Gotham (2 page)

‘Yes, sir.' This time it's not a question. He draws back on the long brass handle and swings the door fully open. ‘Please follow me. They're in our ‘At His Service' section. Men's personal shopping.'

He keeps his hand on the door as it glides into place and locks behind me. He walks me through the silent store to the lift. Inside the store, the light is not as golden as it appeared from the street, though it still has a lustre to it. Somewhere, far across the shop floor, I can hear the hum and slap of a polisher buffing the black-and-white tiles. Behind the counter nearest us is a trolley, with fresh supplies of the store's distinctive Little, Medium and Big Brown Bags.

Lindsey bought a brooch on that first visit to Bloomingdale's. That was not part of the plan. The dollar was low, our dollar against the American, and even the half-price theatre tickets we'd been lining up for weren't cheap. We'd seen Matthew Broderick in a comedy, and a Ben Johnson play that didn't survive the creative shift to a late nineteenth-century schtetl and a whole lot of kvetching. She came out with the brooch in a little brown bag with ‘Little
Brown Bag' written on the side, and told me the bag was the main reason for the purchase.

My mouth was dry from salt and stale pretzel. The guy at the stand picked up another pretzel in a square of white paper and took a handful of coins from his next customer. I wondered if that pretzel was stale, too, or if the others were all fresh, even warm. I had a ball of dry bread in my mouth. I felt like I'd been suckered somehow.

‘They're iconic,' Lindsey said, holding the bag up and letting it swivel on its string handles. ‘These bags. Bloomingdale's bags. A New York icon.'

We had an argument about it right there on Third Avenue, this purchase made in the name of packaging at a time when all our money was being measured out. It was another big deal made out of nothing. I should have taken it in my stride. What was twenty bucks, really? We had talked about seeing the Yankees play at
Yankee Stadium, and still hadn't got tickets. I thought about money too much that trip. It was our chance to treat New York lightly, to be young there and care about little, but I was seeing money as a limit to everything rather than as our only limit.

And I was thinking of Natalie, the girl I had broken up with to be with Lindsey and who had suggested the New York trip in the first place. She had a wish list that included the Museum of Modern Art, meeting particular graphic novelists and
New Yorker
cover artists, and buying something that came in a Bloomingdale's bag. She had used the word ‘iconic', too. And there was Lindsey, swinging one on her finger in front of me. It had been Natalie's plan to go to MoMA late on a Friday, when it was pay-what-you-wish, and that's what Lindsey and I had done. I made it seem like my idea. Natalie would never know about that. But the Little
Brown Bag would be packed carefully, taken home, witnessed. It seemed cruel for a moment. Lindsey didn't like Natalie and hadn't tried to hide it.

But I kept that complicated thought to myself and kept the argument about money, the waste of twenty precious dollars on a paper bag. Lindsey wasn't stealing Natalie's dream. The Bloomingdale's experience was her own. Then she saw my hair. I hadn't needed a haircut, not really, but it was the Chelsea and I'd taken the opportunity. I surrendered the argument then and there.

‘You should wear the brooch,' I told her. ‘It looks good.' She had it in her hand, still partly wrapped in its tissue paper. ‘You should wear it now.'

We bought salads from Zabar's and picnicked in the park, watching kids hitting baseballs, practising, practising. We made it to Yankee
Stadium, too, later that week, and sat way up in the bleachers, facing the sun the whole game, but it was the Yankees and nineteen years later we still have the photo in a frame.

‘Must be coming from the top,' Mr Lopez says, his eyes on the lift doors, our buckled gold reflections.

With that, there's a muted electronic tone, then a hum as the doors part.

‘At His Service' is on lower ground, one floor down. A cleaner is polishing the glass countertop at Salvatore Ferragamo. There are designer boutiques on either side of the aisle—Zegna, Armani, Michael Kors, Hugo Boss. The rubber soles of Mr Lopez' boots squeak softly on the tiles in a rhythm built long ago into his stride and no more audible to him, I'm sure, than his own heartbeat.

‘At His Service' is set discreetly away from the aisle, though nothing could be more discreet
than being the only customer in a department store that's already closed. It's the voices that let me know we're getting close, a young male, ‘I don't think so,' and a softer deferential murmur in reply.

Na
ti Boi is sitting on a plush red Louis XIV chaise lounge, his rapper's jacket slung over the gilt-turned arm with a baseball cap set on top of it. Below his right eye, he has a scar that's wider than it should be, like a small pale pink pair of lips or a kiss, with the dots of failed sutures along its edges. There's a line of whiskery boy's moustache running along his upper lip. His hair is gathered in tight cornrows, ending in coloured beads. He looks younger than nineteen, younger than his photos, as if he's still growing into the trackpants that balloon around his invisible legs. He looks like a kid who has borrowed from his big brother's wardrobe and been told to sit there, and sit still, while a parent attends to some
business nearby. He never had that life though, I know that much.

Behind him is a cabinet with cufflinks and tie bars set in trays. On the countertop, there's a steel bucket with two glass bowls of frozen yoghurt sitting in ice. Each bowl has a long-handled silver spoon resting in it. At the foot of the chaise lounge, in an armchair that's part of the same set, a man in a charcoal suit sits leaning forward, elbows on his thighs, phone in his hands. He has just been shown something, or has just whispered advice—that's the pose he's in. He looks late twenties, maybe thirty. Two Bloomingdale's staff members, both women, are on the move, silently arranging clothes for viewing.

Na
ti Boi was discovered by Jay Z after he posted some rapping videos shot on his phone and people started to talk. Jay Z found him producers like A
AP Rocky and Joey Fat Beats.
Na
ti Boi does the usual braggy stuff about bitches and brand names, but his rhymes are smart and sometimes unexpected. It's rumoured he was booked to open for Beyoncé until she listened closely.

‘Gentlemen,' Mr Lopez says, ‘this is Mr Foster.' He indicates me with his hand and gives a small nod.

He takes a step in retreat, still facing Na
ti Boi and his attendants. It's the way you're supposed to leave the Queen. She never sees people's backs, and maybe that's now true for Na
ti Boi.

‘Hey, man,' Na
ti Boi says, in a way that's downplayed, but not unfriendly. ‘Australia, right?'

‘Yeah. Jeff Foster.' He nods when I say it, but it's a reflex, not a sign that I'm getting his full attention. ‘Good to meet you.'

The man in the suit stands. He slips his phone into a pocket and offers me his hand. He has a gold ring, chunky as a nugget, on his ring finger. As his white shirt cuff slides from his jacket sleeve, he reaches across with his other hand and tweaks it back into place.