She wasn’t sure whether no one had noticed the gun, or whether New Yorkers were just so pathologically nonchalant that no one would give up their place in line simply because a violent crime was in progress.

  Everyone shuffled forward. She and the mugger shuffled together. After what felt like an improbably long interval, it was her turn at the machine. ‘My limit is fifty dollars,’ she told him. ‘Is that OK?’

  ‘Sure,’ he said. And then, ‘Sorry about this.’

  In classic Stockholm syndrome style, she found herself feeling sympathetic. ‘It’s fine,’ she said, and handed him the money with a small but friendly smile. He grabbed it and fled.

  On further thought, she doubted they’d remain in touch.

  No one tried to tackle him. No one shouted ‘Stop! Thief!’ No one came up to ask if she was OK, despite there being at least six other people behind her waiting for money.

  Not knowing what else to do, she headed out the door. Her limit really was fifty dollars, so she couldn’t get more cash anyway.

  On the sidewalk, a guy came up to her. ‘Did you just get robbed?’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ she said.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘I think so.’ Though to be honest, she felt a little shaky.

  ‘I wasn’t sure what was happening. Go home and call the cops,’ he said. ‘Not that they’ll do anything, but you may as well keep the crime stats honest.’

  ‘Right,’ she said. And then, ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You need me to walk you home?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m OK.’

  She didn’t tell the doorman she’d been held up at gunpoint. It seemed silly. Lots of people got mugged in New York, and the guy had probably chosen her because she looked suburban. Which made it almost her fault.

  Edie was shocked. ‘Wow,’ she said. ‘Are you OK? I’ve never been mugged in New York. I get flashed sometimes. It happened once when I was about ten and I’d never seen a penis before. I kept looking at it trying to figure out what it was. But criminals can probably tell I was born here and leave me alone. Were you scared?’

  Beth explained that she hadn’t really been scared at the time, but she’d felt queasy on the streets coming home, looking around all the time, waiting for someone else to pounce.

  ‘Not such a bad thing,’ Edie said. ‘You gotta have your wits about you to live here. I bet it never happens to you again.’

  It wasn’t really the reply she’d hoped for. But she was used to Edie’s overblown reactions to her own tragedies and minimal response to everyone else’s. It was just the way she was. Another person might have called it selfish.

  Eventually she called the police. The desk officer sounded bored. ‘You should come down and look at some photos,’ he said, and Beth didn’t dare say she wasn’t very good at faces. The gun – now that was a different thing altogether. Tiny hole in the end. Flat barrel. She could pick that out of a line-up.

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘Should I come now?’

  ‘We’re pretty busy at the moment, maybe in a few hours.’

  She’d expected more sympathy for being nearly murdered and in the end decided not to go. Nothing much had happened after all. He’d seemed to really need the money, for drugs probably, and she didn’t think she could identify his face. Nor could she remember what he was wearing, or anything much except their odd exchange. She didn’t particularly want him to be arrested and spend years in jail. He could have hurt her but hadn’t. And he’d said sorry.

  For some reason, that helped.

  Beth thought about calling her parents but decided it would only upset them. Instead she sent a postcard of the Brooklyn Bridge, saying she’d managed to buy it for just fifty bucks, which she thought was a pretty good price. After all their warnings, she knew they’d laugh.

  27

  ‘He thinks if he proves how much better he is than the rest of us, they’ll offer him a job at the end of the summer.’ Edie lit a cigarette, and Oliver waved the smoke away from his face. ‘But he’s the only one of us who already has a degree and we’re all going to college next year so he could afford to be less selfish.’

  ‘Besides, no one’s even mentioned a job,’ Beth said.

  ‘Doesn’t matter. In his head there’s a job and he’ll make sure he’s the one who gets it.’ Edie somehow managed to talk, smoke and eat cafeteria lasagne all at the same time.

  Oliver considered. ‘He’s the first in his family to go to college. You can understand him wanting to get a foot in the door.’

  Edie snorted. ‘It’s no excuse for being an asshole. I’ve had to work with him this week, and though I say with him what I mean is without him. He’s secretive and sticks to that Matt Eisen guy like glue. Lots of people are tipping Matt for stardom so Dan never leaves his side. It makes me furious. I don’t know how you two coped.’

