Anybody Out There? (Walsh Family)

by Marian Keyes

  To: Aidan_maddox@yahoo.com

  From: Magiciansgirl1@yahoo.com

  Subject: Kooky girl goes back to work

  Today’s outfit—black suede boots, pink fishnets, black crepe-de-chine vintage dress with white polka dots, pink three-quarter-length coat (also vintage), and butterfly bag. Silly hat, I hear you ask—oh, but of course: a black beret at an angle. All in all, a little subdued, but I should get away with it today.

  I would really like to hear from you.

  Your girl, Anna

  He always got a kick out of my work uniform. The irony was that he tried to subvert his conservative suits with funky ties and socks—Warhol prints, pink roses, cartoon superheros—and I was desperate to be somber and tailored.

  While I was online, I had an idea: I’d read his horoscope to see if I could get any clue about how he was. Stars Online for Scorpio said:

  Usually you’re philosophical about change, but recently even you have been overwhelmed by events. Many of the month’s dramas climax around Thursday’s eclipsed Full Moon. Until then, investigate everything, but make no commitments.

  I was concerned about the “even you have been overwhelmed” stuff. I felt helpless, then angry. I wished it had said something comforting, so I went back a couple of pages and clicked on Today’s Stars.

  The sun’s shining down on that part of your chart related to pure self-indulgence. You’ll feel like baring your hedonistic streak today. So long as it’s legal and doesn’t hurt anyone else in the process, feel free to have fun!

  I didn’t like that either. I didn’t want him baring his hedonistic streak with anyone other than me. I clicked on Hot Scopes!

  Resist the temptation to resuscitate dying plans, relationships, or passions. You’re beginning a new cycle and over the coming weeks you’ll learn about all manner of exciting offers!

  Ah, here! I didn’t want him learning about all manner of exciting offers if I wasn’t one of them. I made myself disconnect—there was a danger that I could sit here all day until I found the horoscope that made me feel better—left another quick message on his cell, and finally left the apartment. Out on the street, I found I was shaking. I wasn’t used to going to work on my own; we always got the subway together—he got off at Thirty-fourth Street, I carried on up to Fifty-ninth. And had New York always been this loud? All those cars beeping and people shouting and buses’ brakes screeching, and this was only Twelfth Street. How noisy was it going to be uptown?

  I began walking toward the subway, then stopped as I considered what it would be like down there. Steps up and down everywhere; my knee was aching, far worse than it had done in Dublin. I’d only taken half of my usual dose of painkillers because I didn’t want to start nodding off in meetings and it was a shock to discover how much pain the painkillers had actually been killing.

  But how else was I going to get to work? I shrank from getting into a cab. I’d coped with taking one from the airport because Rachel had been with me, but I was petrified at the thought of being in one alone.

  Riveted by indecision, trapped whichever way I jumped, I considered my options. Go back to the apartment and spend the day there on my own? That was the least palatable.

  After standing on the sidewalk and getting curious looks from passersby for an indeterminate time, I watched myself hail a cab and, in a dreamlike state, get in. Could I really be doing this? The fear was profound; saucer-eyed, I watched all the other cars, flinching and shrinking whenever any of them came too close, as if my scrutiny alone would prevent them from driving into me. Suddenly, with a bang to my chest that nearly stopped my heart, I saw Aidan. He was sitting on a bus that had paused at an intersection. It was only a sidelong view, but it was definitely him, his hair, his cheekbones, his nose. All the city noise retreated, leaving only a muzzy, staticky buzzing, and as I clawed for cash and reached for the door handle, the bus surged forward. In a panic, I twisted around and stared out the back window.

  “Sir!” I said to the cabdriver, but we were moving also and already too far gone. It was too late to turn and the traffic going back downtown was stuck solid. I lost my nerve: I’d never catch him.

  “Yeah?”

  “Nothing.”

  I was trembling violently: the shock of seeing him. It didn’t make sense for him to be on that bus—he was going completely the wrong way, if he was going to work.

  It couldn’t have been him. It must have been someone who looked like him. Really like him. But what if it was him? What if this had been my one chance to see him?

