Gotham Read Online Free PDF Page B

driver reaches his arm out to beckon Nati. Smokey scans the streetscape, clutching his phone, as if he’s guarding a Kennedy. His mouth is slightly open, streetlights sparking from his grills.
    â€˜Paps,’ Nati says to me, though they were just people, bewildered passers-by glimpsing star activity and not wanting to miss a New York moment.
    Shoot first and ask questions later. Maybe they’ll recognise him when they open the images, maybe they won’t. I have my own collection of moments, stars of various wattages making entrances and exits. I have a photo of Dame Edna on her way into the Tonys, gladioli, glasses and bouffant do bobbing along above the heads of the crowd.
    The van has fat leather seats, a faint smell of dope, a stronger smell of sanitiser and a compactfridge loaded with piccolos of Krug. Nati passes me one right away.
    â€˜Some people drink it with a straw,’ he says. ‘They require a straw. Assholes.’
    Smokey climbs in next to him, picking up the Little Brown Bag that’s on the seat and placing it in his lap. The two big bags are next to me. The door clunks shut.
    â€˜So, why do you like facing backwards?’ I want to get us talking.
    â€˜Is this the interview?’ He tears the foil from the top from his bottle and twists at the wire cork cover.
    He’s in a good mood. He is famous on 59th Street and he has Krug to share.
    The engine starts. It’s less powerful, less military in tone than I was expecting. It’s a car engine, with this beast of a pimp van built on.
    â€˜It can be. Or it can be just a question.’
    â€˜Sure.’ He drinks a mouthful. ‘Any asshole can face forward. In a cab, you face forward. In a car, you face forward. You got wheels big enough to have a room, you get to face backward.’
    It’s a point he can’t seem to stop himself making. He needs it in my notes, in every article. He wants proof in writing that he has escaped the hard streets of his recent childhood and arrived somewhere else, in some Oz of his invention, where life is about something altogether more luxurious than survival.
    â€˜And you get to look back and see all the people pointing, going, ‘Who the fuck?’ He imitates star-shock, going wide-eyed and waving his hand around, snapping away with an imaginary phone.
    Beside him, Smokey stares at his screen, punching out a text message, no doubt to his labouring lady, placating, promising, telling hershe matters more than this ride. He has another life, as do I, but I have yet to see Nati’s properly. My hand goes to my pocket without me thinking about it, but there’s no buzz of a message from Lindsey, nothing telling me there are problems back at the Beacon.
    Smokey hits send and says, ‘I might step out while you two eat.’
    It’s the first I’ve heard of food being part of the plan. The nine-thirty meeting time meant I ate in the real world before heading for Bloomingdale’s. But I’ll take it. The biggest piece I’m writing is Rolling Stone -style, where you buddy up with the artist and log time across different terrains—in transit, in their favourite dive bar where they don’t merit a glance, over Darjeeling tea one morning while they’re in trackpants and coming down from something, finding room for remorse and even doubt. For this interview I get to compress that into onenight, and it must go as long as it must go. A meal works well as the middle part of it. It’ll read like days. Themes will be revisited. Truths will find their shape and show themselves.
    â€˜You leavin’ me at this man’s mercy?’ Nati laughs. ‘Who knows what shit I might say without you running interference?’ He pokes Smokey in the sleeve, hoping for a laugh back. Smokey obliges, but half-heartedly. ‘Yeah, man. I can let you off the clock a while.’
    Nati pulls his own phone from his pocket and flicks between screens. I