Tim Wynne-Jones - The Uninvited

No, not hate.

“You robbed us blind. Wasn’t that enough?”

What was she talking about?

“What is it you want?” She paused, then she let out a long shuddery breath. “Just go away. Please. Leave us alone.”

She didn’t yell. It was exactly as if she were talking to him, except that what she said hurt more than he could bear. Then she sniffed, rubbed her nose, and went back in the house. He didn’t hear the door slam.

Cramer slithered from his branch and stood at the base of the tree breathing hard. What was she talking about? He started toward the house. What the hell was she talking about? He stopped, walked back toward the snye, slammed his fist hard against a tree.

Robbed them blind?

That isn’t what you said about a rock taken from a windowsill. It wasn’t even what you said about a picture in a silver frame. What did she mean? Something else. Something big. And then it came to him and he went cold all over. Stooley Peters.

He’d caught the bugger sneaking around, figured him for a Peeping Tom. Maybe he’d done more. Could he tell Mimi that? Yes. He would walk up to her door right now. But he couldn’t. She’d know he was the one in the tree and she’d hate him.

He took a deep shaky breath. He would deal with this himself-find a way.

He slunk away through the glade, and when he was out of earshot, he ran, whipped and slapped and slashed at by the underbrush, until he arrived at last at the cove where he kept Bunny hidden under a blanket of cedar boughs.

He was bleeding. The back of his hand, his cheek, his left ankle. Angrily he tore off the tendrils of undergrowth still clinging to him. Then he cleared Bunny of her cover, and, grabbing the gunwales, he launched himself out onto the darkening water. He dug his paddle down deep, right into the muck of the Eden, almost spilling himself in his desperate need to escape that horrible place where a girl had said that to him.

You are a sick person. Do you know that? You are really sick.

Not just any girl-the most beautiful girl who had ever talked to him. He thrust his paddle into the water and with all the strength in his shaking body propelled Bunny out into the river. He was crying now. Crying in great sobs. Crying in rage.

“It isn’t fair! It isn’t fucking fair!”

And he was so wrapped up with the unfairness of everything that he didn’t notice what was happening to him.

He was going down.

The boat was filling up with water. From holes all along its keel, the river poured into Bunny, and with every stroke he only drove her farther down into the water. He stopped, midstream, and sat there, sinking.

Lazar called Saturday from the Lord Nelson Hotel in Halifax, Nova Scotia. It was pricey, he said, but in for a penny in for a pound. What does that mean? Mimi wondered but didn’t ask. He sounded almost cheery, as if the terrible joke Mimi’s father had played on him had snapped him out of his stupor. He was in the process of raiding the hospitality fridge in his room for tiny bottles of booze. He had rented a car and driven down the coast to where she wasn’t. And then he had driven back to Halifax.

“A very big lesson,” he said. “A very expensive lesson.”

Mimi kept her lips zipped. She was not going to apologize for what her father had done. But it seemed Lazar wasn’t looking for an apology.

He made Mimi laugh with his running commentary of what the hospitality fridge had to offer in the way of alcoholic diversion. It reminded her of when they first started seeing each other. How he was always explaining how things worked: how subways ran on the energy created by people on treadmills in gyms all over the city; how smog was necessary to hide the hooks that held up the skyscrapers. He would take her to obscure dives he had discovered, where the waiters knew him and treated him like a king and her, like the king’s consort. She could hear that same sense of wound-too-tight fun in his voice tonight. Then he sighed and she expected the worst. But he surprised her. Well, he had always been surprising.

“I have been crazy,” he said. “I thought crazy in love but perhaps, really, just crazy. No?”

She had a lump in her throat. Was this a setup?

“Are you still there?” he asked, his voice gentle. But she couldn’t speak. “If you have hung up,” he said, “I will just keep talking anyway and then tell myself we had this discussion and it’s, as you would say, all good.”

“I’m still here,” she said.

“Good, because I would rather talk to you than to myself, but I wouldn’t blame you for hanging up.”

Mimi swallowed hard. Was this a trap? “I’m sorry,” she said. “I…” But she wasn’t sure what she could add. She was sorry in a way and she wasn’t really sorry in another way, but she was confused and wary.

“You have no reason to be sorry,” he said. “This wild-goose chase was not your idea. And even if it was, I gave you no options.” He sighed. “Sophia has left me,” he said.

“You told me.”

“But I only told you half a truth,” he said. “It wasn’t because of you, Meem. It was because of me. I have been unfaithful for so long. I thought it was different with you. You know? Different. Ah, of course you know. Well, now I know, too. Crazy, hey?” She heard the sound of another cap being snapped open on another tiny bottle. “A slow learner,” he said, and chuckled sadly.

“Lazar,” she said. “It was fun-at first, I mean.”

He laughed again, a little drunkenly. “At first, yes,” he said, but not unkindly.

“I didn’t want to run away, but I couldn’t think of… You were so…”

“No, don’t remind me!” he said. “It is painful to think of the last couple of months. You were clever to go. You are a clever girl. A talented girl.”

Mimi could feel the tears coming, welling up in her. Relief and release from all that anger. And sadness, too. Sadness at the part she had played in this.

“You will not have to worry about me being a pest anymore.”

“Lazar, I-”

“No. It’s true. I have been a pest. But I have come to my senses, okay? And I am leaving NYU.”

Mimi was on her guard again. “What do you mean?”

“I mean what I say. There were rumors in the department. My reputation was… how can I put this delicately?” He laughed. “I cannot put it delicately. Let’s just say, my reputation was catching up to me. So, to save myself the mortification of being dismissed, I have offered my resignation.”

“Lazar, I never said anything-”

“To the dean? Of course, you didn’t. You didn’t need to. I have no one to blame but myself. But all is not lost. I have found work.”

“You have?”

“I’m going to Baylor.”

“Where’s that?”

Lazar laughed. “A good question,” he said. “It’s in Waco, Texas. I have to learn how to say that. It’s Way-co, yes? I did not know this at first.”

“You’re moving to Texas?” Mimi tried to imagine Lazar in a cowboy hat.

“It’s the largest Baptist university in the world,” he said. “Me teaching in a Baptist university. Communication studies. I tell you, my world is… how shall I say this? Changing?” he said. “Yes, that puts a good spin on it. Changing.”

Mimi was shaking with relief. He was moving thousands of miles away. And she refused to feel guilty, and yet “You will be happy?” he asked. She wasn’t sure, but there did not seem to be any malice in what he was saying. “Because it is important to me, after everything, that you are happy. Well, a little bit sad. Yes?”

“Okay,” she said meekly. “But-”

“No but s, Meem. You be happy. That is good. And before I get too ridiculous, let me just say thank you for the good times and say good-bye, you delightful creature.”