Free Charlotte Street by Danny Wallace

foreigner. August 8 1901
.
    I looked at the people on their benches, with their salads and their smoothies. Did they read these? Do they make them feel the same? Like … useless?
    I downed the rest of my
Polo-Cockta
, and chucked it in the bin.
    ‘You know you can just email us this stuff?’ said Zoe.
    I’d already plugged in the memory stick, and sort of mumbled my excuse.
    ‘I was passing.’
    ‘You’re always passing. Where are you always on your way to?’
    ‘Here and there,’ I said. ‘I am a very mysterious man.’
    ‘Nothing about you is very mysterious, Jason,’ she said. ‘You’re an open book. And I’ve read you a few times and I’m bored. So are you good to go to this gallery tonight?’
    ‘Thanks, Zoe. Yeah, seven, yeah.’
    ‘The bloke’s supposed to be a genius. Not that I want to compromise your opinions.’
    ‘Do you know him?’
    ‘He’s my cousin’s fiancé.’
    ‘Ah. I’ll be kind.’
    I transferred the files to Zoe’s computer, which meant I had to lean close to her, which meant she had to move her chair back a bit, but she could only move it as far as the wall and for a second or three we were quite close. We didn’t say anything. It would’ve been awkward, so we just listened to the tap-tap and whirr of her desktop. But she smelled nice. Like coffee and mints. For a second I wondered about us.
    ‘I’ll give them to Rob,’ she said, as I stood.
    Rob’s the reviews editor. I don’t really know what that means. It’s Zo that hands everything out.
    ‘Great. So.’
    I stood there and blinked a couple of times.
    ‘So …?’ said Zoe.
    ‘So, I’ll be going, unless …’
    ‘Unless?’
    Sigh.
    ‘Got any more work?’
    Zoe smiled, weirdly. Not disappointed, exactly, but like maybe she’d thought I wasn’t going to just – you know – ask for more work. A strange thing happens to an old friendship when suddenly there’s money at stake. But then, enough things had happened over the years to put strain on this friendship. It was remarkable we were still holding on, somehow. Jason and Zo.
    ‘Talking of work, as we mainly do these days,’ she said, now a little more sternly, ‘your Abrizzi’s review ran this morning.’
    Oh. Shit. ‘Did it?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    Shit shit shit. Why was she bringing this up?
    ‘They phoned up. Wanted to speak to you.’
    ‘Did they?’ Shit.
    ‘Yeah. Spoke to me instead.’
    Busted.
Royally
busted.
    ‘They want to use your quote.’
    ‘What? Which quote?’
    ‘“A happy slice of silly pizza”, or something.’
    ‘Oh. Right. Is that what they said?’
    ‘It’d be a weird thing for me to make up.’
    ‘So what did you say?’
    ‘Well, Publisher’s keen to get our name in more places. Said so last week. Wants us to become a “London Recommender”. And now that we’ve heralded them as the saviour of Italian food, Abrizzi’s are going to take out an ad. Everyone’s a winner.’
    Phew.
    ‘Well, tell them I said yes, then.’
    ‘Lucky, seeing as it’s not your decision. Not ours, actually, either. Anyway, they’re doing it. They’re sending round a voucher for you, too. A thank you. I said it wasn’t really allowed, but then I remembered we’re not the bloody BBC, so it’s free meals for you and … whoever else you might want to take with you.’
    ‘Dev, probably.’
    Zoe looked at me, with what I hoped was admiration and respect for taking someone like Dev almost
anywhere
, but was, in actual fact, pity.
    ‘I’m going to have to check it out too sometime,’ she said. ‘Check out this magic pizza.’
    ‘Yep. So. Any more work?’
    She held up a ticket.
    ‘Rob’s called in sick. Again. I’m starting to believe him. There’s a screening at four. Fancy it?’
    In a small screening room somewhere round the back of Chinatown, the film had begun.
    There was me, someone from
Time Out
, and a bloke with a beard from Radio 1, who laughed like a nitwit throughout. Somewhere at the back, the film critic who used to be