The Traveling Tea Shop (3 page)

Little-Laurie-Worry, my mum used to call me.

But not here. Not in New York City.

One inhalation of yellow cab fumes—mingling with pepperoni pizza, hot trash and Tom Ford’s Café Rose—and I find myself in an Empire state of mind . . .

That’s what I love most about Manhattan:
it brings out a sassy side to me.

In the concrete jungle it’s sink or swim: you can’t be timid or tentative; you have to forge through, make your mark, enter the fray!

Last week I stepped off the curb and nearly got run over by some smoke-windowed Chrysler, and my instinctive reaction was to bang on the boot and cry, “Hey! Watch where you’re going!”

I’d seen some cool urban chick do it once and now I’d joined the Pedestrians Fight-Back Club. I was on a high for the rest of the day.

Krista was horrified. She finds the whole place too in-yer-face. “Who knew walking down the street had become a contact sport?”

She’s right, of course. It’s crazy. But I love that feeling.

I remember the first time I came here, I returned to my hotel room after a day’s sightseeing exhausted, feet throbbing, calves tweaking, head thumping, and I collapsed on the bed for a few minutes and then I thought: I want more! I want another fix! So I stepped back into the insanity, weaving my way through the crush on Fifth Avenue, standing amid all the tourists ogling Bergdorf Goodman and Harry Winston, raising their cameras to try and ensnare the jutting angles of skyscrapers. I felt simultaneously charged and exhausted all over again.

It was just what I needed.

Krista finds peace mushing huskies across plains of pure glistening white, but I need the chaos, the distraction of overstimulation. Back in London, I’d gone through a phase of reading way too many self-help books, gazing deeper and deeper into my navel . . . Sometimes I’d come to a complete halt in the street, questioning my next move—my motives, intentions and every possible consequence. Was it in the best interest of my Higher Self? In NYC you have to keep moving forward, stride with purpose. As you do so your attention is pulled every which way, away from yourself. And, for me at least, that is a source of great relief.

I know I’m not the only British person to feel this way. I see the faces of my fellow countrymen transform in this city. I see their amazement and fascination mingling with a surprising sense of belonging. The most unlikely places can feel like home here. There’s this place, the Brooklyn Diner on West 57th, to be precise, and the first time I went there it was tipping down with rain, but they were playing Tony Bennett and had matching Tony Bennett French Toast (thick-cut cinnamon raisin and pecan), and so I sat there, drinking filter coffee from one of those squat cream-colored mugs that hold next to nothing but come with endless refills, observing the mostly older clientele and some bulky Sopranos-looking family, and I felt so
cozy
there. Maybe it’s because you feel like you’re in a movie half the time you’re in New York. Maybe it’s because things are happening all around you and, just by standing in the middle of it, you feel like something is happening
to
you. I don’t know. And maybe the reasons don’t matter. It just feels good.

“Taxi!” I step out into the street, instinctively rising up onto my tippy-toes as if I’m in Carrie-esque stilettos.

Appropriate that I should be heading to the Upper East Side!

Sliding across the collapsed, cracked black leather, I issue the address and then glance back at my redbrick building.

That’s the only time I have a little wobble, when I put the key in the lock and I know it’s just me and the apartment for the rest of the night. I still have the impulse to call my mum and tell her how my day went. I feel so hollow in that moment, so echoingly, despairingly alone. And then comes the rage, as I think of my sister.

“I don’t want you here!” I say it out loud sometimes, trying to banish her from my head. But she’s always lurking.

We stall at the lights beside one of the granite-thighed pedi-cabbers. Do you know they actually have credit card machines on board? They need to; they’re actually more expensive than regular cabs now. I look beyond the cyclist’s khaki shorts and focus on charting our route through Gramercy Park and the Flatiron district, checking off each cross street along the way—23rd becomes 34th and then 42nd, making us level with Times Square, just a few blocks from Rockefeller Center. I take a breath, unable to decide whether to quell my butterflies or embrace them. Talk about the American Dream! Just knowing that my cake-loving tummy is going to be seated across from Pamela Lambert-Leigh within the hour seems fantastical.

“Central Park!” the driver motions to his left.

I smile. That vast expanse of greenery always has an appropriately “centering” effect on me. I wonder if Pamela has had the time to look out over the treetops from the Lobby Lounge at the Mandarin Oriental? Thirty-five floors up with panoramic windows, it’s one of the best views in the city, utterly justifying the $7 price tag dangling from your tea bag.

Of course the park is pretty nice at ground level too. Even if half the New Yorkers fit the overachiever profile. Here the word “relax” becomes an active verb—running, cycling, rollerblading, skating, basketballing, boating, bowling, dog-jogging, tai-chi-ing . . .

I generally go there to sit down. Perhaps wiggle my toes in the grass, maybe blink up at the leaf-dappled sunlight. My regular spot is beside a bronze husky called Balto—ears pricked, chest proud, tail curled, he’s a beauty. He was part of the relay team of sled dogs that battled the elements to bring life-saving vaccines to a remote Alaskan village, inaccessible by any other means. Now he stands immortalized on a rock in one of the more picturesque nooks of the park. Just being around him makes me feel connected to Krista, which is always reassuring. If tinged with some new emotions these days . . .

I wasn’t expecting to feel the way I did when she moved in with Jacques. It’s strange how something that makes you so happy—to see your best friend embarking on a wonderful new life with a good man—can also make you so sad. Prior to their romance we were in it together—the relationship bafflement fog. It was oddly comforting—if someone as lovely as Krista couldn’t find love, then it proved it wasn’t just my shortcomings keeping the right man at bay. We just weren’t destined to get lucky in that way. Better we fill up our hearts with other pursuits. As far as I was concerned, Manhattan was all the man I needed! But now . . . Now she has gone and proved that true love does exist, the pressure is back on again.

