Anybody Out There? Read online

  I must have glued the right things together, because they told me to come back the following day, the day of the actual pitch, when they were all even more twitchy.

  At 3 P.M., Ariella and seven of her top people took up positions around the boardroom table. I was there, too, but only in case anyone needed anything urgently—water, coffee, their forehead mopped. I was under instruction not to speak. I could make eye contact if necessary, but not speak.

  As we waited, I overheard Ariella say in a low urgent voice to Franklin, her second in command, “If I do not get this account I will kill.”

  For those who don’t know the Candy Grrrl story—and because I’ve lived and breathed it for so long, I sometimes forget there are people who don’t—Candy Grrrl originated with the makeup artist Candace Biggly. She began mixing her own products when she couldn’t buy the exact colors and textures she wanted, and turned out to be so good at it that the models she was making up got all excited. Word began to filter down from The Most Fabulous On High that Candace Biggly’s stuff was something special; the buzz had begun.

  Then came the name. Countless people, including my own mother, have told me how “Candy Grrrl” was Kate Moss’s pet name for Candace. I’m sorry if this disappoints you, but it’s not true. Candace and her husband, George (a creep), paid an expensive advertising agency to come up with it (also, the growling-girl logo), but the Kate story has entered popular folklore and what’s the harm in letting it stay there.

  Stealthily, the Candy Grrrl name began to appear in beauty pages. Then a small store opened on the Lower East Side, and women who had never been below Forty-fourth Street in their life made pilgrimages all the way downtown. Another store opened, this time in L.A., followed by one in London and two in Tokyo, then the inevitable happened: Candy Grrrl was bought by the Devereaux Corporation for an undisclosed eight-figure sum ($11.5 million, actually. I found it in some papers in the office last summer. I wasn’t looking, I just stumbled across it. Honestly). Suddenly CG went mainstream and exploded onto counters in Saks, Bloomingdale’s, Nordstrom—all the big department stores. However, Candace and George weren’t “comfortable” with the in-house public-relations service Devereaux was providing, so they invited some of New York’s biggest agencies to pitch for the business.

  “They’re late,” Franklin said, fingering a little mother-of-pearl pillbox. Earlier I’d seen him not so discreetly pop half a Xanax; I reckoned he was considering taking the second half.

  Then, with a surprising lack of fanfare, in came Candace, looking nothing like a Candace—brown unstyled hair, black leggings, and strangely, not a scrap of makeup. George, on the other hand, could be considered good-looking and charismatic—he certainly thought so.

  Ariella began a gracious welcome, but George cut right across her, demanding “ideas.”

  “If you got the Candy Grrrl account, what would you do?” He pointed a finger at Franklin.

  Franklin stammered something about celebrity endorsement, but before he’d finished, George had moved on to the next person. “And what would you do?”

  He worked his way around the table and got the usual cookie-cutter PR ideas: celebrity endorsement; feature coverage; flying all the major beauty editors somewhere fabulous—possibly Mars.

  When he got to me, Ariella desperately tried to tell him that I was a nothing, a nobody, just one step up from a robot, but George insisted. “She works for you, right? What’s your name? Anna? Tell me your ideas.”

  Ariella was in the horrors. More so when I said, “I saw these great alarm clocks in a store in SoHo at the weekend.”

  This was a pitch for a multimillion-dollar account and I was talking about weekend shopping trips. Ariella actually put a hand to her throat like a Victorian lady planning to swoon.

  “They’re a mirror image of a regular alarm clock,” I said. “All the numbers are back to front and the hands go in the wrong direction; they actually turn backward. So if you want to see the right time, you’ve got to look at the clock in the mirror. I was thinking it would be perfect to promote your Time-Reversal Day Cream. We could do a shout line like ‘Look in the mirror: You’re reversing time.’ Depending on costings we could even do an on-counter giveaway.” (Note to the girl who wants to get ahead: never say “cost”; always say “costings.” I’ve no idea why, but if you say “cost” you will not be taken seriously. However, liberal use of the word costings allies you with the big boys.)

