The Uninvited

by Tim Wynne-Jones

  “And today was a bad one?”

  He nodded. “Oh, yeah. Really bad.”

  “That’s really a coincidence because-”

  But Cramer interrupted her. “She’s like on this creative journey?” he said. “She’s got this book called The Artist’s Path?”

  “Oh,” said Mimi. “I know it.”

  He looked stunned. “You’re kidding me.”

  “No,” she said. “Honest.” She had been about to tell him her father was an artist, too, but she was glad she hadn’t. The Artist’s Path, as far as she could tell, was a book for dilettantes and dabblers.

  “Wow,” he said, shaking his head, his mouth hanging open a little. “I never met no one-anyone-who ever heard of it or like that.”

  She nodded again. “Well, now you have.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Now I have. So, you know what they can be like, eh? Artists?”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said. “Big-time.”

  “Like it can be kind of, you know…” He waggled his hand in the air, palm down.

  She did the same with her hand, and they both laughed.

  “Wow,” he said again, and rubbed his head.

  His hand was so large, so strong. Mimi looked away. She was feeling just the slightest bit short of breath. Then she noticed her cell phone, still in her hand, and saw that it was nearly noon.

  “Listen,” she said. “I’ve got to meet Iris.”

  “Oh, yeah. Right.” He seemed flustered again and immediately jumped to his feet.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to join us?”

  He thought about it, looked pained, she thought, but shook his head. “Hank’ll be waiting for me,” he said, but he didn’t fool her.

  “Let’s do this again, Cramer, okay?”

  He smiled. “Okay,” he said.

  “Cool.”

  They walked back to where his car was parked, and he gathered his electronics from the backseat again.

  “It was good seeing you,” he said. “It was good to talk to you like that.”

  “Same for me,” said Mimi, and reached out to shake his hand. He took it and almost lost the equipment he was cradling.

  “Oops!” she said, grabbing some kind of a measuring device before it slipped out of his grasp entirely.

  “Thanks, eh,” he said. “And about the coffee-”

  “A rain check,” she said.

  “Pardon? Oh, right. Yeah. Right.” He chuckled. “They say there’s going to be some rain. Like soon.”

  Mimi grinned. “Good,” she said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Like it’s a sign?” She nodded. And he looked as if he wanted to say more but couldn’t think of a thing. Then, with his head bobbing, he started off. He turned and waved. “Thanks,” he said.

  “You’re welcome.”

  Then he stopped and came back. “Hey, you still got my number, right?”

  “You betcha,” she said, giving him a little salute.

  “Well, just phone if you need any help.”

  “I will.”

  He nodded seriously. “I hope you don’t,” he said. Then he looked horrified. “That’s not what I meant to say. I meant I hope you don’t run into any-”

  She cut him off with a laugh. His confusion was endearing. “I knew what you meant, Cramer,” she said. “And I won’t hesitate to call if I need you… uh, need to. Thanks so much.”

  He took a deep breath, as if this interchange was burning a great deal of calories and he’d soon have to skate back to the bench to recuperate.

  His face got serious again. “And no one’s been bothering you up there?” he said.

  “No,” she said. “We seem to be out of the woods.” Then she laughed at the unintended pun.

  “All right,” he said. “Good one!” And he gave her a thumbs-up.

  She returned the gesture.

  And then with a tip of his head, he left, swiveling to look at her again, a few paces down the path. He flashed her a smile.

  She sighed. Nice smile, bad teeth or not.

  “Hey.”

  She turned and there was Iris approaching from up Forster. “Hey, yourself.”

  “Who’s the muffin?” said Iris, shielding her eyes to catch the last glimpse of Cramer as he ducked down the alley to PDQ Electronics.

  “Mr. Cute Butt,” said Mimi. “A little short on the snappy repartee but nice. Very nice in a hockey-player kind of way.”

  “Charm enough for your charm bracelet?” said Iris, and Mimi laughed out loud, a little raucously.

  “Who is he?” said Iris.

