Anybody Out There - Marian Keyes (24 page)

true, I knew it was wildly exaggerated. But she was so funny and fearless and full of life that a
little of it had rubbed off on me.
38
I   checked my watch again. Only four minutes since the last time I'd checked. How could that
be? It felt like at least fifteen minutes.
I was pacing, actually pacing with nervy excitement, waiting for it to be time to leave for the
spiritualist-church place, for their Sunday service. It was taking every ounce of my restraint not
to tell everyone--Rachel, Jacqui, Teenie, Dana. Only the fear that they'd have me
institutionalized kept me quiet.
Back and forth I went from the living room to the bedroom, bargaining with a God I no longer
believed in. If Aidan shows up and speaks to me today, I'll...I'll...what? I'll believe in You again.
You can't say fairer than that.
See, I told Aidan. See what I've promised. See the lengths I'm willing to go to. So you better
show up.
I left home miles too early and got the subway to Forty-second and Seventh and walked across
town, passing Seventh, Eighth, Ninth Avenue, my stomach churning with anxiety.
The closer I got to the Hudson, the more bleak and warehousy and seagully the landscape
became. This part of town was a world away from Fifth Avenue. The buildings were lower and
more cramped, crouching on the sidewalk like they were afraid they were going to be hit. It was
always colder here and the air was different, sharper.
The farther west I walked, the more my anxiety burgeoned; there couldn't be a church here.
What should I do? I asked Aidan. Keep walking? I felt even worse when I found the building--it
certainly didn't look like a church. It looked like a converted warehouse. Not terribly converted
either. I had made some dreadful mistake.
But in the lobby, a sign on the wall listed THE CHURCH OF SPIRITUALIST COMMUNICATION as
being on the fifth floor.
It did exist.
A couple of people passed by me on their way to the elevator, and full of sudden happiness, I ran
and squeezed in with them. They were three other women about the same age as me and they
looked very normal: one had a bag that I'd have sworn was a Marc Jacobs, then I noticed that
another had her nails painted with--I almost gasped--Candy Grrrl Chick-chickachicka (pale
yellow). Of all the brands in all the world? What were the chances? I took this as a Sign.

"What floor?" Marc Jacobs bag asked me. She was nearest to the button panel.
"Fifth," I said.
"Same as us." She smiled.
I smiled back.
Obviously talking to the dead on a Sunday afternoon was more commonplace than I had realized.
I followed the trio out of the elevator, down a bare-floored corridor, and into a room, full of
several other women. Everyone started saying hi to one another and an exotically attired creature
approached me. She had long dark hair, bare shoulders, a long fringey skirt (I had a moment of
teenage flashback), and tons of filigree-style gold jewelry, around her neck, around her waist, up
her wrists and arms and fingers.
"Hi," she said. "Belly dancing?"
"Excuse me?"
"You're here to learn to belly dance?"
It was only then that I noticed that the other women in the room were also wearing long bell-
infested skirts, little belly tops, and spangledy slippers and that my three elevator mates were
changing out of their ordinary clothes into jangly fringey things.
"No, I'm here for the Church of Spiritualist Communication."
Now that was a conversation stopper if ever I encountered one. The entire room became one
discordant jangle as everyone whipped around to look at me.
"Not here," the chief lady said. "Probably down the hall."
Under the gaze of the filigreed girls, I retreated. Out in the corridor, I checked the number on the
door. It was 506; the talking-to-dead-people were in room 514.
I carried on down the corridor, passing rooms on both sides. In one, several elderly women were
singing "If I Were a Rich Man"; in another, four people were clustered around what looked like a
script; and in yet another, a man with a rich baritone was singing about the Windy City being
mighty purty while someone accompanied him on a clapped-out-sounding piano.
The whole place reeked of amateur dramatics.
I had to be at the wrong address. How could there be a church here? But I consulted my piece of
paper again. It said room 514--and there was a room 514. Right at the end of the hallway; it