  “Wow,” George said. He sat back and looked around the table. “Wow. That is great! The most original thing I’ve heard here today. Simple but…very wow! Very Candy Grrrl.” He and Candace exchanged a look.

  The high-tension mood around the table shifted. Some people relaxed but some others got even more tense. (I say “some others” but I mean Lauryn.) The thing is, though, I hadn’t planned to have a great idea, it wasn’t my fault, it just happened. The only thing I will say in my favor is that I’d stopped at Saks on the way home the night before, picked up a CG brochure, and learned about their products.

  “Perhaps you might even consider changing the name to Time-Reversal Morning Cream,” I suggested. But a tiny fierce head shake from Ariella stopped me. I’d said enough. I was getting overconfident.

  Lauryn tinkled. “Well, isn’t that the thing! I saw those alarm clocks, too. I—”

  “Shut up, Lauryn.” Ariella cut Lauryn off with terrifying finality, and that was that.

  It was my finest hour. Ariella got the account and I got the job.

  4

  Dinner chez Walsh was from the local Indian takeaway and I did well: half an onion bhaji, one prawn, one chunk of chicken, two okra fingers (and they’re quite big), approximately thirty-five grains of rice, followed by nine pills and two Rolos.

  Mealtimes had become silent battles where Mum and Dad forced cheer into their voices, suggesting another forkful of rice, another chocolate, another vitamin-E capsule (excellent for preventing scarring, apparently). I did my best—I felt empty but never hungry—but whatever I ate, it wasn’t enough for them.

  Exhausted by the madras-based tussle, I retreated to my room. Something was rising to the surface: I needed to talk to Aidan.

  I spoke to him in my head a lot, but now I wanted more: I had to hear his voice. Why hadn’t this happened before now? Because I’d been injured and in shock? Or too subdued by the knockout painkillers?

  I checked on Mum, Dad, and Helen, who were deeply ensconced in the kind of TV detective drama they’re hoping will be made out of their lives. They waved me in and began elaborate shifting along the couch to make room, but I said, “No, I’m fine, I’m just going to—”

  “Grand! Good girl.”

  I could have said anything—“I’m just going to set the house on fire,” “I’m just going round to Kilfeathers to have a three-in-a-bed romp with Angela and her girlfriend”—and I’d have got the same response. They were in a profoundly unreachable state, similar to a trance, and would remain that way for the next hour or so. I closed the door firmly, lifted the phone from the hall, and took it into my room.

  I stared at the little piece of machinery: phones have always seemed magical to me, the way they pull off the unlikeliest, most geographically distant connections. I know there are perfectly good explanations of how it all works, but I’ve never stopped being amazed at the wondrousness of people on opposite sides of oceans being able to talk to each other.

  My heart was banging hard in my chest and I was hopeful—excited, in fact. So where should I try him? Not at work because someone else might pick up. His cell phone was the best idea. I didn’t know what had happened to it, it might have been disconnected, but when I hit the number I’d called a thousand times, there was a click and then I heard his voice. Not his real voice, just his message, but it was enough to stop me breathing.

  “Hi, this is Aidan. I can’t take your call right now, but leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

  “Aidan,” I heard my voice say. I sounde
d quavery. “It’s me. Are you okay? Will you really get back to me as soon as you can? Please do.” What else? “I love you, baby, I hope you know that.”

  I disconnected, feeling shaky, dizzy, elated; I’d heard his voice. But within seconds I’d crashed. Leaving messages on his cell phone wasn’t enough.

  I could try e-mailing him. But that wouldn’t be enough either. I had to go back to New York and try to find him. There was a chance he mightn’t be there but I had to give it a go because there was one thing I was certain of: he wasn’t here.

  Quietly I replaced the phone in the hall. If they found out what I’d been up to, there was no way in the whole wide world they’d let me leave.

