Anybody Out There? by Marian Keyes
“Can you take my number? Could you call when you find it?”
“Sure.” He took my card.
“Can I ask you something?” I said. “Why do you come here after seeing someone so good?”
He stared into the distance, considering. “After talking to Trish via Neris, I was able to let a lot of stuff go. And I dunno, I like coming here. Leisl is good, in her own way. She doesn’t hit gold every week but her averages are pretty high. And the people here understand how it is for me—everyone else in my life, they think I should be over it by now. So coming here, I can be myself.” He tucked my card in his wallet. “I’ll call you.”
“Please do,” I said.
Because I wouldn’t be coming back.
41
But later on, at home, I wondered if Leisl might have been onto something. The spirit “person,” “voice,” whatever you want to call it, had sounded a bit like Granny Maguire. Then there was the dog connection; I know it had come through a bit garbled, what with talk of my (unfortunately, nonexistent) dog putting on weight. But the thing was, Granny Maguire had kept greyhounds.
Rumor had it that she used to sleep with them. Sleep sleep with them, if you know what I mean. Although, now that I think of it, it was Helen who’d told me that and I’d never had it corroborated by a more reliable source.
Whenever we used to visit Granny Maguire, the minute I stepped out of the car, she’d urge, “Go on, Gerry; go on, Martin.” (Named after Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness.) And two blurs of leanness would whip out of the house and pin me to the wall, a paw on either side of my face, barking so hard my eardrums would hurt.
Granny Maguire would be in convulsions. “Don’t let on you’re ascared,” she’d screech, laughing so much she’d have to thump the ground with her stick. “They can smell the fear. They can smell the fear.”
Everyone said that Granny Maguire was a “character,” but that was only because she hadn’t set the dogs on them. They wouldn’t have been so quick to say it then.
And what about Leisl mentioning a little blond nephew in a hat? Not everyone had one of those. With a tickle of anxiety, I started to worry about JJ. What if Leisl had been giving me a warning? What if something was wrong with JJ? Fear continued to badger me, until eventually I had no choice but to ring and see if he was okay, even though it was one in the morning in Ireland.
Garv answered the phone.
I whispered, “Did I wake you?”
He whispered back, “Yes.”
“I’m very sorry, Garv, but could you do something for me? Could you check that JJ is okay?”
“What sort of okay?”
“Alive. Breathing.”
“Okay. Hold on.”
Even if Aidan hadn’t died, Garv would have humored me. He was nice, that way.
He put the phone down and I heard Maggie whisper, “Who is it?”
“It’s Anna, she wants me to check on JJ.”
“Why?”
“Just.”
Thirty seconds later Garv was back. “He’s fine.”
“Sorry to have woken you.”
“Not at all.”
Feeling a little foolish, I disconnected. So much for Leisl.
As soon as I hung up, I was filled with a terrible need to talk to Aidan.
Typing furiously, I looked up Neris Hemming on the Internet. She had her own site, bearing literally hundreds of grateful testimonials. There were also details of her three books—I hadn’t known she’d written any, I was going to run out to the nearest Barnes & Noble right now—and information on her forthcoming twenty-seven-city tour: she was playing thousand-seater venues in places like Cleveland, Ohio, and Portland, Oregon, but, to my bitter disappointment, she wasn’t coming to New York.
The nearest city was Raleigh, North Carolina. I’ll go, I thought, with sudden determination. I’ll take a day off work and fly down. Then I discovered that it was sold out and another wave of wretchedness hit me.
I had to arrange a personal reading with her, but I clicked on every single link until it became clear that there was no way of contacting her via the site. I needed that phone number from Mitch.
42
I was trying to remember if Aidan and I had had rows. I mean, we must have had. I mustn’t fall into the trap of turning him into a saint because he had died. It was so important to remember him as he’d really been. But I couldn’t remember any major fireworks—no big shouty matches or kitchen implements being flung.
Of course, we’d had our disagreements: I used to get occasional bouts of jealousy about Janie and any mention of Shane made him tight-lipped and surly.
And there was that morning when we were getting ready for work and he was having trouble with his hair.
“It won’t go the way I want it to,” he complained, trying to push down a stubborn tuft.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “You look cute with it sticking out like that.”
Briefly, he lit up, then said, “Oh, you mean Irish cute—like a puppy. Not U.S. cute.”
“Cute, like adorable.”
“I don’t want to be cute or adorable,” he griped. “I want to be good-looking. I want to be handsome, like George Clooney.”
He put his tube of hair wax back on the shelf with a little more force than was strictly necessary and I got annoyed and accused him of being vain, and he said that wanting to look like George Clooney wasn’t vain, it was normal, and I said, “Oh, is it?” And he said, “Yes!” Then we continued our ablutions in huffy silence. But it was early in the morning and we’d had a late night the night before and were tired and had to go to work and we didn’t want to, and under the circumstances the whole thing was understandable.
And there were other things—it used to drive him mad when I played with the ingrowing hairs on my shins. I’d be having a great time, squeezing and tweezing—gross, I know, but is there anything more satisfying?—and he’d say, “Anna, please. I hate it when you do that.” And I’d say, “Sorry,” and pretend to stop, but I’d carry on, hiding behind a cushion or a magazine. After a while he’d say, “I know you’re still doing it.”
