Anybody Out There - Marian Keyes (16 page)

I was forty-five feet beneath the surface and I had no air. I felt the full weight of all that water
pressing down on me. Up until now, it had been entirely weightless, but all of a sudden it might
kill me.
The terror was so bad I felt like I was dreaming. Surface, I thought. I've got to get to the surface.
I stared upward. It looked a very long way away.
Diving upward, my legs kicking, my lungs bursting, I raced up, up, up, breaking all the rules,
thinking, I'm going to die and it's all my own fault for going on a cut-price scuba course.
Every fifteen feet I was supposed to hang around decompressing for two minutes; never mind
two minutes, I didn't have two seconds.
I kicked past a surprised shoal of clown fish, praying to break the surface. My blood roared in
my ears and images flitted into my head. Then I realized what was happening--my life was
flashing before my eyes. Fuck, I thought, I'm definitely going to die.
My life didn't flash sequentially, but highlit unexpected stuff, things I hadn't thought about for
years--or ever. My mother had given birth to me and I thought, What a nice thing that was to
do. What a generous act. Next person to appear in my head was Shane: I'd stayed with that bloke
for far too long.
Why did I have to die? Well, why not? There were six billion people in the world and I was as
insignificant as everyone else. They were dying all the time, why shouldn't I?
Mind you, it was a shame because if I got another shot at my inconsequential little life, I'd...
Just when I thought my head was going to burst, I broke the blue line that separates the two
worlds. The noise and the glare hit me, a wave slapped me in the ear, and I was tearing the mask
off my face, gulping in glorious oxygen, amazed not to be dead.
The next thing I remember, I was lying on the deck of the boat, still heaving desperately for air,
and Aidan was bending over me. His expression was a mixture of horror and relief. I made a
monumental effort and managed to speak. "Okay," I gasped. "I'll marry you."
23
I  n the darkness, I woke with a bump, my heart beating fast and hard. The light was switched on
before I knew I had done it and I was superalert and awake. I was on the couch. I'd nodded off
there in my work clothes because I'd kept postponing the moment when I had to go to bed alone.
Something had woken me. What had I heard? The sound of a key in the door? Or had the front
door actually opened and closed? All I knew was I wasn't alone. You can tell when someone else
is in your space; it feels different.

It had to be Aidan. He'd come back. And although I was excited, I was also a bit freaked. Out of
the corner of my eye, over by the window, I saw something move, something fast and shadowy. I
whipped my head around but there was nothing there.
I stood up. There was nobody in the living room, nobody in the kitchenette, so I'd better check
the bedroom. As I pushed open the door, I was sweating. I reached for the light switch, almost
paralyzed with terror that a hand might grab mine in the dark. What was that tall narrow shape
over by the closet? Then I hit the switch and the room flooded with light and the dark, ominous
shape revealed itself as our bookshelf.
Hearing my own gaspy breathing, I turned on the bathroom light and pulled back the wave-
patterned shower curtain with a violent swish. No one there either.
So what had woken me?
I realized I could smell him. The tiny space was filled with him. The panic was back and my eyes
scudded around looking for--what? I was afraid to look in the mirror, in case I saw someone else
looking at me. It was then that I saw that his wash bag had slipped off the crowded shelf on to
the tiles. Things had tumbled out and a bottle of something had broken. I crouched down; it
wasn't Aidan I could smell, it was just his aftershave.
Okay. So how had the wash bag fallen? These apartments were old and rickety; someone
slamming their front door could generate enough shock waves to nudge an overhanging wash
bag off a ledge onto the floor in someone else's apartment. No mystery there.
I went to get a brush to clean up the broken glass, but in the kitchenette another smell awaited
me, something sweet and powdery and oppressive. Nervously I sniffed the air. It was some sort
of fresh flower. I recognized the scent, I just couldn't...and then I got it. It was lilies, a smell I
hate--so heavy and musty, like death.
I looked around fearfully. Where was it coming from? There were no fresh flowers in the
apartment. But the smell was undeniable. I wasn't imagining it. It was real, the air was thick and
cloying.
After I'd tidied the broken bottle away, I was afraid to go back to sleep, so I switched on the TV.
After a trawl through all the lunatics on the cable channels, I found Knight Rider, an episode I
hadn't already seen. Eventually I drifted back into a half sleep, where I dreamed I was awake and
Aidan opened the door and walked in.
"Aidan, you came back! I knew you would."
"I can't stay long, baby," he said. "But I've something important to tell you."
"I know. So tell me, I can take it."
"Pay the rent, it's overdue."