  5

  How I met Aidan

  The August before last, Candy Grrrl was preparing to launch a new skin-care line called Future Face (and the eye cream was called Future Eye, the lip cream Future Lip, and you get the picture…). Constantly on the quest for new and innovative ways to love-bomb beauty editors, I had a middle-of-the-night, lightbulb-over-the-head moment and thought I would buy each editor a “future” to tie in with the “future” theme of the launch. The obvious “future” to buy would be a personalized horoscope, but that had already been done for See Yourself in Ten Years’ Time, our time-defying serum, and had ended in tears when the assistant beauty editor of Britta got told that she’d lose her job and her pet dog would run away within the month. (Funnily enough, although the dog stayed put, the job bit actually did come true; she had a total career change and now works as a hostess at the Four Seasons.)

  Instead, I decided to buy some of those investment things, called “futures.” I hadn’t the first clue about them except what I’d heard about people pulling down millions of dollars working on Wall Street. But I couldn’t get an appointment with a Wall Street futures analyst, even if I’d been prepared to pay a thousand dollars for every second of his time. I tried several and got stonewalled over and over. By then I was sorry I’d ever started, but I’d made the mistake of boasting about it to Lauryn, who’d liked the idea, so I was forced to work my way through less and less famous banks until finally I found a stockbroker in a midtown bank who agreed to see me and only then because I’d sent Nita, his assistant, tons of free stuff, with a promise of more if she could get me in.

  So along I went, taking the rare opportunity to strip myself of as many kooky accoutrements as possible. Let me explain: all McArthur publicists have to take on the personality of the brand they represent. For example, the girls who worked for EarthSource were all a bit Hessian-ey and rough-woven, while the Bergdorf Baby team were Carolyn Bessette Kennedy clones, so etioliated, creamy-haired, and refined they were like another species. As Candy Grrrl’s profile was a little wild and wacky, a little kooky, I had to dress accordingly, but I was so over it, so quickly. Kookiness is a young woman’s game and I was thirty-one and burned out on matching pink with orange.

  Thrilled to have the chance to dress soberly, I gloriously denuded my hair of all stupid barrettes and accessories and I was wearing a navy skirt suit (admittedly dotted with silver stars but it was the most conservative thing I had) and clopping along the eighteenth floor looking for Mr. Roger Coaster’s office, passing neatly dressed, efficient-looking people, and wishing I could wear severe tailored suits to work, when I rounded a corner and several things happened at once.

  There was a man and we bumped into each other with such force that my bag tumbled from my grasp, sending all kinds of embarrassing things skittering across the floor (including the fake glasses I’d brought to look intelligent and my coin purse that says Change comes from within).

  Quickly we bent down to retrieve stuff, simultaneously reached for the glasses, and bumped our heads with a medium-to-loud crack. We both exclaimed “Sorry!”; he made an attempt to rub my bruised forehead and in the process spilled scalding coffee on the back of my hand. Naturally I couldn’t shriek in agony because I was in a public place. The best I could do was shake my hand vigorously to make the pain go away, and while I was doing that and marveling that the coffee hadn’t done more damage, we realized that the front of my white shirt looked like a Jackson Pollock painting. “You know what?” the man said. “With a little work, we could get a real routine going here.”

  We straightened up, and despite the fact that he’d burned my hand and ruined my shirt, I liked the look of him.

  “May I?” He indicated my burned hand but didn’t touch it because sexual-harassment lawsuits are so rife in New York that often a man won’t get into an elevator with a lone woman, just in case he gets landed with a witness-free accusation of trying to see up her skirt.

  “Please.” I thrust my hand at him. Apart from the red scald marks, it was a hand to be proud of. I’d rarely seen it looking better. I’d been moisturizing regularly with Candy Grrrl’s Hands Up, our superhydrating hand cream, my acrylic nails had been filled and were painted in Candy Wrapper (silver), and I’d just been de-gorilla’d, an event that always makes me feel joyous and skippy and carefree. I have quite hairy arms and—and God knows, this is not easy to talk about—but some of my arm hairs kind of…well…extend to the backs of my hands. The naked truth of the matter is that unchecked, they resemble hobbit feet.

