Anybody Out There?

by Marian Keyes

  Showed photos to Harry. Colin said he had right to know. Harry was broken man. Vay funny. Then he said to Colin: I’m going out to Dalkey to kill Racey O’Grady. I’ll be back in a couple of hours, depending on traffic. You hold the fort.

  I ran out of the apartment and stood on the street and found I had nowhere to go except work. I didn’t give a damn about the pitch, but, as is the way with these things, I got a cab immediately, there was almost no traffic, and every light was green. I’d never got to work so quickly in my life.

  I took my time ambling from the lift to my desk, where Franklin, Teenie, and Lauryn were in a head-to-head.

  “…flaky bitch,” Lauryn was saying. “We should never have let her come back after her husband…”

  Franklin was the color of chalk. Then he turned and saw me and I almost laughed when I saw his expression. He was too relieved to be angry. “You’re here.”

  “Yeah. Teenie, I’m so sorry to mess you around like this.”

  “No way,” she said. “It’s your pitch, it’s your baby.” She gave me a little kiss. “Way to go.”

  79

  They’re not here yet,” Franklin said breathlessly, taking me by the arm and hurrying me to the boardroom.

  “Here she is!” Triumphantly, he displayed me to Ariella, who said, “Cutting it a little fine, no?”

  “I told you, I had an appointment.”

  Glances were exchanged: What was going on with me? But then word came that the Devereaux people were on their way up and everyone stapled on their happy faces.

  Wendell—in her yellow Big Bird rig-out—went first and gave a pretty dazzling display. Then it was my turn. I watched myself do my pitch, almost as if I was standing outside of my body; I was full of adrenaline, my voice was louder than usual, and I laughed a little too bitterly when I pointed out my scar, but nothing else untoward happened.

  I answered their tricky questions with perfect ease—I was letter-perfect after the countless hours of practice. Then it was all over and hands were being shook and they were gone.

  As soon as the elevator doors closed behind them, I walked out of the boardroom, leaving Ariella and Franklin staring after me in bewilderment.

  Back at my desk, Teenie said, “How’dit go?”

  “She couldn’t do it. She had the contractors in.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Oh, the pitch. Fine, fine.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Fine.”

  “Right. Messages for you. Jacqui rang. She’s breaking the news to Narky Joey tonight. Does she have chlamydia?”

  “No. I’ll tell you when Narky Joey knows.”

  “’Kay. Then Kevin rang. You know Kevin, Aidan’s brother?” I nodded wearily.

  “You’ve gotta call him, like, now. He said it was way urgent.”

  “What kind of urgent?”

  “It’s okay. No one’s dead. I asked him. So just regular urgent, I guess.”

  That had probably been Kevin on my call waiting this morning. With sudden curiosity, I switched on my cell phone; there were two messages from Kevin.

  Why did he want me to call him? Why was it urgent? And all at once, I knew why. Kevin wanted to talk to me for the very same reason that Aidan wouldn’t.

  Uneasiness, which had existed, wraithlike, at the back of my mind for months, abruptly moved to the forefront.

  I’d hoped this would never happen. I’d even managed to convince myself that it wouldn’t. But whatever this was, it was coming to a head; I was powerless to stop it.

  I had to talk to Leon.

  I called him at work. “Leon, can I see you?”

  “Great! How’s Friday sound? There’s a Sri Lankan restau—”

  “No, Leon. I need to see you now.”

  “But it’s ten-thirty. I’m at work.”

  “Fake something. A meeting. A sore tooth. You’re important. Just for an hour, Leon. Please.”

  “And what about Dana?”

  “It’s not that kind of meeting, Leon. Can you be in Dom’s Diner in twenty?”

  “Okay.”

  I announced to the desks around me, “I’m going out in ten minutes, I’m taking an early lunch.”

  Lauryn didn’t even answer. She didn’t care. I’d messed up so badly by almost missing the pitch that I was probably going to be sacked anyway.