  “Cramer. He’s the one who fixed my computer. I don’t know his last name.”

  “I thought Hank Pretty fixed your computer.”

  Mimi shook her head, holding open the door to the restaurant for Iris. “Maybe Cramer’s a Pretty, too,” she said.

  “There are lots of them around these parts,” said Iris, and then stopped in her tracks. “Cramer, Cramer. Why does that ring a bell?”

  “Because of Jerry Seinfeld?”

  Iris shook her head. Then she snapped her fingers. “Cramer Lee,” she said, and turned to Mimi with her dark eyes sparkling.

  “What about him?”

  Iris dropped her voice. “Cramer Lee was the kid who used to follow Jay around in high school.”

  Mimi looked at her in disbelief. “Get out. The one you were talking about? He sounded like a nerdy kind of kid-a twerp.”

  “He was,” said Iris. She turned as if to make sure Cramer wasn’t still around. “ That was Cramer Lee we were leering at?”

  “I guess.”

  Iris made a wry face. “He certainly bulked up.”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Mimi, as they took a table. “Pecs, traps-the works.” She picked up her menu and fanned herself vigorously. “Is it hot in here or what?” she said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  He wanted to ask her out. He had a couple more days off. They could do something. He wasn’t sure what. Just go for a walk maybe. Go for that coffee-cash in his rain check. But how? She had his number, but he didn’t have hers. Could he just show up at her place? How about if he ran into her? He could go out running along the Upper Valentine around the time she did. It would be this big coincidence. But would it appear like too much of a coincidence? That’s what he was afraid of. What was far stronger than his fear, however, was his desire to see her.

  Friday bloomed an August day of rare perfection. Cramer worked out hard but slow, took his time, enjoyed every curl and crunch. He felt every muscle fiber in his body stretch and contract. He had sculpted himself into something. She had noticed. He had been someone no one noticed, but Mimi had noticed. He’d seen how she looked at him. It was worth every chin-up and dead lift.

  He showered and changed and made himself a few sandwiches. He wouldn’t come home at all that day. Mavis wasn’t around. He had offered to drive her into Ottawa for art supplies, but she had said she’d go alone. He wasn’t sure when she was planning on doing that, but he didn’t care anymore. He had gotten her the money she wanted. It had not been easy. And that was it. He was done. The rest was up to her.

  From a tree he watched Mimi sitting by the snye in white jeans and a peach-colored halter top, her hair tied up in a rose-colored scarf. She just sat, her feet bare, occasionally reaching out a toe to stir the water gurgling by or leaning back on her elbows until her face was full of dappled sunlight.

  How he would have liked to sit there beside her. Not talking-not doing anything. Not so much as touching her. He had never felt like that before. Someone he just wanted to be with.

  He would take her out in Bunny. He could imagine her leaning back against the thwart-except he’d take pillows along for her to lean on. She could drag her fingers in the water, like in some old movie or like that. They would have a picnic-he knew just where. He’d buy wine. He’d ask her to choose. She could teach him about things like that: wine and fancy stuff and conversation.

  He suddenly felt this huge sense
of shame about what he had done to them. To Jay as well as Mimi. It was envy, jealousy. It had coursed through his veins as thick as sludge. But that had all changed. Kind of like open-heart surgery.

  Mimi got up and walked back to the house. She came out a few minutes later in a bikini, with her flotation device on. She took the kayak and made her way down the snye to the river. He followed her on foot, along the bank, a safe distance back, quiet as a ghost. He watched her from the shore. He imagined her overturning and him swimming out to save her. He imagined giving her mouth-to-mouth, watching her chest rise and fall as life flowed back into her lungs. Then, as her eyes opened and she saw who it was that had saved her, she would take the hand resting on her chest and she would hold it against her breast.

  At a little after six, Iris showed up at the snye in the white Camry in a turquoise blouse and black skirt and slingbacks, with her hair tied back in a yellow ribbon. She had just come from work, he guessed. She was carrying a bag from the liquor store. Jay, all dressed in white, met her at the bridge, and they kissed for a long time, before they made their way across the bridge, balancing with their arms out on a plank someone had placed there.

