While I was online, I had an idea: I’d read his horoscope to see if I could get any clue about how he was. Stars Online for Scorpio said:

Usually you’re philosophical about change, but recently even you have been overwhelmed by events. Many of the month’s dramas climax around Thursday’s eclipsed Full Moon. Until then, investigate everything, but make no commitments.

I was concerned about the “even you have been overwhelmed” stuff. I felt helpless, then angry. I wished it had said something comforting, so I went back a couple of pages and clicked on Today’s Stars.

The sun’s shining down on that part of your chart related to pure self-indulgence. You’ll feel like baring your hedonistic streak today. So long as it’s legal and doesn’t hurt anyone else in the process, feel free to have fun!

I didn’t like that either. I didn’t want him baring his hedonistic streak with anyone other than me. I clicked on Hot Scopes!

Resist the temptation to resuscitate dying plans, relationships, or passions. You’re beginning a new cycle and over the coming weeks you’ll learn about all manner of exciting offers!

Ah, here! I didn’t want him learning about all manner of exciting offers if I wasn’t one of them. I made myself disconnect—there was a danger that I could sit here all day until I found the horoscope that made me feel better—left another quick message on his cell, and finally left the apartment. Out on the street, I found I was shaking. I wasn’t used to going to work on my own; we always got the subway together—he got off at Thirty-fourth Street, I carried on up to Fifty-ninth. And had New York always been this loud? All those cars beeping and people shouting and buses’ brakes screeching, and this was only Twelfth Street. How noisy was it going to be uptown?

I began walking toward the subway, then stopped as I considered what it would be like down there. Steps up and down everywhere; my knee was aching, far worse than it had done in Dublin. I’d only taken half of my usual dose of painkillers because I didn’t want to start nodding off in meetings and it was a shock to discover how much pain the painkillers had actually been killing.

But how else was I going to get to work? I shrank from getting into a cab. I’d coped with taking one from the airport because Rachel had been with me, but I was petrified at the thought of being in one alone.

Riveted by indecision, trapped whichever way I jumped, I considered my options. Go back to the apartment and spend the day there on my own? That was the least palatable.

After standing on the sidewalk and getting curious looks from passersby for an indeterminate time, I watched myself hail a cab and, in a dreamlike state, get in. Could I really be doing this? The fear was profound; saucer-eyed, I watched all the other cars, flinching and shrinking whenever any of them came too close, as if my scrutiny alone would prevent them from driving into me. Suddenly, with a bang to my chest that nearly stopped my heart, I saw Aidan. He was sitting on a bus that had paused at an intersection. It was only a sidelong view, but it was definitely him, his hair, his cheekbones, his nose. All the city noise retreated, leaving only a muzzy, staticky buzzing, and as I clawed for cash and reached for the door handle, the bus surged forward. In a panic, I twisted around and stared out the back window.

“Sir!” I said to the cabdriver, but we were moving also and already too far gone. It was too late to turn and the traffic going back downtown was stuck solid. I lost my nerve: I’d never catch him.

“Yeah?”

“Nothing.”

I was trembling violently: the shock of seeing him. It didn’t make sense for him to be on that bus—he was going completely the wrong way, if he was going to work.

It couldn’t have been him. It must have been someone who looked like him. Really like him. But what if it was him? What if this had been my one chance to see him?

18

The security guards couldn’t believe I was back. No employee of McArthur on the Park had ever taken such a long time off work before—like never, not for holidays, not for “going to Arizona” because most people who “went to Arizona” didn’t come back to work. Weren’t let back.

“Hey, Morty, Irish Anna’s back.”

“She is? Irish Anna, we thought they’d sacked your ass. And whatcha do to your face?”

They delicately high-fived my bandaged right hand, and I joined the throngs of people streaming to the banks of elevators. I squashed into the crammed metal box, everyone holding their coffee and avoiding one another’s eyes.

On the thirty-eighth floor, the elevator doors opened with a silent swish. I struggled to the front and popped out like a pinball. The cream carpet was thick and soft, the very air smelled expensive, and an unseen voice said, “Welcome back, Anna.” I nearly jumped out of my skin. It was Lauryn Pike, my manager, and she looked like she’d been standing there all night, waiting. Tentatively she extended her hand, like she was thinking of touching me compassionately, then thought better of it. I was glad. I didn’t want anyone touching me, I didn’t want to be comforted.

“You look great!” she said. “Really rested. Your hair has grown. So! Ready to go, yeah?”

I looked terrible, but if she acknowledged that, she might have to make allowances for me.

Right, about Lauryn. She was scrawny skinny, always cold, had very hairy arms and a nasty brown cardigan, nearly as hairy as her arms, which she wore in the office, always dragging and wrapping it about her undernourished body in an attempt to get warm. She burned with a manic intensity and had very poppy eyes, like a Latter-day Saint. (Or maybe she just had an overactive thyroid.) If I’d been a magazine beauty editor and I saw Lauryn coming to pitch me a Candy Grrrl piece, I’d hide under my desk until she’d gone.

Despite that, Lauryn got loads of coverage. Likewise with men: regardless of her bulgy-eyed boniness, and knobbly elbows and lumpy knees, she often got taken away for weekends to the islands by lookers. Figure that one. (As we say around here.)

I can’t understand it because it’s not as if it’s easy to find men in New York, even for the un-poppy-eyed woman: it’s comparable to ragged bands of women tramping wearily through a smoking, destroyed, postapocalyptic cityscape, foraging for the smallest bits of usable stuff, like the people in Mad Max had to do.

And it’s not as if Lauryn was such a great person. Her job mattered to her far too much, and if someone else succeeded, it was as if she’d failed. She threw an empty Snapple bottle at the wall when Lancôme’s Superlash mascara got coverage in Lucky the same month it went head-to-head with Candy Grrrl’s Flutter-by.