Mimi changed into dry clothes and threw her sopping tracksuit into the bathtub. The rain clattered on the tin roof, and she wished that the fireplace worked. She brushed her hair in the bathroom. It was after five; Jay wouldn’t be long now. Then the knock came at the kitchen door.
She stood stock-still, suddenly panic-stricken, although she had been hoping for him to come. Cramer. It had to be Cramer.
The knock came again, louder, more insistent.
She was sure she’d seen the last of Peters. When he had dropped her off, he had not so much as glanced at her. He had looked like what he was: an old man.
So, Cramer then. Had he been up there at the end of the road? Had he heard her little speech? Had he read her letter? Was she ready for this?
She opened the kitchen door and was shocked to see a woman there, not old, but hunched over as if she were, her elbows pressed tightly to her sides, her face bowed, as if she were still out in the slashing rain.
“Good grief,” said Mimi. The woman looked at her, imploringly.
“Come in,” said Mimi, taking her by the arm.
She was shaking violently, drenched, injured. Her hair was flattened against her skull by the rain. A pink stain, high on her cheek, proved to be blood seeping from a head wound. Her eyes bled mascara.
She was wearing a flimsy baby-doll, which, plastered to her skin, revealed a body that was shapely but too old to be dressed this way. And the finishing touch to this apparition was a large pale blue leatherette handbag slung over her shoulder, as if she’d been caught in a downpour while shopping at the mall.
Mimi helped her to the table. “I’ll get a towel,” she said. And she did, a big one, but it was ridiculously inadequate. The woman was soaking head to toe, shaking violently and sobbing by now. “Hold on,” said Mimi, and dashed to her room. She came back with the comforter from her bed and wrapped the woman in it.
“Thank you,” the woman mumbled.
“What happened?” said Mimi. “Did your car break down?”
It was hard to tell whether the woman was nodding or just shivering.
Mimi took the towel and started gently drying the woman’s hair, careful of the head injury. Deja vu. This place was turning into a hospital for head cases! The woman didn’t wince. Perhaps she was too cold to notice. Mimi stopped and peered into her eyes. “Would you like something hot to drink?”
The woman nodded. Mimi dropped the towel on a chair and went to fill the kettle. She put it on the stove top and turned on the burner.
“There,” she said, turning back to her guest. Her guest who was now holding a gun.
“Hello, Mimi,” she said.
Mimi stepped backward, recoiling from the sight of the gun.
“Don’t move,” said the woman. Her voice was still shaky, but her hand, surprisingly, was not, and there was way too much resolve in her eyes to take any chances. Mimi slowly raised her hands.
“What are you doing? How do you know my name?”
The woman didn’t speak right away. She seemed to convulse from the cold, but her aim didn’t falter much. Her eyes were green but bloodshot. So bloodshot that Mimi wondered if there was internal bleeding.
“We’re going to make a phone call,” the woman said.
“A phone call?” said Mimi.
The woman nodded, then shuddered again, so hard Mimi hoped the gun would shake right out of her grasp. It didn’t and Mimi found herself staring at it. She’d never seen one up close. The barrel didn’t look more than four inches long. It was bluish black. The nose was snub and in its center was that darker blackness.
“I need dry clothes,” the woman said, trembling.
“Okay,” said Mimi. “I’ll get something.”
“Don’t move!” the woman barked. “Didn’t you hear me?”
“Yes,” said Mimi. “Yes.” The woman’s face was distorted with anger. “Take it easy,” said Mimi.
The woman stood, slowly, clutching the comforter closed at her throat with the same hand that held the handbag. She waved Mimi forward with the gun. “We’ll go together.”
