Bono

I accelerated into a clumsy jog, but then stopped in my tracks. I could hardly believe it. Piercing the sky barely two blocks away was the most exquisite piece of architecture in the entire world. The Chrysler Building with its glittering tiara symbolizes everything I adore about New York. I called out to introduce her to the delights of this needle-like confection rising from the intersection of 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue. It had been the tallest building in the world for eleven months until the Empire State Building eclipsed it in 1931. But my voice dissolved in a thrum of traffic.

When I caught up with her, she was standing at the entrance to a small park. Drums thumped to the strains of Indian music, bodies twirled, arms waved. Faces were happy—and every one of them, from babies to grandparents, was spattered with neon powder paint.

I took her elbow and suggested we leave them to it, but she was entranced. Ignoring me, she slipped out of my grasp and into the crowd. Alarmed, I lost sight of her. A few minutes later, I caught a glimpse of her, head thrown back and laughing, her right cheek vibrant blue. I dived in to rescue her—only to have my ski cap bombed bright yellow. The first hit felt like an assault; the second, a green blob on my forehead, was more like a kiss.

As the music drew us into a hypnotic spiral, we were soon putting ourselves in the firing lines of reds, purples, and oranges—begging to be hit.

Dancing around with crazy, paint-bombing Indians in the middle of New York was like being drunk without touching a drop of vodka. Outsiders in this giant city, we’d been accepted and daubed by a group of other outsiders, who somehow embraced me with joyous feelings of belonging. Laughing under a shower of orange, I forgot about the prospect of inhabiting a rat hole for the next month or two. Weariness dissolved, and my feet were pleasantly painless.

Miraculously, my knee wasn’t hurting, either. Western medicine has a long way to go, I thought, gyrating my hips Bollywood style. I didn’t have a meniscus tear, just a lack of Indian dancing. As I shook my hands in the air, my list of perpetual anxieties began to fade. Wallet and passport stolen—so what? Mugged and thrown in the Hudson—well, I’d had a good life.

Lydia spread her arms in the air and laughed. I’d never seen her so uninhibited. Maybe we were more alike than I’d thought. The city was having a strange effect on us both. I could see my husband’s face at the sight of me covered in splotches like a Jackson Pollock painting. The stuff didn’t seem to rub off, either. If I could ever persuade him to move here there’d be compromises, of course. We’d have to find a neighborhood where they don’t throw paint.

“We’d better get to the shops before they close,” Lydia said, appearing at my side. She was back to her sensible self—apart from the fact she was bright blue and green.

Two blocks along, the atmosphere changed radically. Almost every face was white and conservatively dressed. Horns stopped honking and there were no more vividly speckled soul mates to wave at. We seemed to have moved out of the paint-throwing neighborhood to a part of town where people had never even heard of the Holi festival. My red ski cap and I were now largely yellow. I caught my reflection in a shop window to see a hallucinogenic Big Bird.

We stumbled across a housewares store, where the young staff members looked too tired to jump to conclusions. As we paid for our towels (blue), Lydia’s blanket (fake fur), and a shower curtain (red and yellow stripes), the cashier didn’t seem to notice his customers resembled a pair of brightly colored parrots. If he did, he wasn’t saying anything. This is New York, after all.

Chapter Seven

A CITY WITH HEART

There’s no such thing as just a cat.

A set of purple curtains came into focus above my head as I woke from a hollow of sleep. Lydia was snoring gently under her fake fur blanket a few feet away. Poor kid. The so-called sofa bed was just a vinyl-covered plank, but she’d insisted it was comfortable. The room was chilly. Thank god we had bought the blanket for her. I pulled the covers up to my chin and tried to focus on the freshly laundered sheets rather than the bed’s lingering aroma.

With most traces of the previous tenants gone, our new home revealed itself in all its glory. The only source of natural light was from the windows behind my bed. The front door and kitchenette at the other end of the room faded into shades of gloom.

The cleaning person had left a note saying she’d changed the code to the door lock. She’d scrawled the new numbers in bold pencil. Reassuring as it was, I was grateful for the additional row of bolts across the inside of the door.