The Uninvited Page 4

  “My father told me about it,” she said. “He… Well, he owns this place.”

  Jay stared at her, his mouth hanging open. Then he closed it and swallowed. “That’s really funny,” he said at last. “Because my father owns this place.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  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.”

  “Well, I’ll watch out for moose and bears and Socialists. Anything else?”

  Her mother touched her fingers to her lips, kissed them, and reached out to touch her daughter’s lips.

  Mimi made an exaggerated kissy sound, and then Grier withdrew her hand.

  “Phone!” she said, wagging her finger at the lens. She left, looking at her watch as she marched sharply to the corner, where she hailed a cab. One stopped immediately.

  Cramer fast-forwarded through scenery and strangers in roadside diners and gas stations until he came to a close-up of Mimi’s own face fringed in dark pixie hair and with her impossibly blue eyes. Cramer’s heart rate speeded up.

  “News update,” she said. “This is Mimi Shapiro reporting from Nowhere!” She swiveled the camera around to take in the countryside.

  “Not a Starbucks in sight,” she said, returning the camera to her face. But for a second the lens took in her cleavage, too.

  His arms went limp and he lowered them to his lap. He closed the viewer, resisting the urge to look at her again. He closed his strong hands around the camera. It was red, a JVC HDD, with thirty gigabytes of drive. Laser-touch panel operation. He could guess what it was worth, a thousand bucks or so, and yet so small he could completely conceal it in his grip.

  So many toys, he thought.

  He took a deep breath. Closed his eyes tight. If only he’d had this camera when she had changed by the car. If he closed his eyes, he could see her, almost entirely naked, the cheeks of her butt paler than her tanned legs.

  This changed things.

  What happened now?

  He would be patient. Patience was his greatest gift. He had read something about that in his mother’s book The Artist’s Path. “Above all else, be patient with yourself. The overzealous boater swamps his craft.”

  Cramer had felt the author was talking directly to him with that quote. But he knew she wasn’t talking about canoes. He understood what she meant, all right.

  Calmer now, he stared toward where the house on the snye stood, though he could not see it from here, anymore than they could see him. He tugged on his one gold earring. Tugged until it hurt.

  He wondered what they were up to in there. Was she a new girlfriend?

  He took a long deep breath.

  The wind picked up again and rocked him. From the look of what she had in the car, Mimi was planning on more than an overnight visit. So she was going to be around for a while. The thought made Cramer’s blood buzz in his veins.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Jay and Mimi stared at each other for one very long uncomprehending moment, standing in the middle of his bedroom by the gaping hole in the floor.

  “Marc Soto, the artist,” she said.

  “Right.”

  Then Jay led her back to the kitchen to sit down.

  “I feel numb,” said Mimi. “Catatonic.”

  “Catatonia is characterized by rigidity of the muscles,” said Jay. “You’re as wobbly as Jell-O.”

  She stared at him. “I’m impressed,” she said.

  “Yeah, well, I’m not only anal; I’m a doctor’s son.”

  They sat for long moments at the table not quite able to look straight at each other. Embarrassed-at least he was. He had been entertaining thoughts about her, for Christ’s sake! Thoughts that now made him cringe, but only sort of. And that made it worse. Then a desperate idea occurred to him.

  “Your birth father?” he said.

  She nodded, frowning, as if she wished it weren’t true. Then she looked down again, suddenly demure, though that seemed the last word he would ever use to describe her.

  Then finally their eyes snagged, and he tried to say what neither of them had been actually able to articulate yet.

  “So you’re like… We’re… I’m your…”

  She laughed. “Nice try, Shakespeare,” she said.

  They looked hard at each other-looking for themselves in each other’s faces. That was what he was doing, anyway, and assumed she was doing the same.“You’ve got Marc’s forehead,” she said.

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Trust me.”

  “I’ve never laid eyes on the man,” he said.

  “Not even photographs?”

  He shrugged. “Yeah, I guess. When I was a kid. He left before I was born.” The answer seemed inadequate to him, as if he should have cared more.

  She was staring at his face again, her eyes taking him in with an intimacy that made him a little breathless. “You’ve got the line of his jaw, too,” she added. “Or what it used to be like. Now his face has gone all kind of spongy.”

  Jay felt his jaw with his hand, realized how tightly clenched it was.

  “Are you okay?”

  She sounded so solicitous. And after a moment he was able to say yes, which was ridiculous, really, under the circumstances. Then his mind wandered back to the hidey-hole, and he must have glanced in the direction of the bedroom, because she stood up and reached for his hand again. He didn’t take it this time.

