Anybody Out There - Marian Keyes (15 page)

I had a second-tier duty: badgering beauty editors, taking them out to lunch, telling them how
lovely Candy Grrrl products were, and persuading them to give us a four-line sound bite and a
photo on their Beauty News page. This was a massively important part of my job, so much so
that my performance was targeted; the inches of magazine coverage I generated were measured,
then compared with how much would have had to be spent in advertising to get the same space.
My target this year was 12 percent higher than the previous year's, but I'd lost two months'
worth of badgering while I'd been in Ireland. It was going to be hard to make it up. Would
Ariella or Candace and George Biggly make allowances? Probably not. Looked at objectively,
why should they?
I gave Lauryn my Eye Eye Captain press release. A one-second glance was all it took.
"This is shit." She threw it back at me.
That was fine. I always had to present her with at least two attempts; she would trash my first
offering, then trash the second, then she usually accepted the first.
Unpleasant perhaps, but it was nice to know where I stood.
I   didn't leave work until about seven-thirty, and when I got home there was an e-mail from my
mother--something which had never happened before.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: The woman and her dog
Dear Anna,
I hope you are keeping well. Just remember you can come home whenever you want and we will
mind you. I am writing in connection with the woman and the dog who was "doing his business"
at our front gate.
Oh, cripes, what can of worms had I opened?
I will admit that we all thought you were imagining things, as a result of the tablets you are
on. But I am not afraid to "step up" to the "plate" (what does that mean? Is it a barbecuing term?)
and say I was wrong. Myself and Helen have watched her over the last few mornings and it has
become clear to us that she is indeed urging her dog to "pee" at our front gate and I just wanted
to keep you "in the loop" as they say. As yet we haven't identified her. As you know she is an old
woman and all old women look the same to me. As you also know your sister Helen has high-
powered binoculars, which your father paid for. But she will not give me a "go" of them, she
says I have to pay her the going rate for her time. I do not think this is one bit fair. If you are

talking to her, will you tell her I said that. Also if she tells you any "scoop" on the woman's
identity be sure to let me know.
Your loving mother,
Mum
22
L    ess than a week after he first asked me to marry him, Aidan did it again, this time with a
ring, made by a jeweler I'd once said I liked. In white gold with a delicate band and seven
diamonds in a star setting, it was a very nice ring and I was very freaked out.
"Snap out of it," I said to him. "Take it down a notch or two. We had one bad weekend, you're
overreacting."
I hurried home to Jacqui and related what had happened.
"A ring?" she exclaimed. "You're getting married!"
"I'm not getting married."
"Why not?"
"Why should I?"
"Duh...because he asked you?" Testily, she said, "It was a joke. Sort of. So why won't you
marry the guy?"
Incoherently, I spluttered, "Reason (a) I barely know him and I've spent so much of my life
being impulsive, I've used it all up. Reason (b) Aidan has too much baggage and I don't want a
fixer-upper. Reason (c) As you yourself, Jacqui Staniforth, said--and I bet you're right--he's
probably a hard dog to keep on the porch. What if he's unfaithful to me?"
"Actually, it's none of the above," Jacqui said. "It's reason (d) Because you're a late starter.
Which means," she said loudly, "that while every other single woman of our age would be
delighted to marry anyone, even a three-eyed dwarf who has to shave his nose, you're still naive
enough to think you shouldn't go round marrying the first man who asks you. Yes, you barely
know him! Yes, he's got baggage! Yes, he might have trouble keeping his lad in his pants! But
basically, Anna Walsh, you haven't a fucking CLUE how lucky you are!"
I waited for her to finish shouting.

"Sorry," she said, her color high, her breathing louder than usual. "Got a little...overexcited
there. I'm really sorry, Anna. Just because he has only two eyes and is of average height and
nose-hairiness for his age, is no reason to marry a man. Not at all."
"Thank you."
"But you do love him," she accused. "And he loves you. I know it's been quick, but it's serious."
T    he next time he produced the ring I said, "Please stop."
"I can't help it."
"Why do you want to marry me?"
He sighed. "I can list the reasons but it still won't convey anything like enough: you smell good,
you're brave, you like Dogly, you're funny, you're smart, you're really, really cute-looking, I like
the way you say `curly-wurly,' I like how your head works, how we can be talking about
FedExing my Mom's birthday gift to Boston and you suddenly say, `It's impossible for someone
to look sexy while licking a stamp'..." He spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. "But it's
much, much more than that. Like much, much, much, much more than that."
"What's the difference between how you feel about me and how you felt about Janie?"
"I'm not dissing Janie, because she's a great person, but there's no comparison..." He snapped
his fingers. "Okay, got it! Have you ever had, like, a really bad toothache? One of those
screaming ones where it's like electricity crackling up into your head and ears, it's so bad you
can nearly see it? Yeah? Okay, convert that same intensity into love and that's how I feel about
you."
"And Janie?"
"Janie? Janie is like when you bump your head on a low ceiling. Bad but not unbearable. Am I
making any sense?"
"Strangely, yes."
Obviously, I'd known the first time we'd met that there had been something, some connection.
Then, accidentally bumping into each other seven weeks later looked like a "sign" that we were
meant to be together, but I didn't want to live my life by "signs," I wanted to live them by facts.