  It wasn’t really Oliver’s style to compete. Beth figured he’d never had to.

  ‘He takes any halfway interesting job for himself. He’s so competitive,’ Edie said. ‘And the way he sneaks around – I could strangle him.’

  ‘We’re all competitive,’ Beth said.

  ‘But the rest of us have the decency to be polite about it.’ Edie had started on a large chocolate brownie. Beth was still eating her sandwich.

  ‘Maybe politeness is a luxury.’ Beth had often thought this. ‘Maybe if you’re not born into all this –’ in a wide gesture, she indicated the newspaper and New York City beyond – ‘you can’t afford to be reticent.’

  Edie ignored her. ‘Jeanne says she’s spoken to him a couple of times already. He’s an idiot if he thinks they’re going to offer him a job if he pisses Jeanne off.’

  They fell silent as Dan approached their table.

  ‘Hey, Dan.’ Beth moved over so there was room for him. ‘Did you hear I got mugged?’

  ‘No. Really? You OK?’

  ‘Yeah, fine. He was kind of an idiot. Held me up at gunpoint while I waited for the cash machine. Like he couldn’t figure out why I was there in the first place.’

  ‘Gunpoint? Whoa. Did you tell the police?’

  ‘She tried,’ Edie said. ‘But they put her on hold for five hours and then hung up.’

  ‘Not exactly,’ Beth said. ‘They said they were busy and could I come report it at a more convenient moment. I took it as a lack of concern.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad you weren’t shot, anyway.’

  ‘Gosh, Dan. Thanks.’

  The conversation lagged.

  ‘So, what’s it like working with Matt Eisen?’ Oliver managed to make his interest sound sincere.

  ‘Good,’ Dan said, through a mouthful of sandwich. ‘I’m helping him research a big cover story, all about crime syndicates and bent cops. It’s top secret, can’t talk about it.’

  Edie rolled her eyes at Beth. She turned to Dan. ‘Aren’t we supposed to be working together?’

  ‘Are we? There’s plenty of work to go around.’

  Edie got up and left the table.

  Beth got up too. ‘I’ll see you guys,’ she said.

  Edie was fuming. ‘I’ve had it with him. Now do you see what I mean? I was right from the start. From now on he and Oliver can have each other. I’m telling Jeanne I’m only working with you.’ And she threaded her arm through Beth’s.

  Oh, Beth thought. She liked working with Oliver, was studying his easy manners, hoping they might rub off. In her family, nothing was ever simple. For as long as she could remember, her parents had seemed complicated and tragic, their secrets just beyond reach.

  Oliver just seemed clean.

  28

  Mike spent weekends with his wife, so on Saturdays Beth and Edie did laundry, shopping and sleeping. But on Sundays, after Edie returned from her grandmother’s, they sometimes went out – to the Bronx for discount designer clothes, or down to Orchard Street where women’s dresses, men’s suits, and the heavy dark coats of Orthodox Jews hung high on hooks outside shop after shop, swaying incongruously in the heat.

  Beth was fifty dollars down from the mugging, so she bought almost nothing, but enjoyed the sensation of shopping, enjoyed watching Edie (with her bottomless allowance) add clothes to her already bursting closet.

  Beneath the criss-crossing fire escapes of Orchard Street’s tenement blocks, signs advertised Shoes, Hosiery, Dresses, Bags, Coats, Uniforms, Woollens, Underwear, Fabrics, Ribbons, Buttons and Notions. Signs on shops marked with prominent Jewish stars read: Bekishe and Shtreimel, Kittel and Yarmulke. And everywhere, everywhere, everywhere: Bargains, Bargains, Bargains. SALE! HUGE DISCOUNTS! SPECIAL PRICES! LAST DAY OF MARKDOWN!

  ‘Bekishe and shtreimel,’ Edie crowed. ‘Kishkes and strudel!’

