Read Anybody Out There - Marian Keyes for Free Online

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.