2 Questions Every Girl is Asking Herself

Chapter 49

One warm evening in September, a few months after I'd started writing full time, I was in the middle of reading my weekly horoscopes, when a call interrupted my absorption in the subject.

A voice as sweet as nectarine seeped through the other side,

"Da mimi, let's move to New York together!"

This is Kat talking. This non-stop chatterbox of a girl I've known since uni. Right after we graduated, the recession hit, this girl bounced from job to job to job. POS sales, back-office cheque processing, and now piano school, not to mention long stretches of unemployment in between. The fire in her seems to be at perpetual odds with the tranquil waters of our city. She studied Finance. All she ever wanted to be was an investment banker.

"I really have to go. I can't stand my boss, I can't do this anymore," she went on, "All these years you can't go because you've been married to that consulting job, but now you're finally divorced and free. You can go anywhere you want!"

"Kat, I get why you wanna go, Wall Street is there, but what am I gonna do in New York?"

Her response was a song:

"In New York, concrete jungle where dreams are made of...there's nothing you can't do...big lights will inspire you..."

I laughed, "Even if you serenade me with a guitar, it still doesn't make any sense! What am I going to be an inspired starving artist in New York? Besides there's also the visa to consider."

I thought she'd drop it then, just like we always had.  But a little later, Kat called again, excited about something.

"Let's move to London!"

"Now, why London?"

"Because London is the financial center of Europe.  I've looked it up online, it's easier to get the visa. We can get the visa and THEN look for work. And it's not like the Australian working holiday visa, where you're only allowed to do shitty work like picking berries on a farm, you can do any kind of work like a regular British person."

"Oh..."

"Da mimi, you should google London Flats for Rent."

"Why would I want to do that?"

"Because you can see the places we are gonna live in! If we live together, and Annie wants to go too, the three of us, we can rent some place really nice, with French windows and date British men. We'll have dinner parties and flowers in the house every week!"

"I'm strictly into Chinese men now, don't you know?" I winked, "But what are the Brits like?"

"I don't know. When I was on exchange in Amsterdam, I only visited London. Actually, I prefer Germans. And Oh...the Italians! But don't worry, European guys are all super fashionable. They wear bright socks and have perfect manners. And they are so interesting to talk to, not like the guys here, all they know is hockey. You know with the Euro boys, we talked about really deep stuff like... philosophy - " I could just hear her going breathless...at the thought of philosophy...

Then a trickle of giggles flooded the telephone line.

"Da mimi, it's going to be so much fun if we lived together. You're gonna be the next J.K. Rowling!"

I laughed, "I've never read Harry Potter."

"All the publishers are there," she went on, "All the magazines and ad agencies are there. You know, you can find a real writing job there."

She waited for the message to sink in.

For the months since I've been back, when people ask me what I do, I say, "I'm writing a book." Then they ask again, as though they hadn't heard me, "No I mean, what do you really do? The thing that pays the bills?" When I explain to them I'm just writing, it doesn't pay the bills, their faces quickly turn into a smirk,  their eyes look past me as though I'd already been dismissed from the conversation, as though saying, 'Ah, she's just an amateur.'

"Send me the link to the visa paperwork," I said to Kat.

I sat in front of the computer waiting for the link. The screen resumed with my half-finished horoscope. It read, "A Libra will change your life."

I smiled. Kat is a Libra. 

—————————

Please remember to vote. Thanks :)