Tim Wynne-Jones - The Uninvited

“Well, I just did. Except it was only a guess.”

“And the snake skin?”

Mimi rolled her eyes. “Listen, the only snakeskin I’ve ever seen was on a really nice pair of boots at Bloomingdale’s.”

His frown lessened. Or at least his forehead uncreased a little.

“I couldn’t afford the boots. And seriously, I have no idea what you are talking about.”

“This snake skin was curled on the pillow on my bed,” he said.

“Eeuw! But I thought you said you didn’t live here.”

“I don’t. I crash sometimes. I have a mattress in case I end up working late.”

“‘Working late’?”

“We were talking about the snake skin,” he said.

“Right.” Mimi shuddered. “That is gross!”

“Yes, it is.”

Her arms were still crossed, and she hugged herself a little tighter at the thought of what he was saying. Then the kettle whistled and he got up to attend to it.

She backed out of his way, but from the way his head was hanging, she didn’t think he was much of a threat anymore. Kind of sweet, really.

“So, Jay,” she said, her voice upbeat, “what is it you do here? Which is not the same as what are you doing here-a question you still haven’t answered.”

He grinned a little. He was still clearly pissed, but just maybe she could win him over. She had a habit of shooting first and asking later, but she did not want this to get messy.

“You want some tea?” he asked, good manners winning out over smoldering resentment.

“Thanks,” she said. “Tea would be good.”

“There’s no milk,” he said.

“And no lemon, I guess.”

He shook his head. “No fridge.” Then, with the tea steeping in a Brown Betty teapot, he resumed his seat at the little table. She pulled out the chair across from him. It was a bright yellow chair that might have seemed cheery under different circumstances.

“I’m still waiting,” she said.

But he stirred his tea and wouldn’t look at her.

“Listen,” she said, “whatever’s been happening here, it wasn’t me. I left New York yesterday and crossed the Peace Bridge at around two this afternoon, entering Canada for the first time in my life.”

He looked at her candidly.

“And I hate snakes,” she said. “Except in expensive boots.”

He smiled. What a treat! Maybe she’d keep him around-as a maid. Then the smile wilted. He sighed and lowered his head. He knitted his fingers together.

Shit, she thought. He’s going to say grace.

But he was just sad. Sad and drained.

“This stuff has really gotten to you, huh?”

He looked up at her and nodded. “You could say that. Somebody obviously doesn’t love me being here.”

It was the perfect segue. But some instinct made Mimi hold her fire. She knew she’d have to burst this guy’s bubble sooner or later, but she was intrigued. And she wasn’t stupid, either. If somebody didn’t want Jay here, was that somebody going to take kindly to her?

“It’s not what you’d call an all-out terror campaign,” she said. “I mean you haven’t found any dolls that look like you with pins stuck in them or pentagrams written in blood on the door, right?”

He chuckled. But then he looked hard at her, and his shiny brown-gold eyes glowed so strongly she had to look away. That wasn’t something she did very often.

He poured their tea at the counter. “In a way, it’s worse,” he said, handing her a mug. “Come on.”

He led her from the kitchen into a front room that was empty except for a vacuum cleaner standing guard in one corner and a beanbag chair by the east-side window with a few books and magazines strewn around it. Through a door she saw a mattress on a bare floor in the only other room. The bed was covered with a bright blue comforter.

There was a stairway with light cascading down it like a warm yellow carpet. She followed him up to the second level, and this was another story altogether. She had heard about this from her father, but he had been vague about the details, either because he’d forgotten or preferred to keep it a surprise. And what a surprise!

There had been interior walls up here, a bedroom or two, but they were gone now. The space was wide open-a loft-with posts and beams to take the weight of the missing walls. The room was naturally lit by a gable window in the front and one in the back. There was also a window at the east end and two smaller windows to either side of the chimney stack on the west wall. The floor was stained with colorful spots and dribbles, courtesy of her father. A large carpet of industrial gray twill covered most of the central space, and on the carpet sat a couple of Ikea-type trestle tables, upon one of which sat an impressive Mac connected by all sorts of cables and adapters and who knows what to a couple of synthesizers and an array of black boxes stacked in a rack behind what she guessed had to be some kind of mixing board. There was a ratty-looking Yamaha keyboard and several other electronic thingies strewn on the floor, their little LED lights glowing in readiness. Guitars were arrayed on stands around Action Central. So was what she thought must be an electronic drum kit. There were mikes on stands, speakers and headphones, and a music stand and…

“Shit!” she said. “It’s a recording studio.”

He laughed. “Well, sort of,” he said modestly. Then once again his face fell and he looked sad, defeated. She carefully put down her mug of tea on the floor by the stairs.

“I have bad luck with liquids and computers,” she said. “I fried my laptop with a double latte.”

“Bummer,” he said. But his mind was elsewhere. “I want you to hear something.”

He cleared a space on the desk and put down his own teacup. Then he booted up the Mac. He sat, put on a pair of headphones, and started moving things around on the screen with a mouse, so quickly and expertly that she didn’t have time to catch what he was doing. When he stopped, the screen was filled with blocks of color like a Mondrian painting on a gray background. He vacated his seat and the headphones.

She sat and he placed the headphones on her and tightened them for her. And when she nodded that she was comfortable, he punched the space bar.

Simple was written in the title band at the top of the screen. There were instrument names written in a list down the left-hand side of the screen. It was some kind of musical composition. Yes. There was a goofy-sounding riff played, she guessed, on the Yamaha. Her mother had bought her a similar keyboard when she was a kid, before her musical talents had been tested and found to be nonexistent. But the goofy theme soon was undermined by a deep and resonant sound and a wind song that seemed to blow the melody out of the water, replacing it with a harmonically complex tune that she realized was a variation of the rinky-dink Yamaha melody. Meanwhile, a rhythm was beginning to pulse under the rich tapestry of sound, picking up momentum. She nodded in time with it, smiling.

“Can you hear it?” he asked.

She went to take off the headphones, but he stayed her hand. He wanted her to keep listening. “Hear what?” she said, too loud, because of the music pounding in her ears. The question was ridiculous.

“Listen closely,” he shouted.

She concentrated but felt a little exasperated. This was nuts! And then suddenly she heard something unexpected. Unexpected because it was random-out of sync to the orchestration. A chirping sound.

She looked up at him. “The cricket?” she said. He nodded. Then he reached over her shoulder and paused the piece, and she leaned back in the chair and pulled off the headphones. She looked at him. “You didn’t put it there?” He shook his head. “And you can’t get rid of it?”