Once in the bedroom, Mimi got to her knees and looked through her suitcase for something warm. A sweatshirt, cotton pajama bottoms. Meanwhile, she closed her hand over the knitted holster with the mace in it. She glanced at the woman, who looked around the room distractedly. Mimi managed to slip the canister into the pocket of her hoodie. Then she got to her feet and held out the clothes to the woman. She was standing just at the threshold of the bedroom door, and her eyes surveyed the room as if searching for hidden cameras or something. No, it wasn’t that. There was an odd expression in her eyes and an eerie half smile on her face, as if there were pictures on the wall and the woman was delighting in the details. Then she seemed to remember where she was and returned her attention to Mimi. She waved the gun in a way that suggested she wanted Mimi to back up into the corner. And as Mimi backed away, the woman dropped the comforter and, leaning against the lintel of the doorway, began to slip on the pair of pants under her wet dress.
“I don’t have anything valuable,” said Mimi.
“Oh, yes, you do,” said the woman. She was by now trying to tighten the drawstring of the pants but couldn’t do it with only one shaky hand. She carefully lowered her gun hand, though not her eyes, and tried again to pull the drawstring tight with two hands, but she was trembling too much.
“Can I help?” said Mimi. She wasn’t exactly sure why. Part of her said stay as far away from this madwoman as possible. But part of her said make nice. Make very nice. And what was it Pacino said in The Godfather? “Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.”
The woman stared at her, and Mimi had the feeling that she-this woman-was seeing her and not seeing her at the same time. As if Mimi was in some other dimension that the woman had to concentrate very hard to keep in view. She nodded and waved Mimi forward, until she was standing directly in front of her.
“No fooling around,” said the woman, and placed the cold nose of the gun against Mimi’s temple. Mimi closed her eyes. But her fingers found the ties and pulled them together, carefully into a knot. Then the woman pushed her away, and Mimi retreated to her corner.
Now the woman reached with her free hand behind her back and undid the zipper of her dress, sloughed it off her shoulders, and let it fall to the floor. She picked up the sweatshirt and managed to slide into it, one arm at a time, only losing sight of Mimi for the split second that her head was lost in the neck hole. She smoothed the terry cloth against her wet skin.
“Are you… are you Sophia Cosic?” said Mimi.
“Who?”
“Nothing,” said Mimi.
The woman looked derailed. Then she seemed to come back to her senses, what she had of them. “My name is Mavis. Mavis Lee. Ever heard of me?”
Mimi shook her head. She knew it must be Cramer’s mother-the one who had lost her way on the Artist’s Journey. But pleading ignorance seemed the best bet. “I didn’t think you would’ve,” said Mavis. “But your father has, all right.”
“Pardon?”
“He might have forgotten me, but he sure won’t ever forget again.”
The look in the woman’s eyes was triumphant and clearly fanatical. Mimi felt faint. She leaned against the wall for support. It was all coming clear to her. M.L.-the initials and phone number on the wall in the other room. Her father’s lover and Cramer’s mother. Which meant… No. No way!
Mavis must have seen something of what was going on in Mimi’s head. She nodded. “Now you get it, don’t you, honey? Huh?” Mimi didn’t move a muscle. “He’s all I have left of Marc,” said Mavis. “That Page boy-oh, he’s got the world on a string, hasn’t he? And you-the same thing-everything money can buy. What’d my Cramer ever get? Nothing. Nothing! Marc Soto left us nothing.”
“Mrs. Lee-”
“Don’t call me missus. I’d be a missus if your father had done the right thing.”
“Mavis, you’re not the only person my father ever left.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“No. I just mean he left my mother as well.”
The woman sniffed and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “But he didn’t leave her penniless, did he?”
“He didn’t leave her a thing,” said Mimi. But the news only surprised Mavis for a second or two, before she recovered whatever insane sense of purpose she had come here with. She had been hovering at the doorway; now she entered the room, the fingers of her left hand gliding along the wall as if the room was in darkness and she had to feel her way into it. Again she looked around, and now Mimi understood that she was lost in memory. But she snapped out of it pretty quickly as she drew nearer to Mimi. She leaned her shoulder against the wall, lowering the gun, but holding it in two hands in front of her.
“I saw you out running,” she said. “Wondered who you were. Then I realized you were the same girl as in the picture Cramer had stuffed under his mattress.” Her eyes glinted. “I sniffed it out. It was wrapped in a T-shirt that reeked of your perfume.”
