Anybody Out There - Marian Keyes (22 page)

The idea of not being alive constantly hovered on the verge of my consciousness. Not to the
extent that I'd ever made any hard-and-fast plans, but it was definitely there. "Yes, I suppose I
have."
"Oh, that's good. That's great to hear." She was visibly relieved. "Thank God for that."
"It's the kissssss of DEATH! From Missss-tah...Gold FINGAH!"
"Look, would you like me to give you earplugs?"
"It's okay, thanks."
"This heart is COLD. HELOVESONLYGOLD, HELOVESONLYGOOOLLLLLDDDDD!"
"God, I'm off. Let's get together for dinner some night this week."
"I'm meeting Leon and Dana on Wednesday night," I said quickly.
"Good girl, very good. I won't be around at the weekend, I'm going on retreat, but let's get
together Thursday night? Yes?"
She made me nod yes.
"Good-bye."
I   lay on the couch, trying to recover my crying mood. Upstairs, Ornesto continued belting out
the tunes and it sparked off a memory: sometimes Aidan and I used to sing. Not serious singing
--God, no--but making stuff up, having fun. Like the night we called Balthazar for home
delivery and I was in absolute raptures.
"It's amazing," I'd raved. "Balthazar is one of the nicest restaurants in New York--no, scratch
that, one of the nicest restaurants in the world--and they're not too big for their boots to bring
their food to your door."
"This New York is a great place," Aidan said.
"'Tis," I agreed. "You'd never get this in Ireland."
"So why, then, are there so many songs about how sad it is to leave Ireland?"
"Entre nous, mon ami, I haven't a clue. I think they're stone mad."

Aidan, belonging to the Boston-Irish diaspora, knew all about the sad emigrant songs and he
started singing "`Last night as I lay dreaming, I dreamed of Spancil Hill.'" He might have been
quite a good singer, but it was hard to tell because he was doing it in his Smurf's voice, even
though he wasn't shaving.
"`I dreamed that I was back there and that thought, it made me ill--'"
"They're not the words."
"`--I met the tailor Quigley, he's as bold as ever still. He used to mend my britches when I lived
in Spancil Hill.'"
Abruptly he knocked off the Smurf voice and started really giving it socks.
"`But now I don't need my britches mended.
When they wear out, I've got a good trick.
I buy myself a brand-new pair
from Banana Repub-a-lik.'"
"Hurray!" I said, clapping and trying to whistle. "More!"
He stood up for the next verse.
"`And if Anna tears her britches.'" He extended his arm in dramatic fashion.
"`To tailor Quigley she doesn't go.
For well-cut britches in cute col-ors,
She goes to Club Monaco.
They've tops and bags and jewel-ler-ee
And lots of other good stuff.
I'm told they're very reasonably priced
and I'm sorry this doesn't rhyme.'"
"Bravo!" I called. "As Irish people don't say! More!"
"Okay. Final verse. The sad one." He hung his head and sang almost in a whisper.
"`The police sir-ens in the morn-ing,
They blew both loud and shrill.
And I awoke in New York City,
Happy I wasn't in Spancil Hill.'"

He bowed low to the floor, then raced toward our bedroom.
"Come back!" I called. "I'm enjoying this."
"You can't sing this stuff without wearing a bad sweater."
He reemerged in the most terrible Aran jumper you've ever seen. It was a wedding present from
Auntie Imelda, Mum's most competitive sister. (Mum insisted, "She knew it was horrible.") It
made him look like he had a potbelly.
"Will you wear this?" He brandished a tweed cap at me. (Also courtesy of Auntie Imelda.)
"Indeed I will. Now my turn." To the same tune, I sang:
"`Back in the county of Claa-are,
My one true love waits for me.
But I met a far nicer one true love
When I came to New York cit-ee.
My one true love in County Clare
Was actually my first cousin.
And if we'd haa-ad a child,
His fingers might have numbered a dozen.'"
"Jesus! You're good," Aidan said. "You rock! You rhyme! Freestyle!" Trying to do the funny
hand gestures and knee-bendy stuff that rappers do, he said, "I'm a Mick, far from my crib,
hanging with my homies, who is wishing they at homie. So you see, I agree, that I'm far across
the sea, but I got an U-zi, an SUV, blacked-out windows through which you can't see. I ain't
bitchin' that I got no kitchen. Got some dough, got some blow, got my ho, got food from
Balthazar ready to go."
We passed the entire evening making up songs about how New York was a much nicer place than
Ireland and how we weren't at all sad to be across the foamy sea from it. Usually they didn't
rhyme but they were so so funny. At least to us.
35
O     utside Diego's, Leon and Dana were emerging from one cab while I was paying off
another. Perfect timing. That used to happen a lot when I was with Aidan and the four of us were
meeting up.
There seemed to be some argument with their cabdriver. There usually was.