  To: Magiciansgirl1@yahoo.com

  From: Thewalshes1@eircom.net

  Subject: All is revealed

  Dear Anna,

  How in God’s name did you know?! Was it a lucky guess? Do you have a sixth sense? Or did Helen tell you? Yes, Nan O’Shea is the woman your father “dumped” for me. She has carried a grudge all these years. Isn’t it a gas? Who would have thought that someone would feel so strongly about your father?

  It all came out when I made your father come over with me to her house to “front her out.” We rang the bell and the front door was opened very “forcefully,” then your woman spots your father and “fell to pieces.”

  She said, “Jack?” And he said, “Nan?” And I said, “You know this woman?”

  Your father said, “What’s going on, Nan?” And she said, “I’m sorry, Jack.”

  I said, “You’d bloody well want to be, you raving lunatic,” and your father said, “Sshh, sshh, she’s upset.”

  She brought us in for a cup of tea and your father was all chat, sitting down and accepting Hobnobs but I remained “standoffish.” I am slower to forgive.

  Anyway, it all “came out.” She had been heartbroken when your father “kicked her to the curb” and had never forgotten him. As Rachel would say, she has “never moved on.” (A flogging offense, to hear Rachel talk about it, it is nice that the child has had an education but sometimes…anyway, don’t mind me getting on my “hobbyhorse.”)

  I asked your father why he hadn’t recognized the name and he said he didn’t know. Then I asked Nan O’Shea why she had started pestering us only recently and warned her not to say that she didn’t know either. She said she had lived “away” for many years. Up close she has the look of an off-duty nun, like she might have joined the missions, badgering those misfortunate Africans, but it turned out that she has been living in Cork, working for the ESB, since 1962. She has recently “retired” and moved back to Dublin. (I was quite shocked as I had thought she was much older than me.)

  Your father was all palsy-walsy, and when we were leaving Nan O’Shea said. “Maybe you’ll drop in for a cup of tea once in a while, Jack.”

  “No,” I said. “He certainly won’t. Come on, Jack, home.”

  So that’s the end of that. How are things with you? Anything strange at all?

  Your loving mother,

  Mum

  80

  Leon was already there. I slid into the brown vinyl booth opposite him and said, “Leon, I know this is hard for you, and if you have to cry, feel free. I’m going to ask you some questions and I’m begging you to be honest with me. Even if you think you’re going to hurt me.”

  He nodded anxiously. But that was no indication. He did everything anxiously.

  “The night that Aidan died, he was about to tell me something. Something important.”

  “What was it?”

  “I don’t know. He died, remember?”

  “Sorry, I thought you meant…So how do you know he was going to tell you big stuff?”

  “He’d booked a table for us at Tamarind.”

  “What’s funny about that? Tamarind is an ‘exquisite spot for Brahmins and their bankers.’ Direct quote from Zagat.”

  “Leon, it’s funny because Aidan and I hardly ever went for dinner, just the two of us. We had takeout at home, or went out with you and Dana, or Rachel and Luke, or whoever. And we’d already been for a fancy romantic dinner, two nights before, because it was Valentine’s night, remember?”

  “Okay.”

  “And looking back, something had upset him. He’d had a call on his cell—he said it was work, but I don’t think it was
because he was very subdued after it, like he’d had the stuffing knocked out of him.”

  “Work stuff can do that to a guy.”

  “I don’t know, Leon, it seemed bigger than that, and he stayed subdued and sort of…distant. I mean, he tried his best, especially on Valentine’s night, but those things are so cheesy and stilted anyway…Anyway, the next thing is he’d booked a table at Tamarind, and I said I didn’t understand why we were going out for dinner again so soon, but he said please, so I said okay.”

  “Jeez, I wish Dana was more like you.”

  “I’m not. I wasn’t usually like that, but I remember thinking that if it was important to him that we go out to talk—because obviously we weren’t just going for the food”—I stopped Leon before he got going—“no matter how nice it is—then I would do it.”