"That's it?"
"That's it."
"But I thought..."
"The bill is in the closet with all the other mail. I'm sorry; I know you don't want to open any of
it, but just find that one. Don't lose our apartment. Be a hero, baby."
24
A    nna, where are you?" It was Rachel.
"Work."
"It's ten past eight on a Friday night! It's your first week back, you should be building up
slowly."
"I know, but I've so much to do and it's taking me forever to do it."
Spending half the previous night watching Knight Rider, instead of being asleep, hadn't helped.
I'd been wiped all day--exhausted and slow-witted. Lauryn was piling stuff on me, Franklin was
on at me to get my hair cut, and to add to my woes, a small, determined gang of EarthSource
girls thought I was an alcoholic.
One of them--Koo? Aroon? Some silly earthy name, anyway--came right up to my desk on
Friday morning and invited me to a lunchtime meeting--that's AA meeting, by the way--with
some of the other "McArthur recovery babes."
My heart sank to the soles of my glittery, wedge-heeled sneakers. The weariness! "Thank you," I
managed. "That's very nice of you..." I wanted to say her name, but wasn't sure what it was, so
had to make do with a mumbly, all-purpose "ooo" sound. "But I'm not an alcoholic."
"Still in denial?" A sad shake of her middle-parted, lank-haired head. "Surrender to win, Anna,
surrender to win."
"Okay." It was just easier to agree.
"It works if you work it, so work it, you're worth it. If you want to drink it's your business, but if
you wanna stop, it's ours."
"Thank you. You're lovely." Now please piss off before Lauryn comes over.

Rachel said, "Some of the Real Men are calling round to play Scrabble. It might be an easy way
for you to start meeting people again. Could you face it?"
Could I? I didn't want to be alone. Mind you, I didn't really want to be with anyone else either.
Paradox as that was, it made sense: I simply wanted to be with Aidan.
In the four days I'd been back in New York, I'd never had so many invitations in my life.
Everyone had been fantastic, but, as yet, the only people I'd been up for were Jacqui and Rachel
(who came as a job lot with Luke). There were loads of people I still had to get back to: Leon
and Dana; Ornesto, our Jolly Boy upstairs neighbor; Aidan's mother. Anyway, all in good time...
I switched off my PC and jumped in a cab on Fifty-eighth Street--it was getting slightly easier to
be in them. En route I called Jacqui and invited her along.
"Scrabble with the Real Men? I'd rather set myself on fire, but thanks for asking."
Apart from Luke, Jacqui had no time for the Real Men.
L    uke let me in. Although his rocker-type hair was a lot shorter now than when he'd first met
Rachel, he still wore his jeans just that smidgen too tight. My eyes were always drawn
inexorably to his crotch. I had no control over it. It was a bit like the way everyone had started
addressing all conversation to my scar instead of to me.
"Come on in," he invited my scar. "Rachel's just having a quick shower."
"Grand," I said, to his crotch.
Rachel and Luke's apartment was a rent-controlled place in the East Village. It was massive by
New York standards, which meant you could stand in the middle of the living room and not be
able to touch all four walls. They'd lived there for a long time, nearly five years, and it was very
cozy and comfortable and full of stuff with meaning: patchwork quilts and cushions which had
been embroidered by addicts Rachel had helped, shells Luke had brought back from the the
picnic celebrating Rachel's fourth clean-and-sober birthday--that sort of thing. Lamps cast pools
of soft light, and the air smelled of the cut flowers in a bowl on the coffee table.
"Beer, wine, water?" Luke asked.
"Water," I told his crotch. I was afraid that if I started drinking I would never stop.
The buzzer went. "It's Joey," Luke said. Joey was his best friend. "You sure you'll be okay
around him?"

I tried to tell Luke's face, I really did, but my eyes just slid down his chest and fastened onto his
bulge. "No problem."
Seconds later, Joey strode in, closed the door behind him with some fancy foot rotation, grabbed
a straight-backed chair, twirled it round, pulled it to him, and planted himself in it, facing into the
chair back, all without splitting his jeans or squashing his goolies. Very gracefully done.
"Hey, Anna, sorry about your...you know...it's rough." He was one person who wouldn't be
killing me with kindness. Suited me.
He gave my scar a long, brazen stare, then produced a packet of cigarettes and hit the box in
some fashion, and a cigarette somersaulted upward and into his mouth. In a fluid arc, he
scratched a match along the red-brick wall, and just as he was about to light the cigarette,
Rachel's disembodied voice, from another room, said, "Joey, put it out."
He froze in surprise, the lit match in his hand, and mumbled through the cigarette in his mouth,
"I didn't know she was home yet."
"Oh, I'm home all right. Out, Joey. Now."
"Fuck," he said, shaking the match out as it started burning his fingers. Slowly he returned the
cigarette to its box, then sat--there's no other word for it--brooding.
But it was nothing to do with Rachel not letting him smoke. Joey was always like that.
His habitual humor was one of dissatisfaction with the world. Lots of people, after meeting him
for the first time, would say, with sudden venom, "What the fuck was up with that Joey bloke?"
He could be actively and gratuitously obnoxious. Like, if someone got a radical new haircut and
everyone else would be oohing and aahing, Joey would be more likely to say, "Sue. You'd get
millions."
Other times he said nothing at all. Just sat in a group of people watching everyone with narrowed
eyes, his mouth set in a grim line, while something--a muscle? a vein?--jumped in his jaw. As a
result of this, a lot of women found him attractive. I always knew that they had crossed the line
from thinking he was a grumpy fucker to fancying him when they said, "I've never noticed it
before, but Joey looks a bit like Jon Bon Jovi, doesn't he?"
He had never, to my knowledge, had a long-term relationship, but he had slept with thousands of
people, some of them related to me. My sister Helen, for example, as part of her "tag and
release" program. She said he "wasn't bad in the scratcher," which was high praise indeed.
Rachel said he "has anger issues." Other people who didn't know about things like anger issues
said, "That Joey chap would want to learn some manners."

