An Author and A Young Woman - Chapter 1: Birthday Party
Chapter 1: Birthday Party
A young woman stood at the entrance end of the bar. It was around 7:30 pm. ‘75th Street Brewery’, a sports bar in Upper West Side, New York City, had a small crowd already and more customers were coming in; most of them looked like young working professionals. The woman was about 160 cm tall or 5’3’’, 5 feet 3 inches tall, which was how her height was measured in US. She was not considered to be a small woman but definitely not a tall woman in this country; she was slightly shorter than average women. But she stood like something invisible lifted her up. Though she looked very comfortable and did not look forceful, she had a very good pasture. She did not have the ballerina like pasture, but she clearly looked taller than her actual height at the first glance. She had dark straight hair and her skin had slight complexion. Eyebrows were straight and clear; her eyes curved in slightly. She actually had large eyes; since they did not look like wondering around but looked very calm and peaceful, one had to take a moment to realize that they were large eyes. Eye color was green, though it was rather difficult to tell because the bar was slightly dim. Straight nose and lips with texture. Her makeup was rather light, but it seemed that she did not have to wear thick makeup. She wore a necklace; it was nothing big or elaborate, and it suited her. She just wore a white blouse and blue jeans. Both seemed like they were designer clothes though; they did not look like cheap clothes. Black boots with heals not too high; they looked like made of fine leather. She wore a few rings but no ring on her left ring finger; she also wore a small watch and several thin bracelets. Bracelets looked like they were authentic handicrafts from Africa, India or Southeast Asia. One couldn’t tell whether they were expensive or not, but they did look authentic; they suited her well because she looked like she had an ethical background. She looked like she was a southern European descent or Middle Eastern descent. Iranian descent? Maybe Turkey? Maybe she’s from a southern European country like Spain, Portugal or Italy. It was difficult to tell, though she had calmness and peacefulness so that she looked like she truly belonged to the city. A young female bartender approached and said, “I saw you comin’.”
“Hi Kristina.”
”What can I get you, Diva?”
“Martini.”
”Ok. Phew …” Kristina whispered only slightly as if Diva were going to party hard tonight. Diva kept cool and waited for her drink. She didn’t want to have too much alcohol too early, but today was her birthday. Though she looked like she was in control and had no plan to get drunk, she wanted to order a suitable drink, a stiff drink, to celebrate her birthday. She just turned 25 years old today. She had pretty much everything she could ask for as a 25 years old career woman. Good job, good look, good health, nice clothes, a decent apartment, friends to hang out with and good education. She worked as a web designer and made about 55k a year. Tons of people made more than what she made in New York City, but 55k was a very good salary given her age; she could foresee that she could be becoming a project manager and making 100k a year easily by the time she reached 30. She could also get into other areas like online marketing and multimedia development for the web. She could get MBA while she would continue working full time; given her age, she could complete the program before she reached 30. Her career had bright future ahead. She was rather short, and she didn’t exactly look like a tall slender fashion model, but she had a very pretty face and a fine figure. Most people would give her 8 out of 10 at least if they were to give her a score on her look out of 10. She had a gym membership paid by her company and she worked out three times a week. She kept in shape and she also had good health; she did a full checkup a couple of months ago, and her doctor told her that everything looked great. She also had a bunch of nice clothes. She bought some of her clothes at stores like Macy’s and Bloomingdale but she also bought a bunch of clothes at designer brand stores in SOHO, Upper West Side and Upper East Side. She usually dressed semi-formally. Because of her upbringing, she felt comfortable dressing formally, but most people at her work dressed rather casually, however, because it was one of those work places that people with creativity and artistic sense worked (or they liked to believe that they were creative people). She accommodated and decided to dress semi-formally. She lived alone in Sunnyside, Queens; her apartment had two rooms, one of which being her bedroom, a separate kitchen and a bathroom. The apartment was a lot more than what a single woman in her 20s could ask for. Since she didn’t spend a lot of time in her apartment, she only had necessary furniture. The room looked rather empty, but she liked it that way. She also had friends that she met at various places like dance classes and professional training classes to advance career. She had a B.S. degree in math from one of top 50 universities in US, which impressed a lot of people, particularly, men.
