Anybody Out There - Marian Keyes Read Online Free PDF Page A

went for a couple of interviews but got no solid offers and I was just
starting to worry when, one Tuesday morning, I got a call to hotfoot it to McArthur on the Park.
Apparently the previous incumbent had had "to go to Arizona" (NYC speak for "going into
rehab") in a big, fat hurry and they urgently needed a temp because they were preparing for a
major pitch.
I knew about Ariella McArthur because she was--aren't they always?--a PR legend: fiftyish,
big-haired, big-shouldered, controlling, impatient. She was rumored to sleep only four hours a
night (but I later discovered she disseminated that rumor herself).

So I put on my suit and showed up, to discover that the office suites really were on Central Park
(thirty-eighth floor, the view from Ariella's office is amazing, but as you're only ever invited into
her inner sanctum to be bollocked, it's hard to savor it).

Everyone was running around hysterically, and no one really spoke to me, just shrieked orders to
photocopy stuff, to organize food, to glue things to other things. Despite such shoddy treatment, I
was dazzled by the brands McArthur represented and the top-end campaigns they'd run and I
found myself thinking: I'd give anything to work here.

I must have glued the right things together, because they told me to come back the following day,
the day of the actual pitch, when they were all even more twitchy.

At 3 P.M., Ariella and seven of her top people took up positions around the boardroom table. I
was there, too, but only in case anyone needed anything urgently--water, coffee, their forehead
mopped. I was under instruction not to speak. I could make eye contact if necessary, but not
speak.

As we waited, I overheard Ariella say in a low urgent voice to Franklin, her second in command,
"If I do not get this account I will kill."

For those who don't know the Candy Grrrl story--and because I've lived and breathed it for so
long, I sometimes forget there are people who don't--Candy Grrrl originated with the makeup
artist Candace Biggly. She began mixing her own products when she couldn't buy the exact
colors and textures she wanted, and turned out to be so good at it that the models she was making
up got all excited. Word began to filter down from The Most Fabulous On High that Candace
Biggly's stuff was something special; the buzz had begun.

Then came the name. Countless people, including my own mother, have told me how "Candy
Grrrl" was Kate Moss's pet name for Candace. I'm sorry if this disappoints you, but it's not true.
Candace and her husband, George (a creep), paid an expensive advertising agency to come up
with it (also, the growling-girl logo), but the Kate story has entered popular folklore and what's
the harm in letting it stay there.

Stealthily, the Candy Grrrl name began to appear in beauty pages. Then a small store opened on
the Lower East Side, and women who had never been below Forty-fourth Street in their life
made pilgrimages all the way downtown. Another store opened, this time in L.A., followed by
one in London and two in Tokyo, then the inevitable happened: Candy Grrrl was bought by the
Devereaux Corporation for an undisclosed eight-figure sum ($11.5 million, actually. I found it in
some papers in the office last summer. I wasn't looking, I just stumbled across it. Honestly).
Suddenly CG went mainstream and exploded onto counters in Saks, Bloomingdale's, Nordstrom
--all the big department stores. However, Candace and George weren't "comfortable" with the
in-house public-relations service Devereaux was providing, so they invited some of New York's
biggest agencies to pitch for the business.

"They're late," Franklin said, fingering a little mother-of-pearl pillbox. Earlier I'd seen him not
so discreetly pop half a Xanax; I reckoned he was considering taking the second half.

Then, with a surprising lack of fanfare, in came Candace, looking nothing like a Candace--
brown unstyled hair, black leggings, and strangely, not a scrap of makeup. George, on