Anybody Out There - Marian Keyes (36 page)

Candace strung out Mackenzie's makeover for as long as possible, but finally Mackenzie
descended from the stool and I cornered her.
"Will I see you soon?" I asked, without actually moving my lips.
She shook her head. "I don't think so," she said very, very quietly. "I'm trying something
different."
"The rich husband route?"
"Yeah. But I miss you guys. How's Nicholas?"
"Um, good."
"What did his T-shirt say last week?"
"`Jimmy Carter for President.'"
She laughed out loud. "Vintage. God, he's just adorable. A little cutie. Is it just me or is he
kinda...hot?"
"I'm not really the person to ask."
"Sure. Sorry." She sighed, quite sadly. "Well, tell Nicholas I said hey. Tell everyone I said hey."
She left and I resumed my badgering of the crowd. Still no takers, which was bad enough, but
then someone said, "I totally broke out when I tried Candy Grrrl's day cream," and--horror of
horrors--Candace heard.
She dashed down her pony-skin blusher brush and said, "I've got better fucking things to do with
my time than try the hard sell on these assholes. I've got an annual turnover of thirty-four million
dollars."
I feared client meltdown. Anxiously, I looked around for George, but he was off sucking up to
any half-famous fool he could find. Lauryn, naturally, had also disappeared.
"I want ice cream," Candace said petulantly.
"Er...okay. I'll go and get you some. Teenie and Brooke will stay with you."
"I'm sorry but I have to leave now," Brooke said. "I've pledged to sell raffle tickets at the moose
benefit."
"Okay. Well, thanks, Brooke, you've been a total star today. See you Monday."
"Wednesday," she reminded me. "I'm not back until then."

"Right, Wednesday." I dived into the throng, desperately seeking ice cream.
Fifteen frustrating minutes later I returned, triumphantly bearing an Eskimo Pie, a Dove Bar, and
three other assorted ice creams. Covering all bases.
Grumpily Candace accepted the Eskimo Pie and sat slumped on the high stool, her chin on her
chest, tucking in. She looked like an orangutan who'd been left out in the rain.
This was the moment, of course, that Ariella, visiting friends in East Hampton for the weekend,
did a drop-by. It didn't look good. Mercifully, Ariella couldn't linger. She was on her way to the
Save the Caribou cookout.
"Is that different from the Save the Moose picnic?" Teenie asked.
"Totally," she snapped.
Then they were all gone and it was just me and Teenie.
"So what's up with the moose anyway?" Teenie asked. "I didn't even know it was endangered.
Or the caribou."
I shrugged. "Dunno. Maybe they've just run out of stuff to save."
67
A    nna, it's me, your mother, it's urgent--"
I grabbed the phone. Something was wrong with someone. Dad? JJ?
"What?" I asked. "What's urgent?"
"What's the story with Jacqui and Joey?"
I had to wait for my racing heart to slow down. "That's why you're ringing? Because of Jacqui
and Joey?"
"Yes. What's going on?"
"You know. He fancies her. And she fancies him."
"No! She's slept with him. Over the weekend, while you were in those Hamptons."
She hadn't told me. In a little voice I said, "I didn't know."

Fake cheerily, Mum said hastily, "Sure it's only Monday morning, she'll tell you soon. And, God
knows, who hasn't slept with Joey?"
"I haven't."
"And neither"--she sighed heavily--"have I. But just about everyone else has. Was it a one-
night stand?"
"How the hell do I know?"
"No, it's a joke. A whole night? Does Joey do that kind of commitment?" Mum said.
"Good one." Then I said, "Well, I can't help you. I don't know what's going on. Ask Rachel."
"I can't. We're not talking."
"What now?"
"The invitations. I want nice silver italics on nice white paper."
"And what does she want?"
"Twigs and twine and shells and woven papyrus stuff. Would you have a word with her?"
"No."
A startled silence came from Mum's end, then I explained, "I'm the daughter who's been
recently bereaved, remember?"
"Sorry, pet. Sorry. I was mixing you up with Claire for a minute."
It was only after she hung up that I wondered how she knew about Jacqui. Luke, I presumed.
S   traightaway, I rang Jacqui, but she wasn't picking up either of her phones. I left messages for
her to call me immediately, then went to work, bursting with curiosity.
She didn't call all morning. I tried her again at lunchtime but still no reply. Midafternoon, I was
just about to ring her once more when a shadow fell over my desk. It was Franklin. Very quietly,
he said, "Ariella wants to see you."
"Why?"

