Tim Wynne-Jones - The Uninvited

“Jay was telling me you left New York in a bit of a hurry.”

Mimi frowned. “What exactly did he tell you?”

“A predatory prof?”

Mimi glared at Jay.

He threw up his hands. “She forced it out of me,” he said.

“Yeah, right.”

“Dish!” said Iris.

Note to self, thought Mimi. Keep secrets from Jay. But Iris was not about to be put off and so Mimi dished. She didn’t mind. In fact, she was a little amazed at how crazy hungry she was to talk about it. So she told them about the exhilaration in the early days of the affair, the clandestine dates, the off-the-beaten-track venues, the surprising places one could find to be totally alone together even in an academic establishment. Then she told them how it all came undone, as Lazar got more and more infatuated.

“It got kind of surreal,” she said.

“Like melty?” said Iris.

“Huh?”

“You know, that picture by Salvador Dali with the melting clocks hanging from dead trees or whatever.”

“Ah, melty,” said Mimi. “I guess.” But what she guessed was that Iris was getting pretty drunk. Come to think of it, so was she. Nikki had come back with a second pitcher of margaritas. Mimi had tried to decline, but Jay guessed her only real concern.

“Nobody’s driving,” he said. “Transportation is under control.”

She didn’t bother to ask what that meant, mostly because she wanted to keep drinking. Wanted to let go. And she had let go. Except that letting go had led to this discussion about her love life.

“Is he dangerous, this Lazar Coatrack?”

“Cosic,” said Mimi. She shrugged and shook her head. Then thought a moment and nodded. Iris stared at her a little cross-eyed.

“Could you be slightly more definitive?”

“I’m here, aren’t I?” said Mimi. And what she meant was she had run away, but they already knew that. Hell, half the people at Conchita’s probably knew it by now, she realized. Her voice had gotten quite loud. It did that.

Jay looked serious, and she was about to apologize when he said something that stunned her. “He was stalking you, wasn’t he?”

She felt panicky as if Jay must have been stalking her himself. “How did you know that?”

“Your documentary. There was some dude standing outside the apartment, on the corner.”

Mimi stared at Jay and nodded slightly, a little unnerved. “Good eye,” she said.

Jay shook his head. “Not really. You zeroed right in on him, swore, and then went into this dissolve. If I was writing the score, there’d be cellos.”

“Cellos?”

He nodded. “Playing a lot of sharps.”

Mimi was a little lost.

Luckily Iris was there to move things along.

“So tell us about the film treatment.”

Mimi poured herself another margarita. “The script is so-so,” she said, waggling her hand as if she was screwing in a lightbulb that didn’t quite fit. “Actually, I’m thinking of turning it into a sci-fi thriller, set on one of the moons of Venus.”

“Odd choice,” said Iris.

“Does Venus have moons?” said Jay.

“Dunno. Could be a space station, I guess. Anyway, instead of an aging professor having a fling with a beautiful freshman, I’m thinking of an aging Gangroid with three heads, huge talons, and… well, you know. The rest.”

“Eeuw, kinky,” said Iris.

“And the beautiful freshman?” said Jay.

“Natalie Portman,” said Mimi.

It was just then that a rowdy customer arrived, already three sheets to the wind, and it turned out to be good old Rudy Slater. Mimi shook hands, did the intro thing, smiled nicely, and then sank back into her chair, talked out-out of practice-and glad to be saved from any more dishing. Rudy, Jay, and Iris caught each other up-she wasn’t listening. He left a few hearty moments later, but he had done the job of putting the Lazar Cosic Horror Show out of her dinner mates’ minds. Good! And, she thought, a great ploy to remember for screenwriting. Noisy guy arrives. Wipe.

“Oh, I love being home,” said Iris, leaning back in her chair and staring out at the water. It was dark now, rippling with reflected light. Then she smiled at Mimi and made her feel as if she, somehow, was part of what Iris meant about being home.

“You love it for about three weeks,” said Jay. “Then you go, ‘Wait a second-there is absolutely nothing happening here.’”

“Harsh,” said Mimi. “And not true. I saw a poster for a hoedown, somewhere. The Oompah something.”

“The Ompah Stomp,” said Jay, “and don’t knock it.”

“I wasn’t knocking it. I want to go, just as soon as I get a ball cap.”

“True,” said Iris. “There’s the Ompah Stomp; the Blue Skies music festival; the amateur theatrical production of Gilbert and Sullivan every fall; hockey, of course; and… what was that other thing, Jay?”

“Monster car rallies at the fairgrounds?”

“Right. Oh, and golf. Everybody golfs.”

“My mother doesn’t golf.”

“Oh, right. All the lesbian doctors in Ladybank abstain from golf, but everybody else plays.”

“I like it here,” said Mimi. “It’s so…”

“Pretty?” said Jay.

“Pretty,” said Mimi, curling up in her chair and cradling her drink. Her sixth? Her hundredth? There was a lull in the conversation, and she listened to the voices around her, happy vacation voices. Except the accent was all wrong. And her thoughts drifted, inevitably to New York and humid evenings, sun filtered through dust and crowded sidewalk cafes. Suddenly she felt an intense stab of homesickness.

Had she really let herself be driven out of the city by a professor? No, there was more to it than that. Getting away was a good thing. And look what she had found! She glanced at Jay chatting with Iris. This… this was something she had never experienced. Something to hang on to. And yet…

“You okay?” Jay asked.

“Homesick,” she said. “But I’ll survive.”

Iris poured the rest of her drink into Jay’s glass. “Ladybank is a wonderful place to be from, ” she said. And made a toast with her empty glass. “Here’s to being from somewhere and getting away!”

“And visiting,” said Jay. Mimi caught his glance and wondered if he was telling her something. That this was just a visit and she shouldn’t get any ideas about staying. Great, she thought, homesick and paranoid, a winning combination.

“Hey,” he said, leaning across the table to rest his hand on hers, “what’s up?”

Mimi shrugged. “I’m rethinking Natalie Portman. Maybe Keira Knightley is more the coed-from-Venus type.”

And on the conversation wobbled, veering away from anything serious and punctuated by laughter. Liberating laughter, thought Mimi, when she allowed herself to be liberated from her feelings of being out of place. There was something else bothering her… What was it? Ah, yes. They had left the house unguarded. Christ! She shook it off. She had locked the place up. It would be safe. Except that they wouldn’t be going back there tonight. Couldn’t. Whatever transportation Jay had planned, he was in no better shape to drive than she was. It really was time to go.

Jay picked up the tab. Mimi left the tip. She found a five-euro note in her purse left over from Italy, hiding like a secret in the detritus at the bottom of her purse. She was drunk enough to leave it-a very big tip. But Iris wouldn’t let her.

“Nikki will think it’s play money and throw it away,” she whispered.

The three of them wound their way up the staircase from the river, hanging on to the railings. The happily reunited lovers had their heads together nattering about how well Rudy Slater’s skin had cleared up but how his love life sucked, and Mimi looked up into the night sky for a friend of her own, like the moon, for instance. This was something she was only just learning how to do-look for heavenly light of one kind or another. Apparently, there were stars and planets, too, and you could actually see them sometimes. Who knew?