Even from Krista. She has started having expectations for me whereas before there was just an acceptance that we had such awful taste in men we were best off out of it.

I remember the first day we met—at a mutual friend’s wedding reception. I was under one of the dinner tables eating a second slice of the wedding cake, not wanting my enjoyment of the pink champagne icing to be tainted by my boyfriend’s look of disapproval. (He had this conspiracy theory that I had hooked him with my feminine wiles, all with a dastardly plan to eat my way to enormity, purely to spite him and shame him in front of his friends. I wasn’t even plump then. But just the sight of me eyeing the dessert trolley would give him the heebie-jeebies.)

Anyway, there I was, prom dress all fanned out on the carpet, feeling like I was five years old, having a lovely time shoulder-popping along to “Crazy in Love” when an arguing couple plonked themselves down beside me. Her foot was bleeding from being skewered by a stiletto on the dance floor, and his main gripe seemed to be that she should have been wearing high heels too.

“Why can’t you just be like everyone else?”

And then he’d stormed off, telling her she could find her own damn Band-Aid.

That was the point at which I revealed myself and offered to make a little bandage using a torn napkin and a cocktail stick. She told me her big toe now looked like one of those pigs-in-blankets hors d’oeuvres, and her giggle gave me such hope, even when I learned she was married to this guy.

We talked for a while (mostly about that soul-destroying shift when your man switches from admiring to admonishing), but Krista said the moment she knew we were going to be bonded forever was when Andrew (her then husband) returned and I drove my steel-tipped vintage heel into
his
foot. Accidentally, of course. I just lost my balance as I was climbing out from under the table . . .

That seems like a lifetime ago now. By the next time I saw her, I was single. And I’ve been that way ever since. On purpose.

I was very clear by that point that I couldn’t risk hooking up with another controlling calorie-counter (always my calories, not theirs!), because I honestly didn’t feel like I had any more escape acts in me.

And my boyfriends have always been so easy to leave, on paper at least. They gave me so many reasons, but I always stayed way too long. Krista thinks it’s because my working life is so geared to finding solutions, making the best of any situation, streamlining, honing—I have to try everything in my repertoire before I’ll throw in the towel, and by then I’ve got myself into some kind of habitual behavior that has nothing to do with any genuine feeling toward the other person, but keeps me held there until they ditch me. Urgh! Even thinking about this raises my blood pressure. Switch that thought!

“Do you know there are nine thousand benches in Central Park and if you placed them end to end they would stretch for seven miles?”

The cab driver glances back at me, seemingly deliberating whether or not to let on that he speaks English.

“Oh! This is it—Lady M!” I scooch up in my seat and point ahead.

He peers with curiosity at the jarringly modern, glass-fronted white box tucked into the otherwise historic
grande dame
neighborhood.

“Cakes,” he grumps.

“Yes,” I cheer as I step onto the pavement.

I pause before I enter, looking around me and wondering what Pamela’s impression will be.

A 1920s matriarch out walking her short-legged pooch would not be out of place. But then neither would the
Sex and the City
girls. If they were coming for tea they would all be in jewel-colored dresses and glinting metallic heels. I shift the dragging laptop bag on my shoulder, straighten my cotton frock and reach for the chrome door handle.

Instant cool. I love the frisk of air-conditioning on a sauna day.

“May I help you?” A gamine server with a black head-kerchief greets me.

“Hello, I’m Laurie—I called earlier?”

My heart is palpitating as I go through the arrangements.

With everything in order, I slide onto one of the molded plastic chairs and try to convince myself that this isn’t a big deal. Even though it is.

I just pray I’ve made the right choice. This place definitely has a snoot factor. And I’d forgotten how bijou the tables are. I hope Pamela doesn’t come with a lot of paperwork or anything that needs fanning out.

“Would you like anything while you are waiting?”

“No, no, thank you, I’m fine.”

I could actually do with a glass of water but I don’t want a half-drunk glass with a lipstick smudge ruining the pristine setting, so instead I focus on my posture and forming an open, welcoming expression. Every now and again my heart loops as a figure passes the window, but so far each person who has entered has been male. And Chinese. I look at my watch. Any minute now . . .

At 3
P.M.
I expect a siren to go off and balloons and streamers to drop from the ceiling. But nothing happens. Life goes on as normal. Without Pamela.

A further five minutes pass.

Anticipation turns to anticlimax.

What if she doesn’t show? What if she’s having such a great time with one of the other itinerary experts she’s decided she doesn’t need to take any more meetings? I check my messages, no polite let-down from the agent. Just an invitation to try out the new ramen burger craze.

I’m starting to get fidgety. I could catch up on my Words with Friends games but I don’t want to look like one of those people always zoned in on their phone, letting the world pass them by. Besides, there are far prettier things to gaze upon in here . . .

“I’m just going to have a little look,” I tell the server as I approach the counter.

I feel a mix of serenity and awe as I contemplate their pristine cake selection. It’s just so unique. Take the Gâteau aux Marrons—it looks as if a pan of spaghetti has been heaped atop the almond flour cake, when in fact the strands are lavish pipings of chestnut-infused cream, dusted with snow sugar.

Snow sugar!

I’m telling you, this place is in a league of its own. You never saw a glossier ganache finish. The only item I’m not sure about is the Green Tea Mousse Cake on account of its lurid chartreuse coloring. Then again—

“These are the ones I saw in Oprah magazine!” a voice bustles in beside me.

She’s pointing to Lady M’s Mille Crêpes—twenty paper-thin handmade crêpes layered with light pastry cream to form their signature cake. You can even keep “tiering up” until you create a wedding cake.

“Aren’t they incredible?” A quieter, more reverent voice inquires. “Like the most delicate of petticoat layers.”