Anybody Out There?

  How was I to know that sending a compliment slip did not actually involve complimenting anyone? No one had told me and I wasn’t psychic (although I wished I was). It was the kind of mistake any uninitiated person could make, but it became a watershed event: it took pride of place in the family folklore and crystallized everyone’s opinion of me: I was the token flake.

  They didn’t mean it unkindly, of course, but it wasn’t easy.

  However, everything changed when I met Shane, my soul mate. (It was a long time ago, so long that it was permissible to say that sort of thing without getting sneered at.) Shane and I were delighted with each other because we thought exactly the same way. We were aware of the futures that awaited us—stuck in one place, shackled to dull, stressful jobs because we had to pay the mortgage on some horrible house—and we decided to try to live differently.

  So we went traveling, which went down oh-so-badly. Maggie said about us, “They’d say that they were going up the road to buy a Kit Kat and the next time you’d hear from them, they’d be working in a tannery in Istanbul.” (That never happened. I think she must be thinking of the time we went to buy a can of 7-Up and decided on a whim to skipper a boat around the Greek Islands.)

  Walsh family mythology made it sound like Shane and I were a pair of work-shy layabouts, but working in a canning factory in Munich was backbreaking work. And running a bar in Greece meant long hours and—worse still—having to be nice to people, which, as everyone knows, is the toughest job in the world.

  Whenever we came home to Ireland, it was all a bit “Ho, ho, ho, here they are, the pair of smelly hippies, coming on the scrounge, lock up your confectionery.”

  But it never really got to me—I had Shane and we were cocooned in our own little world and I expected it would stay that way forever.

  Then Shane broke up with me.

  Apart from the sadness, loneliness, woundedness, and humiliation that traditionally accompanies a broken heart, I felt betrayed: Shane had got his hair cut into something approaching respectability and had gone into business. Admittedly it was a groovy kind of business, something to do with digital music and CDs, but after he’d scorned the system for as long as I’d known him, the speed with which he’d embraced it left me reeling.

  I was twenty-eight, with nothing but the fringey skirt I stood up in and suddenly all the years I’d spent moving from country to country seemed wasted. It was a horrible, horrible time and I ricocheted around like a lost soul, directionless and terrified, which was when Maggie’s husband, Garv, took me under his wing. First he got me a steady job, and while I admit that opening the post in an actuarial firm isn’t exactly scintillating, it was a start.

  Then he convinced me to go to college and suddenly my life had taken off again, moving at speed in an entirely different direction. In a short space of time, I learned to drive, I got a car, I got my hair cut into a proper, medium-maintenance “style.” In short, a little later in the day than most people, I got it together.

  8

  How Aidan and I met for the second time

  A barrel-chested man slung a hamlike arm around my neck, swung a tiny plastic bag of white powder at my face, and said, “Hey, Morticia, want some coke?”

  I extricated myself and said politely, “No, thank you.”

  “Aw, c’mon,” he said, a little too loudly. “It’s a party.”

  I looked for the door. This was dreadful. You’d think that if you took a ritzy loft overlooking the Hudson, added a professional sound system, a ton of drink, and a load of people, you’d have a great shindig on your hands.

  But something wasn’t working. And I blamed Kent, the guy throwing the party. He was a jocklike banker and the place was overrun with hordes of his Identi-Kit pals and the thing about these guys was they didn’t need anything to boost their confidence, they were bad enough au naturel without adding cocaine to the mix.

  Everyone looked florid and somehow desperate, as if the crucial thing was to be having a good time.

  “I’m Drew Holmes.” The man swung the bag of coke at me again. “Try it, it’s great, you’ll love it.”

  This was the third guy who’d offered me coke and it was kind of cute really, like they’d just discovered drugs.

  “The eighties will never die,” I said. “No, thank you. Really.”

  “Too wild for you, huh?”

  “That’s right, too wild.”