There was a low rumble of thunder. The storm was moving away. The rain went on unabated, but in the moment the thunder died, Mimi heard something. A car? Jay?
“What is it?” said Mavis.
“Nothing,” said Mimi, too loud.
Silence filled the space between them. Maybe the noise had only been wishful thinking. But she suddenly realized that she needed to keep Mavis talking. “Cramer had a picture of me?”
“You and some other rich bitch. I decided I’d better do some snooping,” said Mavis. “A mother likes to know what her boy’s up to. It didn’t take me long to find out. I’ve been here before.” She looked at Mimi, nodding, waiting for her to respond. Play dumb, Mimi told herself. The woman glanced again at the corners of the room. “I was here often enough,” she said.
“Mavis, I don’t know-”
“Shut up!” Mavis wiped her nose again, this time with the back of her gun hand. She looked nervous, suddenly, and Mimi didn’t think she wanted Mavis nervous.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“I couldn’t quite figure out how he was getting in and out. Cramer, I mean. So, when the time was right, I found my own way in.” She nodded her head toward the window. Jay had replaced the glass, but Mimi still found broken pieces of it now and then. “And that’s when I found that movie camera of yours. Took it home to look it over. And there-there he was, older and losing his hair, but I recognized him, all right, even with the shades. Recognized the smile. The lying smile.”
“Does Cramer know?”
“Who knows? The boy’s not himself. I guess I’ve got you to thank for that.”
“But does he know about him and me-about us being-”
“I said I wouldn’t know what he knows,” Mavis shouted. “He doesn’t know his own mind anymore. Or who his mother is. Or what’s right or wrong.”
She stopped and made a face as if she’d just bitten into something bad.
“What about the guitars?” asked Mimi. “Was it you who took Jay’s guitars?”
Mavis shrugged. “Distributing the wealth a little. Those guitars are long gone.”
There was another noise. In the shed? Mavis didn’t seem to notice. Mimi spoke up in any case, but not so loudly this time as to create suspicion. “Why are you telling me this? Why are you here? What is it you want from me?”
“We’re going to make a phone call,” said Mavis, as if it were going to be fun-a party game.
“You said that. But I don’t understand.”
“We’re going to phone your daddy,” she said. Then she slid along the wall toward Mimi, stopping an arm’s length away. “We’re going to find out how much he thinks his pretty daughter is worth.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. You aren’t stupid.”
Mimi swallowed hard. Her right hand was in her pocket where she had been trying to work the canister of mace free from its holster without drawing attention to the activity. Now, with Mavis so close, it was a little easier, since the woman’s field of vision was so much smaller. If there was somebody coming, she had to be ready for whatever happened. By now Mavis was face-to-face with her, staring directly into Mimi’s eyes. “You got the same eyes as him. I wished in that film he hadn’t had those dark glasses on. I’d have loved to see those eyes again.”
She seemed to go off into a daydream, and while Mimi wasn’t about to try anything rash, she managed to silently pop the top of the canister. Now it was just a matter of getting the thing out of her pocket. But Mavis had recovered from her reverie.
“What are you thinking?” she said.
“Nothing.”
“Liar. You’re thinking about getting away. But you can forget about it.”
Keep her on task, thought Mimi.
“My father,” said Mimi. “Marc. You want me to phone him?”
Mavis looked suspicious, as if this was somehow a different proposal than the one she had made. Slowly she nodded. Then she smiled expectantly. “Bet he’ll be surprised.”
“Yeah,” said Mimi. She cleared her throat. “But my phone is in the kitchen.”
Mavis shook her head. She backed away toward the bedroom doorway, tripping on the mattress, but righting herself too quickly for Mimi to do anything. At the doorway she picked up her handbag and reached inside. “Your little phone was just lying there on the kitchen table,” she said. She pulled it out and crossed the room, stepping around the mattress this time. She handed the phone to Mimi.
Mimi stared at her. This was totally insane. Even if her father could pay whatever Mavis asked for, how did she expect to get her hands on the money or get away?