Diva organized tonight’s party. She wanted to pick a familiar place. She also wanted to pick a kind of place that she could have fun casually. Being able to order variety of drinks was a must. If not the best and greatest in the city, she wanted to be able to get good cocktails if she wanted. She wanted the place to have a reasonable selection of beers as well so that her male friends could enjoy trying out different beers. The place had to have a good selection of hard liquors to wrap up the party. She couldn’t think of any other place other than ‘75th Street Brewery’ when she thought about all these requirements. She also wanted to have dinner at the place, so the sports bar was just perfect. The bar served pretty good food and had a decent variety. She wasn’t expecting to have so many guests, but if there was a good turnout, the bar could accommodate; it shouldn’t be difficult to set up tables and chairs to fit 15, 16 guests or so. She started calling and emailing her friends about a week ago; she got quite a few responses. She finalized the time and told them the name and the address of the place along with the time when the party was scheduled to start, 8:00 pm Friday night. She just wanted to make sure that she, the organizer, was the first person to come to the party, so she arrived at the bar early.
Shortly after Diva ordered Martini, one of her friends, Ros showed up. “Happy Birthday!” said Ros and hugged Diva. “Thanks”, smiled Diva.
“Am I the first to arrive?”
”Looks like it.”
”How’re you feeling?”
”Not bad.” Diva smiled again and she had chitchat with Ros. Among her guests, Ros had the most impressive resume. She got her PhD in Biochemistry from NYU; that itself was a big achievement, but she started working in Wall Street right after. She’s a project manager at Sphere Fund Management, a major investment firm in Wall Street and her team looked into legal matters related to commodity trading. Her name was spelled ‘Ros’, R O S, because she was originally from Cambodia; she immigrated to Europe when she was 5 years old and then immigrated to US eventually when she was 10 years old. She was several years older than Diva; she wasn’t very tall, but she possessed the atmosphere of ‘tough girl’ in Wall Street.
Shortly after Ros arrived, Mia and her male friend arrived; Diva couldn’t tell whether her friend was just her male friend or her boyfriend. She met her at the speech class that she took at City College this fall. Diva still had a slight accent, and that bothered her a little. She thought that taking a speech class could help her improve her speaking ability. It turned out that most of those who took the same class spoke English as a second or a third language, and they were not originally from US. Mia was one of them; she was from Dominican Republic. She came to US when she was 8 years old; she came straight to New York. Since there were so many Spanish speakers in New York, she spoke English only when she needed to until she started college. As a result, she still sounded slightly awkward when she spoke English; that was why she took the speech class.
Mia said, “Happy Birthday!” “Thank you” said Diva.
”How are you doing?”
”Good. How are you?”
”I’m fine.”
Mia spoke like an ESL student. She introduced her friend to Diva. “Diva, this is George.”
“Hi, nice to meet you.”
”Nice to meet you, too, and happy birthday.”
”Thank you.”
Diva had chitchat with Mia and then she started talking with Ros again.
It was around 8:00 pm and Rene showed up. She was Diva’s best friend.
“Hey, how’s it going, Diva?”
”Having a drink and relaxing.” They hugged and Diva introduced Rene to everyone around. She was born and raised in Jersey City, right across Hudson River from the city; she didn’t go to college, but she was very talented in drawing and she eventually became a retoucher; she retouched posters and illustrations at a printing company in Queens. She was also several years older than Diva; she talked about dating, finding the right man and getting married all the time, but she was still single. She was in her early 30s, and as far as Diva could see, she would remain single for some time.
Diva’s group was occupying one table, but there were five people now, so they took another table and a couple of chairs. “How’s everything going?” asked Rene.
“Work is going ok. It’s a bit stressful, but it’s just a part of it. My boss is a psycho, but you know that already. Reading a couple of books. I’m a bit tired of dance classes. I’m into cardio boxing now. Great, great workout. It’s a so better workout than dance. What else …? I’ll go catch a movie with you this weekend? Maybe?”
