Ten (6 page)

I took a step in his direction, but Aunt Lucy said, “This way, Winnie,” and steered me to the back of a long line of people waiting to get a taxi. A woman in a blue outfit like one a cop might wear was moving down the line saying, “Destination? Destination?”

She wouldn't reach us for a minute or two.

“Can we go to the top of the Empire State Building?” I asked.

“Sure,” Aunt Lucy said.

“What about the Statue of Liberty?” Sandra said.

“If you want. I've heard it takes about three hours to get in, though.”

“Three hours?” Sandra repeated.

“Or we can take a ferry and look at it from the harbor. We don't have to decide this very second.” The uniformed taxi lady reached us, and Aunt Lucy said, “Central Park South.” She said it like she was a woman of the world. I was impressed.

The taxi lady ripped off a stub of paper and handed it to Aunt Lucy, saying, “Number twenty-two.”

I headed toward the end of the line of taxis, because that's what I'd seen the other people do. The taxi lady grabbed my shoulder and turned me around.

“I
said
number twenty-two,” she said. “Clean your ears out, girl.”

“We go this way,” Aunt Lucy told me, and I trotted behind her to a different line of cabs.

“Did that lady tell me to clean my ears out?” I said.

“She did,” Sandra marveled. In Atlanta, people didn't randomly tell you to clean your ears out.

Aunt Lucy laughed. “Welcome to New York.”

 

Aunt Lucy's friend's apartment was the size of my entire bedroom, although it was split into different sections. But Aunt Lucy said apartments were hard to come by in New York, and that Catherine—that was her friend—felt lucky to have found hers, because “it was in such a great location.”

I didn't know what made the location so great. I wasn't suggesting it was
un
-great. I just didn't know how to tell it apart from what I'd seen on the cab drive from the airport. Looking out the window, all I saw were streets and cars and taxis and a hundred thousand people at least. Some looked like businessmen and -women, others looked a lot less fancy. Like, there were moms pushing babies in strollers and chubby men wearing baseball caps and plain old normal kids, too. There were even kids my age walking along alone, going wherever they were going.

There wasn't much to do in the apartment, since it was so small. So we dropped off our suitcases and headed back out, this time on foot. My head spun from trying to take in all the sights, and then I saw something that made it spin right off my head stalk, practically. I saw a man with crazy white hair that looked like a bird's nest,
and in that bird's nest of hair was an actual parrot!

A live parrot was living in the man's hair!

“Winnie, stop gawking,” Aunt Lucy said, because without realizing it, I'd stopped stock-still in the middle of the sidewalk. I couldn't help it! There was a man in front of me with a parrot in his hair!

“Yeah, and close your mouth before a bee flies in,” Sandra said. “Or somebody's cigarette.”

“But, Sandra! That man! He had a—”

“Bird in his hair,” she finished. “I saw.”

“But—”

“But what? You act like you've never seen a man with a bird in his hair before.”

“I haven't.” I frowned. “Have
you
?”

She dropped her
nothing shocks me, not even a bird in a nest made of hair
act. “Are you crazy, you crazy girl?!” she exclaimed, thwonking my head. “Winnie! That man had a
bird
in his hair!”

One sad thing was that Aunt Lucy was right about there being homeless people. On the way to the pizza place, I saw a man holding a tin can with a taped-on piece of paper that said,
Help a vet.

I still had my two quarters from the airport, which the airport guard had given back to me once he decided I wasn't a threat to national security, so I dropped them in his can.

“God bless you, angel,” he said.

“Um, God bless you, too,” I said.

After our pizza—which
was
delicious, and which we folded in half before eating, because Aunt Lucy said that was the way New Yorkers did it—we walked back to the apartment. This time we passed a black woman and her little boy, who looked about Ty's age. The little boy held a hat in his lap, and in the hat were coins and a few bills.

I looked at Aunt Lucy, who smiled and tried to be brave in the face of that distressing sight. She fished a five-dollar bill from her wallet.