"Let's go."
"Where?"
"Her office."
Oh God, I was sacked. I was so sacked.
Ah, well.
Franklin walked me in and I was hugely surprised to discover several people already there:
Wendell from Visage, Mary Jane, coordinator of the other seven brands, and Lois, one of Mary
Jane's "girls." Lois worked on Essence, one of our more worthy, touchy-feely brands, although
nothing like as bad as EarthSource.
Was this going to be a job-lot sacking?
Five chairs were set in a semicircle around Ariella's desk.
"Siddown," she Don Corleoned. "Okay, the good news is that you're not fired. Yet."
We all laughed far too loud and long.
"Settle down, kids, it wasn't that funny. First thing you've got to know is, this is
superconfidential. What you hear here today, you do not discuss outside this room, with anyone,
anywhere, anytime, anyhow, got it?"
Got it. But I was intrigued. Especially because we were such an unlikely combination of people.
What did we have in common that made us privy to some huge secret?
"Formula Twelve." Ariella asked. "Heard of it?"
I nodded. I knew a bit. It had been formulated by some discoverer man who had been down in
the Amazon Basin badgering the locals, trying to record their lifestyle, that sort of thing. When
the local lads got wounded, an ointmenty thing would be made up of ground roots and plants and
other stuff you'd expect; the explorer had noticed how quickly the wounds healed and how
residual scarring was minimal.
The discoverer bloke tried to make the ointment himself, but didn't get it right until the twelfth
go, hence the title.
It had been regarded as medicinal and he'd been trying to get approval from the FDA, which was
a long time coming.
Ariella took up the story. "So while he's waiting and waiting for FDA appro, Professor Redfern
--that's the guy's name--had an idea: skin care. Using the same formula, in a diluted form, he's

created a day cream." She handed out an inch-thick pile of documents to each of the five of us.
"And the trials have been phenomenal. Like, off the scale. It's all there."
The funny thing about Ariella is that when she had to talk for any length of time, she stopped the
Don Corleone carry-on. Clearly it was just an affectation to scare people. Mind you, it worked.
"It's been bought by Devereaux." Devereaux was a massive corporation; they owned dozens of
cosmetic lines. Including Candy Grrrl, actually. "Devereaux is going huge on it. It's going to be
the hottest brand on the planet." She half smiled, moving eye contact from one of us to the next.
"You're wondering where do we come in? Okay, take this to the bank: McArthur on the Park...is
pitching for their publicity."
She took a moment to let us say wow and how fabulous that was.
"And I want each of you three"--she pointed at me, Wendell, and Lois, in turn--"to come up
with a pitch. A separate pitch."
Another momentous pause. In fairness, that was fabulous. A pitch of my own. For a totally new
brand.
"If they're good enough, we pitch all three to them. If they go with your pitch, maybe you get to
head up the account."
Oh. Now, that would be amazing. A promotion. Although what would a Formula Twelve girl
have to wear? Stuff inspired by the Amazon Basin? Even Warpo would be better than that.
"How much time do we have?" Wendell asked.
"Two weeks today, you three pitch to me."
Two weeks. Not long.
"That gives us time to nix any glitches before the real thing. Not that I want any glitches." Ariella
was suddenly low and menacing. "Another thing, you do all of this in your own time. Coming in
here every day, you carry on like normal, giving one thousand percent to your current brands.
But you can forget about having a life of your own for the next coupla weeks."
I was in luck. I had no life of my own anyway.
"And like I said, no one must know."
Suddenly she switched to regal mode. "Anna, Lois, Wendell, you don't need me to tell you what
an honor this is. Do you?" Energetically we shook our heads. No, indeed, we did not. "Do you
know how many people I have working for me?" No, we didn't, but plenty, for sure. "I spent a
lot of time with Franklin and Mary Jane assessing every single one of my girls, and out of all of
them, I picked you three."

