Anybody Out There?

by Marian Keyes

  Jesus, Anna, the boredom is killing me.

  I had a sudden thought…

  To: Lucky_Star_PI@yahoo.ie

  From: Magiciansgirl1@yahoo.com

  Subject: Colin

  Helen, what does Colin look like?

  To: Magiciansgirl1@yahoo.com

  From: Lucky_Star_PI@yahoo.ie

  Subject: Colin

  Big, burly, dark-haired, sexy. Not bad. Like him best when he puts gun in waistband of his jeans. View of sexy stomach and space to slip hand in. And down, of course…

  You see, that was the difference between Helen and me. I’d just be afraid that with his gun stuck in his waistband, he might accidentally shoot himself in the flute.

  Your next question will be, Do I fancy him? Yes. But sometimes he talks about giving up crime and going straight and then I think he’s gobshite. Sexy beast or deluded gobshite? Can’t decide.

  57

  Rachel, you have to go to the beach,” I said. “Because if you don’t get your fix of sunlight, you might get depressed and ‘go pure mental on the drugs again,’ as Helen so sensitively puts it.”

  “Yes, but…,” Rachel sounded helpless.

  “And I can’t go because of my scar,” I said, brooking no argument.

  “I’m so sorry,” Rachel said guiltily.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s fine.”

  And it was. I wanted to go to the spiritualist-church place. Very quickly, it had become part of my Sunday routine. I liked the people who went; they were very kind, and to them, I wasn’t Anna with her Catastrophe—well, maybe I was—but they’d all had catastrophes, too. I was no different.

  But I told no one—especially not Rachel or Jacqui; they wouldn’t understand. They might even try to stop me. Luckily, Rachel was off my case because the hot weather was continuing and Jacqui worked such irregular hours that I was often in the clear with her as well. As for Leon and Dana, they only ever wanted to see me in the evenings when we could go somewhere fancy for dinner.

  All the gang was there, sitting in a line on the benches in the corridor.

  Nicholas saw me. “Cool! Here’s Miss Annie.” Today his T-shirt said FREE KATIE. Mitch was slouched back against the wall and he shifted forward to get a look at me.

  “Hey, peanut.” He stretched out his leg to touch me with his foot. “How was your week?”

  “Oh, you know,” I said. “How was yours?”

  “’Bout the same.”

  We took our places in the circle of chairs, the cello groaning started up, and several people got messages, but nothing for me.

  Then Leisl slowly said, “Anna…I’m seeing the little blond boy again. I’m getting the initial J.”

  “Because his name is JJ.”

  “He really wants to talk to you.”

  “But he’s alive! He can talk to me anytime he wants!”

  Afterward I cornered Leisl. “Why would I be getting messages from my nephew who’s still alive? Or my horrible granny? And not from Aidan?”

  “I can’t answer that, Anna.” Her eyes, underneath her frizzy fringe, were so kind.

  “There isn’t some sort of waiting period after someone has died before they start being channeled, is there?”

  “Not that I know of,” she said.

  “Have you tried EVP?” Barb growled. “Electronic voice phenomenon?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Recording the voices of the dead.”

  “If this is a joke…”

  “Not a joke!” All the others knew about EVP. A flurry of voices said, “That’s a good idea, Anna. You should try it.”

  Defensively, I asked, “How do you do it?”

  “Just on a regular tape recorder,” Barb said. “Use a new tape. Set it to record, leave the room, come back one hour later, and pick up your messages!”

  “You need a quiet room,” Leisl said.

  “Hard to find in New York City,” Nicholas said.

  “And a positive, cheerful, loving attitude.” Leisl again.

  “That’s hard, too.”

  “It’s got to be done after sunset on the night of a full moon,” Mackenzie said.

  “Preferably during a thunderstorm,” said Nicholas. “Because of the gravitational effect.”

  “Nicholas, I’m really in no mood for any of your bonkers beliefs.”