A few minutes later saw the arrival of Gaz and Shake, the air-guitar champ. They did their best
not to stare at my scar. This they achieved by looking at some point about eighteen inches above
my head when they were talking to me. But they both meant well. Gaz, a beer-bellied, balding
sweetie--not the brightest, but never mind--pulled me to his squashy tummy in a tight hug. "It's
a bad scene, Anna, man."
"Yeah," Shake said, shaking back the shaggy head of hair of which he is justifiably proud and
which gave him his name. "It sucks." Then he, too, embraced me while not actually looking at
me.
I stood and endured it. It had to be done. Now that I was back, sooner or later I would meet
everyone I knew and the first encounter would always be like this.
"Hey, you know, Anna, thanks, man, for that Candy Grrrl big hair mousse," Shake said. "It's the
gear. Volumetastic."
"Oh, it worked, did it?" I'd given it to him a few months back. He'd been obsessed with making
his hair as big as possible for the air-guitar finals.
"And that spray, man. We're talking rock hard."
"Well, good. Just tell me when you need more."
"'Preciate it."
Rachel emerged from the bathroom in a steamy cloud of lavender. She smiled sweetly at Joey as
she passed; he glowered back at her. As the lads got stuck in to their Scrabble and beer, we curled
on the couch in a softly lit corner and Rachel gave me a hand massage on my nongammy hand.
I was just starting to doze off when the buzzer went again. To my surprise it was Jacqui. She
burst into the apartment, full of shine and sparkle and chat: she'd had her gold-plated teeth
restored to normality, someone had given her a Louis Vuitton something, and she was on her way
to a private view.
"Hi." She waved at the Real Men at the table. "I can't stay long. But as the private view is only
two blocks down I thought I'd drop in and say hi. See how the Scrabble is going."
"How honored are we?" Joey drawled. He was doing something with a matchstick in his teeth.
Jacqui rolled her eyes. "Joey, you brighten every room you leave."
She came over to me and Rachel. "Why is he always so horrible?"
"He doesn't like himself very much," Rachel said.
"Don't fucking blame him," said Jacqui.

"And he turns that dislike outward," Rachel continued.
"I don't get it. Why can't he just be normal? Well, fuck it, I'm off. I'm sorry I came. Have a good
night," she called over to the table. "Everyone except Joey."
She left and the Scrabble kicked off again, but about half an hour later, I was seized by a strange
panic: suddenly I couldn't be with these people any longer.
"I think I'll be off now," I said, trying to keep the urgency from my voice.
Luke and Rachel watched me anxiously. "I'll come down and put you in a cab," Rachel said.
"No, you're not dressed, I'll do it," Luke said.
"No, please, I'm fine." I looked longingly at the door. If I didn't leave soon, I'd burst.
"If you're sure."
"I'm sure."
"What are you doing tomorrow?" Rachel asked.
"Going shopping with Jacqui in the afternoon." I raced through the words.
"Want to go to a movie in the evening?"
"Yeah," Luke enthused. "There's a digitally remastered version of North by Northwest showing
in the Angelika."
"Fine, yes, fine," I said, my breath constricted. "See you tomorrow, then."
"'Night."
"'Night."
And then the door was being opened and I was free. My pulse rate slowed down, my breathing
became easier. I stood on the sidewalk and felt the panic abate. Then it built back up again as I
thought: God, how bad is it that I can't even be with my own sister? And now I have to go back
to my empty apartment.
What a pisser: I couldn't be with people and I didn't want to be alone. Suddenly my perspective
whooshed and I was far out in space, watching the world. I could see millions and millions of
people, all slotted into their lives; then I could see me--I'd lost my place in the universe. It had
closed up and there was nowhere for me to be.
I was more lost than I had known it was possible for any human being to be.