  18

  The security guards couldn’t believe I was back. No employee of McArthur on the Park had ever taken such a long time off work before—like never, not for holidays, not for “going to Arizona” because most people who “went to Arizona” didn’t come back to work. Weren’t let back.

  “Hey, Morty, Irish Anna’s back.”

  “She is? Irish Anna, we thought they’d sacked your ass. And whatcha do to your face?”

  They delicately high-fived my bandaged right hand, and I joined the throngs of people streaming to the banks of elevators. I squashed into the crammed metal box, everyone holding their coffee and avoiding one another’s eyes.

  On the thirty-eighth floor, the elevator doors opened with a silent swish. I struggled to the front and popped out like a pinball. The cream carpet was thick and soft, the very air smelled expensive, and an unseen voice said, “Welcome back, Anna.” I nearly jumped out of my skin. It was Lauryn Pike, my manager, and she looked like she’d been standing there all night, waiting. Tentatively she extended her hand, like she was thinking of touching me compassionately, then thought better of it. I was glad. I didn’t want anyone touching me, I didn’t want to be comforted.

  “You look great!” she said. “Really rested. Your hair has grown. So! Ready to go, yeah?”

  I looked terrible, but if she acknowledged that, she might have to make allowances for me.

  Right, about Lauryn. She was scrawny skinny, always cold, had very hairy arms and a nasty brown cardigan, nearly as hairy as her arms, which she wore in the office, always dragging and wrapping it about her undernourished body in an attempt to get warm. She burned with a manic intensity and had very poppy eyes, like a Latter-day Saint. (Or maybe she just had an overactive thyroid.) If I’d been a magazine beauty editor and I saw Lauryn coming to pitch me a Candy Grrrl piece, I’d hide under my desk until she’d gone.

  Despite that, Lauryn got loads of coverage. Likewise with men: regardless of her bulgy-eyed boniness, and knobbly elbows and lumpy knees, she often got taken away for weekends to the islands by lookers. Figure that one. (As we say around here.)

  I can’t understand it because it’s not as if it’s easy to find men in New York, even for the un-poppy-eyed woman: it’s comparable to ragged bands of women tramping wearily through a smoking, destroyed, postapocalyptic cityscape, foraging for the smallest bits of usable stuff, like the people in Mad Max had to do.

  And it’s not as if Lauryn was such a great person. Her job mattered to her far too much, and if someone else succeeded, it was as if she’d failed. She threw an empty Snapple bottle at the wall when Lancôme’s Superlash mascara got coverage in Lucky the same month it went head-to-head with Candy Grrrl’s Flutter-by.

  All of a sudden I was gripped by terrible fear that I wouldn’t be able to handle being back at work, but I said, “I’m good to go, Lauryn.”

  “Good! Because we have, like, a lot happening right now.”

  “Just bring me up to speed.”

  “Sure. And you let me know, Anna, if you can’t cope.” She didn’t mean this in a kind way. She meant for me to let her know if she needed to sack me. “And when will that…thing…on your face be better?” They hate physical imperfection round here. “And your arm? When will it be out of the cast?”

  Then she noticed my bandaged fingers. “What’s that all about?”

  “Missing nails.”

  “Jesus H,” she said. “I’m gonna throw u
p.”

  She sat down and breathed deeply but didn’t throw up. In order to throw up, it’s necessary to have something in your stomach and there was scant chance of that having happened.

  “You gotta do something about them. Go see if you can get them fixed.”

  “Yes, but…okay.”

  A flash of silver caught my attention—it was Teenie! Wearing a silver boiler suit, tucked into orange, vinyl knee boots. Today her hair was blue. To match her glittery blue lips. “Anna!” she said. “You’re back! Ooh, your hair is pretty. It’s gotten so long.” Together we discreetly sidled away from Lauryn and Teenie said quietly, “Sweetie, how’re you doing?”

  “Okay.”

  “You are?” She quirked a blue, glittery eyebrow at me.

  I slid a glance at Lauryn; she was far away enough not to hear. “Okay, maybe not exactly, but, Teenie, the only way I’ll get through this is if we pretend everything is the way it always was.”

