A Is for Apple Read Online Free

those annoying people, like Angel, who walks under a streetlight and goes a lovely golden shade all over. Well, nearly all over, ahem.
    “That bad?”
    “I got sunburnt on my shoulders. The rest of me is Persil white.”
    “Well, I’ll just have to check that out for myself when I see you.”
    “Hmm.”
    “Oh, Soph—when you filled out the immigration form, did you tick the espionage box?”
    “I’m not stupid.”
    “Questions still stands.”
    I stuck my tongue out. “No.”
    “Okay, good.”
    A pause. “Well, bye then,” I said.
    “Bye.”
    So there was nothing for it. I had to go shopping.
    The only thing was I didn’t know where Bloomingdales was. I didn’t know anything about Manhattan, except for where the Friends and Sex and the City characters lived. Which wasn’t very helpful.
    I wandered down to the lobby and went to the information desk, where there were some leaflets about the city. One of them had a map, and I scanned it for department stores. There it was.
    I also saw an ATM, and wondered if my cash card would work there. Yes, my friends, I truly am an innocent abroad. The card worked, and I got fifty dollars out, hoping that was a reasonable amount of money. I really had no idea what the exchange rate was. I was fresh from Euroland.
    Armed with my little map, I set off across town. I wasn’t brave enough to try the subway yet, and anyway, it couldn’t be very far from 32nd and 7th to 59th and Lexington, which was next to Third. Couldn’t be that hard, right?
    Right?
    By the time I’d got to Central Park, I was knackered. It had taken about forty minutes, and I still had to make my way across to Lexington, which was five blocks over, because somewhere around the chaos of Times Square I’d taken Broadway instead of Seventh and ended up a block over…
    When I stumbled into the air-conditioned calm of Bloomingdales, a nicely suited man asked me cheerfully, “And how are you today?”
    “Bloody knackered,” I said. “Where’s women’s clothing?”
    He gave me a once-over, like the women on Rodeo Drive in Pretty Woman . “Second floor.”
    “Cheers.” And I set off, only to find that Bloomingdales is the most confusing shop in the whole world. The escalators are set up oddly, each floor has about ten different levels and I went straight up to the third floor first, because in English that’s the second floor, and I was all confused…
    Eventually I found the ladieswear department, flipped my scruffy hair out of my eyes and started looking for something drop-dead. Because drop-dead was exactly how I felt.
     
    I ended up with a very cute black and white fifties-style dress, all fitted bodice and fluffy skirts, and shoes to match, and then I had to hunt down some stockings and while I was there I went for new underwear too, and a cute little handbag… Well, I was on assignment, and there was no telling how much distracting I might have to do. Besides, I didn’t have to pay for it.
    Which is just as well, because I’d spent hundreds of dollars.
    The other thing I don’t understand about American money is the tax system. If you pick something up off the rail and the label says $19.99, you don’t pay $19.99. Because they add sales tax on at the desk. How this has not been rectified I don’t know. Americans must all be good with numbers. What’s wrong with putting the tax inclusive price on the tag?
    I left Bloomingdales with my Medium Brown Bags, feeling a lot smarter, and found it was chucking it down with rain. And my bags were made of paper. And my shoes were incredibly flimsy.
    So. Less smart.
    There were, of course, no cabs. I trudged to the subway, a system I thought I might be familiar with since I’d used London’s, and promptly got lost.
    By the time I got back to my hotel, I was wet and blistered and grumpy, and there was a voice mail on my phone from Macbeth telling me to meet him in the lobby of the Park Avenue Hotel in an hour and a half. Bloody hell!
    I leapt into