  In New York, waxing is as necessary to survival as breathing and you are only really acceptable in polite company if you’re almost entirely bald. You can have head hair, eyelashes, and two sliverettes of eyebrows, but that’s it. Everything else must go. Even your nasal hairs, which I hadn’t yet been able to face. I would have to, though—if I was planning on having a successful career in beauty.

  “I am so sorry,” the man said.

  “A mere flesh wound,” I said. “Don’t apologize, it was no one’s fault. Just a terrible, terrible, terrible accident. Forget it.”

  “But you’re burned. Will you ever play the violin again?”

  Then I noticed his forehead: it looked like an egg was trying to push out through his skin.

  “Oh God, you’ve a lump.”

  “I do?”

  He shifted the light brown hair that fell across his forehead. His right eyebrow was split in two by a tiny, silvery thread of a scar. I noticed it, because so is mine.

  Tenderly he rubbed the lump.

  “Ouch,” I said, wincing on his behalf. “One of the finest brains of our time.”

  “On the verge of breakthrough research. Lost forever.” He pronounced “forever” as “forevah” like he was from Boston. Then he looked at my temporary ID badge. “You’re a visitor here? [“visitah”]. Would you like me to show you the bathroom?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “What about your shirt?”

  “I’ll pretend it’s a fashion statement. Really, I’m fine.”

  “You are? You promise?”

  I promised, he asked if I was sure, I promised again, I asked if he was okay, he said he was, then he went off with what remained of his coffee and I felt a little deflated as I carried on my way and found Mr. Coaster’s office.

  I tried to get Nita to explain to Mr. Coaster why I was splattered with coffee but she had zero interest. “Did you bring the stuff? The base in—”

  “—Cookie Dough,” we said together. There was a waiting list a month long for the base in Cookie Dough.

  “Yes, it’s in there. Lots of other stuff, too.”

  She began tearing the Candy Grrrl box apart. I stood there. A while later she looked up and saw that I was still standing there. “Yeah, go on in,” she said irritably, waving her hand in the direction of a closed door.

  I knocked and took myself and my dirty shirt into Mr. Coaster’s office.

  Mr. Coaster was a short, big-swinging-dick superflirt. As soon as I introduced myself, he gave me an overly twinkly grin and said, “Hey! Is that an accent I hear?”

  “Mmm.” I gave the photo of him—and who I can only presume were his wife and two children—a hard stare.

  “British? Irish?”

  “Irish.” I gave the photo a
nother meaningful eye flick and he shifted it slightly so that I could no longer see it.

  “Now, Mr. Coaster, about these futures.”

  “‘Now, Misthur Coasther, about dese fewchurs.’ I love it! Keep talking!”

  “Ha-ha-ha.” I laughed politely, while thinking Fuckhead.

  It was a little while before I managed to get him to take me seriously and then it was only a matter of seconds before I discovered that “futures” were more of a conceptual thing, that I couldn’t just waltz out the door with a handful of gorgeous futures, take them back to the office, wrap them in handwoven boxes from Kate’s Paperie, and have them messengered over to ten of the city’s most powerful beauty editors.

  I’d have to come up with some other bright idea, but I wasn’t as disappointed as I should have been because I was thinking about the guy I’d bumped into. There had been something. And not just the synchronicity of our his ’n’ hers scars. But when I walked out of this building today the chances were that I would never see him again. Not unless I did something about it. If you don’t ask, you don’t get. (And even then it doesn’t always work.)

  First I’d have to find him, and this bank was a big place. And if I did manage to locate him, then what should I do? Stick my finger in his coffee and suck it suggestively? Immediately I ruled this out. (A) the heat of the coffee might melt the glue on my acrylic nail, causing it to fall off and swim around in the cup like a shark’s fin and (b) It was a revolting thing to do anyway.

  Mr. Coaster was explaining expansively and I was nodding and smiling, but I was far away inside my head, riveted by indecision.

  Then, like a switch had been flicked, I fixed on a plan of action. I was suddenly certain: I was going to be up-front and honest, and I decided to enlist the help of Mr. Coaster. Yes, unprofessional. Yes, inappropriate. But what was to be lost?