"Nice driving, buddy," Dana said, very loudly, bending down to the driver's window. "Not!"
Dana was loud and opinionated--she attracted a lot of attention wherever she went--and her
favorite phrase was "It's hideous." Said like this: "At's had-i-aaaasss." She said this a lot,
because she thought a lot of things were hideous. Especially in her job; she worked in interiors
and thought all of her clients had despicable taste.
"Hey, hey, I'll handle this," Leon insisted, not very convincingly.
Standing in the shadows of Dana's height, Leon looked short and plump and anxious. Or maybe
he was just short and plump and anxious.
"Don't tip him, Leon," Dana ordered. "Leon. Do. Not. Tip. Him. He went totally the wrong
way!"
Leon, ignoring her, was fussily counting out notes.
"That's bullshit," Dana exclaimed. "He doesn't deserve that much!" But it was too late, the
driver's hand had closed over the money.
"Oh what-ever!" Dana spun on her four-inch heel and swished her thick curtain of glossy hair.
Then Leon saw me and his face lit up. "Hey, Anna!"
Leon and Aidan had been friends since childhood, but with Dana and me in the mix, we'd been a
perfect fit; the four of us had really clicked. When Dana wasn't shouting about things being
hideous and bullshit, she was immensely warm and funny. The four of us used to go away on
weekends together and spent a week in the Hamptons last summer and had gone skiing in Utah
in January.
We used to see one another for dinner about once a week--Leon was a man who was fond of his
food and he got all excited about new restaurants. Our "thing" was to construct elaborate
alternative identities for one another--zookeeper, American Idol winner, magician's assistant,
etc. Then used to come our favorite bit--our fantasies for ourselves. Leon wished he was six-
foot-three and in the Special Forces and a Krav Maga master (or whatever the word was). Dana
wanted to be a surrendered wife, married to a rich man who was never there, running his home
like a CEO. I wanted to be Ariella. But nice. And Aidan's dream life was to be a baseball player,
one who hit enough home runs in the World Series to win it for the Boston Red Sox.
For some reason, after I'd come back from Dublin, it had taken me longer to face Leon than
anyone else. I was afraid of seeing the full extent of his grief because then I would see my own.
The problem was that Leon had been as desperate to see me as I was desperate not to see him--
he was probably thinking of me as an Aidan replacement.

I'd kept ducking him, but I'd caved in a few weeks back and agreed to a meet. "We'll get a table
at Clinton's Fresh Foods," he'd declared.
I'd been horrified. Not just at the thought of going out out, but at the idea of trying to re-create
one of our foursome nights.
"Why don't I just call over to your apartment," I'd said.
"But we always go out for dinner," he'd replied.
And I'd thought I'd been in denial.
He'd managed to badger me into going over to their apartment a few more times to hold his hand
while he cried and reminisced. Tonight, however, in an attempt to move on, we were going out.
Only to Diego's, though. It was a small neighborhood place, our default restaurant, the place we
used to go on the (rare) weeks when a new restaurant hadn't opened in Manhattan.
"Whatcha bring me?" Dana looked at the Candy Grrrl bag in my hand.
"Latest stuff." I handed it over.
Dana fingered through the cosmetics and halfheartedly thanked me. The problem with Candy
Grrrl was that it wasn't expensive enough for her. "Ya ever get any Visage stuff?" she asked. "I
like that."
"Can we go in?" Leon asked. "I'm starved."
"You're always starved."
Diego himself was at the front desk and delighted to see us. "Hey, you guys! Been a while." He
made his eyes supersparkly to pretend he hadn't noticed my scar. "Table for four?"
"Four," Leon said, pointing at our usual table. "We always sit there."
Diego started picking up menus.
"Three," Dana and I said together.
"Four," Leon repeated. There was this dreadful pause, then his face buckled. "I guess it's only
three."
"Three?" Diego confirmed.
"Three."

At the table all Leon could do was cry. "Sorry, Anna," he kept saying, looking up through hands
wet with tears. "I'm so sorry."
Diego approached quietly and respectfully. In subdued tones he asked, "Can I get you guys a
drink?"
"A Pepsi." Leon sniffed. "With a twist of lime, not lemon. If there's no lime, don't bring me
lemon."
"Glass of Chardonnay," Dana said.
"Me, too."
When Diego came back with the drinks, he murmured, "Would you like me to take the menus
away?"
Leon's hand shot out to flatten the menus against the table. "I guess we have to eat."
"Nothing stops him," Dana said.
"Okay." Diego retreated. "Just holler when you're ready."
Leon peered into his drink, took a sip, and said tearfully, "I knew it. This isn't Pepsi. This is
Coke."
"Aw, shaddup and drink it," Dana said.
Without replying, Leon picked up his menu and studied it. We could hear him crying behind it.
He managed to pull himself together long enough to order the venison, but broke down as he told
Diego, "But hold the capers." Almost wailing, he said, "I caaan't...eeeeat...caaaapers."
"They give him gas," Dana said.
"Why don'cha tell everyone."
Once the food was ordered, Leon was able to relax and really get into the crying.
"He was my best friend, the best buddy a guy could have," he wept.
"She knows," Dana said. "She was married to him, remember?"
"I'm sorry, Anna, I know it's bad for you, too..."

