try some on so she could take pictures and come back to me. Before I knew what was happening it was twenty to six and I barely had time to run Dean Martin home and feed him before heading down here. So here I was, sweaty and a little frazzled, still in my work clothes, about to find out which way my life was about to go next.
Okay, ladies and gentlemen, this way to the observation deck, please.
I had stopped running several minutes previously, but still felt breathless as I made my way across the plaza. I pushed at the smoked-glass door and noted with relief that the queue for tickets was short. I had checked on TripAdvisor the night before and been warned that queues could be lengthy but felt somehow too superstitious to buy one in advance. So I waited my turn, checking my reflection in my compact, glancing around me surreptitiously on the off-chance he had turned up early, then bought a ticket that gave me access between the hours of six fifty and seven ten, followed the velvet rope and waited while I was shepherded with a group of tourists towards a lift.
Sixty-seven floors, they said. So high that the ride up was meant to make your ears pop.
He would come. Of course he would come.
What if he didn’t?
This was the thought that had crossed my mind ever since his one-line response to my email. ‘Okay. I hear you.’ Which really could have meant anything. I waited to see if he wanted to ask questions about my plan, or say anything else that hinted at his decision. I reread my own email, wondering if perhaps I had sounded off-putting, too bold, too assertive, whether I had conveyed my own strength of feeling. I loved Sam. I wanted him with me. Did he understand how much? But having issued the most enormous of ultimata it seemed weird to start double-checking that it had been understood properly, so I simply waited.
Six fifty-five p.m. The lift doors opened. I held out my ticket and stepped in. Sixty-seven floors. My stomach tightened.
The lift began to move upwards slowly and I felt a sudden panic. What if he didn’t come? What if he’d got it, but changed his mind? What would I do? Surely he wouldn’t do that to me, not after all this. I found myself taking an audible gulp of air, and pressed my hand to my chest, trying to steady my nerves.
‘It’s the height, isn’t it?’ A kindly woman next to me reached out and touched my arm. ‘Sixty-seven floors up is quite a distance.’
I tried to smile. ‘Something like that.’
If you can’t leave your work and your house and all the things that make you happy I will understand. I’ll be sad, but I’ll get it.
You’ll always be with me one way or the other.
I lied. Of course I lied. Oh, Sam, please say yes. Please be waiting when the doors open again. And then the lift stopped.
‘Well, that wasn’t sixty-seven floors,’ someone said, and a couple of people laughed awkwardly. A baby in a pram gazed at me with wide brown eyes. We all stood for a moment, then someone stepped out.
‘Oh. That wasn’t the main elevator,’ said the woman beside me, pointing. ‘That’s the main elevator.’
And there it was. At the far end of an endless snaking horseshoe of people.
I stared at it in horror. There must have been a hundred visitors, two hundred even, milling quietly, staring up at the museum exhibits, the laminated histories on the wall. I looked at my watch. It was already one minute to seven. I texted Sam, watching in horror as the message refused to send. I started to push my way through the crowd, muttering, ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry,’ as people tutted loudly and yelled, ‘Hey lady, we’re all waiting here.’ Head down, I made my way past the wallboards that told the story of the Rockefeller building, of its Christmas trees, the video exhibit of NBC, bobbing and weaving, muttering my apologies. There are few grumpier people than overheated tourists who have found themselves waiting in an unexpected queue. One grabbed at my sleeve. ‘Hey! You! We’re all waiting!’
‘I’m meeting someone,’ I said. ‘I’m so sorry. I’m English. We’re normally very good at queuing. But if I’m any later I’m going to miss him.’
‘You can wait like the rest of us!’
‘Let her go, baby,’ said the woman beside him, and I mouthed my thanks, pushing on