Bono

After I’d changed and slid between the sheets, a man’s voice started up on the other side of the wall. He was on the phone sharing details of his workday with someone called Darling. It seemed his office was overflowing with demons and narcissists. Corporate politics is the same the world over. After what seemed hours, he told Darling how much he loved and missed her, and we were all able to get some sleep.

* * *

I woke the next morning to hear my neighbor talking to Darling again. He’d slept well, thank you, and hoped she had too. He told her to have a wonderful day, that he’d be thinking of her every minute of it, and he loved her so much. Mwah, mwah.

Making comparisons between your own relationship and other people’s is pointless. Other couples may seem devoted to each other, but it’s easy to put on a show in public. Then again, unless they had a weird kink about people listening in on their phone calls, what I was hearing was just between the two of them. I smiled at the thought of them being in the throes of a new love. Diamond rings and wedding cakes . . . nothing could be more romantic.

After my neighbor had left for work, I unlatched the French doors. It wasn’t the grandest courtyard, but on a mild spring morning I wasn’t about to waste it. I negotiated tubs of withered plants and stood on tiptoe to inspect next door, but the fence was like the Great Wall of China. There weren’t any cracks to peer through. I shifted a rickety seat into a shaft of sunlight. A bird warbled a tentative melody from a nearby tree. With a cup of coffee and the New York Times, I was practically in paradise.

To fill in the hours before I could see Bono and Michaela, I wandered tree-lined streets. The Upper East Side is a world away from Midtown. Nannies of various ethnicities shouted into their phones while they pushed oversized strollers containing kids easily old enough to get around on their own two feet. A diminutive doorman escorted a teenager twice his size onto the sidewalk and helped the hulk adjust his backpack.

I was taken back when a limo glided past with a pale-faced boy in the back. With his school uniform and neatly parted hair, he was a clone of Richie Rich. It hadn’t occurred to me the comic-book character I’d grown up with could have been based on a real boy.

Two limos later, I realized the Upper East Side is populated by hundreds of Richie Riches. Yet in all this opulence, it seemed a type of apartheid was going on. I had the impression those who served were not only taken for granted but invisible to their employers. Around a corner, a group of African American kids gathered around a portable soup kitchen.

With there being so many different ways to live in New York, I was grateful for the weeks I’d had with Bono in a scruffy studio near Grand Central. That little lion cat had opened the door to the city’s soul for me. Though I knew New York could be a tough place to live in, I’d always think of it as a warm and generous place because of him.

Much as I loved the city, it was right for me to live with Philip, our family, and crazy Jonah. The world’s a small place these days, anyway. I consoled myself with the thought that New York and Melbourne are never more than a day apart.

Wandering past smart restaurants and nail salons, I pretended to enjoy myself. But I couldn’t wait to see Bono.

Chapter Forty

OLD HAUNTS

A cat feels at home when she is invisible.

My heart sank when Michaela told me Monique and Berry had gone away for a couple of days. The Bono reunion was on the back burner.

With her usual sixth sense, Michaela invited me out to a night of my dreams—dinner at the Algonquin Hotel followed by a Broadway performance of An American in Paris. For years I’d been in awe of the Algonquin and the witty circle of writers who met for lunch there every day throughout the 1920s. Fortunately, the hotel has maintained enough dark wood and carpet to keep the ghosts of Dorothy Parker, Harold Ross, Robert Benchley, and the rest alive.

Michaela and Gene were waiting for me in the foyer. As we threw arms around each other it felt as if we’d been apart for five minutes rather than two years. Whenever our kids fret over losing friends who are moving away, I assure them distance has little impact on true friendship. Besides, intermittent catch-ups with people you have a shared history with is, like the finest cognac, all the more treasured for its rarity.

“Have you met Matilda?” Michaela asked.

Casting the name through a mental list of her friends and colleagues, I couldn’t think of a Matilda.

Michaela pointed across the room at a gray and white Rag-doll cat who was busy greeting guests.

“The hotel cat,” Michaela said. “There’s been a Matilda at the Algonquin since the 1930s. Different cats, of course, but the same name. Unless it’s a male, and then it’s called Hamlet.”

“How Shakespearean,” I smiled.