  “No.” Several voices insisted, “It’s not one of his bonkers beliefs!”

  “What’s a bonkers belief?” I heard Carmela ask.

  “There’s actually a scientific basis for this,” Nicholas said. “The dead live in etheric wavelengths which operate at much higher frequencies than ours. So we can hear them on tape when we can’t hear them talking directly to us.”

  I asked, “Have you done it?”

  “Oh, sure.”

  “And your dad spoke to you.”

  “Oh, sure. It was kinda hard to hear him, though. You might have to speed the tape up or down a lot when you’re listening back.”

  “Yeah, sometimes they speak really fast,” Barb said. “And sometimes they speak sloooow. You’ve got to listen real careful.”

  “I’ll e-mail you all the instructions,” Nicholas said.

  I asked Mitch, “Have you tried it?”

  “No, but only because I spoke to Trish via Neris Hemming.”

  “When’s the next full moon?” Mackenzie asked.

  “Just missed it,” Nicholas said.

  “Aw, too bad!” was the general consensus. “But there’s another in less than four weeks. You can do it then.”

  “Okay. Thanks. See you all next week.”

  I started walking away, wondering if Mitch would follow.

  He caught me up before I reached the lift. “Hey, Anna, do you have to be someplace now?”

  “No.”

  “Wanna do something?”

  “Like what?” I was interested to see what he came up with.

  “How about MoMa?”

  Why not? I’d lived in New York for three years and I’d never been there.

  Being with Mitch had many of the advantages of being alone—like not having to keep smiling in case he felt uncomfortable with my real face—but without the actual aloneness. Speedily, we moved from painting to painting and we barely spoke. At times we were even in different rooms, but were linked by an invisible thread.

  When we’d seen everything, Mitch checked his watch.

  “Look at that!” He sounded pleased and almost smiled. “That took two hours. The day is nearly done. Have a good week, Anna. See you next Sunday.”

  Anna, pick up the phone. I know you’re in there. I’m outside and I need to talk to you.”

  It was Jacqui. I grabbed the phone. “What’s up?”

  “Let me in.”

  I buzzed the door and heard her pounding up the stairs. Seconds later she burst in, a tangle of limbs, her face distraught.

  “Has someone died?” That was always my worry now.

  That stopped her in her tracks. “Um, no.” Her face changed. “No, this is just…ordinary…stuff.”

  Suddenly she resented me. Whatever was going on, it was huge for her and I’d reduced it to something shallow because my husband had died and no one could top that.

  “Sorry, Jacqui, sorry, come and sit—”

  “No, I’m sorry, scaring you like that—”

  “All right, we’re both sorry, so tell me what’s up.”

  She sat on the couch, leaning forward, her forearms on her thighs, her knees neatly together. She looked exactly like the Pixar lamp. If she’d started bunny-hopping around the room, even her mother would have been hard-pressed to tell them apart.

  She stared into the middle distance, locked into silence for quite some time.

  Eventually she spoke. One word. “Joey.”

  Well, at least now I could tell Mum.

  “Or as I call him,” she said, “Narky Joey.” She sighed heavily. “I was over in his apartment just now.”

  “What were you do
ing?!”

  “Playing Scrabble.”

  Sunday-afternoon Scrabble playing! I felt a slight sting at my exclusion. But who could blame them? They were blue in the face from inviting me and getting turned down.

  “I wasn’t even looking at him, but out of the corner of my eye, I suddenly thought he looked like…looked like…” She paused, took a shuddery, tearful breath, and burst out, “Jon Bon Jovi!”

  In shame, she buried her face in her hands.

  “You’re okay,” I said gently. “Carry on. Jon Bon Jovi.”

  “I know what it means,” she said. “I’ve seen it happen with other women. One minute they say they think he looks a bit like Jon Bon Jovi, that they’d never noticed it before, the next thing they fancy him. And I don’t want to fancy him, I think he’s a fool. And not even nice, you know? Narky.”

  “You don’t have to fancy him. Just decide not to.”