  There was a perfect breeze on this perfect day, so the mosquitoes stayed away. The three friends moved a table out onto the grass and placed a white tablecloth on it and set it with plates and silverware. Soon they were sitting there eating some kind of salad and drinking wine.

  The summer evening closed in around the dinner party on the lawn. It wasn’t completely dark, but they brought out tea candles. Cramer shimmied down his tree and moved silently closer. They would not hear him. Jay had his acoustic guitar, and they were singing. They drank and sang and laughed. Then one or the other of them would drift into the house and come back with something else to eat or another bottle of wine. And Cramer imagined walking out of the gathering night right up to the table.

  “Cramer!” Mimi would say, and throw her arms around him. “I was just thinking about you.” Then he would drift into the house and return with a chair of his own. He would watch and listen. That would be enough. He would smile at the right moment, be careful not to drink too fast or too much. He would be attentive-he was good at that. He would leap up to get more fruit or whatever.

  “No, let me,” he would say. And Mimi would touch his hand. And then…

  And then what?

  The mosquitoes didn’t move in until 9:05, and the dinner party broke up only to reassemble inside. Slapping at bugs, Cramer waited most of another hour, drawing as close to the house as he dared, hoping for one more glimpse of her.

  Bats escaped from the eaves of the little house and swooshed around him, gorging on the mosquitoes and not making a dent in the population. Still he stayed on, steadfast. It was what he knew how to do. And there was another reason for staying. That old bastard Stooley Peters. Mimi wasn’t alone tonight, but Cramer would stay as long as he could, keeping guard. He would be her guardian if he couldn’t be anything else. This would be the good secret to offset the bad secret. This would be the decent thing he did to compensate for all the wrongness.

  It was the next day, Saturday, when tragedy struck. The sun was just going down when she came outside, and to his shock he saw that she was crying. What could have happened? He had been close enough to hear her cell phone go off-that old song by Queen. Was it the man with the foreign-sounding name that made her cry? The one she had dumped? What had he done now, because Mimi was weeping-holding herself and weeping. Cramer wanted to swing down out of his roost and take her in his arms. The sky was still light enough to see her face, and although it was disfigured with tears, it was as lovely as ever. Even more beautiful because it was filled with need. He wanted to kiss her tears away, hold her tight. And it was in that rush of yearning that his foot slipped. He didn’t fall but he swung out for one tense moment, and in grabbing for a handhold, a branch snapped off in his grasp, cracking loudly.

  It was all over in a moment. She had not seen him; he was sure of it. But she was aware of his presence. Through the thick foliage of the maple, he saw her looking around. She stopped crying. She was staring up into the trees, sniffing, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. He didn’t dare breathe.

  When she spoke, she didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t sound frightened or even angry, but her words were like knives.

  “You are a sick person,” she said. “Do you know that? You are really sick.” She walked down toward the snye until she was almost beneath him. “What have we done to make you hate us so much?”

  No, not hate.

  “You robbed us blind. Wasn’t that enough?”

  What was she talking about?

  “What is it you want?” She paused, then she let out a long shuddery breath. “Just go away. Please. Leave us alone.”

  She didn’t yell. It was exactly as if she were talking to him, except that what she said hurt more than he could bear. Then she sniffed, rubbed her nose, and went back in the house. He didn’t hear the door slam.

  Cramer slithered from his branch and stood at the base of the tree breathing hard. What was she talking about? He started toward the house. What the hell was she talking about? He stopped, walked back toward the snye, slammed his fist hard against a tree.

  Robbed them blind?

  That isn’t what you said about a rock taken from a windowsill. It wasn’t even what you said about a picture in a silver frame. What did she mean? Something else. Something big. And then it came to him and he went cold all over. Stooley Peters.

