump the lights. I find that under the close scrutiny of eight rows of New York drivers, my blading deteriorates significantly. I wobble nervously and falter like a beginner. Once I reach the other side I feel triumphant, liberated. Until the time approaches to cross again, as it always does.

But today, today is my last crossing of the West Side Highway. Today I have almost reached the other side when, unaccountably, my left skate jams and I fall heavily – just as the lights turn in favour of a grid of trucks. The Mack truck nearest me releases its brakes with a menacing pneumatic wheeze, kicks into gear and advances. I look up desperately, but my perspective is too low to allow me to see the driver, too low to fix him with pleading eyes. The truck looms dangerously and then emits a vast, throaty, customized hoot. My whole body resonates, right to the fillings in my molars. I scuttle desperately to the kerb, a spidery, Gothic figure in my matte black safety outfit and the goat’s hooves of my black skates. I felt that I must look like one of those Calcutta pavement cripples, cosmetically enhanced by callous relatives for more proficient begging. I haul myself up over the concrete lip to safety, where I sit, feeling the laughter of the driver wash over me. Fast, proficient skaters, the ones I have been trying to emulate, blade gracefully past me.

‘Bad blades, man. You OK?’ yells one cheerily, as he whisks past shirtless, and without any safety gear, casually ramping some substantial obstacle. He is well out of earshot before I can reply.

I bend down to examine my recalcitrant skate, expecting to find a shard of gravel from the nearby roadworks, wedged in my axle. Instead I find a used condom has wrapped itself around a wheel with the aid of a puce blob of chewing gum. I gingerly peel off the condom and its attendant gluey tendrils of gum, remove my skates and hobble home in my socks.

I check for phone messages, but my test results still aren’t in.

Monday, 18 May Joanna

Though part of me wants to sit and obsess until the next set of results comes through, Peter persuades me that I would be better kept busy and so, at 7 p.m., we set off for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s summer fund-raiser organized by Tina Brown, the editor of the New Yorker. It takes place at the Manhattan Center, a vast indoor stadium in midtown. As we arrive, a motorcade of stretch limos is disgorging its passengers.

‘Oh God, I don’t know if I can face this,’ I grumble.

‘Well, we can go if you like,’ says Peter reasonably. We are about to leave when I hear a low mellifluous rumble of a voice behind me. Could it possibly be? … Is it really? … I turn around. It is. Alan Rickman is standing fewer than ten feet away.

‘Oh well, I suppose we’re here now,’ I say. ‘Let’s just see how it goes.’

Originally, the RSC had earnestly planned to perform a play in its entirety, but Tina Brown, conversant with New Yorkers’ bantam attention span, has cleverly persuaded them to offer us a medley of the Bard’s Greatest Hits instead.

The audience is huge, there are at least 1,000 of us, with many having paid $20,000 a table. As usual, however, we have slipped in on a press freebie. To my right sits a cheerful man called Christopher Buckley, who tells me he is the author of a book called Thank You for Smoking. He is in a state of some excitement because the place card next to him reads ‘Susannah York’.

To my left sits Garth Drabinsky, the legendary Broadway producer of Showboat and Ragtime, which has just picked up four Tony awards. The Drabinsky legend stems from his almost magical ability to stay financially afloat, confounding his many naysayers. He is a huge, darkly brooding presence, and seems depressed.

I feel depressed too. What did Dr Beth mean, ‘You’re certainly something but it’s not pregnant’? I look around for Peter, who has been placed at a different table. Curiously, when I finally spot him, he is sitting next to Susannah York.

‘Have you seen The Horse Whisperer yet?’ asks Drabinsky morosely.

‘Yes, very disappointing,’ I start. ‘What’s Robert Redford’s problem? How could he have cast himself as the romantic lead? He’s far too old! His mouth’s all lined, he looked ridiculous opposite Kristin Scott Thomas. And as for all those schmaltzy, sentimental shots of Montana …’

‘Really?’ he interrupts. ‘I loved the movie.’ He raises a heavy eyebrow. ‘And I consider Robert one of my greatest friends.’

Monday, 18 May Peter

I am not at my best at these society events. I seem to revert to my African childhood, dumbstruck and gauche, radiating rudeness to mask social incompetence. I tend to lean on Joanna, using her as a social battering ram, as she possesses complete candour and an effrontery to make me blush. Tonight, however, we are split up, but this is fine since Susannah York is at my table. In the course of the evening I do not manage to exchange a single word with her, however, so intense and exclusive is her conversation with the man on her left, apparently an old friend. Once I think she smiles at me, but I cannot be sure.

When we leave we are besieged by a squadron of publicity girls, who hover around the foyer to present us with our goody bags. I am still at a stage where I am enticed by goody bags. To me they are like unseasonal Christmas stockings. The prospect is exciting, though the contents seldom fail to disappoint. Tonight’s freebies, which we examine in the cab on the way home, are the usual random medley of sponsors’ offerings: a copy of the New Yorker, a volume of Shakespeare’s sonnets, a tube of Callard and Bowser’s liquorice toffees. On the drive home we declaim sonnets while chewing liquorice until our teeth have blackened.

The best gift is a small radio from Bloomberg, the financial rival to Reuters. But to our chagrin we discover that the radio has a strictly limited repertoire – it is permanently pre-tuned to Bloomberg’s own station, and can receive no other.

Tuesday, 19 May Joanna

After fruitless attempts to get through the voicemail, I make up my mind to go down and collect the second lot of results in person, when Dr Beth calls me.

‘Joanna, it’s Beth from Murray Hill, can you come in this afternoon? We need to talk. I’ve got your results back and quite frankly, Joanna, I don’t mind tellin’ you, I’m baffled.’

As I arrive, I see Donna the technician sitting on a low wall outside the surgery, smoking, a habit long since forbidden in New York offices. She gives me a thumbs up.

‘Your numbers have doubled,’ she says, drawing heavily on her cigarette. ‘That’s very good. That’s what we look for.’

Buoyed up by this news, I sit patiently underneath the peaks of Yosemite waiting for Beth, who finally calls me in to tell me she is still baffled, but has booked me a sonogram. She leads me into a small white room, tells me to swap my suit for a paper robe and I lie back on a grey leather reclining chair.

The monitor flickers into life, she squeezes a transparent gel over my belly and I see a series of dark undulating lines, which she tells me is my uterus. The electronic wand hovers and she zooms in on a tiny dark spot.

‘Mmn, a cyst,’ she murmurs. ‘Definitely an ovarian cyst.’

‘Is that serious?’ I ask, struggling to sit up.

She gestures me down and this time zooms in on an indecipherable white speck. She pulls one of her faces.

‘A cyst is a symptom of pregnancy,’ she says. ‘Doctor to patient, it’s too early to say. But woman to woman, I’d say you are pregnant, Joanna. Very, very early. But I don’t think it’s anything more serious.’ She sounds disappointed. ‘Congratulations,’ she says flatly. ‘You’re going to have a baby after all.’

I manage a weak grin and, flooding with relief, make two instant vows. I will never come back to this surgery again. And I will never wear a turquoise pregnancy smock with white seagull-wing collar.