  I looked around for Jacqui. This was all her fault—she worked with Kent’s brother. But all I saw were lots of shouty meatheads with saucerlike pupils, and trashy-looking girls, necking vodka straight from the bottle. I discovered afterward that Kent had put the word out that he wanted people to bring along the kind of girls who were six months away from rehab, who were in their final, promiscuous crash-and-burn.

  But even before I’d known that, I’d known he was a creep.

  “Tell me about yourself, Morticia.” Drew Holmes was still at my side. “What do you do?”

  I didn’t even hide my sigh. Here we go again. This party was lousy with incessant bloody networkers, but—at their request, I might add—I’d already explained my job to two other guys and neither of them had listened to a word, they were just waiting for me to shut up so they could monologue about themselves and how great they were. Cocaine really kills the art of conversation.

  “I test-drive orthopedic shoes.”

  “Well!” Deep breath before he launched into it. “I’m with blah bank, blah, blah…tons of money…I, me, myself, being fabulous, blah, promotion, blah, bonus, workhardplayhard, me, mine, belonging to me, my expensive apartment, my expensive car, my expensive vacations, my expensive skis, me, me, me, me, MEEEEE…”

  Just then a canapé—it was going very fast but I believe it was a miniburger—caught him on the side of the head, and while his eyes bulged with rage as he sought the perpetrator, I slipped away.

  I decided I was leaving. Why had I come in the first place? Well, why does anyone go to the party of someone they didn’t know? To meet men of course. And funnily enough, whatever the hell was going on with the planets, for the previous couple of weeks, I’d been overrun with men. I’d never experienced anything like it in my life.

  Myself and Jacqui had gone to the eight-minute speed dating that Nita at Roger Coaster’s office had told me about and I’d got three matches; a handsome, interesting architect; a red-haired baker from Queens who wasn’t a looker but was very nice; and a young, cute bartender who said words like dude and shibby. Each had submitted a request for a date and I’d agreed to all three.

  But before you start thinking that (a) I’m a three-timing slut (and it’s actually four because I haven’t told you yet about the blind date that my lovely Korean colleague, Teenie, had set up for me), or (b) that the whole thing was a recipe for disaster—that I was bound to be caught and end up with no one, let me explain the rules of Dating in New York City, especially the whole exclusive/nonexclusive end of things. What I was currently doing was Dating Nonexclusively—a perfectly acceptable state of affairs.

  How it is in Ireland is, people just drift into relationships. You start by going for a couple of drinks, then on another night you might go to a film, then you run into each other at a party given by a mutual friend, and at some stage you start sleeping together—probably this night, in fact. It’s all very casual and drifty and most of the initial propulsion depends on accidental meetings. But although no one ever says anything about exclusiveness or nonexclusiveness, he’s definitely your boyfriend. So if you discovered the man you’d been sharing fireside nights and videos with for the last few months having a nice dinner with a woman who wasn’t (a) you, or (b) a female relation of his, you’d be perfectly within your rights to pour a glass of wine over him, to tell the other woman that she’s “welcome to him.” It is also appropriate at this point to wiggle your little finger and say, “Hardly worth it, though, is it?”

  But not in New York. You’d think, There’s one of the men I’ve been seeing nonexclusi
vely having dinner with a woman he’s also seeing nonexclusively. How civilized we all are. No wine gets poured on anyone; in fact, you might even join them for a drink. Actually, no, scratch that, I don’t really think you would. Maybe on paper, but not in reality, especially if you liked him.

  However, it’s an ill wind, and during this time of nonexclusivity, you can ride rings around yourself; you can sleep with a different man every night should you so wish and no one can call you a six-timing tramp.

  Not that I’d touch any of the overgrown frat boys at this party, no matter how accommodating the system. I battled through the crowded room. Where the hell was Jacqui? Panic flickered as my path was blocked by another man with yet another jocko name, a short butch thing. In fact, now that I think about it, it might actually have been Butch. He pulled at my dress and said peevishly, “What’s with all the clothes?”

  I was wearing a black wraparound jersey dress and black knee boots, which seemed not unreasonable attire for a party.

  Then he demanded, “What’s with the Addams-family thing you’ve got going on?”

