things Amer­i­can

It’s get­ting clos­er! Our vis­it home. We’ve con­firmed some more excit­ing plans: lunch in upstate New York with John’s for­mer assis­tant (and our per­ma­nent friend) Olimpia and her hus­band Tony. They have just built on an amaz­ing new kitchen to their coun­try place up in the moun­tains, from which Olimpia promis­es will issue… her famous meat­balls. I can­not wait. And lunch with Alyssa at a new place in Tribeca, the Devin Tav­ern. Rus­tic Amer­i­can? That’s what we’re com­ing home for.

And we’re stay­ing in town at a lit­tle cozy-sound­ing place, The Union Square Inn. It gets huge­ly dis­parate reviews, and I hope it’s decent, since it was my idea and John always likes bet­ter the sound of a place high in the sky, not low to the ground in the East Vil­lage. Any­way we’ll be there only to sleep, so what’s the prob­lem. I don’t think I have ever stayed in a New York hotel in the whole of my life. That’s what hap­pens when you live in a place; you don’t see the hotels. Unless, that is, you live the kind of life where you do things in hotels in the town where you live, and alas… no. Sigh.

And in our uber-organ­ised mode late­ly, John had the bright idea for me to renew my pass­port before we try to attach all sorts of legal immi­gra­tion things to it, so we skid­ded over the two steps it takes to get to the Amer­i­can Embassy from our flat. Boy is that a weird place. Grant­ed it’s mind-bend­ing­ly ugly. I accept that. But I don’t think I’ve ever been that close to a gun before, and they’re all tot­ing them, just like in Amer­i­can gang­ster films. Only not revolvers, but big long things with lots of han­dles. The demeanor of the chaps in the secu­ri­ty hut is sur­pris­ing­ly joc­u­lar, con­sid­er­ing their brief, but I guess you get used to any­thing. I had a lit­tle drop­per bot­tle of what John calls “hap­py juice,” a flo­ral relax­ation rem­e­dy (I know, I sound like a crack­pot) in my bag, and let me tell you, the intense secu­ri­ty and height­ened state of alert in Grosvenor Square was alive to the pos­si­bil­i­ties of this poten­tial breach of safe­ty. The lit­tle bot­tle was scru­ti­nized under the x‑ray and then I was made to reach per­ilous­ly into the bag myself (they weren’t tak­ing any risks with their own secu­ri­ty, absolute­ly not), and hand it over, where­upon I was about to be giv­en a claim tick­et for it and watch it get installed cer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly in a lock­er. “Don’t be sil­ly, it’s almost emp­ty, you can pitch it,” I said gen­er­ous­ly, and went in the building.

After­wards I had a good spy-ish, plot-like thought (this is what comes of tak­ing too many writ­ing cours­es). What if, upon their find­ing my lit­tle bot­tle, I had made a fuss? Told them I had to take two drop­pers-ful every half hour or else drop dead? Or what if, even more sin­is­ter, I had giv­en them back the bot­tle and then said that, on sec­ond thoughts, I did­n’t need to renew my pass­port that day, and had left? Would that have been ter­ri­bly sus­pi­cious? John of course sug­gest­ed that I should have said, “Oh keep it, I can always get more. It’s just Polo­ni­um 210.” I won­der if they would sic dogs on me? Life in Lon­don can be a lit­tle strange these days, espe­cial­ly in my neighborhood.

Any­way, the sweet embassy man behind Win­dow #1 assured me that I should keep this pass­port as I could get only a year-long one on an emer­gency basis, few­er than 10 days before trav­el­ing, so I can look for­ward to vis­it­ing the embassy again when we return, and in the mean­time I can run through some poten­tial dia­logue sce­nar­ios, smug­gling this, smug­gling that. I’m accept­ing scripts, if you’d like to apply.