Tim Wynne-Jones - The Uninvited

“Jay likes to make people happy,” said Iris.

“What do you mean?”

“He likes to give people what he thinks they want, especially teachers. He compartmentalizes. You’ve got your rock and roll here and your serious music here. And these people listen to this, and those people listen to that.”

“But that’s garbage,” said Mimi. “What about passion? What about your ‘inner music,’ or whatever?”

“That would be good,” said Iris. And Mimi wondered if she was blowing her off, but actually she had spotted an enormous red sun hat.

“What do you think?” she said.

“It looks like a UFO,” said Mimi. Iris bought it anyway and put it on. It dwarfed her but cast a beautiful woven shadow over her face.

“It’s ten degrees cooler under here,” she said.

“And you look ten degrees cooler,” said Mimi. Then she spotted the worst baseball cap she had ever seen. It had fishermen’s excuses written all over it and badly drawn cartoons. “I have so got to get this for my friend Rodney,” she said.

“Does he like to fish?”

“Only for compliments.”

At the next booth Iris found a game of Mouse Trap, all set up. “The cheese is missing,” said the lady behind the table. “But that way you can supply your own.”

“You think it would work with Asiago?” Mimi asked.

The woman nodded. “Or Limburger, if you can stand the smell.”

“I like that,” said Mimi, but what she really liked was the woman’s pitch. She bought the game, and the woman said she’d pack it up for them while they continued shopping.

“Shopping,” said Mimi with a sigh. “That’s what’s been missing from my life.” At another booth she found a knitted EpiPen holder that you could attach to your belt. She bought it and put her canister of mace in it.

“You look like a cowboy,” said Iris.

“The fastest draw in the East,” said Mimi practicing a few times. And then her eyes strayed to a table of bobble heads, and she gasped with delight.

“A bobble-head Mountie,” she cried. “I promised Jamila a Mountie.” She couldn’t believe her luck and immediately text-messaged her friend to let her know the good news. Then she followed Iris to a display of carved duck decoys, which is where she was standing, wondering about the whole idea of making something beautiful like a decoy in order to trick ducks so you could blow them to bits, when Jamila texted her back. ran into l.c. asked where u were.

“Uh-oh,” said Iris.

Mimi was furious. There was no way Lazar accidentally “ran into her.” She fled the fair and made her way to a quiet spot down by the water. Iris, wisely, stayed behind. Mimi could barely talk she was so angry. She had bought a new SIM card, but she was going to have to let Lazar know her new number, anyway. He did not answer, so she left a message. “Phone me,” she said. “ And stay the fuck away from my friends! ”

The others were going out that night, but Mimi opted to stay home. There had been no further disturbances at the house, which might have been because they seldom left it unattended. In any case, she was not afraid. Part of her believed that Constable Roach was right, that the perp had toyed with them for a while and then made a hit and was gone. If he was a local, maybe he saw the cop car there and got cold feet. Good. But part of Mimi still dreamed of a confrontation, of whipping out her mace canister and, when the bastard was stumbling around blind, hitting him senseless with a chair or something.

She was watching When Harry Met Sally and missing New York when Lazar phoned her back.

“What are you doing stalking my friends?”

“Mimi, calm down.”

“Do not tell me to calm down. This is not about me. You are a pervert. Do you realize that?”

“That is not the case. And I was not, as you say, stalking your friend.”

“Lazar,” she said. Then paused to take a weary breath. On the screen Meg Ryan had her finger raised at Billy Crystal, about to give him a lecture. Then the image dissolved into a screen saver of a rain forest. Behind Lazar she heard urban sounds, an echoey loudspeaker voice-the subway, maybe?

“I want to come up there,” he said.

“You don’t even know where ‘there’ is,” she said.

“Actually, I do.”

Mimi sat up a little straighter. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means what it means.”

“So help me, Lazar, I am this close to calling the NYPD.”

“I was not stalking your friend, all right? Why won’t you believe me?”

Mimi was breathing hard, a little frantic. “All Jamila knows is that I’m in Canada. News flash, Lazar, Canada is a BIG PLACE.”

“You’re right, of course,” he said. “But she did mention that there was this house where you are staying that your father owns. So I took the liberty of calling him.”

Mimi froze.

“Meem? Are you still there?”

“You what?”

“I talked to him, and he was kind enough to give me your address.”

Mimi thought her head was going to explode. Blood pounded against her skull like a tsunami against some fragile island wharf.

“Meem?”

“He did not tell you where I am,” she said in a voice only just above a whisper.

“Meem-”

“Stop calling me that!”

“Mimi,” he said, “things have changed. Big things. Sophia has gone to see her parents in Chicago.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“She and I are separating. I have told her about you.”

It was like a nightmare. Every sentence seemed more improbable than the last.

“I am coming,” he said.

“No! You are not. And if you do, you won’t find me here.”

Her face felt like it might burst spontaneously into flames. She could barely breathe, and into the blood-pounding silence came a noise. A noise that was not in the subway or some shopping concourse in Manhattan but nearby. Outside the house. It sounded like a struggle of some kind. Was that a shout? She peered through the curtains.

“We will talk, face-to-face,” he said. “It will be different.”

She heard a voice cry out.

“Lazar, I’ve got to go.”

She was on her feet now and moving toward the kitchen.

“You wait and see,” said Lazar, his voice buoyant, filled with easy good humor. “It will be good between us. As good as it was.”

Through the kitchen window, Mimi could see a shadowy flurry of activity just beyond the illumination from the kitchen light.

“Lazar-”

“I understand, Mimi,” he said, interrupting her. And he went on talking, but she wasn’t listening anymore. She only heard him dimly, a background noise to the struggle in the bushes. She pressed her face against the glass.

Then she gasped.

“What is it?” the voice on the phone demanded, but she hung up. All her attention was on the figure lying facedown in the long grass just past the shed, his old head poking out of the shadows into the light.

Stooley Peters. By the time Mimi had grabbed a flashlight and her mace, he was on his knees, groaning. He looked like some mangy animal.

“Mr. Peters?”

He groaned again. Groggily, he clamped his hand over his head. In the flashlight beam, she could see blood. His skull was bleeding!

For a moment she didn’t know what to do. She was afraid to relinquish her hold on her mace canister and certainly not on the flashlight. Nervously, she aimed it at the bushes, seeing nothing but foliage in every direction. But foliage by flashlight had never been the same since The Blair Witch Project. She swung around, as if maybe the old man’s assailant had sneaked up behind her. But there was nothing-only the shed with its own jumble of shadows lit by the light pouring out of the kitchen door.