We scoured the menu and chatted about the upcoming holiday weekend, Swift scrolling through her phone to find pictures of the beach outside her eight-bedroom Rhode Island mansion retreat, and describing preparations for her imminent tour of Asia, the very last stop on her two-year odyssey with the colossally successful Red. A chopped salad (sans tomato) and a short walk back to hers, and Swift and I stood alone in her newishly acquired double-storey downtown apartment, a lofty, bright living space she bought from the film director Peter Jackson.