Bono

Sated on Frozen, we plunged into the sea of traffic on 44th Street. We were both hungry so we entered a vast deli that doubled as an all-day café. After loading salads on our plates, we were taken aback when the tired-looking checkout operator with a Hispanic accent insisted we weigh them. Nobody weighs their food in Australia, at least not until it’s sitting in rolls on their hips.

A cop with a paunch equivalent to an eight-month pregnancy hunched over his coffee cup and gazed at the street as if nothing would surprise him. At the next table, a couple sat opposite each other and shouted into their phones. I liked the everyday grittiness of the deli and the people who went there.

Afterward, we walked past the fruit shop next door. The Indian man who’d served us the night before waved from behind a bank of flowers. Far from being scary, violent New York, this place was positively friendly.

“Let’s say hello to Doris,” Lydia said as we approached the pet supply shop.

Bluebell was dozing in the window, her tail curved neatly around her front feet.

“Not yet,” I said.

Doris would be shocked to hear of Bono’s disappearing up the chimney act. She’d label us the world’s most incompetent cat lovers.

We strode past the hardware shop. I couldn’t face the girls in there, either. I steered Lydia around a corner down a gentle slope past cafés and diners toward Grand Central Station.

I began to realize the reason so many New Yorkers look as if they have stepped out of hair salons is they probably have. There were more pocket-sized beauty salons, nail bars, and dry cleaners than I could count. Across the street, a supermarket overshadowed a computer gadget store, where I hoped to someday find a 12-year-old who would help end my Wi-Fi drought.

Even more alluring was an authentic-looking clinic offering acupuncture and Chinese medicine. With any luck, a few artfully placed needles and a massage would down-age my knee.

“Oooh, look!” Lydia said, stopping outside a bakery window packed with sumptuous pastries.

“Those raspberry tarts are to die for!” I said.

But she’d hardly noticed them.

“They’ve got free Wi-Fi!” she said, pointing at a discreet sign.

“Don’t you want a raspberry tart?” I asked.

“Okay, I guess we’ll have to buy something to get the Wi-Fi,” she said.Before we knew it, we were inside sitting at a scrubbed wooden table and feverishly checking our emails. I itched to call Philip. He wouldn’t believe a fraction of the things we’d been through in the past forty-eight hours. But there was no point. He’d be fast asleep with Jonah curved like a croissant next to his knees.

The only downside of my raspberry tart was the sign over the counter advertising the fact it contained 510 calories. Back home, cakes hardly ever confess how fat they’re going to make you. The tart landed in front of me with a guilt-inducing clunk.

“Delicious!” I said, digging into it with a fork. “Want to go halves?”

Like most naturally slim people, Lydia could take or leave a pastry.

“Please,” I said. “You’d be doing me a favor.”

“Oh all right,” she said, graciously raising a spoon.

The cappuccino was good, but I was hankering after a full octane Australasian latte served by a barista in a man bun.

I planned to take Lydia inside Grand Central Station to show her the immense cathedral-like hall with its eggshell-colored ceiling, displaying the constellations in elegant gold leaf, but she disappeared into a women’s boutique near the entrance. I was more than pleased to hang around while she reveled in trying on skirts, tops, and shoes. She’d missed out on years of shopping.

“What do you think?” she asked, emerging from a changing booth wearing a creamy blouse with a flouncy collar.

I caught my breath when I saw the neckline plunging between her breasts. It was the last thing I’d have expected her to choose.

“Looks great!” I said. “What will you wear with it?”

“Oh, these pants will do,” she said gazing down at her jeans.

I rifled through a pile of skirts and held one up.

“How about this?”

Lydia twisted her mouth. It was knee length and probably too short for her taste, but I saw no harm in expanding her horizons.

“I was thinking more this,” she said, reaching for a brown handkerchief posing as a skirt.

I waited outside the booth, anxious she might have an identity crisis in there. When she pulled the curtain aside, a beautiful, faun-like creature stepped toward me. The cream blouse glowed against her skin, and the miniskirt made the most of her legs.

“You look beautiful!” I said. “Now all you need are the shoes.”

Lydia demurred, saying she’d spent enough already.

“My treat,” I said, pointing her at the stairs leading to the shoe section.

For someone who’d spent years in and out of a monastery, my daughter had a highly developed sense of style. She chose elegant, tan ankle boots with a discreet gold chain around each of the heels.

She thanked me several times over as we left the store on a rare and wonderful thing for her—a retail high.