”Sure. You look good.”
”Thanks.”
”How many more people are coming tonight?”
”You know, I don’t know. Maybe a couple of more? New friends from my speech class are coming, so I expect a few more guests.”
”Ok.” Rene ordered ‘Alexander’; she said that she wanted to order something fancy.
Tatyana and her boyfriend, Kamen, arrived at around 9:00 pm. Most Europeans weren’t very punctual, and they were no exceptions; Diva didn’t mind that though. After all, this was not a business meeting, and the night was still young. Kamen didn’t care much about his clothes, but Tatyana looked good. Many Europeans dressed well, and she found that that was one of the biggest differences between Americans and Europeans. New Yorkers dressed so much better than the rest of Americans, but it seemed that Europeans were a level above.
Malique and her female friend, Anne, arrived shortly after Tatyana and Kamen; Diva met Malique in the IT training class at City College that she took this fall. She actually didn’t know a lot about Malique, but he seemed to be a genuinely nice person. She chatted with Malique pretty often when they were in the class, and they exchanged phone numbers to keep in touch on the last day. Both Malique and Anne were African Americans. Malique was engaged to someone, but she wasn’t here today; she had a previous engagement apparently. Anne was Malique’s close friend and she liked partying, and that was why Malique invited her. She had an arty look; she wore glasses with a think black frame, a purple blouse and black jeans. She also wore boots though they did not look as nice as Diva’s boots.
There were eight people including Diva. They said ‘Three is a crowd’, so eight was a good crowd. They ordered drinks, food and enjoyed the night. There was no birthday cake or any special event, but she liked it that way.
At around 11:00 pm, a couple of people started leaving, and there were three left at around midnight, Diva, Rene and Ros. Diva went to the bar and ordered another drink; she then saw Adrian. Adrian was a regular, and he was her good bar friend. Good looking, good income and presumably good apartment; he actually lived in the bar’s neighborhood, so she assumed that he lived in a pretty expensive apartment. He worked at an investment firm and he was in his mid 30s. She sensed that there was certain emptiness in his life, but he appeared to acknowledge it and she liked that. She was not interested in getting involved with him romantically, but she enjoyed his company whenever she came to the bar. She had a small talk with him as usual and she told him that today was her birthday. “Your birthday? Let me buy you a drink. What do you want?” said he. She wanted to have hard liquor at this point and she asked for a shot of Jägermeister. After she finished the drink, he told her “Enjoy your birthday”; he sounded like he genuinely cared for her and was happy to entertain her on her birthday.
Diva also bumped into one of co-owners of the bar, Justin; he also offered a drink. “You should’ve told me!” said he.
“What are you having?”
”Jägermeister.”
”Jäge, huh? It’s on the house, and happy birthday!”
”Thanks.”
Ros left around midnight, and Diva and Rene were left. They spent another hour talking about different things, and Diva said, “Should we call it a night?” “If you want, I can stay longer,” said Rene.
”Nah, I had enough drinks and I had a lot of fun tonight.”
“Ok. Should we take a cab? You’ll get off first and I’ll just ask the driver to take me to Astoria.” Rene lived in Astoria, Queens with her younger sister and another roommate.
”Sure, let’s go.” She took her long leather coat from the chair; Rene helped her to wear it. They walked out of the bar and took a cab.
They reached Diva’s apartment building in Sunnyside and Diva got off after they exchanged a few words. As she walked up to her apartment on the 4th floor, she felt that she was on top of her game. She could be making more money, buying more clothes and buying a car though she wouldn’t’ be driving much since she lived in New York. She could be getting many more things and more expensive things. She could perhaps be thinking about her marriage and starting a family as well though she didn’t know when she’d be married or whom she’d be married to. Her life was far from complete as far as things and status that she could be obtaining, but, seven years after she left India, she felt that she had all she could have at her age. As a girl who’s growing up to become a woman from a country half around the world, she did very very well.