And I’d sort of snap, “I can’t help it! It’s my…thing, my…hobby, it helps me unwind.”
“Can’t you have a glass of wine?” he’d say, and I’d stomp off into the bedroom, where I’d ring someone and gouge away to my heart’s content. Sometime later, I’d reemerge in top form and we’d all be friends again.
Then there was that time we went to Vermont in the fall to see the changing of the leaves and I decided that he was taking too many photos. I felt that he was intent on photographing every fecking leaf in the state, and every time he pressed the button and unleashed that whirry noise, I got a funny, angry feeling in my teeth.
But as differences went, that wasn’t so bad and even our worst row ever had been about something really stupid: we’d been talking about holiday resorts and I said that I wasn’t that keen on outdoor showers. He’d asked why and I told him the story of how Claire had been having an outdoor shower in a safari camp in Botswana and had caught a baboon watching her and having a good old wank for himself.
“It wouldn’t happen,” Aidan said. “She’s making it up.”
“She’s not,” I said. “If Claire said it happened, then it happened. She’s not like Helen.”
(Actually I wasn’t at all sure that that was the case. Claire wasn’t above embroidering a story.)
“A baboon wouldn’t react that way to a human woman,” Aidan had insisted. “It would only happen if he was watching a lady baboon.”
“A lady baboon wouldn’t take a shower.”
“You know what I mean.”
Then the whole thing deteriorated into a “Are you saying a baboon wouldn’t fancy my sister?” sort of thing, but again, we’d had a hard week at work and we were both cranky and would have happily had a scrap about anything.
But, in all honesty, that was as bad as it ever got.
Speaking of sisters, an
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Job!
Colin the bozo brought me a gun—heavy, exciting. Imagine, I’ve a gun!
I’d loads of questions for him. Most importantly…What’s Mr. Big’s real name? (Again, please remember am parrot-phrasing.)
Colin: Harry Gilliam.
Me: Do you really think something’s going on with Mrs. Big and this Racey O’Grady?
Colin: Yeah. Probably. And if it’s true, Harry’ll be very upset. He’s mad about Detta. Detta Big is a lady and Harry’s always thought she was too good for him. Anyway, let’s get going.
Me: Where?
Him: To a shooting club.
Me: For what?
Him: For you to learn how to shoot.
Me: How hard can it be? I just point the thing and pull the trigger.
Him: (all wearylike): Come on.
Went to funny bunker place in Dublin mountains, full of dirt-smeared, starry-eyed men who looked like they ran their own militia in their back garden.
I wasn’t bad. Hit target couple of times. (Pity wasn’t my target, har har.) My shoulder, though, was killing me. No one said shooting people hurts. Well, obviously hurts person who’s shot! (Har har.)
Piss: Don’t worry. Know you’re all freaked out about death at moment, but promise you (a) Won’t get shot (b) Won’t shoot anyone.
The talk of guns had been alarming me, so her promise was a relief. Until I saw the final line.
Pissss: Except maybe some bad guys.
All the same it made me laugh. There was probably no point taking her too seriously—God only knew how much of this was embellished. Or downright fantasy.
43
Monday morning. Which meant the Monday Morning Meeting. And here came Franklin, clapping his hands together, rounding up his girls.
Walking to the boardroom, Teenie linked her arm through mine. She looked almost normal today; wearing a silver, Barbarella-style shift dress and long silver-and-gray sneakers that laced right up to her knee. Only the silver-painted skateboarding elbow and knee guards were evidence of proper kookiness.
“Step right up,” she said. “Get your humiliation here!”
“Be degraded in front of your peers,” I said.
“And undermined by your lessers.”
Easy for us to laugh, we were doing okay.
I was getting good newspaper coverage. No great coups, but at the Monday Morning Meetings, I always had a couple of things to show and tell after each weekend. Maybe the beauty editors felt sorry for me with my scarred face and my dead husband. Mind you, I wasn’t milking it because something like that could very much count against you: I could be seen as tainting Candy Grrrl with my bad luck and my ruined face. Normally when the MMM is over, there’s a feeling that the week can only get better. But not today. Today was day zero for Eye Eye Captain. Today was the day that one hundred and fifty Eye Eye Captain kits would be assembled and packaged, ready to be couriered out to all the magazines and newspapers the following day. The timing was crucial: they couldn’t be sent today, they couldn’t be sent the day after tomorrow; it had to be tomorrow. Why? Because Lauryn was trying out a new guerrilla-style tactic. Instead of doing what we’d normally do with a launch—giving all the beauty editors plenty of advance notice—we were trying the opposite. She’d carefully calibrated the timing to ensure that Eye Eye Captain would arrive on every important beauty editor’s desk just before their copy had to go to press. The idea was to dazzle them so completely with something fresh and new, to make them think that they had a jump on a new product, that they’d bump something else and give us the slot instead. Admittedly a high-risk game but one Lauryn insisted that we had to try.