looked nothing like a church; just a bare room with a circle of ten or eleven hard chairs on a
dusty, splintery floor.
Uncertainly, I wondered if I should leave. I mean, how mad was this?
But hope intervened. Hope and desperation. In fairness, I was early. Extremely early. And I'd
come all this way, I might as well see if anyone else showed up.
I sat on a bench in the corridor and passed the time by watching the proceedings in the room
across the way.
Eight buff young men--two rows of four--were stamping and clattering across the bare boards,
singing that they were going to wash some man right out of their hair, while a sinewy, older man
yelled dance cues. "And TURN and SHIMMY and THRUST and TURN, smile, guys, SMILE,
for fuck's sake, and TURN and SHIMMY and...okay, stop the music, STOP, STOP!" The piano
tinkling petered out.
"Brandon," the older man said peevishly. "Sweetheart? What is going on with your shimmy? I'm
looking for..." He leaned forward and gave a beautiful fluid shoulder shake. "And not..."
Clumsily he shuddered his upper body like he was trying to shoulder his way through a crowd.
"I'm sorry, Claude." One of the boys--clearly poor Brandon, the bad shimmier--said.
"This is what I'm looking for," Claude said imperiously, and launched into a demo: balancing up
on his toes, spinning around on the ball of his foot, doing the splits in midair, all the while doing
this scary, fake smile. He finished, bowing in pretend humility right down to the floor, his arms
in airplane wings up behind him...
"Excuse me," a voice said. "Are you here for the spiritualism?"
I whipped my head around. A young guy, probably early twenties, was looking eagerly at me. I
saw him clock my scar but he didn't display any obvious revulsion.
"Yes," I said cautiously.
"Great! It's always great to see a new face. I'm Nicholas."
"Anna."
He extended a hand, and in light of his youth and his pierced eyebrow, I wasn't sure if he was
proposing a normal handshake or a funny complicated young person's one, but it turned out to
just be a straightforward clasp.
"The other guys should be here soon."

This Nicholas was lean and wiry--his jeans were hanging off him--with dark sticky-up hair, red
high-tops, and a T-shirt saying BE UNAFRAID. BE VERY UNAFRAID. Several woven bracelets were
twined around his wrist, and he wore at least three chunky silver rings and had a tattoo on his
forearm, one I recognized because it was the current hot tattoo: a Sanskrit symbol that meant
something like "The word is love" or "Love is the answer."
He looked perfectly normal but that was the thing about New York: lunacy appeared in all shapes
and sizes. It specialized in Stealth Nutters. In other places they make it easier--shouting in the
street at invisible enemies or going to the chemist to buy Bonjela dressed in your Napol�on
costume is usually a dead giveaway.
Nicholas nodded at the South Pacific lads being put through their paces. "Fame costs," he said.
"And right here's where you start paying."
He looked normal. He sounded normal. And all of a sudden I asked myself why shouldn't he be
normal? I was here and I wasn't abnormal, simply bereaved and desperate.
And now that someone had finally turned up, I was avid for answers.
"Nicholas, you've been to...this...before?"
"Yeah."
"And the person who does the channeling--"
"Leisl."
"--Leisl. Does she really communicate with"--I didn't want to say "the dead"--"the spirit
world?"
"Yeah." He sounded surprised. "She really does."
"She gives us messages from people...on the other side?"
"Yes, she really has a gift. My dad died two years ago and, via Leisl, I've spoken to him more in
the last two years than I did my entire life. We get on a whole lot better now that he's dead."
Out of the blue, I was nearly sick with anticipation.
"My husband died," I splurged. "I really want to talk to him."
"Sure." Nicholas nodded. "But, just so as you know, it's not like Leisl's a telephone operator. If
the person doesn't want to be channeled, she can't go after them and hunt them down like a
dog."

"I went to another woman." I was talking very quickly. "Someone who said she was a psychic,
but she was just a swizzer. She said there was a curse on me and she could take it away for a
thousand dollars."
"Oh, man, you've got to be careful." He shook his head ruefully. "There are a lot of hustlers out
there who take advantage of vulnerable people. All Leisl asks for is enough money to cover the
rent. And here's the lady herself."
Leisl was a short, bowlegged woman, laden with shopping bags, through which I could see a
chilled lasagne for one; it had made the inside of the bag wet with little drops of condensation.
Her curly hair was lopsided: When Perms Go Bad.
Nicholas introduced me. "This is Anna, her husband bought it."
Leisl immediately put down her bags and gathered me into a tight hug, pulling my face into her
neck so that I was breathing into an impenetrable thicket of hair. "You'll be okay, sweetheart."
"Thank you," I mumbled through a mouthful of hair, close to tears from her kindness.
She released me, and said, "And here's Mackenzie."
I turned to see a girl walking down the corridor like she was walking down a catwalk. A Park
Avenue Princess, with blown-out hair, a Dior purse, and wedge sandals so high most people
would sprain (or strain, whichever is worse) their ankles in them.
"She's coming here?" I asked.
"Comes every week."
By the looks of her, she shouldn't even be in New York. She should be stationed in some
colonial-style mansion out in the Hamptons until the start of September. My spirits rose.
Mackenzie should be able to afford the best medium money could buy, but she chose to come
here. It must be good.
Behind Mackenzie lumbered a hulking, eight-foot-nine bloke, in an undertaker's suit and with a
green-white face. "That's Undead Fred," Nicholas whispered. "Come on, let's help set up the
room."
Leisl had put some spooky-sounding cello music on a tape deck and was lighting candles when
people started "flooding" in.
There was a round-faced frumpy girl, who was probably younger than me but looked like she
had totally given up, an older gentleman, small and dapper with pomaded hair, and a selection of
older women with nervous tics and elastic waistbands. Mind you, one of them had interesting
sandals; they looked like they'd been made out of a car tire. The more I looked at them, the more