“Sandra, do you want to give it to her?” I whispered, since I'd been the one to give the older man my quarters.

Sandra shook her head. She wanted the lady and her little boy to have the money, I could tell, but the situation made her nervous. Or upset. Or both?

I took the five-dollar bill and put it in the hat, and the mom said, “Thank you, baby.”

“You're welcome.” I was holding an unopened can of Dr Pepper—I hadn't gotten around to drinking it at dinner—and I had an idea.

“Is your little boy allowed to have Coke?”

“What's that, baby?” the mom said.

“Soda,” Aunt Lucy told me. “In New York, Coke is called soda.”

I stored the knowledge away and tried again. “Can your son have soda? Is he allowed?”

“Yeah, baby, sure,” the mom said.

I offered my Dr Pepper toward the boy, who said, “Why'd you call that a Coke? That's not a Coke. That's a Dr Pepper.”

I frowned, because he had a point. I'd never thought about it, but in Atlanta,
we
called all soft drinks Coke, even when they weren't. And I'd thought New Yorkers were the weird ones for calling Coke soda!

“I don't know,” I said. “Do you want it?”

“Yeah!” he said, scrambling up. “Thanks!”

It made me happy that a Coke—er, a Dr Pepper—would make his eyes light up like that. But it also made me feel lonely.

Later, when I was supposed to be falling asleep, I couldn't. I think I was homesick . . . maybe because seeing that mother and her son made me miss Mom?

I missed Dad, too, and Ty and our house and my bedroom, but I missed Mom the most. Even though it was exciting to be here, home seemed awfully far away.

 

The next day we went to Central Park. I was tired, so Aunt Lucy bought me an espresso, and it was n-a-s-t-y. So she poured it into a much bigger cup, added lots of cream and five packs of sugar, and after that, it was scrumdiddliumptious ! And made me talk really-really-fast and do hyper dancing and bounce from foot to foot until finally Sandra said, “Winnie.
Down
.”

She said it like I was a dog, so I got down on my hands and knees in Central Park and started yip-yip-yipping.

“Omigosh,” Sandra said, edging away on the bench.

“But she doesn't have a bird in her hair,” Aunt Lucy pointed out. “We need to remember that.”

Oh! Oh! And later we saw a famous person taking an afternoon stroll, and it was Al Roker! The real live Al Roker from the fancy morning TV show! He was with a pretty girl who we decided was his daughter. I wanted to run over and say hi, but Aunt Lucy said absolutely not, because New Yorkers respected celebrities' privacy.

“But we're not New Yorkers,” I said.

“We are today,” Aunt Lucy said.

“Can I take a picture of them?”

“No.”

“Can I
draw
a picture of them?”

“With what?”

“Well, can I just call out a general
hellooooo
, and if they happen to look over, then they happen to look over?”

“No, Winnie, you may not,” Aunt Lucy said. “And please get up off the grass. I'm not giving you any more belly rubs.”

When Sandra and Aunt Lucy weren't watching, I went ahead and waved at the girl anyway. Just an itty-bitty, cupped-palm wave. The girl looked confused, but she waved back. My smile stretched wide. I could feel it.

That day and the next, we did tons of fun things with Aunt Lucy, like buying sea salt caramels from a famous
chocolatier
and seeing a musical version of
Mary Poppins
on Broadway and shopping at the Disney store, which had a window display of a huge doll made up entirely of normalsized dolls.

Out of all of our adventures, however, I had two definite favorites. The first was going to the top of the Empire State Building, which I insisted we do even though Sandra was like, “Oh, we are
such
tourists.”

My response to that was, “Why yes, we are. And when people come to Atlanta to visit the World of Coke, guess what? Then
they're
the tourists.”

“Who comes to Atlanta to visit the World of Coke?” Sandra asked.

“Lots of people.”

“And their names would be . . . ?”

“The people who visit the World of Coke,” I retorted. Then I looked at the people in line with us, taking in their fanny packs and their shirts that said
New York
on them. Did real New Yorkers
ever
did go to the top of the Empire State Building?