  “But you never got there.”

  “No. And I sort of forgot about it. I mean, not really. Not always. But…there was too much other stuff going on. Leon, you were his best friend. Did Aidan love me?”

  “He would have taken a bullet for you.” Stricken silence. “Sorry, wrong thing to say. He was crazy about you. Me and Dana, we knew him and Janie together, but you and him were different. The real thing.”

  “Okay, here comes the tough question. Are you ready?”

  Fearful nod.

  “At the time that he died, was Aidan cheating on me?”

  Leon looked appalled. “No way!”

  “But how do you know? Would he have told you?”

  “Absolutely. He had that guilt thing, always felt the need to confess.”

  Now, that was true. He’d probably have confessed to me, never mind Leon.

  “And I’d have guessed it anyhow,” Leon said. “We were tight, you know. He was my best buddy.” His voice broke. “The best buddy a guy could have.”

  Automatically, I reached into my bag and passed him a tissue.

  Leon spread the tissue over his face and choked into it while I asked myself if I believed him. Yes, I decided. I believed him. So what was going on?

  But when I got back to the office, there was a series of frantic messages from Kevin on my voice mail, the last one saying, “I’m coming to see you in New York tomorrow morning. I can’t get there before then. Anna, this is big stuff. If anyone calls you, any woman you don’t know, don’t talk to her, Anna, don’t talk to her until I get there.”

  Oh my God. My knees were trembly and I sank onto my chair. Leon was wrong and I’d been right. This was what I’d been waiting for.

  I felt sick. But calm. It was out of my hands now.

  I could have rung Kevin and found out everything, but I didn’t want to. I knew anyway. And I needed a little longer to remember my life with Aidan the way I’d thought it had been.

  81

  Anna. Anna!” I was brought back to the present by Franklin. Looking at me oddly.

  “Ariella’s office, right now.”

  “O-kay.” I trailed along slowly. I didn’t give a shite.

  “Close the door,” Ariella said.

  “O-kay.”

  I sat down without Ariella telling me to. She flashed another of those “what the fuck?” looks at Franklin, who was standing behind me.

  Go on then, sack me. Get on with it.

  “Yeah.” Ariella cleared her throat. “Anna, we have some news for you.”

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  Another perplexed exchange.

  “Devereaux is going with our pitch.”

  “Hey, that’s just great,” I said superperkily. “Wendell’s or mine?”

  “Yours.”

  “But you want to fire me. So fire me.”

  “We can’t fire you. They loved you. The head guy, Leonard Daly, thought you were, I quote, ‘a great kid, very courageous’ and a natural to do a whispering campaign. He said you had believability.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “Why? You’re not quitting!”

  I thought about it. “Not if you don’t want me to. Do you?”

  Go on, say it.

  “No.”

  “No what?”

  “No, we don’t want you to quit.”

  “Ten grand more, two assistants, and charcoal suits. Take it or leave it.”

  Ariella swallowed. “Okay to the money, okay to the assistants, but I can’t green-light charcoal suits. Formula Twelve is Brazilian, we need carnival colors.”

  “Charcoal suits or I’m gone.”

  “Orange.”

  “Charcoal.”

  “Orange.”

  “Charcoal.”

  “Okay, charcoal.”

  It was an interesting lesson in power. The only time you truly have it is when you genuinely don’t care whether you have it or not.

  “Right,” I said. “I’m giving myself the rest of the day off.”

  It was only when I got home that I remembed about Helen. In her last e-mail her situation had sounded a little hairy but I hadn’t really taken it in at the time.

  To: Lucky_Star_PI@yahoo.ie

  From: Magiciansgirl1@yahoo.com

  Subject: Are you okay?

  What’s happening?

  A short time later, I got a reply.

  To: Magiciansgirl1@yahoo.com

  From: Lucky_Star_PI@yahoo.ie

  Subject: Denooming!