Fact 1. I couldn't deny that he'd severely disrupted my peace of mind; despite my insisting that
we barely knew each other, privately I felt that we knew each other extremely well. In a good
way.
Fact 2. It was different from the way I'd felt about any man in a long, long time. I suspected--
feared even--that I was badly in love with him.
Fact 3. I valued loyalty and in many ways Aidan was extremely loyal: he embraced Jacqui,
Rachel, even Luke and the Real Men, calling them "man" just to fit in. He celebrated my work
victories and he'd hated Lauryn long before he met her.
Fact 4. I wasn't going to get sidetracked by the physical side of things, because you can fancy
anyone. But, as it happened--and it's really neither here nor there--we couldn't keep our hands
off each other.
On paper so many of the boxes were ticked. The problem was Janie. I couldn't forgive Aidan for
dumping her.
But when I took my woes to Jacqui, she said, "He dumped her for you!"
"It still feels wrong. And he was with her for a thousand years, he only knows me five minutes."
"Listen," she said earnestly. "Really listen to me. You often hear of people who go out with
someone for years and years, then they break up and two days later they're getting married to
someone else. We've seen it, haven't we? Remember Faith and Hal? She broke it off with him
after eleven years and immediately--so it seemed--he married that Swedish girl and everyone
said, `There goes the rebound kid,' but they're still together and they've three children and they
seem happy. When people move that fast, everyone says, `I'll give it a month,' but often they're
wrong, often it works. And I've a feeling that's what's going on here. You don't have to be with a
person for a hundred years before you're sure. Sometimes it happens in an instant. You've heard
the saying: `When you know, you know.'"
I nodded. Yes, I'd heard it.
"So do you know?"
"No."
She sighed heavily and muttered, "Christ."
I  n all the time I was with Janie," Aidan said, "I never asked her to marry me. And she never
asked me either."

"I don't care," I said. "I'm freaked out enough, having such an intense relationship with you so
quickly, but all this marriage stuff is really doing my head in."
"What are you so scared of?"
"Oh, you know, all the obvious reasons: I'll never be able to sleep with anyone else ever again, I
don't want to be part of a smug couple who finish each other's sentences, etc., etc."
But my real fear was that it mightn't work out, that he might run off with someone else--or more
likely, go back to Janie--and I'd be absolutely destroyed. When you love someone as much as I
suspected I loved Aidan, there was so much further to fall.
"I'm afraid that it might all go horribly wrong," I admitted. "That we'd end up hating each other
and losing our trust in love and hope and all the good things. I couldn't bear it. Then I'd become
an over-made-up lush with big hair who drinks martinis for breakfast and tries to sleep with the
pool boy."
"Anna, it won't go wrong, I promise. This is good stuff, you and me, as good as it gets. You
know that."
Sometimes I did. Which meant that--like the urge I got on the top of a tall building, to just jump
off--my biggest fear of all was that I might say yes.
"Okay, if you won't marry me will you come on vacation with me?"
"I don't know," I said. "I'll have to ask Jacqui."
"Kill or cure" was Jacqui's conclusion. "It could be a total disaster, trapped in a foreign country
with nothing to say to each other. I'd say, go for it."
I said I'd go so long as he didn't once ask me to marry him. "Done," he said.
I   went to Ireland for Christmas, and when I got back, Aidan and I went to Mexico for six days.
After the cold and drear of a New York winter, the white sands and blue skies were so dazzling,
it almost hurt to look at them. But the best bit of all was having Aidan on tap twenty-four hours a
day. It was sex, sex, and more sex. First thing in the morning, last thing at night, at all points in
between...
To make sure we got out of bed once in a while, we checked out the dusty local town and
decided to do a beginners' scuba-diving course, which was run by two expat Californian stoners.
It was dirt cheap, and with the benefit of hindsight, maybe we should have been concerned. Also

