Before You Knew My Name, Jacqueline Bublitz [best book club books for discussion txt] 📗

some small, preserved part of herself that is excited to be here. She felt it, briefly, when she landed at LAX. A little arms-out-wide moment at all the freedom ahead of her. But that was hours ago, hours of transit and bad coffee, before another flight jolted her three hours ahead, so that she’s missed the sun twice over, and has no idea what time it’s really meant to be.

As Ruby looks out the cab window at her new surroundings blurring by, she thinks maybe that first view of New York’s famous skyline will cheer her up. An iconic bridge she will recognise, or one of those familiar buildings, lit like a Christmas tree. For now, it’s grey plastic bags floating like bloated birds in the trees, and a freeway knocking up against the sloping yards of thin, slate houses; if she can just keep her eyes open, just hold on, she knows these houses and church billboards and chain link fences will soon give way to shimmering water, to neon lights, and those famous metal buildings, narrow as fingers, beckoning. And, with this last thought, Ruby acknowledges she is delirious. Seeing bloated birds and beckoning fingers—she must be dreaming more than awake right now.

(I am stepping over cracks, shimmying around people, waving at my street signs and statues, as she presses her forehead against the glass of her passenger-side window, watching for those beckoning fingers. At what point in this journey do our paths begin to cross?)

Struggling to keep her eyes open, Ruby wills the driver to go faster. She wonders if he knows what an important role he is playing in her life right now, delivering her to a new world, a beginning of things, like this. As the driver talks to someone on his mobile phone, his voice so low as to be indecipherable, she acknowledges this man could not care less about her, or the way her heart has seemingly moved up into her throat. It is clearly nothing new for him, this transporting of another lost, hopeful soul to whatever awaits them in New York City.

She watches his hands slide across the steering wheel, each turn like a clock counting down and understands it is of no consequence to a stranger that she has come here with no plan, no calendar of events. He just wants to get her to her destination, drop her off and get back to whoever he’s talking to, maybe show up at someone’s door himself. Ruby is a task to complete, irrelevant to him and to New York, that neon glow outside her window, getting brighter. She suddenly feels like laughing.

I could, she muses, change my name, make up a life. That’s how anonymous I am right now.

And then.

‘Here.’

‘Wha—?’

The car stops suddenly, and the cab driver half-turns toward Ruby.

‘You say, here.’

He points to a five-storey apartment building on his right. Scaffolding one floor high runs alongside the façade, and a series of wrought-iron fire escapes snake up to the roof, giving off the impression of a building under perpetual construction. Ruby sees that the numbers above the wide front door match those she read out to the driver back at JFK.

Scrambling for her wallet, Ruby over-tips for the ride, and the driver finally looks at her now, shakes his head slightly, before he pops the trunk and hoists her suitcases onto the street.

As Ruby watches him speed away, she fights the urge to wave him back to the curb and ask to be returned to the airport. Instead, as the yellow cab disappears from sight, she struggles her suitcases up the concrete steps that lead to her new home, before using her elbow to hit a buzzer that says Press Here. She hears the echo of her arrival on the other side, as she waits, trembling, for the door in front of her to open.

Mine opens with a knock.

As Ruby Jones was delivered to her new front door, I was following the blue dot of my phone all the way to the edge of Central Park, then veering around it, just like the map told me to. Keeping the Hudson River on my left, there were soon more apartments than stores and hotels, and bags of household rubbish began to appear on the curb. Rows of thin, leafless trees started to grow up out of the pavement, shin-high fences made of iron turning each one into tiny, walled-off gardens, and it was clear, strange as everything seemed to me, that I had reached the streets where people lived. The frantic pace of Midtown seemed a world away up here on the Upper West Side, the night sky pressing down on my shoulders, the residential streets all but empty. I wasn’t worried though, you could still feel the presence of people on nearby streets, sense all the living going on around me. Other than a small, involuntary jump when a man smoking in a doorway whistled at me, I felt oddly calm as I approached Noah’s apartment building.

Still. My heart is in my throat when I knock, as if the gesture is pulling all my courage up out of me. I am sweating slightly after being buzzed in from the street, a set of narrow stairs climbed, the Leica pressing against me. Rows of doors remain closed to me, and then the one I have been looking for is right there in front of me.

Own bed, shared bathroom. $300 P/W—all included …

Yes, I’ll be paying cash …

No, I’m not allergic to dogs …

Here is the full address, if you’re taking the train the closest stop is 96th and Broadway …

I’ll be coming by bus, I should arrive by 9 …

As you will.

As you will. A strange sign off, I thought at the time. But I appreciated this Noah’s efficiency throughout the process. Deal done inside a few text messages, hardly any questions asked. No unnecessary niceties or chit-chat. I don’t even know what his voice sounds like, I realise