  Back at my office a note had been shoved under door. It said, “Do you want to know who sent the nudie pictures of Detta and Racey? Do you want to know what’s really going on?” ’Course bloody well did!

  It said to show up tonight, 10 P.M., at address on docks. Looked it up on map: it was a warehouse. Was prepared to bet was a deserted warehouse. Why can’t denooming ever take place in nice comfortable bar?

  Turned on radio. Made the news! (Sort of.) Shooting incident in Dalkey was main story. A man in his fifties (Harry Big) had “shot several times at another man” (Racey). Target had escaped injury, and although police quickly arrived on scene, gunman had “evaded capture.” Police warning people “not to approach him.”

  This was utterly ridiculous. She was out of her mind to be involved in all of this; she could end up getting killed.

  To: Lucky_Star_PI@yahoo.ie

  From: Magiciansgirl1@yahoo.com

  Subject: Denooming!

  Helen, do NOT go to that warehouse place. You are way out of your depth. I want you to promise me you won’t go. You have to do whatever I ask because my husband died.

  Anna

  To: Magiciansgirl1@yahoo.com

  From: Lucky_Star_PI@yahoo.ie

  Subject: Denooming!

  Ah, feck.

  I promise.

  To: Lucky_Star_PI@yahoo.ie

  From: Magiciansgirl1@yahoo.com

  Subject: Denooming!

  Good!

  82

  I settled down to wait. In a way, it felt like a rerun of the previous night, but back then I’d been full of hope and now I was weighed down with foreboding.

  Kevin rang and once again I didn’t pick up; I just couldn’t face it. He said he’d be arriving on the 7 A.M. shuttle from Boston. I’d see him tomorrow. Tomorrow I would know everything.

  Then Jacqui showed up: she’d broken the news to Narky Joey. The fact that she was here did not bode well.

  She shook her head. “Dopamine wipeout.”

  “Oh no!”

  “Yeah, he doesn’t want to know.”

  “For God’s sake! Like he didn’t have anything to do with it! Was he horrible?”

  “Not horrible. Just the old nondopamine Narky Joey.”

  “Horrible, then.”

  “Yes, I suppose. I mean, I knew he wasn’t going to go for it, but I was hoping, you know…”

  I nodded. I knew. She sank onto the couch and had a good old sob while I murmured what a fuckhead he was. After a while she began to laugh even though she was still crying. “I mean, Narky Joey,” she said, wiping her cheeks with the heel of her hand. “What was I thinking of, falling in love with him? Talk about
asking for trouble. And you know something, Anna, you’ll have to be my birthing partner. We’ll have to go to the prenatal classes together and all the other man-and-woman couples will think we’re a pair of Jolly Girls.” She even went to the trouble of doing an Indian accent when she said “Jolly Girls.”

  “You’re a trouper,” I said.

  “I’m a gobshite, and I can’t even drown my sorrows. Stick on Dirty Dancing there, would you? That’s the only comfort available to me for the next eight months. I can’t drink, smoke, eat too much sugar, buy lovely clothes, or have sex; the only men who’ll want to sleep with me are those weirdos who are into pregnant women. Sappy movies are all that’s left. Who’s the message from?”

  I was on the floor, searching for the DVD. “What?”

  “Your message light, it’s flashing.”

  “Oh, it’s Kevin, he’s coming to town tomorrow.” It was amazing how normal I sounded. I couldn’t tell Jacqui what was going on; she had enough on her plate.

  After she left, I went to bed, went to sleep—sort of—then got up around 7:30, feeling like I was going to be executed.

  83

  I washed and got dressed as usual. My mouth was as dry as cotton wool, so I had a glass of water, but it came right back up again, and when I tried to brush my teeth the pressure of the toothbrush against my tongue made me gag.

  I didn’t know what to do. Until Kevin arrived, everything was on hold. I made a bargain with myself: if I could find an episode of Starsky & Hutch on the telly, I’d watch that. And if I couldn’t? Well, then I’d go to work.