The Uninvited (23 page)

Mimi winced. “Is that as bad as it sounds?”

He shrugged. “Let’s take a look.”

“I always have problems with mothers,” she said.

He glanced at her, his eyes humorless.

“A joke,” she said.

“Oh. Right.” Then his eyes let her go, and he gently turned the laptop upside down. He went into the back room. The cloth with which he had been cleaning his hands now hung from his back pocket, drawing attention to his butt.
I have been in the wilderness too long,
thought Mimi.

He returned with a little yellow screwdriver and proceeded to remove a panel from the back of her Power­Book. He took a flashlight and looked into the exposed opening. She craned to see what was inside, then realized she was crowding him, blocking his light.

“Sorry,” she said, pulling back. He smelled of aftershave and fruit gum.

He had a stern look on his face as if this was major surgery and she shouldn’t be there without a mask and gown. She stepped obediently away from the counter. The surgeon went back to his investigation. He reached into the cavity and, after wiggling something a bit, pulled out a two-inch-long piece of high-tech equipment with gold teeth and all kinds of software patches.

“This is a memory module,” he said. He peered into the cavity again. “You have ports for two of them in case you want to boost your memory.”

“I just want to get back the memory I already had,” said Mimi.

He held the module up to the light and squinted at it. “Weird,” he said after a bit.

“What?” she said.

“There’s some kind of smear of something…” He looked at her with a perplexed expression on his face. “I don’t know for sure, but it looks like someone took a colored marker to the contact points.”

He held the module close to her eyes, and she could see on the gold teeth the slightest blush of red, here and there.

“That
is
weird,” she said. Then she looked closer still and sniffed. Sniffed again. “It smells like … like lipstick,” she said.

He sniffed it, too. “I wouldn’t know.”

“Could that be the problem?” she said. Then added, “Duh!”

He shrugged, but she dared to think that he looked a little bit more keyed up than he had before. A little
hopeful,
maybe?

“The contact has to be one hundred percent,” he said. “Even a film of ink or lipstick like that and the contact would be, you know, broken.” He looked at her quizzically.

“Believe me,” she said, resting her hand on her chest. “I do not open up my computer and doodle on it.” She took the memory module from him and peered at it again. “Anyway, it’s not a shade I’d ever wear.”

He managed a tightly packaged little smile, which she returned to him opened. Then, distractedly, he reexamined the gold head of the module. “Just a second,” he said. And again he walked back into his work area, returning a moment later with a tiny paintbrush and a bottle of foul-smelling liquid. Mimi scrunched up her nose.

“Nail polish remover?”

“Acetone,” he said. “Same thing, I guess.” He delicately wiped the top of the module until every trace of the red was gone. Then he waved the module in the air, gently.

When it was dry, he carefully replaced it and screwed the panel back on. He turned the computer over and opened the lid.

“No beeps!” said Mimi.

“So far, so good.” Then he turned the computer to face her.

“You want to give ’er a go?” he asked.

“Is it going to blow?”

“I don’t think so.”

She grinned, pushed the power button. And now her computer sang out a proud note to let her know it was leaping into action.

“I don’t believe it,” she said, as she watched her familiar desktop swim into place before her eyes. There was Harpo Marx, grinning his gorgeous face off! It gave her such a jolt of happy relief. Her world was still intact! She clasped her hands together with glee. “I don’t believe it.”

The repairman leaned around the edge of the laptop, and she turned it so that he could see the magic, too. “Your boyfriend?” he asked.

“My dream boyfriend,” she said, but she was giggling now. She double-clicked on one of the files and it sprang to life. “Oh, wow!” she said. “You did it! You did it … What’s your name?”

“Cramer,” he said.

“Cramer!” she said, and gave him a high five. “Here you are taking my computer apart and saving my life, and we haven’t even been introduced. I’m Mimi,” she said, offering him her hand across the counter. “Mimi Shapiro.”

He took her hand and squeezed it, only very carefully, she thought, because had he wanted to, he could have probably crushed it.

“I can’t thank you enough,” she said. He bobbed his head around self-consciously. “No, seriously. I was expecting to have to go into Ottawa or maybe Seattle, but my friend said I should try here first. Wow!” She took a deep breath and waved her hand in front of her face.

“How much do I owe you?”

He held up his hands as if he had no idea.

“Oh, come on, Cramer,” she said, reaching into her purse. “You have rescued me from a fate worse than death. What do you charge for saving damsels in distress?”

Now he truly blushed. He looked down, held up his hand in protestation. “No charge,” he said. “It was just a lucky guess.”

She placed her hand on her throat. “Then I won’t try to bribe you with money anymore. Thank you. Thank you very much. But, oh! I’ll buy stuff,” she said, and placed the discs and ink jet on the counter.

“Okay,” he said, and started to write out a receipt. He looked up and smiled gravely, a little ill at ease. “This friend,” he said.

“Who, Harpo?”

“The one who said you should try here.”

“Oh, right.”

“Could she have done this?”

For a moment she didn’t understand what he was getting at. Then his eyes strayed from her face to the computer she was packing away in its case.

“Oh,” she said. “No. No. Believe me, it wasn’t him.”

“Okay,” he said, nodding. “But the thing is somebody did it.”

Mimi hung the case from her shoulder, held it close to her side. “I know.” There was an awkward silence, but she really didn’t want to start trying to explain about the situation. It sounded too spooky, too perverse.

“Maybe you should keep it locked up?”

“Funny you should mention that,” she said with a laugh stripped of any amusement.