"It's okay." I didn't want to get into it with him, the two of us competing to see who could cry
the most. I don't know how I managed it, but I didn't let myself think that it was Aidan he was
crying about. He was just crying and it was nothing to do with me.
"I'd give everything I have to wind the clock back. Just to see him again, you know?" Leon
looked at us questioningly, his face wet with tears. "Just to talk to him?"
That reminded me that I needed a medium. Dana might know of one. In her line of work, she met
all kinds of people.
"Hey," I said. "Do either of you know any good mediums? Like, reputable ones?"
Momentarily, the tears paused in their journey down Leon's cheeks.
"A medium? To talk to Aidan? Oh my God, you must miss him so baaad." And he was off again.
"Anna, mediums are bullshit!" Dana exclaimed. "Bullshit! They take your money and take
advantage. You need to see a grief counselor."
"I see mine three times a week," Leon stopped crying long enough to tell me. "He says I'm doing
good."
Then he sobbed for the rest of the meal, pausing only to order bitter-chocolate pie with vanilla
ice cream instead of the advertised caramel. "Too many flavors going on," he told Diego with a
watery smile.
36
...she channeled my mom, who told me where she'd hidden her wedding ring...
...I got to say a proper good-bye to my brother and finally got closure...
...I was so happy to talk to my husband again, I missed him so bad...
There were pages and pages of these sorts of testimonials on the Internet.
But, I asked Aidan, how can I trust any of them? The mediums might have written them
themselves. They might all be as bad as swizzy Morna. Can't you give me some sort of sign?
Can't you get a butterfly to land on the right one, or something?
Frustratingly, no butterfly appeared to help me out. What I needed was a personal
recommendation. But who could I ask? I mean, I didn't want people to think I was bonkers. And
they would. Rachel would. She'd be like Dana and go on about therapy. And Jacqui would say I
simply needed to get out more and I'd be grand in a little while. Ornesto, on the other hand, was

always seeing psychics, but they kept telling him the man of his dreams was just around the
corner. They never mentioned that the man of his dreams was already married or had a penchant
for hitting him or stealing his good saucepans.
Maybe someone at work might know...? But Teenie wouldn't--instinctively I knew she'd
subscribe to the "bullshit" school. And Brooke would be horrified--her WASPy lot don't believe
in anything. Anything other than themselves.
The only work people I could think of were the girls at EarthSource--Koo or Aroon or whatever
their names were--but I couldn't risk getting too pally with them in case I ended up being swept
along to Alcoholics Anonymous on a wave of misplaced support.
Dispirited, I checked my e-mails. Only one, from Helen.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Job!
Anna, I've got a job! Proper job. In crime. Ding-dong! All kicked off yesterday.
In office, nothing to do, feet up on desk, thinking if looked like real PI, something might
happen, instead of "case of mystery dog poo." Next thing--as if by magic, like I willed it to
happen, maybe have special powers--car pulled up outside, parked on double yellows. Traffic
wardens around here ferocious, so looking forward to good fight. Then noticed it looked like
crime car, don't know how I knew, but knew. Instinct.
No tinted windows, but backseats had pink ruched curtains, like Austrian blinds but smaller.
War crime. I'm thinking Christ when two bozos got out. Ding-dong!
Big, burly, leather jackets, bulges in chest pockets, meant to say guns! but bet were just
cheese baguettes. All same, makes difference from upset women arriving in yummy mummy
people carriers, saying husbands won't ride them anymore.
In the pair of bozos comes and one says: Are you Helen Walsh?
Me: Too right I am!
Admit I should have said: Who wants to know?
But wasn't going to miss this for anything.
Haven't time at moment to tell you everything--but it's all going on. Criminals, guns,
extortion, "muscle," tons of money--and they want ME on board! Am going to write down
everything that happened and send it to you. Miles better than poxy screenplay, much more
exciting. Stand by for long, thrilling e-mail.
It all sounded more than just a little far-fetched; I went back to Googling random stuff like
Talking to the dead and Nonswizzy mediums, which was when I finally hit gold.
The Church of Spiritualist Communication