  I couldn’t have anyone’s sympathy, sympathy meant that it had actually happened.

  “Lunch?”

  “Can’t. Lauryn says I’ve got to get my nails fixed.”

  “What’s up with them?”

  “They’re missing. But they’re growing back as fast as they can.”

  “Eew.”

  “Yes, well,” I said, going to my desk.

  This was the longest I’d ever been away from my job and things felt familiar, yet very different. The temp—or temps—had rearranged my stuff, and someone had put my photo of Aidan in a drawer, which made me briefly but corrosively angry. I took it out and banged it down on the spot it always stood on. And they said I was in denial?

  “Oh my gosh, Anna, you’re back!” It was Brooke Edison. Brooke was twenty-two and loaded and lived with Mommy and Daddy in a triplex on the UES (Upper East Side). She took a car service to work every single day—not the subway, not even a cab, but an air-conditioned Lincoln Town Car with bottled water and a polite driver. Brooke didn’t actually need to work, she was just filling in time until someone put a massive rock on her finger and moved her to Connecticut and bought her a station wagon and three perfect, highly gifted children.

  She’d been hired as the Candy Grrrl junior, the person who did the heavy lifting, like stuffing envelopes with samples for the magazines. But she was always having to leave work early or come in late because she was attending charity benefits or having dinner with the chairman of the Guggenheim, or getting a ride in David Hart’s helicopter to the Hamptons.

  She was sweet, obliging, and quite intelligent, and did everything perfectly. When she did it. Which, like I say, wasn’t that often. We picked up the slack a lot.

  Ariella kept her on the staff because she knew everyone—people were always being her godmother or her dad’s best friend or her old piano teacher.

  She did her private-girls’-school-in-Europe walk over to my desk, swinging her thick, glossy, naturally beautiful hair, which glowed with privileged rich person’s health. Her skin was fantastic and she never wore makeup, which would have been a sacking offense for me and Teenie, but not for her. Same with her clothes: Brooke wasn’t even remotely kooky and no one said a thing. Today she wore wide-cut pants in greige cashmere and a dinky little fawn sweater, also in cashmere. I didn’t think she knew that there were other fabrics and a rumor persisted that she’d never bought anything from Zara in her life. She shopped at the three Bs—Bergdorf, Barneys, and Bendel, the golden triangle—and get this: sometimes her dad bought her clothes. He took his “baby girl” on weekend sprees and said, “Make your father happy, let me buy you this vintage bag/embroidered Japanese coat/Gina sandals.”

  This is not conjecture, this is actual reportage of a real event, because one Saturday Franklin was in Barneys spending money on his hot young (penniless) boy, Henk, in the hope that he wouldn’t leave him. Next thing Franklin spots Brooke and Old Man Edison (who is richer than God) looking at Chloé bags. At first Franklin thought the old guy was Brooke’s boyfriend, and when he heard the desk clerk say, “Hey there, Mr. Edison,” he nearly puked. He said it was pedo stuff, nearly like incest. I don’t think he really meant it, Franklin is simply phenomenally mean-spirited. He hates everyone, except Henk, and sometimes I think he hates him, too. (Henk is Franklin’s trophy wife—a skinny, sly-eyed boy, with jeans hanging indecently superlow, displaying a narrow, sinewy abdomen. His hair is highlighted cream, silver, and honey and he gets it cut in a mad, sticky-up do at Frédéric Fekkai. He doesn’t have a job, probably because his hair care takes up so much of his time. Franklin bankrolls all of this primping, but occasionally Henk stays away nights and goes downtown to play with his rentboy chums. I really like Henk, he’s very, very funny, but if he was my boyfriend, I’d be on sixteen Xanax a day.)

  In addition to the nonstop cashmere, Brooke always wore at least five different items from Tiffany. Mind you, everyone wore stuff from Tiffany. You had to. I think you’d be asked to leave New York if you didn’t.

  She extended her hand (with short, neat, clear-glossed nails), didn’t even flicker as she scanned my scar, and said with genuine-sounding sincerity, “Anna, I am so sorry about what happened.”

