Read Anybody Out There - Marian Keyes for Free Online Page B

green..."

Coaster's stony face remained stony. He could have given those statues on Easter Island a run for
their money. He cut in on me. "'Fraid I can't help." And with lightning speed, I found myself
outside his office, with the door shut firmly behind me.

Nita was studying herself in a compact; she looked like she'd tried on every single product
simultaneously, like a little girl who'd gone berserk in her mother's makeup drawer.

"Nita, can you help me."

"Anna, I am totally in love with this gloss--"

"I'm looking for a man."

"Welcome to New York City." She didn't even look up from the mirror. "Eight-minute dating.
Like speed dating, but slower. You get eight minutes instead of three. It's totally great, I got four
matches last time."
"Not just any man. He works here. He's quite tall and...and..." There was no other way round
this, I had to say it. "And, um, beautiful. He has a tiny scar on his eyebrow and he sounds like he
might be from Boston."

Suddenly I had her interest. She jerked her head up. "Totally giving Denis Leary? But, like,
younger?"

"Yesss!"

"Aidan Maddox. In IT, further along this floor. Make a left, then another, two rights, then you'll
see his pod."

"Thank you. Just one other thing. Is he married?"

"Aidan Maddox? Oh my God. No, he's not married." She gave a little chuckle that said, And he's
never likely to be either.

I found him and stood by his cubicle, looking at his back, willing him to turn around. "Hey," I
said affably.

He swiveled around very quickly, like he was frightened. "Oh," he said. "Hey. It's you. How's
your hand?"

I extended it for him to have a look. "I called my lawyer, the writ is on its way. Hey, would you
like to go for a drink sometime?"

He looked like he'd been hit by a train. "You're asking me out for a drink?"

"Yes," I said firmly. "Yes, I am."

After a pause, he said, sounding perplexed, "But what if I said no?"

"What's the worst that can happen? You've already scalded me with boiling coffee."

He looked at me with an expression curiously akin to despair and the silence stretched too long.
My confidence burst with a bang and suddenly I was desperate to leave.

"Do you have a card?" he asked.

"Sure!" I knew a rejection when I heard one.
I fumbled in my wallet and passed over a neon-pink rectangle with CANDY GRRRL in red wet-
look type, followed in smaller writing by Anna Walsh, public-relations superstar. In the top
right-hand corner was the famous growling-girl logo--an illustration of a winking girl, her teeth
bared in a "grrr."

We both looked at it. Suddenly I saw it through his eyes.

"Cute," he said. Once again he sounded confused.

"Yes, it really gives the impression of gravitas," I said. "Well, er, sayonara."

I'd never before in my life said "sayonara."

"Yeah, okay, sayonara," he replied. Still sounding baffled.

And off I went.

So, you win some, you lose some, and plenty more where he came from. Anyway, I tended to
like Italian and Jewish men; dark and short was more my thing.

But that night I woke up at 3:15 A.M., thinking about this Aidan. I'd really thought we'd
connected.

But I'd had other intense, and ultimately meaningless, encounters in New York. Like the time the
man on the subway had started talking to me about the book I was reading. (Paulo Coelho, which
I so did not get.) We had a great chat all the way to Riverdale; I told him all kinds of things about
myself, like my teenage preoccupation with mysticism, which I was now mortified by, and he
told me about his nighttime cleaning job and the two women in his life whom he was unable to
choose between.

And there was the girl I'd met at Shakespeare in the Park--we'd both been stood up, so we
talked to each other while we waited and she told me everything about her two Burmese cats,
who she said had helped her depression so much that she'd reduced her dose of Cipramil from
forty milligrams right down to ten.

It's a New York thing: you meet, tell each other absolutely everything about yourself,