I liked them. Not for me to wear, you understand, I got enough of that codology at work, but they
were definitely interesting.
When another man walked in, Nicholas grabbed me and said, "Here's Mitch. His wife bought it.
You guys must have loads in common. C'mon and meet him."
He shunted me across the room. "Mitch, this is Anna. Her husband died--when? Few months
back? She got ripped off by some asshole psychic who told her she'd been cursed. Thought you
could help her, tell her about Neris Hemming."
Mitch and I locked eyes and it was like I'd touched an electric fence, there was such a bzzzzz of
connection. He understood; the only one who did. I saw right through his eyes and all the way
down into his bleak abandoned soul and recognized what I saw.
39
P   eople were sitting down and holding hands with the people beside them; I managed to slip in
between the car-tire-sandals woman and the pomady guy. I was glad I didn't have to hold hands
with Undead Fred.
I counted only twelve of us, including Leisl, but with the candles flickering in the dark room and
groany cello noises in the background, the mood felt right. Definitely a place where the dead
might feel comfortable showing up.
Leisl did a little intro, welcoming me, and saying stuff about deep breaths and centering
ourselves and hoping that "Spirit" would deliver what everyone needed. Then we were allowed
to stop holding hands.
Silence fell. And continued. And continued. And continued. Frustration burgeoned in me. When
would this fucking thing start? I opened one eye and snaked a look around the circle, their faces
shadowed in the candlelight.
Mitch was watching me; our looks met and collided in midair. Quickly I closed my eye again.
When Leisl finally spoke, I jumped.
"I have a tall man here." My eyes snapped open and I wanted to put my hand up, like I was at
school. It's for me! It's for me!
"A very tall, broad, dark-haired man." My heart sank. Not for me.
"Sounds like my mom," Undead Fred said, in a slow, gargly voice.
Leisl did a quick recalculation. "Fred, I'm sorry; yes, it is your mom."

"Built like a brick shithouse," Fred gargled. "Coulda been a prizefighter."
"She's telling me to ask you to be careful getting on the subway. She says that you don't pay
attention, that you could slip."
After a period of silence, Fred asked, "That it?"
"That's it."
"Thanks, Mom."
"I've got Nicholas's dad now." Leisl faced Nicholas. "He's telling me--I'm sorry, these are his
words, not mine--that he's pissed with you."
"So what's new?" Nicholas grinned.
"There's a situation at work that you have issues with?"
Nicholas nodded.
"Your dad says you're blaming the other guy, but you've got to look at where you're responsible
for what's happened."
Nicholas stretched out, extended his arms above his head, scratched his chest thoughtfully.
"Maybe, yeah, he's probably right. Bummer. Thanks, Dad."
More silence followed, then someone came through for the car-tire-sandals woman--whose
name was Barb--and told her to include rapeseed oil in her diet.
"I already do," Barb said tetchily.
"More rapeseed oil," Leisl said quickly.
"Okay."
Another older lady got told by her dead husband to "keep doing the next right thing"; the young
frumpy girl's mother told her that everything was going to work out for the best; Juan, the
pomady guy, got told to live in the now; and Mitch's wife said she was happy to see he'd been
smiling a bit more this week.
All meaningless, vaguely spiritual-sounding platitudes. Comforting stuff, but obviously not
coming from "the other side."
It's all bollocks, I thought bitterly, which was just when Leisl said, "Anna, I'm getting something
for you."