"Thank you, Ariella," we murmured.
"I am putting my trust in you." Ariella smiled, for the first time, with real warmth. "Don't fuck it
up."
A    s Franklin walked me back to my desk, he said low and urgent, right into my ear, "You
heard her. Don't fuck it up."
Dread took ahold of me.
Lauryn looked up with eager interest. "Did you get fired?"
"No."
"Oh. So what did she want to see you for?"
"Nothing."
"What's in the file?"
"Nothing."
God, I was doing a great job at stealth. Tonight you sleep in the unemployment line.
Already I was sorry to be one of the chosen ones.
I opened the Formula Twelve file and tried reading the information. Lots of it was scientific data
about the biological qualities of the plants and the properties they contained and why they
worked the way they did. It was highly technical, and much as I would have loved to just skim
over it, I couldn't, because if we got the account, it would be my job to reduce all this
information to understandable, bite-size pieces for beauty editors' consumption.
One of the sad things about my job was that I no longer believed any antiaging promises or
miracle claims. Why would I? I wrote them.
The file contained a photo of Professor Redfern, who looked nice and explorery. Suntanned and
wrinkled around the eyes and wearing a hat and one of those sleeveless khaki gilets that seem to
be mandatory for explorer blokes. Beardy? But of course. Not unattractive, if you like that sort.
Promotable? Possibly. Maybe we could present him as an Indiana Jones du jour.
Finally, there was a little jar of the magic cream itself. It was a nastyish mustard yellow with
dark-colored flecks--a bit like "real" vanilla ice cream. Most face creams were either white or

palest pink, but the mustard yellow wasn't necessarily a bad thing; it might make it seem more
"authentic."
I rubbed a thin layer over my face and a few minutes later my scar started to tingle. I rushed to
the mirror and almost expected to see the puckered skin bubbling and expanding, like something
in a scientific experiment gone very very wrong. But, no, nothing unusual was happening, my
face looked the same as it always did.
B    efore I went to bed, I tried Jacqui one more time. I'd got used to her not answering, so I was
very surprised when she did.
"Hay-lllloooo." She sounded all breathy and gaspy.
"It's me. What's up with you and Narky Joey?"
"We've been in bed since Friday night. He's just left."
"So do you fancy him?"
"Anna, I'm mad about him."
68
S   he insisted on regaling me with stories about how great the sex was. Sex, I thought, saying
the word in my head. Having sex. Impossible to imagine. I was so dead, so numb.
The funny thing was that even though my libido was entirely kaput, one of my regrets was that
Aidan and I hadn't had more sex. I mean, we'd had plenty--well, a normal amount. Whatever
that is. It's hard to know exactly because most people are so paranoid that everyone else is at it
morning, noon, and night that they lie about how often they do it, inflating the numbers, and
obviously the people they lie to also feel the need to lie, so it's very hard to get at the truth.
Anyway, Aidan and I used to have sex about twice or three times a week. In the beginning,
though, it was more like twice or three times a day. I know that you can't carry on like that
indefinitely, ripping each other's clothes off and having showers together and doing it in public
places and generally going for it round the clock. You'd be knackered and you'd have no buttons
left on your clothes and you might get arrested.
To my sorrow, we'd never done anything terribly adventurous; it had all been pretty vanilla. But
maybe the kinky stuff doesn't happen straightaway. Maybe you have to work your way through

all the straightforward sex first and perhaps in ten years' time we'd have moved out to the
suburbs and been in the thick of a riotous, swinging, husband-swapping scene.
What was killing me were all the opportunities I had wasted--almost every morning of my life
with him. Getting ready for work, he'd be parading around naked, his skin still damp from the
shower, his mickey jiggling, and I'd be scooting past, looking for a deodorant or a hairbrush or
something, and I'd half notice his tiny bottom and the hollow down the side of his thighs, and I'd
think, God, he's magnificent. But straightaway I'd think something like I still haven't had my
boots heeled, I'll have to wear different shoes and that throws all my calculations out.
Mornings were a race against the clock; it didn't stop Aidan grabbing at me as I zipped past, half
dressed, but I nearly always batted him off and said, "Away, away, we haven't time."
Mostly he was a good sport about it, but one morning, shortly before he died, he said, quite
sadly, "We never do it in the mornings anymore."
"No one does," I said. "Only weirdos, like company CEOs with trophy wives or mistresses. And
the women only submit because the CEO gives them expensive jewelry. And the CEO only does
it because he was born with too much testosterone, and if he doesn't have sex, he'll have to
invade a country or something."
"Yes, but..."
"Come on now," I chivvied him. "We're not living in a Joy of Sex video."
"What happens in a Joy of Sex video?"
"You know. Spontaneity." I whizzed up the zip on my skirt. "You'd be ready for work, like you
are now, and I'd be having a bubble bath."
"We don't even have a bath."
"Never mind. I'd be pointing my toes in the air and soaping my shins all luxuriously and you'd
lean over the side to kiss me good-bye..."
"...oh, I get it. You'd pull me by the tie..."
"...exactly! Into the bath..."
"...wow. Wild..."
"Not wild. You'd go apeshit. You'd shout, `For God's sake, this is my Hugo Boss suit. What in
the name of fuck am I going to wear to work now?'" As I spoke, I was rummaging furiously
through a drawer looking for a bra. I found it.