  “Thank you.”

  Then she left; she didn’t labor it—an awkward situation, handled just right. Brooke always got everything just right. She was the most appropriate-aware person I had ever met. She also knew exactly what to wear in every eventuality and it was already in her wardrobe. In triplicate. She inhabited a world with strong rules and she had the money to obey them. I often wondered what it must be like to be her.

  Brooke had an Identi-Kit chum, Bonnie Bacall, who “worked” on Freddie & Frannie, another in-house brand. They were BFFs (best friends forever) and both girls were actually very sweet, and if sometimes they were hurtful or cruel, it wasn’t because they meant to be. Not like Lauryn.

  “Okay, people,” Lauryn called. “Now that Anna has finished her conversations, could you all possibly spare me a few moments of your time for a Candy Grrrl briefing.” (Said sarcastically.)

  All day long, everyone was looking at me—but never directly. When I met girls from other brands in the corridors or the washrooms, they gave me slanting, sidelong glances, and as soon as I left I knew they were whispering about me. Like it was all my fault. Or contagious. I tried defusing things by smiling at them, but then they looked away quickly, a little horrified.

  Luckily, because this was New York, no one really gave a shite. For a short while I’d be an object of curiosity, then they’d lose interest.

  Midmorning, Franklin took me into Ariella’s inner sanctum so I could thank her for keeping my job open. One entire wall was filled with photos of her with famous people.

  In her “trademark” powder-blue power suit, she acknowledged my gratitude by nodding slowly, her eyes half closed. There was nothing more disconcerting than Ariella in her Capo di Tutti Capi mode.

  “Maybe sometime you can do something for me.” Either she had a permanent sore throat or she deliberately put on a hoarse Don Corleone–style mumble. “I need a favor, I can count on you?”

  I work very hard for you, I wanted to say. Before all this happened, I got more coverage than any of your other publicists and I intend that that will be the case again. You didn’t pay me for one second while I was away and it’s not like I took off on a whim.

  “Of course, Ariella.”

  “And get a haircut.”

  She nodded at Franklin in his immaculate suit: the signal to take me away.

  Out in the hallway, Franklin circled a manicured thumb between his eyebrows, where his frown lines would be, if they weren’t being Botoxed into submission every six weeks. “Jesus, God,” he sighed. “Is it just me or does she seem a little…psychotic to you?”

  “No more than usual. But I might not be the best judge right now.”

  He did his sympathetic face. “I know, baby cakes. So how ya doing?”

  “Okay.” There was no point in saying any more. He had zero
interest in anyone else’s problems. But he was totally up-front about it, which meant I didn’t mind. “How’ve you been? How’s Henk?”

  “Bleeding me dry and breaking my heart. Got a joke for you. What’s the difference between your dick and your bonus?”

  “Henk will blow your bonus?”

  “Got it.”

  “You get a bonus?”

  “Er…” He patted me on the shoulder and pulled the shutters down on his face. “You’ll be okay, kiddo.”

  I’d have to be.

  Just because Franklin was hilariously funny and willing to talk about his personal life didn’t make him my friend. He was my boss. In fact, he was my boss’s boss. (Lauryn reported to him.)

  “And you heard Ariella. Get a haircut. Go see someone at Perry K.”

  Just what I needed: ridiculous high-maintenance hair when barely one of my hands was operational.

  At lunchtime I tried to get my nails done, but when I took off the bandages and revealed them to the manicurist she went green and said they were far too short for acrylic ones to be fitted. When I returned with the bad news Lauryn behaved as if I was lying.

  “The girl told me to come back in a month,” I protested weakly. “I’ll get them done then.”

  “What-ev-er. Eye Eye Captain—I want your thoughts on the campaign by weekend.”

  When Lauryn said she wanted “my thoughts,” she actually meant that she wanted a fully realized campaign, complete with press releases, spreadsheets, budgeting, and a signed contract from Scarlett Johansson saying she was so thrilled to be the new face of Candy Grrrl that she’d do it for free.

  “I’ll see what I can do.” I dashed to my desk and started speed-reading through the Eye Eye Captain data.