Tim Wynne-Jones - The Uninvited

So she looked up and… Ta-da! There it was-well three-quarters of it, anyway.

“Hello, moon,” she said.

Then she felt Jay slip his arm around her waist. “You’re staying at Mom’s house tonight,” he said. This was his plan. A taxi.

“What about Ms. Cooper?”

“Leave Ms. Cooper to me,” he said. She looked into his brown eyes, suddenly flashing golden in the headlights of a passing car. She started to protest, but then Iris slipped an arm around her, too, so that she was a Mimi sandwich.

“We can all have breakfast together,” said Iris, “and I can tell you about the Intermarium, and Romanian-Hungarian politics prior to World War Two.” She cackled in a most indelicate way, then burped. Mimi was pretty much in love with her by now.

“I’ve always had a thing about Romania,” said Mimi. “It’s, like, right next to Beatlemania, isn’t it?”

Maybe it was the alcohol, but she wondered if she was going to cry. How maudlin. She hated maudlin. She hadn’t simply scored a delightful brother; she’d scored his delightful girlfriend, too. And eventually? Delightful nieces and nephews!

“Okay,” said Mimi, stopping to look around for her car. “So, Mr. Transportation-is-under-control person. What do we do about my vehicle?”

“We’ll leave a note for the traffic guy.”

“Is it still Bob the traffic guy?” asked Iris. Jay nodded, and Iris turned to Mimi. “He’s been around so long, he used to ticket horses.”

They found the Mini and Jay wrote a note.

Dear Bob,

Inebriated. Took a cab.

Back in the morning.

Yours respectfully,

A responsible driver

“God!” said Mimi. “In New York that would be an invitation to trash the car!”

Meanwhile, Iris pulled a cell phone from her purse and called a cab. She seemed to know the number by heart. Then they all sat on a bench at the corner of Forster and Kane, arm in arm, and waited.

Mimi was rapidly losing the pleasure of being a Mimi sandwich. She had the feeling that the two lovebirds would rather be in each other’s arms than in hers. She got up, saying she needed to stretch.

There weren’t many traffic lights in Ladybank, but there was one at Forster and Kane, and a moment later it turned red to the traffic on the main drag. Only one car pulled up at the intersection, a cherry-red Chevy with its back end up like a dog in heat and a muffler that needed serious attention.

There was a lone driver in the car, a greasy-looking guy with a mullet who leered at Mimi and then revved the motor to make his point.

“For me?” cried Mimi, clasping her hands to her breast. “That is so sexy. Can you do it again?”

She watched the driver’s eyes grow wide with expectation. But even as he revved the motor, the laughter broke from her, seeping and sputtering out like water over a dam. The driver’s euphoria turned sour.

“Bitch!” he shouted.

“Damn straight!” yelled Mimi.

Mullet rolled up his window. He squealed away from the corner as the light turned green, and Mimi headed back toward the bench, not in a completely straight line but with her fist raised, triumphantly. She dragged her canister of mace out of her purse and turned toward the Chevy, now a block away, holding it up, ready to fire.

“Bite me!” she shouted.

“Whoa,” said Iris when Mimi rejoined them. She reached over and took the canister to look it over. She’d obviously never seen one before.

“Jay told me about the creep,” she said. “The other one, I mean. Up at the snye.”

“He’s gone,” said Mimi. “We scared him off. Right, partner?”

Jay shoved his own fist in the air. “Woo-hoo,” he said with as much energy as he could muster.

Mimi plumped herself down on the bench. “I leave one stalker creepoid behind in New York and- bam! — walk right into another. Well, kind of. ”

Then they sat, waiting, until suddenly Iris sat up straight.

“Oh,” she said. “It’s like that kid at school, remember?”

“Huh?”

“The guy who used to follow you around.”

Jay looked puzzled. He glanced at Mimi and shrugged. “She’s a history major, what can I say?”

“No, really!” said Iris. “I can’t remember his name. But he was always around.”

“See?” said Mimi, poking Jay in the shoulder. “You had a stalker, too.”

“Well, it wasn’t really like that,” said Iris. “I mean it wasn’t truly creepy.”

“It wasn’t truly anything,” said Jay. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Iris’s forehead bunched up in deep thought. “What was his name? He was one of those totally forgettable people, you know?” Then she covered her mouth. “That was shitty, what I said.”

“What do you mean?”

“About him being a totally forgettable person.”

“Well, it must be true,” said Jay. “I don’t remember him.”

“We talked about this,” said Iris.

“I don’t remember that, either.”

Iris turned to Mimi. “You know the kind of guy I mean?”

Mimi nodded. A nobody. Sure. But one who had a thing for Jay? She turned to him, a question on her face.

He held up his hands in surrender. “She’s on crack. I swear to God, I don’t remember any of this.”

The cab turned onto Forster and slowed down. Jay waved and it pulled a U-turn, stopping at the curb. They were all snug in the backseat heading out toward Riverside Drive when Iris said, “I remember why he freaked me out.”

“Who?” said Jay.

“The stalker,” said Mimi impatiently, and turned her attention back to Iris. “Go on.”

Iris leaned back in the seat, looking straight ahead and talking quietly as if not wanting to jar the memory. “There was this time I was trying to catch up with Jay. I don’t remember why-I mean why I was behind him, but I was. Anyway, my point is, there I was and I didn’t feel like running, so I just followed. And that’s when I realized that he-this kid-was following Jay, too. He was between us.”

“And he didn’t just live out that way?” said Mimi.

Iris shook her head again. “I don’t think so. I know it sounds lame, but I felt sure he was following Jay.”

“Get out of town,” said Jay.

“Actually, the guy looked like he had been bused in from Hick Holler, if you want to know the truth. Oops! I’m being a snob again. But really…”

“And?” said Mimi.

“And… nothing,” said Iris. “I mean he didn’t do anything. He was just always there, a little way off. Wherever our boy Jackson Page was so was the Fan.”

Jay chuckled. “Are you sure it wasn’t you he had the hots for?”

Mimi turned to Iris. She was gorgeous. It would be easy for some lonely guy to have a big-time crush on her. But Iris just kept shaking her head. “Uh-uh,” she said. “It was you, honey-bunch.”

She was alone. It was what Cramer had hoped for, dreamed of. In the four days he had off from Sunday through Wednesday, he saw Jay come and go but never stay the night. Who knows what had gone on the last eight days, but Cramer was full of hope. Mimi and Jay never held hands or kissed, as far as he could see. They were friends, just friends, he told himself, and almost managed to believe it. Cramer loved to listen to them talk-so quick and funny. He wished he could talk to a girl that way. He’d had girlfriends, sure, but no one like Mimi.

She would go for a run in the morning up the Valentine. She was gone forty minutes or so. She is running right by my place, he thought. And he was glad she wouldn’t see the little yellow house up on its knoll above the creek. He had told his mother he would bring a girl home to meet her, but he would never take Mimi there.