Tim Wynne-Jones - The Uninvited

Cramer Lee sat in his canoe in a stand of bulrushes so dense and high it was like being in a small green room. A windowless room with a high blue ceiling and a browny-green shimmering carpet. A room laced together with the whirring of dragonflies.

A breeze picked up, and his hands gripped the gunwales steadying his craft, steadying himself. His breathing was ragged with excitement. He wiped the sweat off his face and then picked up the digital movie camera that he cradled in his lap. He flipped open the viewer screen and started it.

“ A Murder of Good-Byes, a documentary by Mimi Shapiro,” said a perky voice. It was her-the girl in the car. She was wearing a yellow summer dress with thin straps. A flower-print little-girl dress revealing a lot of leg. She was standing in a living room in front of a modern-looking fireplace with a pale green marble front, veined in white. On the mantel were sculptures-African, he guessed.

“First of all, Dmitri,” she said, and the eye of the camera swept around a lavishly appointed room to a golden-colored couch, where some kind of long-haired Siamese-type cat lounged, staring impassively toward her as she coaxed it to speak.

“Say, ‘Good-bye, Mimi,’” she said. “‘Meow, Mimi.’”

The cat looked away as if with disdain. But Cramer wasn’t interested in the cat. The room seemed gilded with light, something from a movie or a fancy magazine.

“Good-bye, apartment,” said Mimi. And then she took him on a tour of her home that ended in her bedroom, where she said good-bye to a stuffed monkey named Ray and every item of furniture.

“Good-bye, bed. Good-bye, closet. Good-bye, dresser. Good-bye, vanity,” she said, and then she laughed as if she had made a joke. The camera grazed the floor strewn with clothing, CDs, magazines. From her window she aimed the camera down to a city street six or seven floors down. A yellow cab pulled up below, and she watched someone get out and disappear from view under the awning over the front doorway. Then her camera floated out toward a busy intersection and suddenly stopped. The girl swore and the camera faded to black.

New York, thought Cramer, but he already knew that from the Mini Cooper’s plates.

The movie continued. Now the camera focused on a faggy-looking Asian guy with his top button done up and yellow thick-rimmed glasses.

“Say good-bye, Rodney,” said the voice behind the camera.

“Good-bye, Rodney,” said the boy. “Oh, my God! Am I going, too?”

“Not this time, oh favorite rummage-sale friend. Mimi must make the trip to the Great White North alone.”

“To find herself,” said Rodney. “And lose you-know-who.”

“Amen,” she answered.

Then Rodney smiled and waved a faggy wave, which Mimi held on to in another long slow fade.

When she faded back in, the scene had changed and there were two girls in a park somewhere, one holding on tightly to the leash of a Doberman. “We want cheesy postcards of Mounties,” she said. “Right, Jamila?”

“Or real Mounties,” said Jamila. “Bring back a real Mountie we can share.”

Again the screen went to black, and Cramer wondered if the little show was over, until he heard the sound of low jazz and the hubbub of a restaurant: clinking plates and glasses, people talking, laughing, muffled traffic. The black was not really black anymore, but only a dark ceiling. The camera panned downward until the lens was full of a man’s face, paunchy, nearly bald, but with wisps of sandy-colored hair fading to gray at the temples.

“Here’s the father figure hiding shamefully behind dark glasses.”

The man’s smile was low-key but indulgent. “Good-bye, sweetheart,” he said.

Then he lazily reached for a glass of red wine, from which he sipped while she trained the lens on him. He looked away, scratched at his unshaven cheek, waved at someone across the room, and then turned back toward Mimi, all without her moving the camera. He waved his hand as if shooing away a fly. She stayed on him and then zoomed in until his face became distorted and there was little on the screen but his nose, blue-veined-a drinker’s nose.

“Is there anything I should say to Canada when I get there?”

As Mimi zoomed out again, the man sipped his wine and sniffed, but not because of any strong emotion that Cramer could see on his placid face. All Cramer could see where his eyes should have been were two Mimis reflected in his shades.

“You had the car checked?”

“Yes, Father dearest.”

“And you phoned the insurance people?”

“Daddy-”

“Just checking,” he said, downing his wine. “It’s a parental prerogative.”

“Like you’d know anything about parenting,” she said.

Cramer gasped, half expecting the man to slap her. But Mimi’s father only chuckled and put down his glass.

“You’re supposed to say, ‘drive sensibly and be careful,’” said Mimi.

Her father scratched his neck. “Yeah, well, I’ll leave that to your mother. She’s the expert on parenting, right?”

He called a waiter, and Mimi made the waiter say good-bye and wish her good luck. Her last shot was of a number of crisp dollar bills left on a white plate.

Cut.

And now, at last, the girl seemed to be sitting in the little red car with her camera aimed through the open passenger window at the front door of what Cramer guessed must be the apartment building in which she lived. THE SAXBOROUGH, it said on a brass plate. It was red brick and there were flower boxes bursting with blooms, under many mullioned windows, alive with sunny reflections, but with black bars on them to keep the world out. Dead center of the tiny screen was the awning he had seen earlier from above and standing under it, half in shadow, was a woman in a suit, with strong, shapely legs and high heels, her hand grasping a black leather briefcase.

“Action,” shouted the camera-girl, and the woman, on cue, walked out from under the canopy into the light and down the short walkway to the sidewalk with an impatient smile on her expensive face. She had gold earrings, gold hair, and some kind of a huge scarf wrapped around her shoulders.

“This is high-powered tax attorney Grier Shapiro of Cavendish, Goldfarb, Shapiro, and Vik, saying good-bye to her only child. Say ‘Good-bye, Mimi, dear,’” said Mimi.

The woman poked her head in the window, arched her stenciled eyebrows, but smiled and complied. “Good-bye Miriam,” she said. Up close, Cramer could see the wrinkles on her turkey neck that her makeup couldn’t hide.

“Did you remember your passport?” she asked.

“Oh, my goodness!” said Mimi. “Is Canada a separate country?”

Her mother smiled wryly. “Phone me tonight,” she said. “On my cell. I’ll be at a fund-raiser until about nine.”

“Yes, Mommy dearest.”

“And drive sensibly, darling,” said the mother, her voice sounding more irritable than concerned.

“I will. And I promise I won’t give any hitchhikers a lift unless they have a degree from an accredited university,” said Mimi.

“You are insufferable,” said the mother.

“And I promise never to drive over a hundred,” said the camera-girl. And then before her mother could argue, she added, “ Kilometers per hour.”

Her mother looked vexed, but then her expression softened. “I’ll miss you, you awful child,” she said. “Be careful and thoughtful. ”

“I will be careful, Mom,” said the girl, with real affection. “Hey, nothing bad happened in London last summer or Firenze — ahhhh, Firenze! Well, nothing I couldn’t handle. So what could happen in Canada? Aren’t they mostly famous for being polite?”

“Not the moose or the bears,” said her mother. “And there are Socialists up there. They’ve got their own political party, from what I hear.”