  The strange thing was I had never before in my life been accused of looking like Morticia. Why, why, why? And I wished he’d let go of my dress. It was stretchy but not in the first flush of youth and I feared it could lose its bounce and never return to its correct configuration. “So, Goth girl, what do you do when you’re not being a Goth girl?”

  I was wondering whether to tell him I was an elephant voice coach or the inventor of the inverted comma, when a voice cut in on us and said, “Don’t you know Anna Walsh?”

  Butch said, “Say what?”

  Say what, is right. I turned around. It was Him. The guy, the one who’d spilled coffee on me, the one I’d asked out for a drink and who’d blown me off. He was wearing a beenie and a wide-shouldered workingman’s jacket and he’d brought the cold night in with him, refreshing the air.

  “Yeah, Anna Walsh. She’s a…” He looked at me and shrugged inquiringly. “A magician?”

  “Magician’s girl,” I corrected. “I passed all my magician exams but the assistant’s clothes are a lot cooler.”

  “Neat,” Butch said, but I wasn’t looking at him, I was looking at Aidan Maddox, who had remembered my name, even though it was seven weeks since we’d met. He wasn’t exactly how I remembered him. His tight hat made the bones of his face more pronounced, especially his cheekbones and the lean cut of his jawbone, and there was a twinkle in his eyes that hadn’t been there the last time.

  “She disappears,” Aidan said. “But then—as if by magic—she reappears.”

  He’d taken my number but he hadn’t called and now he was hitting me with some of the corniest lines I’d heard in a long while. I looked at him in cold inquiry: What was his game?

  His face gave nothing away but I didn’t stop looking at him. Nor he at me. What seemed like ages later someone asked, “Where do you go?”

  “Hmm?” The someone was Butch. I was surprised to find him still there. “Go? When?”

  “When you get magically disappeared? Hey, presto!” He winked brightly.

  “Oh! I’m just out back, having a cigarette.” I turned back to Aidan, and when his eyes met mine again, the shock of our connection made my skin flame.

  “Neat,” Butch said. “And when you get sawn in half, how does that work?”

  “False legs,” Aidan said, barely moving his lips. His eyes didn’t leave my face.

  I could actually feel poor Butch’s smile trickle away. “You guys know each other?”

  Aidan and I looked at Butch, then back at each other. Did we? “Yes.”

  Even if I hadn’t known that something was happening with me and Aidan, the way Butch treated us was a sign: he backed off—and you could tell that ordinarily he was supercompetitive. “You kids have fun,” he said, a little subdued.

  Then Aidan and I were left on our own.

  “Enjoying the party?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “I hate it.”

  “Yeah.” He scanned the room, at a different eye level from me. “What’s not to hate?”

  Just then, a short, dark man, the sort of man who’d been my type until I’d met Aidan, butted his way between us and asked, “Whereja get to, buddy? You just took off.”

  A look passed over Aidan’s face: Were we ever going to be left alone? Then he smiled and said, “Anna, meet my best buddy, Leon. Leon works with Kent, the birthday boy. And this is Leon’s wife, Dana.”

  Dana was about a foot taller than Leon. She had long legs, a big chest, a fall of thick multitoned hair, and radiant, evenly tanned skin.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Hey,” I replied.

  Anxiously, Leon asked me, “It’s a sucky party, right?”

  “Um…”

  “You’re with the good guys,” Aidan said. “Tell it like it is.”

  “Okay. It’s supersucky.”

  “Jeez.” Dana sighed and fanned her hand in front of her chest. “Let’s mingle,” she said to Leon. “Sooner we start, sooner we can leave. Excuse us.”

  “Bail just as soon as you can’t stand it,” Leon told Aidan, then we were alone again.

  Was it the two giggling men running off to the bathroom like a pair of schoolgirls with their little plastic baggie or the poor six-months-away-from-rehab girls scooping out the creamed chicken from the choux pastry horns and smearing their fronts with it that made Aidan ask, “Anna, can we get out of here?”

