Tim Wynne-Jones - The Uninvited

“Are you interested in him?”

Mimi sighed. “I don’t think so.”

Jay shook his head. “Because your track record with regards to boyfriends isn’t exactly great, is it?”

Mimi bit her lip.

“That was totally harsh,” said Iris.

“I’m sorry,” said Jay, his voice sullen.

Mimi glanced at him. “Yeah, well, I guess I had that coming. For all you know, I’m this total loser when it comes to men. Maybe I’m into abuse. Masochism.”

Jay let out a long sigh. “I said I was sorry. It was a dumb thing to say.”

Iris left her post at the wall and came over to Jay. She slipped an arm around his waist. “Take a chill pill, okay?”

Jay dropped his forehead to her shoulder. Mimi got up from her chair and walked over to the window to look out at the day, a dull one, motionless, waiting. Was she crazy? More to the point, was she completely wrong about Cramer? Jay was right; this was serious. Cramer knew where she lived. That didn’t mean he’d been breaking in. She tried to think of him hauling off the guitars. No. The movie camera? That was another thing. If he was infatuated… But none of it fit together in her head.

“Mimi?” Mimi looked at Iris, who was sitting beside Jay on the desk now. She had come straight from the office and was still in her work clothes. She looked so mature and smart. “There’s something that troubles me,” Iris said, her voice cautious, tactful. “When you took your laptop into the store. Cramer knew exactly how to fix it.”

“He looked it up on a Mac website.”

“I know, but you have to admit, it was pretty astonishing. All things considered. And he didn’t want to charge you, right?”

Mimi nodded reluctantly. She had thought of this already and couldn’t summon up the image of Cramer standing in this room wielding a tube of lipstick, his hand in the guts of her computer. It was just too difficult to imagine.

Then Jay came over to her. She folded her arms, looked down. She was still hurt by what he had said. But when she looked at him, his own anger had seeped out of his eyes and he had the hangdog look he slipped into so easily. “You said you spoke to that guy in the tree the other night. You told him he was sick. That what he was doing was sick. Hiding, watching. That’s what you said, right?” She nodded. “And you honestly can’t think that this character-Cramer, I mean-is capable of that kind of thing?” She shook her head. Jay raised his eyebrows, then leaned on the windowsill and looked outside. “So what do you propose we do?” he said.

She touched his arm, not quite able to believe he was going to give her a chance to do this her way. She looked over at Iris, who was holding up her hands in surprise.

“Thanks,” she said to Iris. “Thanks,” she said to Jay, and squeezed his arm.

“Tell me your plan,” he said. “I haven’t agreed to anything yet.”

Mimi hadn’t really gotten that far in her thinking. But it came to her out of the blue. “I’d like to write him a letter.”

“And send it where?” said Jay. “To PDQ?”

“I guess. Maybe I could drop it off to speed things up, when he wasn’t there.”

Jay rolled his eyes. “This is beginning to sound like middle school.”

“Hey, wait!” said Iris, snapping her fingers. “Is there a phone book here?” There was, a very old one, and in a moment Iris found what she was looking for. Out of the sixteen “Lees” in Ladybank, there was one “Lee, M.” and it was particularly notable:

Lee M 1436 UpperValentineRd

“Whoa,” said Jay. “We’re twelve thirty-seven.”

“So it’s just up the road?” said Mimi. He nodded. “And he might have seen me out jogging, like I said?”

Jay nodded again. “You want to take a look?”

Her eyes brightened. “Okay,” she said, “but why don’t I write a letter, and we’ll decide whether we’re going to leave it when we see the place.”

Hey, Cramer:

A strange thing happened. Quite a few strange things, really. First, like I told you, we’ve had these break-ins at our place. The last time, the window was broken and some valuables were stolen. Not nice. That was the time someone messed with my computer, which you fixed. Thanks. But then the other day when I saw you in town and we had such a good talk, you asked me how things were doing “up there,” and although “up there” could mean a lot of things, it struck me as odd when I thought about it later because I had never told you where I lived. Now it turns out you live on the same road. Your telephone number is on the wall of this house. And there are other things, too. Apparently, you used to follow Jackson Page around back in high school. If you’ve read this far, you’re probably wondering what I’m getting at. I kind of wonder myself. It sounds like I’m accusing you of something, and I don’t want to do that. I’m sure there is some kind of explanation for all these strange things. And I want to know what it is. I want to talk to you. Would you do that? I have to know what’s going on. I want you to be straight with me. My cell phone number is at the bottom of the page, if you want to call. If you’d rather talk face-to-face, call first. I don’t want any more surprises.

Mimi

She added the phone number at the bottom.

“What do you think?” she asked.

Jay scratched his head. “You’ve invited him over. What if he is a nutcase?”

“I like to think I can spot the nutcases,” said Mimi. “Like I know when to cross the street. I know when to curl my car keys into my fist with the meanest, sharpest one sticking out like a blade between my fingers. You know what I mean?”

The look Jay gave her wasn’t hard to read.

“Okay, so I blew it with Lazar.”

Jay read the letter again. “Do we really want this guy coming around?” he asked.

Iris looked at Mimi. “He’s right, you know. Maybe this was all a ploy to get your attention. A creepy kind of courtship.”

Mimi shook her head. “It started before I was here, remember? But I don’t think he’s dangerous. And, anyway, I’ve got my handy firearm,” she said. And she patted her mace canister in its woven holster.

So they piled into Iris’s Toyota and took off up the road, passing only two other driveways, one overgrown and clearly abandoned, before coming at last to 1436.

The driveway was steep and deeply rutted. The mailbox was rusty and sitting on a cedar pole that was leaning drunkenly toward the road. You could only catch a glimpse of the house behind a thick growth of sumac. It didn’t look like much.

“Do we go up?” Jay asked.

The others shook their heads. There was no sign of any life, no car that they could see from the road. They sat silently in the Toyota, taking it all in.

“How old was that phone book?” asked Mimi. And Jay knew what she was saying: did anyone really live here? He opened his door and stepped out. The door of the mailbox squeaked noisily as he opened it, and Mimi’s eyes darted to the crest of the driveway, expecting Cramer to appear, or M.-whoever she was. But no one came.

Jay held up the contents of the mailbox for their inspection: circulars mostly, addressed to “Occupant,” except for a bill from Hydro Energy addressed to Mavis Lee. The bill was an overdue notice.

He shoved Mimi’s letter in with the other mail. As Iris put the car in gear, Jay turned to look at Mimi sitting in the backseat. “I hope we’re doing the right thing,” he said.

It was dark before Cramer made it home, so he had to find his way up the creek by feel, like a blind man with a paddle for a white cane. Bunny lay across the thwarts of the old aluminum canoe. The holes drilled into her keel had been too wide to fill up with what he’d taken with him.