It could work because the concept was novel—a one-stop eye-care kit. Three different products, each of which worked in tandem to enhance the efficacy of the others (or so they said). There was Pack Your Bags (a cooling gel to zap puffiness and undereye bags), Light Up Your Life (a light-deflecting concealer pen to banish dark circles), and Iron Out the Kinks (a whipped-mousse wrinkle killer).
Just one tiny little problem: the trio of products hadn’t arrived from the manufacturers in Indianapolis. They were on their way. Oh, they were definitely coming. They’d be with us by eleven. But eleven came and passed. Lauryn made a hysterical phone call and got a guarantee that the driver was in Pennsylvania and would definitely be with us by one. One became two, became three, became four. Apparently the lorry driver had got lost coming into Manhattan.
“Fucking hayseed,” Lauryn screamed. “This is fucking crazy.” Then she slammed down the phone and looked at me. Somehow this was all my fault. We’d gone to the wire on this because I’d had the temerity to be in a car accident and had missed work for two months.
It was after five by the time the big cardboard boxes were being hefted into the boardroom. No one was meeting anyone else’s eyes because we were all thinking the same thing: Who was going to stay late—very late—and do it?
Brooke was going to a benefit, saving something or other: whales, Venice, three-legged elephants. Teenie had school (and it wasn’t her job anyway) and there was more chance of Lauryn eating a three-course meal.
It had to be me. Just me.
Everyone was so used to me working late that they didn’t even ask if I’d any plans, but as it happened, I was meant to be seeing Rachel. I’d given her the slip over the weekend, citing pressures of work. And now I really had to work—the girl who’d cried overtime.
“Does anyone mind if I make a quick call? Just to cancel my sister?”
I sounded so sarcastic that startled looks were exchanged. Now and again unexpected spurts of anger, so red-hot they almost scalded me, were shooting up through me and carrying rage-soaked words out of my mouth.
“Er, no, go right ahead,” Lauryn said.
Teenie helped me slit the boxes open and pile the products along the boardroom table, and Brooke, in all fairness to her, had already put a hundred and fifty press releases into a hundred and fifty padded envelopes, even though she’d been out for most of the afternoon because her aunt Genevieve (she wasn’t her real aunt, just one of her mother’s extremely rich friends) was in town and had hosted a lunch for her in a private dining room at the Pierre.
And then everyone was gone. The building was quiet, nothing but the hum of computers. I took a look at all the stuff on the boardroom table and was stabbed with self-pity.
I bet you’re really pissed off with the way they’re treating me.
I began by lining the inside of all the padded envelopes with sheets of silver lamé. This took until after eight; I was slower than I’d normally be because of my nails. Then I became a human conveyer belt. At one end of the table I stuck a printed label on the padded envelope, then I moved on to pick a Pack Your Bags from one pile, a Light Up Your Life from the next, an Iron Out the Kinks from the third, let them tumble into the padded envelope, picked up a handful of tiny silver stars, scattered them in on top, sealed the envelope, chucked it in the corner, and returned to the start.
I kind of got a rhythm going. Label, pick-pick-pick, tumble, stars, seal, throw. Label, pick-pick-pick, tumble, stars, seal, throw. Label, pick-pick-pick, tumble, stars, seal, throw. Label, pick-pick-pick, tumble, stars, seal, throw.
It was very soothing and I had been crying for a long time before I noticed. Mind you, I wasn’t crying so much as leaking. Tears ran down my face without any input from me—no heaving, no gulping, no shoulder shaking; it was very peaceful. I cried the entire way through the job, and although my tears blurred the ink on Femme’s address label, no other harm was done.
By the time I finished, it was midnight. But all one hundred and fifty packages were waiting to be couriered in the morning.
My taxi driver home was good and mad. He had a massive mustache and long curly hair, which he went on and on about. He said he was like Samson: he carried
44
Another e-mail arrived from Helen.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Job!
First day of surveillance on Detta Big. Stuck in hedge in her back garden in big detached house in Stillorgan, binoculars trained on her bedroom.
She’s about fifty, roundy bum, big knockers, leathery cleavage. Shoulder-length blondy curly hair, heated-rollers end product.
Wearing high heels and cream knitted (bouclé?) skirt and jumper. Couldn’t see lumps or bumps in her arse area, even with zoom at max. She must wear slip and steel-reinforced girdle. Looks like aging newsreader, maybe.
At ten to ten, she put on coat. We were going out. Bypassed car, big silver Beemer (car lacking in personality), and walked to local church. She was going to mass! I sat at back, just grateful not to be in hedge.
Afterward, she went to newsagent, bought Herald, Take a Break, twenty Benson & Hedges, and packet of mints (Extra Strong). Then went home again and I resumed vigil in hedge. She put kettle on, made tea, sat in front of telly, smoking and staring into space. One o’clock, she got up, and I thought, Please let’s be going out. But she was just making bowl of soup and toast, then went back to sitting in front of telly, smoking and staring into space. About four o’clock, she got up and I thought, Aye, aye, here we go. But she wasn’t going out—she was doing the hoovering. Really going for it. Maddest thing you ever heard?