  Can we get out of here? I looked at him, annoyed at his presumption. All that spur-of-the-moment, let’s-do-the-relationship-right-here stuff is fine when you’re nineteen, but I was thirty-one years old. I didn’t just “get out of here” with strange men.

  I said, “Let me just tell Jacqui I’m leaving.”

  I found her in the kitchen, showing a cluster of rapt people how to make a proper Manhattan, and told her I was off. But before I could leave, I had to retrieve my coat from beneath a grunting couple having sex in Kent’s bedroom. All I could see of the woman was her legs and shoes, one of them with gum stuck to the sole.

  “Which coat is it?” Aidan asked. “This one? ’Scuse us, buddy. Just need to get this—”

  He tugged and the coat moved an inch, then another, then with a final yank, it slithered free and we were out the door. On a high from our escape, we couldn’t wait for the elevator, so, fueled with more energy than we’d normally have, we belted down several flights of stairs and ran right out into the street.

  It was early October, the days were still bright but the nights were chilly. Aidan helped me on with my coat, a midnight-blue velvet duster, painted with a silvery cityscape.

  “I like your look.” Aidan stood back to check me out properly. “Yeah.”

  I liked his, too. With the hat and the jacket and the big boots, it was very Workingman Chic. Not that I was going to tell him. And good thing Jacqui wasn’t there to hear Aidan because remarking on my clothes was classic Feathery Stroker acting-out. (Details on Feathery Strokers to follow.)

  “Just a point I’d like to clear up,” I said, a little snippily. “I didn’t ‘disappear.’ I went away. Because you didn’t want to go for a drink with me, remember?”

  “I did want to. I wanted you from the very moment you head-butted me. I just wasn’t sure I could have you.”

  “Excuse me, you head-butted me. What sort of not sure?”

  “Every sort.”

  Two blocks away we found a small weird underground bar, with red walls and a pool table. Dry ice curled around our knees—the barkeep explained they were trying to re-create the glory days before the smoking ban—and at Aidan’s request, I told him all about my life as a magician’s girl.

  “We’re called Marvelous Marvo and Gizelda. Gizelda is my stage name and we’re huge in the Midwest. I sew all my own costumes, six hundred sequins per outfit, and I do them all by hand. I go into a meditative state when I’m doing it. Marvo is actually my dad and his real name is Frank. Now tell me about you.??
?

  “No, you tell me.”

  I thought about it for a while. “Okay. You’re the son of a deposed East European despot who stole millions from his people.” I smiled, a little cruelly. “The money is hidden and the two of you are looking for it.” He looked progressively more anxious as his identity worsened. Then I took pity and redeemed him. “But the reason you want to find the money is to return it to your impoverished people.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “Anything else?”

  “You’ve a good relationship with your first wife, an Italian tennis player. And porn star,” I added. “In fact, you were an excellent tennis player yourself, you could have gone professional, until RSI put paid to it.”

  “Speaking of which, how’s your burned hand?”

  “Good. And I’m happy to see you’ve recovered from the coma I put you in. Any side effects?”

  “Evidently not. Judging from how this Saturday night has turned out, I seem to be smah-tah than evah.”

  That Boston accent again. I found it devastatingly sexy.

  “Say it again.”

  “What?”

  “Smarter.”

  “Smah-tah?”

  “Yes.”

  He shrugged, willing to please. “Smah-tah.”

  A rush of physical desire, similar to but worse than hunger, overtook me.

  I’d want to keep an eye on that.

  “Game of pool?” I suggested.

  “You play?”

  “I play.”

  Double entendre central and a meaningful eye meet that depth-charged something down low in me.

  After twenty minutes of potting balls into swingy pockets that reminded me of testicles, I beat Aidan.

  “You’re good,” he said.

  “You let me win.” I poked him in the stomach with my pool cue. “Don’t do it again.”

  He opened his mouth to protest and I pushed the cue a bit farther. Nice hard stomach muscles. We held a look for several seconds, then, in silence, returned our cues to the rack.