Tim Wynne-Jones - The Uninvited

“I could like maybe, you know… take a look?”

“That would be very nice of you.”

“What’s up with it?”

“It beeps at me,” she said.

“Beeps?”

“Yeah. BEEP, BEEP, BEEP. Like that. Scary.”

He stared at the computer. He leaned lightly against the counter, his fingers splayed, taking his weight. She watched the muscles in his forearms flex, the veins pop. But he was gentle as he unlatched the top. And the computer beeped, just as she had said it would.

“Hmmm,” he said, scratching his head. Then he turned to the store’s computer mounted on the counter and started tapping away at the keys. “I’ll go to the Mac website,” he muttered, not taking his eyes off the screen. “See what they say.”

“You’re so kind. Thanks.” And I’ll continue to ogle your delicious arms, thought Mimi, but decided that she should at least try to seem more interested in his research. She couldn’t see the screen and ended up looking at the man. There was something odd with his right eye, as if the pupil had bled into the cornea. A blue seeping.

“Huh,” he said, after a moment. “It seems to be the code for a motherboard problem.”

Mimi winced. “Is that as bad as it sounds?”

He shrugged. “Let’s take a look.”

“I always have problems with mothers,” she said.

He glanced at her, his eyes humorless.

“A joke,” she said.

“Oh. Right.” Then his eyes let her go, and he gently turned the laptop upside down. He went into the back room. The cloth with which he had been cleaning his hands now hung from his back pocket, drawing attention to his butt. I have been in the wilderness too long, thought Mimi.

He returned with a little yellow screwdriver and proceeded to remove a panel from the back of her PowerBook. He took a flashlight and looked into the exposed opening. She craned to see what was inside, then realized she was crowding him, blocking his light.

“Sorry,” she said, pulling back. He smelled of aftershave and fruit gum.

He had a stern look on his face as if this was major surgery and she shouldn’t be there without a mask and gown. She stepped obediently away from the counter. The surgeon went back to his investigation. He reached into the cavity and, after wiggling something a bit, pulled out a two-inch-long piece of high-tech equipment with gold teeth and all kinds of software patches.

“This is a memory module,” he said. He peered into the cavity again. “You have ports for two of them in case you want to boost your memory.”

“I just want to get back the memory I already had,” said Mimi.

He held the module up to the light and squinted at it. “Weird,” he said after a bit.

“What?” she said.

“There’s some kind of smear of something…” He looked at her with a perplexed expression on his face. “I don’t know for sure, but it looks like someone took a colored marker to the contact points.”

He held the module close to her eyes, and she could see on the gold teeth the slightest blush of red, here and there.

“That is weird,” she said. Then she looked closer still and sniffed. Sniffed again. “It smells like… like lipstick,” she said.

He sniffed it, too. “I wouldn’t know.”

“Could that be the problem?” she said. Then added, “Duh!”

He shrugged, but she dared to think that he looked a little bit more keyed up than he had before. A little hopeful, maybe?

“The contact has to be one hundred percent,” he said. “Even a film of ink or lipstick like that and the contact would be, you know, broken.” He looked at her quizzically.

“Believe me,” she said, resting her hand on her chest. “I do not open up my computer and doodle on it.” She took the memory module from him and peered at it again. “Anyway, it’s not a shade I’d ever wear.”

He managed a tightly packaged little smile, which she returned to him opened. Then, distractedly, he reexamined the gold head of the module. “Just a second,” he said. And again he walked back into his work area, returning a moment later with a tiny paintbrush and a bottle of foul-smelling liquid. Mimi scrunched up her nose.

“Nail polish remover?”

“Acetone,” he said. “Same thing, I guess.” He delicately wiped the top of the module until every trace of the red was gone. Then he waved the module in the air, gently.

When it was dry, he carefully replaced it and screwed the panel back on. He turned the computer over and opened the lid.

“No beeps!” said Mimi.

“So far, so good.” Then he turned the computer to face her.

“You want to give ’er a go?” he asked.

“Is it going to blow?”

“I don’t think so.”

She grinned, pushed the power button. And now her computer sang out a proud note to let her know it was leaping into action.

“I don’t believe it,” she said, as she watched her familiar desktop swim into place before her eyes. There was Harpo Marx, grinning his gorgeous face off! It gave her such a jolt of happy relief. Her world was still intact! She clasped her hands together with glee. “I don’t believe it.”

The repairman leaned around the edge of the laptop, and she turned it so that he could see the magic, too. “Your boyfriend?” he asked.

“My dream boyfriend,” she said, but she was giggling now. She double-clicked on one of the files and it sprang to life. “Oh, wow!” she said. “You did it! You did it… What’s your name?”

“Cramer,” he said.

“Cramer!” she said, and gave him a high five. “Here you are taking my computer apart and saving my life, and we haven’t even been introduced. I’m Mimi,” she said, offering him her hand across the counter. “Mimi Shapiro.”

He took her hand and squeezed it, only very carefully, she thought, because had he wanted to, he could have probably crushed it.

“I can’t thank you enough,” she said. He bobbed his head around self-consciously. “No, seriously. I was expecting to have to go into Ottawa or maybe Seattle, but my friend said I should try here first. Wow!” She took a deep breath and waved her hand in front of her face.

“How much do I owe you?”

He held up his hands as if he had no idea.

“Oh, come on, Cramer,” she said, reaching into her purse. “You have rescued me from a fate worse than death. What do you charge for saving damsels in distress?”

Now he truly blushed. He looked down, held up his hand in protestation. “No charge,” he said. “It was just a lucky guess.”

She placed her hand on her throat. “Then I won’t try to bribe you with money anymore. Thank you. Thank you very much. But, oh! I’ll buy stuff,” she said, and placed the discs and ink jet on the counter.

“Okay,” he said, and started to write out a receipt. He looked up and smiled gravely, a little ill at ease. “This friend,” he said.

“Who, Harpo?”

“The one who said you should try here.”

“Oh, right.”

“Could she have done this?”

For a moment she didn’t understand what he was getting at. Then his eyes strayed from her face to the computer she was packing away in its case.

“Oh,” she said. “No. No. Believe me, it wasn’t him.”

“Okay,” he said, nodding. “But the thing is somebody did it.”

Mimi hung the case from her shoulder, held it close to her side. “I know.” There was an awkward silence, but she really didn’t want to start trying to explain about the situation. It sounded too spooky, too perverse.

“Maybe you should keep it locked up?”

“Funny you should mention that,” she said with a laugh stripped of any amusement.

“Why is it funny?” he said.

Mimi looked at him, standing there all earnest with concern. It made her a little uncomfortable. “We had a break-in,” she said.