  He’d caught the bugger sneaking around, figured him for a Peeping Tom. Maybe he’d done more. Could he tell Mimi that? Yes. He would walk up to her door right now. But he couldn’t. She’d know he was the one in the tree and she’d hate him.

  He took a deep shaky breath. He would deal with this himself-find a way.

  He slunk away through the glade, and when he was out of earshot, he ran, whipped and slapped and slashed at by the underbrush, until he arrived at last at the cove where he kept Bunny hidden under a blanket of cedar boughs.

  He was bleeding. The back of his hand, his cheek, his left ankle. Angrily he tore off the tendrils of undergrowth still clinging to him. Then he cleared Bunny of her cover, and, grabbing the gunwales, he launched himself out onto the darkening water. He dug his paddle down deep, right into the muck of the Eden, almost spilling himself in his desperate need to escape that horrible place where a girl had said that to him.

  You are a sick person. Do you know that? You are really sick.

  Not just any girl-the most beautiful girl who had ever talked to him. He thrust his paddle into the water and with all the strength in his shaking body propelled Bunny out into the river. He was crying now. Crying in great sobs. Crying in rage.

  “It isn’t fair! It isn’t fucking fair!”

  And he was so wrapped up with the unfairness of everything that he didn’t notice what was happening to him.

  He was going down.

  The boat was filling up with water. From holes all along its keel, the river poured into Bunny, and with every stroke he only drove her farther down into the water. He stopped, midstream, and sat there, sinking.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Lazar called Saturday from the Lord Nelson Hotel in Halifax, Nova Scotia. It was pricey, he said, but in for a penny in for a pound. What does that mean? Mimi wondered but didn’t ask. He sounded almost cheery, as if the terrible joke Mimi’s father had played on him had snapped him out of his stupor. He was in the process of raiding the hospitality fridge in his room for tiny bottles of booze. He had rented a car and driven down the coast to where she wasn’t. And then he had driven back to Halifax.

  “A very big lesson,” he said. “A very expensive lesson.”

  Mimi kept her lips zipped. She was not going to apologize for what her father had done. But it seemed Lazar wasn’t looking for an apology.

  He made Mimi laugh with his running commentary of what the hospitality fridge had to offer in the way of alcoholic
diversion. It reminded her of when they first started seeing each other. How he was always explaining how things worked: how subways ran on the energy created by people on treadmills in gyms all over the city; how smog was necessary to hide the hooks that held up the skyscrapers. He would take her to obscure dives he had discovered, where the waiters knew him and treated him like a king and her, like the king’s consort. She could hear that same sense of wound-too-tight fun in his voice tonight. Then he sighed and she expected the worst. But he surprised her. Well, he had always been surprising.

  “I have been crazy,” he said. “I thought crazy in love but perhaps, really, just crazy. No?”

  She had a lump in her throat. Was this a setup?

  “Are you still there?” he asked, his voice gentle. But she couldn’t speak. “If you have hung up,” he said, “I will just keep talking anyway and then tell myself we had this discussion and it’s, as you would say, all good.”

  “I’m still here,” she said.

  “Good, because I would rather talk to you than to myself, but I wouldn’t blame you for hanging up.”

  Mimi swallowed hard. Was this a trap? “I’m sorry,” she said. “I…” But she wasn’t sure what she could add. She was sorry in a way and she wasn’t really sorry in another way, but she was confused and wary.

  “You have no reason to be sorry,” he said. “This wild-goose chase was not your idea. And even if it was, I gave you no options.” He sighed. “Sophia has left me,” he said.

  “You told me.”

  “But I only told you half a truth,” he said. “It wasn’t because of you, Meem. It was because of me. I have been unfaithful for so long. I thought it was different with you. You know? Different. Ah, of course you know. Well, now I know, too. Crazy, hey?” She heard the sound of another cap being snapped open on another tiny bottle. “A slow learner,” he said, and chuckled sadly.

  “Lazar,” she said. “It was fun-at first, I mean.”

  He laughed again, a little drunkenly. “At first, yes,” he said, but not unkindly.