  On their first trip to Orchard Street, Edie took Beth to the Orthodox bra-man who began to tut as soon as you came through the door, then went muttering to the back, returning minutes later with the correct bra, not at all interested in the size you told him you wore, or whether you liked the look of the one he chose. Beth shimmied her way through boxes, stacked shelves and trays of lingerie to get to the tiny cramped changing room at the back of the shop and had to admit that the one he’d handed her felt better than any bra she’d ever worn. He wasn’t quite Gandhi or Einstein, but his skill was impressive. She bought the bra mainly out of appreciation for his world class talent, though it was expensive. She tried to think of it as an investment.

  Afterwards they walked around the corner and ate knishes from Yonah Schimmel because it was so authentic.

  ‘What flavour’d you get?’

  Beth took a while to swallow. ‘Potato.’

  ‘How is it?’

  ‘Tastes like cement. Yours?’

  ‘Kasha. One hundred per cent Negev sand.’ Edie inhaled a knish crumb and began to choke.

  Beth whacked her on the back. ‘Do you need the Heimlich manoeuvre?’

  ‘A German manoeuvre?’ Edie gasped with laughter. ‘Better you should leave me here to die. You can use what’s left of the knish as my headstone.’

  They gave up on knishes, dumped the remains in the trash and walked crosstown to Vesuvio for fennel and black pepper Taralli, a brown paper bag of each.

  ‘The great thing about Italians,’ Edie said, ‘is that the stuff they make actually tastes good. It’s practically anti-Semitic as a concept.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous,’ Beth said. ‘What about Zabar’s? Or Katz’s? What about nearly every deli in New York?’

  ‘Fine. But you can do a lot of cultural damage with a knish.’

  ‘Give me half a pound of corned beef on rye over anything you can buy at Vesuvio. And a half sour pickle.’

  ‘Who’s the real Jew here anyway?’ Edie snorted.

  ‘I’m as Jewish as you are.’

  ‘Suburban Jew. Doesn’t count.’

  Edie had to win at everything, including being a Jew. Beth didn’t voice her opinion that having four grandparents gassed to death might bump her up whatever Jew list was going. Of course, she’d never mentioned her grandparents to Edie. Partly out of an obscure sense of shame. Being the child of Holocaust survivors imparted a taint she couldn’t quite explain.

  They walked back up MacDougal, through the Village.

  ‘How’s your new bra?’ Edie asked.

  ‘I’m not wearing it, am I? It’s probably just hanging out at the bottom of the bag pining for a bosom.’

  ‘A bosom? One single bosom?’

  Beth considered the single bosom. ‘ “Bosom” is such an awful word.’

  ‘Whatever you do, don’t lose that bra. It is a life-changing bra.’

  ‘How am I going to lose a bra? Leave it accidentally in a phone booth?’

  ‘Besides,’ Edie continued, ‘according to the bra guru, it won’t fit anyone else on earth. It’s like Cinderella’s bra. If the prince found it discarded on the stairs, he’d have to go around trying it on every woman in the land.’

  ‘Why would I discard it on the stairs?’ Beth munched a Taralli. ‘I’m not sure I like the idea of being quite so unique. I’d like to have something in common, shape-wise, with my fellow females.’

  ‘You’re too scared of standing out. That’s your problem.’

  ‘Oh, really? That’s my problem?’

  ‘Being different is the best. Uniquity.’

  ‘Not even a word.’

  ‘Whatever,’ Edie said. ‘It’s still the best.’

  ‘Have I never showed you my hermaphrodite genitalia? My plan,’ Beth said, ‘which I am willing to share with you at this time, is to creep along under the radar and then when no one’s looking, rise like a Valkyrie and take over the world.’

  Edie laughed. ‘Excellent use of “Valkyrie”.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  But then Edie stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and stared at her. ‘You think you’re joking but you’re serious. You’re secretly aiming for world domination while pretending to be a funny, grey little unfashionable girl from the suburbs.’

  Beth blinked at the description. She looked at Edie to see if she was just playing around but she wasn’t. A funny, grey little unfashionable girl from the suburbs.

  That’s how her best friend saw her.

  29

  Edie had stopped knocking on Beth’s door after Mike left, knowing her friend was unlikely to answer. But on this evening she arrived home early, alone, and went straight to Beth’s room. Her eyes were red from crying and she looked terrible. Throwing herself down on the bed, she wept piteously.