by the waiver form we had to sign, stating that in the event of death, mutilation, shark attacks,
post-traumatic stress disorder, stubbed toes, broken nails, lost prosthetics, and whatever else,
they were in no way, shape, or form responsible.
But we didn't give a damn, we were having a great time, crouched in the tiny practice pool with
nine other beginners, making Os with our thumb and index fingers and sniggering and nudging,
like we were back at school.
On day three, we were taken out for our first dive in the sea, and although we were only twelve
feet beneath the waves, we were transported to another world. A world of peace, where all you
can hear is the sound of your own breathing and everything moves with slow grace. Swimming
through blue water, it was like being suspended in blue light. The water was as clear as glass and
sun rays filtered all the way to the bottom, to highlight the white sand on the ocean floor.
Aidan and I were mesmerized. Holding hands, we slowly flapped past delicate coral and fish in
every imaginable colorway: yellow with black spots, orange with white stripes, and funny,
transparent ones with no color at all. Shoals of them in formation, moving silently past us,
heading for somewhere else.
Aidan pointed and I followed his finger. Sharks. Three of them, hanging around at the edge of
the reef, looking mean and moody, like they were wearing leather jackets. Reef sharks aren't
dangerous. Usually. All the same, my heart beat a little faster.
Then, just for a laugh, we took out our mouthpieces and used each other's spare "octupus" air
tube, becoming one unit, the way "lovairs" in films set in the 1930s link arms and drink
champagne from each other's glass (and they're always those shallow champagne glasses with
the ridiculously wide rims, so that the champagne spills everywhere and you're barely able to
drink any yourself, never mind your loved one, but what harm).
"Wow, that was amazing," Aidan raved afterward. "It was exactly like Finding Nemo. And you
know what else it means, Anna? It means you and I have something in common. We have A
Shared Interest."
I thought this was his cue to ask me to marry him again but I gave him a look and he said,
"What?" and I said, "Nothing."
The last day was the big banana, the grand finale. They were taking all of us to deeper waters,
which involved decompressing on our ascent. That meant hanging around for two minutes every
fifteen feet while our air yoke resomethinged. We'd been practicing in shallower waters, but this
time it would be for real.
But on the boat taking us out, events turned pear-shaped: Aidan had developed a cold, and
although he was pretending he was in the full of his health, the instructor noticed and nixed
Aidan's dive.
"You won't be able to equalize the pressure in your ears. Sorry, man, you can't go."

Aidan was so disappointed that I decided I wouldn't go either. "I'd rather go back to the cabana
and have sex with you. We haven't done it in over an hour."
"How about you go for your dive and then come back to the cabana and have sex with me? You
can have both. Go on, Anna, you've been so excited about this dive and you can tell me all about
it when you get back."
Because Aidan wasn't coming, I had to get another "buddy"--even though I hate the word
buddy. Except when it's used as an insult. (Example: "What's it to you, buddy?")
I got buddied with a man who'd been reading Codependent No More on the beach. He'd come
on holiday on his own and had been buddied with the instructor for every other dive.
Final instructions were called to us before we jumped off the side of the boat, then we splashed
down into that silent other world. Mr. Codependent wouldn't hold my hand, but that was fine
because I didn't want to hold his either. Swimming along, we'd been near the ocean floor for
several minutes--it's hard to keep track of time down there--when I realized that on my last two
inhales, no air had come out of my tube. I took another suck just to make sure, and no, nothing
was happening. It was like the surprise I get when a can of hair spray is used up; it's something
that I think is never going to happen. I press and press on the nozzle thinking, It can't be empty,
then realize it is and that I'd better stop unless I want the fecker to explode.
My indicator said I still had twenty-five minutes of air left but nothing was coming out; my tube
must be blocked. So I tried my octupus arm--my spare tube--and felt the first tickle of fear
when nothing came out of that either.
I stopped Mr. Codependent and signaled No air. (A slicing action at the neck that the Mafia use
when they talk about "taking care" of people.) It was only when I went to grab his octopus and
take a lovely mouthful of oxygen that I noticed there wasn't one! No extra air tube! The
gobshite! Even in my shock, I knew what had happened: he'd detached it in order to demonstrate
his lack of codependence. In his head he'd probably been saying proudly, I walk alone; I depend
on no one and no one depends on me.
Well, that was just tough because, seeing as he'd abandoned his spare tube somewhere, he'd
have to give me a go of his own mouthpiece. I pointed and signaled Give it to me, but as he went
to take it out of his mouth, he panicked. Even through his mask, I could see it. It was like when
Bilbo Baggins had to hand the Ring over to Master Frodo. He knew it had to be done, but when
it came to actually doing it, he couldn't.
Codependent was too scared to leave himself without air for even a few seconds. One hand
guarding his air tube, he jabbed toward the surface with the other: Go up. To my horror, he
started swimming away from me, still protecting his air supply.
The others had gone on ahead, I could see them disappearing into the distance. There was no one
to help me. This isn't happening, please God, let this not be happening.