At the tippy-top there was a glassed-in observation deck. Initially, Sandra, Aunt Lucy, and I clumped together, because it was freaky being up so high, even with walls.

Then I split off and leaned as far over the railing as I could. Down below, I saw little humans going about doing little human things. My eyes skimmed the zillions of cars, and there were just as many yellow taxicabs as normal cars! In Atlanta, I hardly ever saw taxis.

A tour-guide-y person told us some facts about the Empire State Building, but what stuck with me were the tiny ant people, and the tiny ant cars, and how half of those cars were taxis. Not an eighth, not a fourth, but
half
of them were fully yellow.

On Sunday, we went to a hotel called The Plaza. That was my second favorite adventure, because we got to see a famous portrait of an even famouser girl named Eloise. Eloise was famous even though she wasn't alive. She was a character in a children's book, and in the book, she lived at The Plaza, which was why there was a portrait of her there.

The Plaza in the book was super fancy and posh, and so was The Plaza in real life. It was
so
fancy, even from the outside, that Sandra didn't want to go in.

“I'm wearing jeans!” she protested.

“So?” Aunt Lucy said. “I am, too.”

“But yours are dress-up jeans, and plus you're wearing
those
,” Sandra said, gesturing at Aunt Lucy's high-heeled sandals. “I just look . . . grubby.”

“
I'm
grubbier,” I said. I held out my arms and did a twirl. “Do you feel better now?”

Sandra balked. “The doorman won't let us in. He'll say, ‘Hey, you grubby people! Get out of here, you grubby people!'”

“Don't be silly,” Aunt Lucy said, and she marched right up to the man standing in front of the hotel. His suit was blue with gold trim. His cap had a gold tassel.

“Excuse me,” Aunt Lucy said. “These are my nieces, visiting from Atlanta. We were wondering if you've seen Eloise around, by chance.”

Sandra turned red. I, however, was delighted, especially when the doorman played along.

“I'm sorry, but she just stepped out,” he informed us. “I
could
show you her portrait, if you'd like. Might you be interested in taking a peek?”

“Oh, yes,” Aunt Lucy said.

The doorman, whose name tag said FREDDY, led us into the hotel. I twisted my head from side to side, trying to soak it all in. I glanced up to check out the ceiling, and even
it
was impressive.

In a wide hall, Freddy gestured at an oil painting which showed Eloise looking just exactly like she looked in the books Mom used to read me: plump, smug, and awesome in a ruffly white shirt and pleated black skirt.

“I'll tell you a secret if you promise to keep it to yourself,” Freddy said, lowering his voice.

I nodded.

“This portrait? It's not the real one.”

“What?”

He bent at his waist and spoke into my ear. “The real one got stolen.”

My eyes popped. “The real one got
stolen
,” I told Sandra and Aunt Lucy.

“By who?” Sandra asked.

“A gang of fraternity boys,” Freddy said.

“Really?”
Aunt Lucy said.

I jiggled from foot to foot. It was so cool to discover something about New York that Aunt Lucy didn't even know.

“Really,” Freddy said. “Fortunately, the artist was kind enough to paint a new one.”

“Thank goodness, because think how upset Eloise would be,” I said.

“Very true,” Freddy said. “When she returns, shall I give her your regards?”

“Yes, please. Tell her that Winnie, Lucy, and Sandra say hi.”

Sandra tried to protest.

“Winnie, Lucy,
and
Sandra,” I repeated firmly. It struck me all at once that here I was, having a lovely chat with the doorman of The Plaza Hotel in New York City, when just this past Thursday—was it only
three days
ago?—I'd been taking my multiplication test while trying to ignore Alex Plotkin's unsneaky nose-picking.

In the grand scheme of things, three days was nothing . . . and yet three short days ago, I hadn't ridden in a cab, or folded a piece of pizza in half, or given my
soda
to a stranger. I certainly hadn't tried espresso or waved at a famous person's daughter.

Sophistication zinged through every cell of me. It was amazing how much I'd changed in such a short amount of time.