  ‘Oh Christ,’ Beth said, unable to hold out. She leaned forward and put her arms around her friend.

  ‘It’s not like Mike is my dream man or anything,’ Edie sobbed. ‘You have to understand. Sex makes me feel better about myself. But if I had to choose,’ she hiccuped through her tears, ‘there’s no contest. I’d always choose you. Always. Only … I don’t want you to be upset every time I go off with someone.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, you don’t have to choose. And you certainly don’t have to choose me.’ Beth was repelled by her own impulse to manipulate.

  ‘I want to.’

  ‘No, you don’t. I’m just jealous.’ She was just jealous. ‘And worried about you.’ Was she? ‘And I liked it better when it was just us.’ She had. Were Edie and Mike finished? Please God. ‘You’d better tell me what happened.’

  Edie nestled against her, sniffed, wiped her eyes. ‘I think I’m in love with him.’

  Oh. ‘Well, I guess that’s not a total surprise.’

  ‘It is for me. I never fall in love.’

  Beth sighed. ‘What happened tonight?’

  ‘It was Mike! He told me he was in love with me. He’s so tormented, and of course he can’t leave his wife now. I feel so sorry for him.’

  For him? ‘How long has he been married?’

  Edie flinched at the question, or was it just the word? ‘I don’t know. Five years?’

  ‘And has he cheated on her before?’

  Edie frowned, as if cheating were the last thing he was doing. ‘I didn’t ask. He says he’s never felt like this before.’

  ‘I’m sure he hasn’t.’

  ‘Don’t be horrible. Anyway, he wanted to go home and think about what to do, so we didn’t go out tonight.’

  You mean, you didn’t stay in tonight. ‘It doesn’t sound like he’s in much of a position to do anything. As you said.’

  Edie looked glum. ‘I know. It’s so unfair.’

  They sat in silence for a time and then Edie leaped up and said, ‘Let’s forget about Mike and send out for pizza.’

  So that’s what they did. And the subject was closed.

  Later, alone in bed, Beth thought about the whole fantasy of Mr Right. The promise that when you found him – partner, other half, soulmate – he’d be far better, more valuable, than any friend. In the meantime, you had to live through not knowing, uncertainty ruining month after month, year after dreary year, leading to a sense of life incompletely lived until a resolution could be reached. No wonder people threw huge wedding parties. Not from love, from relief. Finally. We can get on with everything else.

  Beth considered that the duties of Mr Right would be far easier split among a committee. In practice this happened, but not officially. No one ever said, ‘I’d like you to meet my partners: my husband, my mentor, my best friend, my sister.’ Instead, the real players lurked in the background, uncredited. There was no ceremony for when you found a lifelong friend. And no divorce for when it went wrong either.

  30

  After their great reckoning and declarations of love, Edie and Mike spent every spare evening together. Edie never knew in advance when Mike would be free, but she invariably dropped everything – dates with Beth, appointments with Dr Lieb, even work – to be with him. It was always the same. They’d come home and, after the minimum of polite conversation, slink off to bed.

  Not having a lot of other friends in New York, and sick of eating dinner on her own, Beth called Tom.

  ‘Yeah, fine,’ he said when she asked if she could come down.

  He let her in and beckoned to the fire escape where he’d been smoking a joint. The utter squalor of the apartment was even worse than she remembered. How had she lived here? Crumbling and sordid, no right angles, not a single clean surface.

  Sweating and uncomfortable from the climb, she crawled out behind him, took a drag when he offered the joint and held the smoke in her lungs till she started to cough.

  ‘Easy,’ he warned.

  Within five or six minutes she felt fantastically stoned; swirly and vague and somewhere far away in her head. They sat together in happy silence while time passed and then Tom leaned over and kissed her and she kissed him back, not caring very much (she told herself) who he was. They kissed for what felt like ages, and then Tom reached behind her for a bottle of beer.

  ‘Here,’ he said, offering it to her. ‘No glasses. Didn’t expect company.’

  Beth leaned against the side of the metal staircase and drank beer out of the bottle. Tom lit the joint again, but she’d had enough. One more drag and she’d slip gently off the metal platform and glide across the river to Hoboken. He inhaled. The paper burned with a soft hiss.