Anybody Out There?
Page 25

Rachel clapped her hands together in a parody of good humor and declared, “Food! It’s important to eat. What’ll we have?”
“Pizza?” Jacqui asked me.
“I don’t mind. I’m not the one with gold-plated teeth.” I gave her the Andretti’s leaflet. “Will you order?”
“Better if you do,” Rachel said.
I looked at her bleakly.
“Sorry,” she said awkwardly. “But it is.”
“When I order they never bring the salad.”
“If that’s how it has to be…”
So I rang Andretti’s, and as I predicted, they forgot the salad.
“I told you,” I said with weary triumph.
But neither of them rose to the challenge, and as soon as we’d finished eating, Jacqui produced a twelve-inch-high heap of envelopes. “Your mail.”
I took the bundle, put it in the closet, and closed the door tight. I’d look at it sometime.
“Er…don’t you want to open it?”
“Not right now.”
A tricky silence.
“I’ve just got here,” I said defensively. “Give me a chance.”
It was strange to see the two of them united against me. It’s not that they didn’t like each other—not exactly—but Rachel’s motto was “The unexamined life isn’t worth living,” while Jacqui’s was “We’re not here for a long time, we’re here for a good time.”
They had never bitched to me about each other, but if they were to, Rachel would say that Jacqui was too shallow and Jacqui would say that Rachel needed to lighten up.
The crux of their differences was Luke: if pressed, Jacqui would admit that she thought Luke was wasted on Rachel, with her fondness for early nights.
However, Rachel once let slip that the only vice she had left was sex, which instantly made me imagine her and Luke up to all sorts of kinky stuff. But that’s not something you want to think too much about, not about anyone.
After further silence, I said, “So! Jacqui, what’s happening with you? Are you over Buzz yet?”
Buzz was Jacqui’s ex-boyfriend. He had a year-round tan and tons of confidence and money. He was also incredibly cruel—he used to leave Jacqui sitting by herself for hours in bars and restaurants, then he’d tell her she’d got the time or the venue wrong.
He would argue that pink was green just for the hell of it, tried to make Jacqui have a threesome with a prostitute, and drove a red Porsche—so pitifully naff—and made the guy at the garage clean the tires with a toothbrush.
Jacqui used to keep saying what a bastard he was and that she’d had it with him; no, she’d really had it with him this time; but she always gave him one more chance. Then he’d broken up with her on New Year’s Eve and she’d been devastated.
Jacqui never got a chance to answer me. As if I hadn’t spoken, Rachel said, “There are lots of messages on your machine. We thought you might like someone here when you’re listening to them.”
“Why not?” I said. “Hit it.”
There were thirty-seven messages. All kinds of people had come out of the woodwork.
“Anna, Anna, Anna…”
“Who is that?”
“…It’s Amber. I just heard…”
“Amber Penrose? It’s forever since I’ve heard from her. Delete!”
“But won’t you listen to her message?” asked Jacqui, who was manning the machine.
“No need. I could write the script. Look, I’ll remember everyone who rang,” I said. “I’ll get back to them. Delete! Next!”
“Anna,” someone whispered. “I’ve just heard and I can’t bel—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Delete!”
Rachel muttered something. I caught the word denial. “At least write down their names.”
“I don’t have a pen.”
“Here.” She passed me a pen and a notebook that had magically materialized on her person, and obediently I wrote down the names of everyone who had called, and the trade-off was that I didn’t have to listen to their full commiserations.
Then Jacqui and Rachel made me switch on my computer and retrieve all my e-mails: there were eighty-three. I scanned the senders’ addresses; I was only interested in getting an e-mail from one person and it wasn’t there.
“Read them.”
“No need. I’ll get round to them. Now look: I’m sorry, girls, I need my sleep, I’ve got work in the morning.”
“What!” Rachel yelped. “Don’t be so insane. There’s no way you’re well enough either physically or emotionally to return to work. You’re in total denial about what’s happened to you. You need serious help. I mean serious!”
She went on and on and I just nodded and said calmly, “I’m sorry you feel that way.” Like I’d seen her do to people who were pissed off with her. After a while, she abruptly stopped ranting, looked at me through eyes narrowed with suspicion, and said, “What’s your game?”
“Rachel,” I said, “thank you for all your kindness, but the only way this will be okay is if I carry on like normal.”
“Don’t go to work.”
“I have to.”
“Don’t go to work.”
“I’ve already told them to expect me.”
A face-off ensued. Rachel was very strong-willed, but at that moment, so was I. I sensed her start to buckle, so I seized my advantage. “Luke will be wondering where you are.”
I began edging them toward the exit, but I swear to God, I thought they’d never leave. At the door, Rachel insisted on delivering a speech. She even cleared her throat. “Anna, I can’t know exactly the hell you’re going through, but when I admitted I was an addict, I felt like my life was over. How I got through it was, I decided, I won’t think about forever, I won’t even think about next week, I’ll just think about getting through today. Break it down into small pieces and you might find that you can do for one day something that, if you thought about having to do it for the rest of your life, would kill you.”
“Thank you, yes, lovely.” Get out.
“I put that toy-dog thing in your bed,” Jacqui said. “To keep you company.”