The Anglophile Read Online Free PDF Page A

Brit asks me.
    â€œOh, thank you. Hot chocolate. That’s all I want.”
    â€œAnd for youse? ” says the ducky cashier to the Cambridge grad.
    â€œSugar donut, thank you. And make that two cocoas.”
    â€œYouse?” my “new friend” discreetly parrots to me while our paper cups of cocoa are being filled several feet away. “What has your country done to my poor language?”
    â€œWe corrected a few things, too. Calling a fight a wobbly is outlawed in every state of the Union.”
    â€œI’m amazed you even know that term.” He studies my face and gives me the verdict: “You’re charming, by the way.”
    â€œAnd so are you,” I rally back.
    â€œWell then, we might as well be introduced. What’s your name, Miss S.? Susan? Sabrina?”
    â€œShari.”
    â€œSherri? Is that short for Sheridan?”
    â€œNo, Shari, not Sherri.”
    â€œOh. Right. That sounds so—American. Is that short for Sharon, then?”
    I bristle at his question. Like Debbie and Tammy, plain old Shari is a pretty damn common name among lower and middle-class Jews of New York. There are at least five Shari Diamonds in Manhattan alone; I saw us listed on a computer screen when my Citibank manager brought up my account on his computer the day my checkbook was stolen. As the manager double-checked my address, I noted a Shari Diamond in Stuyvesant Town complex on Fourteenth Street, and two of us on Avenue A.
    When I was around sixteen my mother huffed when I asked her why she had to choose such a tacky name: “I can’t believe I’ve given birth to such a snob.”
    I’m still not crazy about my first name, but my mother would never let me get away with a legal name change like the one my Binghamton friend Rain Alexander fixed for herself just before our college graduation—Rain changed her name to Mary so that she wouldn’t come off sounding like the upstate New York hippie kid she was in her post MBA interviews. I useShari socially but for professional publication I always use S. Roberta Diamond, uglier, sure, but far more respectable looking.
    I cram all these thoughts down almost as quickly as they well up. Who needs a North American class and demographic lesson with a sugar donut? I answer with, “No, just Shari. It’s pretty common as a full name in New York City.”
    â€œRight. Well, my friends call me Kit.”
    â€œThat a nickname?”
    â€œYes. Short for Christopher.”
    Oh, good God. Gary is not going to believe this.
    Suddenly it really does feel like cheating. I am not hooking up with this Chris, I sell myself again. “Myself” is not buying. It’s awfully hard to think of Kevin Bernstein now, but I have to try and think of him if I’m any sort of decent human being. I endeavor to do just that, but only my half-committed relationship doubts seep through. Even if Kevin is appealing at first, the more time you spend with him you realize how nebbishy he truly is. He does, however, have endearing brown cowlicks, and an exceedingly warm body temperature—which makes sleeping with him a pleasure since I’m practically an amphibian. I would hate to think a body in the bed is the only reason I’ve stayed with him.
    â€œYou look alarmed.” He studies my face again: “I’m sorry, have I offended you somehow?”
    â€œNo. I’m just a little worried.”
    â€œFor heavens’ sake, what about?”
    I wave off his concern and we talk some more. In another scarily pleasant surprise, it turns out that“after business” in Chicago, Kit is scheduled for my very flight from Chicago to New York’s LaGuardia Airport.
    â€œNow you’ll absolutely have to be my guide to the Big Apple. Do New Yorkers really say the Big Apple by the way?”
    â€œSurprisingly, yes. Do the British really drink a lot of tea?”
    â€œWell, I have a fair bit,” he says