‘I see,’ he said. ‘Well, get back to me when your ego has returned to earth.’

And he walked away!

My confidence was shaken. As if the lights had dimmed briefly, the party ceased to be a glittering social occasion. And was just a scrum of piss-heads and liggers crammed into an unfeasibly tiny New York apartment with three balloons sellotaped to the front door.

And then I squared my shoulders. It was just about time for another line. There was a great selection of attractive men standing in my front room. There was even a chance that some of them weren’t gay.

Luke Costello could feck off for himself!

28

I got lucky that night. I got off with a bloke called Daryl who was someone important at a publishing house. He said he knew Jay Mclnerney and had been to his ranch in Texas.

‘Oh,’ I breathed, impressed.’He has two ranches?’

‘I’m sorry?’ said Daryl.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I knew he had a ranch in Connecticut, but I didn’t know he had one in Texas too.’ Daryl looked a bit taken aback.

I realized I was talking too much.

When we couldn’t get into my bedroom for a shag we left the party and went to Daryl’s apartment. Unfortunately things took a turn for the very weird soon after we got there.

We finished the rest of my coke. But right about the stage we should have been clambering into bed together, out-invincibling each other, he curled up into a ball and started to rock backwards and forwards, saying over and over again in a baby voice ‘Mama. Ma. Ma. Mam. Mah. Mama.’

At first I thought he was joking, so I joined in and did a bit of mamaing myself. Until I realized that this was no joke and that I was nothing but a fucking eejit.

I straightened myself up, cleared my throat and tried to talk sense to him, but he was beyond hearing or seeing me.

By then, the sun had come up. I stood in the beautiful, airy, white-walled loft on West Ninth Street, staring at a grown man rolling around like a toddler on his varnished, cherry-wood floor. And I felt alone with such intensity, it was as though I was hollow. I watched the dust motes dancing in the early-morning light and felt as if I had a hotline to the centre of the universe and that too was hollow, empty and alone. I contained the emptiness of all of creation in the area that was once my stomach. Who would think that one human being could contain so much nothingness? I was an emotional Tardis, containing impossibly vast deserts of abandoned emptiness, weeks’ worth of walking through a sandy isolated vacuum.

Emptiness around me. Emptiness within me.

I looked down at Daryl. He had gone to sleep with his thumb in his mouth.

I thought about lying down beside him, but somehow I didn’t think he’d be too pleased to find me there when he woke up.

I hovered uncertainly, not knowing what to do. So I tore a page out of my notebook and wrote my number on it and then put ‘Ring me!’ and signed it ‘Rachel’. I worried about whether I should put ‘Love, Rachel’or just ‘Rachel’. I thought ‘Rachel’was safer, but less friendly. Then at the bottom I wrote, ‘The girl from the party’, just in case he didn’t remember me. I toyed with drawing a picture of myself but managed to get a grip. Then I wondered if the exclamation mark in ‘Ring me!’ was too pushy. Perhaps I should have written’Give me a call…?’ instead.

I knew I was being silly. But when he didn’t ring me, as he undoubtedly wouldn’t, I would torment myself with what I had or hadn’t done. (Maybe the note was too cold – perhaps he wouldn’t think I really wanted him to ring. He could be sitting at home this very minute, dying to ring me, but he thinks I don’t want him to. Or maybe it was too aggressive – he might have realized how desperate I am. I should have played hard to get by writing ‘Don’t ring me’, etc, etc.) I put the note under his hand, then went to look in his fridge. I liked to see the fridges of stylish people. There was nothing except a slice of pizza and a round of Brie. I put the cheese in my bag and went home.

I tried to force myself to walk back through the sunlit morning to Avenue A because I believed exercise was a great way to normal out.

But I couldn’t do it. The streets were menacing and threatening. Science-fiction land. I felt the few people that were out at that time – six o’clock on a Sunday morning–were turning and staring after me. I sensed every eye in New York on me, hating me, wishing me ill.

I found myself walking faster and faster, almost running.

When I saw a cab approaching, I nearly fell to my knees in gratitude. In I clambered, my palms slick with sweat, just about able to tell the driver my address.

And then I wanted to get out. I didn’t trust him. He kept looking at me through his rear-view mirror.

With horror, the realization hit me that nobody knew where I was. Or who I was with. Everyone knew New York cab-drivers were total psychopaths. This cabbie could take me to a deserted warehouse and kill me and not a single person would know.

No one had seen me leave the party with Darren, Daryl, whatever his name was.

Except Luke Costello, I realized, with relief laced with something unpleasant – he’d seen me and made some smart remark. What was it?

With a belly-flop sensation, I suddenly remembered the my-finger-in-waistband-of-Luke’s-jeans episode and I wanted to vomit with shame. Please God, I begged, make it not have happened. I’ll give next week’s wages to the poor if you’ll only erase it.

What had I been thinking of? I wondered in horror. Him, of all people? And the worst part of it was that he’d turned me down, he’d rejected me!

I returned to the present with a jolt as I felt the taxi-driver’s eyes on me. I was so scared I decided to jump out at the next lights.

But then – mercifully – I realized that I was probably only imagining the sense of menace in the car. I nearly always got paranoid after a good session and I went weak with relief when I remembered that. There was nothing to be frightened of.

Then the man spoke to me and, even though logically I knew there was nothing to worry about, the fear flared up again.

‘Been out partying?’ he asked, meeting my eyes in the rear-view.

‘I stayed in my friend’s apartment,’ I said, my mouth dry. ‘A girlfriend’s,’ I emphasized. And my room-mate is expecting me around now.

‘I called to tell her I was on my way,’ I added.

He said nothing but he nodded. If the back of someone’s head can look menacing, then his did.