“Why is it funny?” he said.

Mimi looked at him, standing there all earnest with concern. It made her a little uncomfortable. “We had a break-in,” she said.

“Bummer,” he said. “And was your place like all locked up and that?”

“Yeah, but locks don’t seem to work on this … Well, let’s just say we’ve had more than one break-in.”

Now Cramer’s brow creased with concern. “Is it some old boyfriend, maybe, who’s still got a key?”

Mimi hugged her computer case. Was this computer knight with the disquieting pecs going to offer his services as a bodyguard? She grinned to herself and then sobered up and shook her head. “Uh, that’s unlikely,” she said.

He looked apprehensive, almost hurt. Then she noticed, with relief, that the receipt was finished, and she busied herself taking out her wallet.

“I really don’t know how to thank you, Cramer,” she said as he swiped her card. He looked at her and bobbed his head, and she wondered if he was going to say “Aw, shucks” or something like that. Then she noticed a little stand that held a stack of business cards. “I should take a card,” she said. “In case of emergency.”

“Uh, that’s my boss’s card,” said Cramer.

“Hank Pretty,” she read out loud. “Oh, I get it, ‘PDQ—Pretty Damn Quick.’ That’s cute.”

Cramer bobbed his head again. “Here,” he said, and he took the card from her, picked up a pen, and printed his name and number on the back of it.

“This is my home number, eh?” he said, handing her the card. “I usually only work here a couple days a week.”

She grinned as she took it from him. “Cramer”; no last name. She shoved it in her pocket. “I usually have to work a lot harder to get a guy’s phone number,” she said, and enjoyed watching him blush again. Enjoyed it a bit more than was entirely healthy.
Time to get out of here,
she thought. And so, with a little neutral kind of wave, she turned toward the door. She was almost at the door before he spoke.

“I hope I see you again,” he said.

She turned and smiled. “Me, too,” she said. “Thanks so much.”

Then she left, and when she glanced back through the door to wave one last time, he was still staring at her, his hands in his pockets. His mouth was open, and she had the odd, exhilarating feeling that he was trying hard to catch his breath.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

T
HEY HAD MET.
They had shaken hands. He had held her hand, so cool and smooth. His plan had worked. He wasn’t used to that. He wasn’t used to wanting something and it actually coming true. He had never believed in luck because then he would have had to face the fact that he didn’t have any. But maybe—just maybe—things were changing.

And he hadn’t blown it. He didn’t think he had sounded too stupid. He didn’t always get what she was saying, but he’d made her laugh—well, once anyway. It hadn’t been so hard. It would be easier next time. He wasn’t exactly sure how this amazing thing called “next time” was going to come around. He’d have to think about that.

He walked through the rest of his workday in a kind of a daze. All he could think of was Mimi. Face-to-face, she was more beautiful than ever. Her eyes—the way she had looked at him! She seemed to like him, but it was more than that, and for one terrible moment he had thought she recognized him. But there was no way she could have seen him. No way. And now they’d met. And they would meet again. Somehow, though he couldn’t quite see how. What else could he break and then fix? He laughed out loud, alone in the store. But he was only kidding. He would never break anything of hers again.

For that one week Cramer was holding down two full-time jobs. He had to be at PDQ by 10:00
AM
to open up and stay there right through until closing time. Because he was working the night shift at the plant, it didn’t make much sense to go home—took too much time and too much wear and tear on the car. But when he suggested that to Mavis, she had a shit fit.

“You’re going to strand me out here?”

“Well, what am I supposed to do?”

“It is
my
car, for Christ’s sake!”

He wanted to tell her that it wasn’t really her car anymore. It wasn’t just that he paid the insurance and the license and kept it topped up with gas. In the six years he’d been driving the Taurus, he’d replaced just about every damn part in the thing.

“So you’ll drive me into town in the morning?” he said. She didn’t answer. She wandered away, rubbing her hands together, and stared out the window.

“I could get to the plant if I’m in town. One of the guys on my crew could give me a lift, I guess.”

Still she didn’t answer. He had no idea what he would do about getting home from the plant at four in the morning if she took him up on his offer. Hell, maybe he’d just sleep in the back room at PDQ.

“Mom?”

She turned and gave him a sour look. “Do whatever you like,” she said, and went outside. Somehow he was the bad guy. But, then, what else was new?

They ended up coming to a compromise. If she needed the car, she’d drive him in and pick him up at five. Then he’d take her home and go to work. It was a lot of driving and a lot of wasted time, but she had things to do, she said. Things to do.

She had pretty well abandoned her art. And she had abandoned asking about the money. He was doing what he could, but he wasn’t going to keep saying to her every goddamned day how he would get her the money. She had to believe in him, the way he believed in her. And until the money was in his hands, he wasn’t going to make any promises he couldn’t keep. He owed her that much. Sometimes it seemed to Cramer that his mother’s life was a promise she couldn’t keep. Somebody had to do it for her.

He allowed himself to think that she was looking for work. Maybe that’s why she needed the car. He fantasized about coming home one day and her surprising him with the news. He fantasized about quitting one of his jobs. He fantasized about having a life! He’d never questioned his life, really. This was it—the one you got. You did the work. You looked after things. You picked up where you left off yesterday. End of story. But now—
now!
—he wanted something. He wanted something big-time. He wanted a new life. And he had done a bad thing to get that new life started. He hated himself for it. Hated the foolish games he had been playing lately and what it had brought him to. But then again those foolish games had brought him to Mimi.