  “Is it that simple?”

  “Yes!”

  Well, maybe.

  Mum?”

  “Which one of you is that?”

  “Anna.”

  A gasp. “Any news on Jacqui and Joey?”

  “Yes, actually! That’s why I’m ringing.”

  “Go on! Tell us!”

  “She thinks he looks like Jon Bon Jovi.”

  “That’s it, then. Game over.”

  “Not at all. Jacqui is made of sterner stuff.”

  “He gives love a bad name.”

  “I suppose he does.”

  “It’s a song,” she hissed. “A Real Men song. By Guns and Leopards, or whatever they’re called. I was making a joke.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “Sorry.”

  “Did she get that dog yet? That Labradoodle dandy?”

  “No.” Buying a nuclear warhead would be easier, she’d said. And how did Mum know about the dog?

  “Just as well, the poor creature wouldn’t be getting much attention from her now that she fancies Joey.”

  “She doesn’t.”

  “She does, she just doesn’t know it yet.”

  58

  A couple of nights later, by accident—but an accident that was obviously meant to happen, especially since I spent more and more time watching the spiritual channel—I saw Neris Hemming on telly! This wasn’t just a televising of one of her shows, it was a profile, a half-hour special. On cable, but so what?

  Probably in her late thirties, with shoulder-length bubble curls and wearing a blue pinafore dress, she was curled in an armchair, talking to an invisible interviewer.

  “I was always able to see and hear ‘other’ people,” she said in a soft voice. “I always had friends that no one else could see. And I knew that stuff was going to happen before it did, you know? My mom used to get so mad with me.”

  “But something happened to change your mom’s mind,” the invisible interviewer prompted. “Can you tell us about it?”

  Neris closed her eyes in order to remember. “It was an ordinary morning. I’d just gotten out of the shower and was drying myself off with my towel when…it’s kinda hard to describe, but everything went sort of misty and I wasn’t in my bathroom anymore. I was in a different place. I was in the open air, on a highway. I could see and feel the hot tar under my feet. About thirty feet away from me, a huge truck was on fire and the heat was intense. I could smell gasoline, and something else, something really bad. Lots of cars were on fire, too, and the worst bit was that bodies were scattered on the highway. I didn’t know what kind of shape they were in. It was horrible. And suddenly I was back in my bathroom again, still holding my towel.

  “I didn’t know what was happening to me. I thought I was losing my mind. I was so scared. I called up my mom and told her what I’d experienced and she was real worried.”

  “She didn’t believe you?”

  “No way! She thought I was cracking up. She wanted to get me to the hospital. I didn’t go to work that day. I felt sick to my stomach and went back to bed. Later, that evening, I turned on the TV. CNN had a report on a horrible accident that had just happened on the interstate and it was totally what I’d seen. A big truck carrying chemicals had exploded, other cars had caught on fire, a bunch of people were dead…I couldn’t believe it. I really did wonder if I’d gone crazy.”

  “But you hadn’t?”

  Neris shook her head. “No. Next thing the phone rings. It was my mom, and she said, ‘Neris, we’ve got to talk.’”

  I knew all of this, I’d read it in her books, but it was fascinating to hear it from her own mouth.

  I also knew what happened next. Her mom decided to stop telling her she was a nut job and instead started booking gigs for her. All her family worked for her now. Her dad was her driver, her little sister was in the booking office, and although her ex-husband didn’t work for her, he was suing her for millions, so that was nearly as good.

  “People tell me that they’d love to be psychic,” Neris said. “But, you know what, it’s a tough road. I call it a blessed curse.”

  Then the screen cut to coverage of one of her live shows. Neris was standing on a huge stage, just her, looking very little. “I have a…I’m getting something for…do we have someone here tonight called Vanessa?”

  A camera panned over rows and rows of audience, and somewhere near the back, a heavyset lady put her hand up and got to her feet. She mouthed something and Neris said, “Wait a minute, honey, until the mike gets to you.”