  Jay dropped down into the earthen room. The floor was compacted soil, as were the walls. The tunnel was only a meter high and only a couple of meters long. He crawled along it to another trapdoor. How could he not have seen the trapdoor outside? But when he pushed it up and open, he found himself directly behind the shed in a dense thicket of prickly ash, which shielded the doorway. Ducking his head, making himself as small as possible, he crawled through the thicket out to the scruffy patch of long grass and the wall of undergrowth and scrubby cedar that pressed up against the shed. He never came back here.

  Mimi followed on her knees. She swore colorfully. He helped her up, pulled away a thorny twig tangled in her hair. She stared at him, her expression unguarded. His gaze slipped away. Her eyes were ultramarine, so vivid that he wondered if she was wearing special contacts.

  Closed, the storm door looked like a stained and filthy piece of plywood left to rot, propped up against the back wall of the house, deep in a winterkill of leaves. Nothing more. In the shadow of the house, it was hardly visible.

  Jay shuddered. He shoved his hands into his pockets and walked out into the sunlight. He walked halfway down the lawn to the snye, then stopped. There was a bit of wind out there in the open. He realized he had been holding his breath and let it out now.

  Mimi followed him silently. It seemed she was out of things to say. Who could blame her? There was far too much to say to know where to start. She wandered past him down toward the snye. He didn’t follow, just watched her, as if she were some exotic animal that might bolt if he moved.

  Mimi… Mimi… Where had he heard that name before? Ah, right: the waif in Puccini’s La Boheme. Mimi was no waif. She was thin, but only in the right places-not in any danger of wasting away. He allowed himself a good long look. His sister.

  His cell phone rang.

  He dug it out of his pocket, looked at the name on the screen. “Hi, Jo,” he said.

  Mimi leaned against a tree, down near the water’s edge.

  “Jackson, I have purchased the most wonderful salmon,” came the voice on the phone.

  “Uh… okay,” said Jay hesitantly.

  “Are you all right?”

  No, he thought. Not even close! But he was not going to talk about this over the phone, not even to his mother’s partner. “I’m fine, Jo,” he said.

  She paused for just a fraction of a second, seeing through him, no doubt. “Well, you will be more than fine when you see this fish. And that’s why I’m phoning.”

  “You’re phoning about a fish?”

  “Uh-huh,” said Jo. “I was hoping I could interest you in making your famous coriander-and-lemon-zest rub.”

  “Uh… I don’t know.”

  “Don’t say you’re too busy. It’s Friday night, for goodness’ sake.”

  Jay was going to protest but checked himself. “Okay. Sure. Why not?”

  “Great.”

&nbs
p; “Yeah. So I’ll see you around… What time is it now?”

  “It’s sixish. Jay? You sound funny. What’s up?”

  Mimi had turned and was staring at him now.

  “I’m out at the snye,” he said, as if that answered Jo’s question. Mimi looked tiny suddenly-a little bit frightened, even.

  “The creativity battle not going so well?” asked Jo.

  “Actually, no,” he said, his voice now pitched loud enough for Mimi to hear. “The battle is not going well at all.”

  Mimi smiled a terrible smile.

  “Well, like I said, it’s Friday night. Lighten up. Lou says she’ll break out one or two of those New Zealand sauvignon blancs she’s been hoarding.”

  “Cool.”

  “Maybe you have other plans?”

  “No,” he said. Then he realized that this was not entirely true. “Well, I might. Have other plans, I mean. Except…” Mimi was already shaking her head. “Jo, mind if I bring someone?”

  Mimi started up the lawn toward him, frantically waving her hands back and forth, nixing the idea.

  “Is it Iris? Is she home?”

  “No, it’s not. Actually, Jo, it’s another woman,” he said, glancing Mimi’s way. She looked horrified, and it brought out the devil in him. “You should meet her,” he said.

  “Is she pretty?”

  “Naaah, not really pretty. But amusing.”

  Mimi was standing right in front of him now, giving him the finger. She made as if to grab the phone, but he turned away, holding his elbow up to block her.

  “Amusing is good,” said Jo. “And the salmon is huge. And the girl

  … is this serious?”

  Jay stared straight at Mimi. “No, nothing serious,” said Jay. “Just some girl.” Mimi rolled her eyes and walked away. “Uh, Jo, it’ll take me a while to get home.”

  “I’m all wrapped up at the office. Won’t be home myself until after seven.”

  “No problem,” he said. Then they said good-byes, and he flipped the cell phone closed and shoved it in his pocket.

  “That was so sweet, Jay,” said Mimi, giving him a look that could turn titanium to dust. “But I really don’t want to party tonight.”