Tim Wynne-Jones - The Uninvited

Tuesday and raining.

Eleven days since she arrived; almost a week since they took up residency. Except that only Mimi was in residence right now. Jay had stayed at the snye for the first three nights. Nothing had happened. Nothing bad had happened! Well, a famous rock went missing, but somehow she was sure that must have happened before. Jay had been back and forth since then, and she’d stayed in town at the Pages’ on the weekend. And nothing bad had happened. Whoever had been stalking the place and leaving mementos of his visits had made no appearance, as far as they could tell.

“Guess I scared him away, huh?”

“You are pretty scary,” he said.

They were old friends. Week-old friends.

But Jay wasn’t here now, and he wouldn’t be back until Thursday. He’d come by that rainy morning in Jo’s Honda to tell her he was driving to Toronto to pick up his girlfriend.

“Your what?”

“Iris. Iris Xu. She’s at school in Toronto.”

“And when were you going to tell me about Iris?” Mimi had said, her arms crossed like some jealous high-school coed.

A crack appeared in the edge of his smile. “You’re kidding, right?”

She wasn’t kidding. She couldn’t believe this hadn’t come up. A girlfriend?

But getting her wits together, she said, “Of course I’m kidding. It’s just the little-sister thing. You know. ‘Uh-oh, what’s he up to now, la-de-da.’ That kind of thing, you know.”

But of course he didn’t know what kind of thing. Neither of them did. They were only children.

Only children.

That’s what they had grown up thinking, anyway.

She would meet Jay and Iris at Conchita’s in town Thursday evening for drinks. He’d phone when he was back to confirm. So now she was really alone.

“How far away is Toronto?”

“Just beyond the edge of the world where everything falls off into the Great Turtle’s mouth.”

She wished she hadn’t asked.

Mimi stared at the screen of her computer. She was using Final Draft, screenwriting software that took all the work out of formatting-almost wrote the screenplay for you. Almost. You’re in a scene with two people? The software knows it; as soon as you push the Return key after writing a bit of dialogue, it automatically centers the name of the other person in the scene. You type Z-it knows who you mean.

ZORBA

INT. OFFICE AT UNIVERSITY-DAY

ZORBA

For Christ’s sake, pick up the phone! Little bitch.

Her cell phone rang again. “Let me go, let me go, let me go!” She was beginning to hate “Bohemian Rhapsody.” She checked the caller, didn’t recognize the number; she didn’t answer. If it was Lazar calling from some booth, she had to shudder at his uncanny timing.

EXT. PASTORAL SETTING-DAY

SASHA steps into the stream, bends down, and lowers her screaming cell phone below the water. She holds it there until it stops.

She pushed the laptop out of the way and flopped her head onto the desk. She closed her eyes and listened to the rain. There was a drip somewhere inside she didn’t have the energy to deal with. She checked that it wasn’t directly over her bed. Then she went upstairs and checked on Jay’s computer, his instruments. Everything was fine. She sat for a moment and picked up the fat electric guitar. She had learned a song once, from Jamila. She tried to recall the chords. But then the cell phone rang. Again. Shit.

Jay was right. She should get a new one. She’d been here long enough; there was a place in town, but she kept putting it off. Why? Because she expected Lazar to stop. She expected him to get the message-to give up. To do the right thing. To act his age! That was part of it. Why should she be turning her life upside down because this supposedly mature- way mature-man couldn’t take no for an answer? But it was more than that. She knew at some point she would have to pick up; she would have to have it out with him. But not until she was good and ready. And she wasn’t ready yet. She was frightened of Lazar Cosic, and she didn’t want him to know that, didn’t want her voice to betray her.

She had brought with her a box of dishes and silverware, for one. And she had planned on buying a microwave or toaster oven if necessary. But the stove worked, and so she had purchased a tiny little beer fridge at the Canadian Tire store in Ladybank. A beer fridge from a tire store. Go figure. She kept soy milk and veggies in her little blue beer fridge. And wine.

She had settled in.

The first few days had been fun, a chance to get to know each other. A brother. She had a brother. The idea still seemed impossible. She had yet to phone her father to confront him with the news, which, apparently, wasn’t news to him. She was still too angry, and yet she wasn’t really sure why. And what was the point of being angry with him, anyway? Anger slid off his hide like water off a duck.

INT. SOHO STUDIO-NIGHT

HENRI

So, you’ve met him. Hell, I’d forgotten all about the boy. What do you think?

HENRI sips from a glass of wine. Dabs a Venetian blue smear across his canvas.

SASHA

Has it ever occurred to you that you are a first-class schmuck?

HENRI

So I’m told. But seriously, what’s he like?

SASHA pours herself a large refill of the wine, then hurls the contents all over the canvas.

She hadn’t told her mother about Jay, either. Not yet. She had fished to see if Grier knew anything about other siblings. She didn’t seem to. So the only person back home who knew was Jamila. And when Jamila had gotten over the shock, she had said, “Oh, my God, welcome to the club!” Because Jamila had four brothers, and she had promised to get Mimi up to speed on the whole thing. They had chatted furiously back and forth by e-mail while Mimi was still staying at the Pages’, but there was no Internet connection out here. And, for that matter, the connection at the Pages’ had been dial-up, so not exactly a furious rate. They were too far out of town for the local tower to get high-speed, although there were rumors of a new tower going up soon. So Mimi had felt very far from home. She was welcome to use the dial-up at the Page house anytime-welcome to stay there whenever she wanted. Lou had given her a key. There was also a great little Internet cafe in town right on the park. But Mimi was trying very hard to do what she had set out to do, which was to be on her own, sorting things out, digging deep. Trying, in one way or another, to figure out who the sap was who had gotten herself in so deep with an almost forty-year-old professor who just might be mentally unstable.

She had been so happy to see Jay arrive that morning. But he was only stopping by to give her the news about his trip to Toronto. The news about Iris.

“Oh, and these,” he said, heading back to the SUV. He returned with a neat pile of sunshine-yellow folded material. Curtains. “Lou figured it might be good on the downstairs windows, anyway.”

Mimi opened one out. “Lou made these?”

“Yeah, I know. A woman of many talents.”

When she and Jo had carted out a “few sticks of furniture,” as Jo called it, Lou had measured the five downstairs windows. Mimi hadn’t even noticed. Jay had picked up curtain rods on his way out. Mimi was surprised at how happy she was. Curtains!

Jay had dragged his mother’s kayak upstream a few days earlier so that they could both go down to the big house whenever they wanted without the long roundabout drive. Mimi laughed herself silly her first time out. “Hey, New York!” she shouted. “Look at me-Mimi Shapiro in a boat!” She imagined herself going back to the city buff and tanned. Yeah, right. Sore and drenched was more like it! She flipped three times the first day. She never felt really comfortable that first trip, though she was okay as long as she hugged the shore and moved at about five strokes per hour.