  A runner was pushing her way between the seats. When the heavyset woman was holding the mike, Neris said, “Can you tell us your name? You’re Vanessa?”

  “I’m Vanessa.”

  “Vanessa, Scottie just wants to say hi to you. Does that mean anything?”

  Tears started to pour down Vanessa’s face and she mumbled something.

  “Say again, honey.”

  “He was my son.”

  “That’s right, honey, and he wants you to know he didn’t suffer.” Neris put her hand to her ear and said, “He’s telling me to tell you you were right about the bike. Mean anything?”

  “Yeah.” Vanessa’s head was bowed. “I told him he drove that thing too fast.”

  “Well, he knows that now. He’s telling me to say, ‘Mom, you were right.’ So, Mom, you get the last word here.”

  Somehow Vanessa was smiling through her tears.

  “Okay, honey?” Neris asked.

  “Yes, thank you, thank you.” Vanessa sat back down.

  “No, thank you for sharing your story. If you could just give the mike back to the—”

  Vanessa was still holding on to the microphone with a clawlike grip. She relinquished it with reluctance.

  Back to Neris on the armchair, who was saying, “The people who come to my shows, nearly all of them are looking to hear from their loved ones who have passed over. These folks are in bad pyschic pain and I have a responsibility to them. But sometimes,” and she gave a little laugh here, “if lots of spirit voices are all trying to get through at the same time, I have to say, ‘Calm down, guys, take a ticket, get in line!’”

  I was mesmerized. She made it all sound so ordinary, so possible. And I was touched by her humility. If anyone could put me in contact with Aidan, it was this woman.

  The camera cut back to another of Neris’s live shows. She was wearing a different dress, so it must have been a different event. From the stage she asked, “I’ve got a message here for a man called Ray.”

  She scanned the theater. “We got a Ray? Come on, Ray, we know you’re here.”

  A large man got to his feet. He was wearing an enormous plaid shirt and had a big redneck quiff held in place with shiny pomade; he looked mortified.

  “You’re Ray?”

  He nodded, and gingerly accepted the mike from the runner.

  “Ray,” and Neris was laughing. “I’m being told here that you don’t believe in any of this psychic BS. Is that so?”

  Ray said something that we didn’t hear.

  “Speak into the mike, honey.�
��

  Ray leaned over and enunciated into the microphone, like he was under oath at a murder trial, “No, ma’am, I do not.”

  “You didn’t want to come here tonight, did you?”

  “No, ma’am, I did not.”

  “But you came along because someone else asked you to, right?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Leeanne, my wife.”

  The camera moved to the woman beside him, a shrunken little thing with a mushroom of teased blond hair, like cotton candy. Leeanne, presumably.

  “You know who’s telling me all this?” Neris asked.

  “No, ma’am.”

  “It’s your mama.”

  Ray said nothing, but his face kind of shut down—the sign of a hardman redneck trying to fight back emotion.

  “She didn’t die easy, did she?” Neris said gently.

  “No, ma’am. She had the cancer. The pain was real bad.”

  “But she’s not in pain now. Where she is is ‘better than any morphine,’ she’s telling me. She wants me to tell you that she loves you, that you’re a good boy, Ray.”

  Tears were pouring down Ray’s ruddy cheeks and we were shown shots of several other people who were also crying.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Ray said hoarsely, and sat back down, receiving claps on the back and handclasps from the people around him.

  The next scene was of people streaming out of the theater into the lobby, saying stuff like “I don’t mind telling you I had no faith in this woman. I’m not too proud to tell you that I was wrong.”

  A brisk, loud, New York type cut in. “Unbelievable. I mean, unbelievable.”

  Someone else said “Awesome,” and someone else said, “I got a message from my husband. I’m so happy he’s okay. Thank you, Neris Hemming.”

  This cranked up my excitement to fever pitch. I’d have her all to myself for an entire half hour. Half an hour to talk to Aidan.