“Do it!” said the woman.
“Mavis, it’s just that…”
“It’s just that what?”
Better not try to explain, thought Mimi. So she punched in Marc’s number. “What am I supposed to say?”
“Leave that to me,” said Mavis. Her beat-up eyes glowed as she waited. But after a long moment, Mimi handed her the phone. It was an answering machine.
“You want to leave a message?”
Mavis glared at her. “Don’t get smart with me,” she said. She handed back the phone. She looked bewildered, as if her crazy plan had not included Marc being out. Mimi glanced at the phone’s clock. Where is Jay? Is he here? If he was, he was being quiet, which meant he must have realized something was up. Her only hope was to keep talking and be ready to create some distraction. She quailed inside.
“Do you know what my boy did? My good boy?”
“What?”
Mavis moved closer to her, leveled the gun inches from Mimi’s chest. “He destroyed merchandise worth thousands of dollars. Plasma televisions. Destroyed them.”
“What are you talking about?”
“He made some people very, very unhappy. And do you know why? Do you know why he did it?”
Mimi heard a clunk. Surely Mavis must have heard it, too, but she seemed beyond hearing anymore. “I don’t know why he did it,” Mimi said. “Tell me why, Mavis.”
Mavis poked her with the gun. “Shut up! What kind of game are you playing?”
“I’m not playing anything.”
“You think I won’t use this thing? You think I have anything left to lose?”
“No, no,” said Mimi. “I mean… I don’t know. It’s just that I don’t have any idea what you are talking about.” There was another clunking sound, but Mavis only stared at her as if her anger was using up all her attention. As if whatever dimension Mimi was in was fading on her.
“Cramer went berserk,” she said. “That’s your doing.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You drove him out of his mind,” said Mavis, poking Mimi in the chest.
“Ow! Stop it!”
“I ought to just shoot you for what you did to him,” said Mavis. And she brought the gun right up under Mimi’s chin.
“That hurts!”
“You wanna know about hurt? Huh? Do you?”
“If you shoot me, you won’t get anything out of Marc,” said Mimi. She watched the woman try to piece together in her shattered mind what she was telling her. “He’s got lots of money,” said Mimi. “He’ll probably pay anything you want. But not if I’m dead.”
At first Mimi thought she had gotten through to Mavis. The woman’s eyes seemed to clear. But as Mimi watched, the look on Mavis’s face went well beyond anything rational. She looked sad-deeply sad-and Mimi had the feeling that Mavis was realizing the terrible lunacy of what she was doing.
“He’ll never give me anything,” she muttered. She lowered the gun but not far. “Why would I have thought Marc would ever give me anything?”
She seemed to actually be asking the question, and Mimi was about to answer her when she saw something out of the corner of her eye. Her foam mattress moved. She stared into Mavis’s eyes, hoping the woman wouldn’t see the hope in her own eyes.
“Let me try him again,” she said. “He might have just been on another call.”
Behind the woman with the gun, the trapdoor was opening slowly, silently. Mavis, oblivious, only shook her head. “Don’t bother,” she said. “Don’t bother to call.”
“Let me try,” said Mimi, her voice a little shrill.
“No,” said Mavis, her voice resigned. “I didn’t think this through very well.” Then she smiled, as if a new idea had come to her. “Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Maybe you should phone him. Yes. It isn’t what Marc should give to me that matters,” she said, her voice getting louder, more enthusiastic. “It’s what I should give to him.”
“Okay,” said Mimi. “So I phone him again?”
“Yes,” said Mavis, her eyes wide now, as if everything was suddenly becoming clear. “You phone him. And after you say hello, I talk to him, tell him where we are, the two of us. Tell him exactly where we are and that I’ve got a gun. And he starts talking about all the things he’s going to give me so that I don’t shoot you. And maybe I say, ‘I’ve heard that before, Marc Soto.’ I say that and then, with him right there on the other end of the line, I do it.”
“Do what?”
“It. You. Shoot you.”
The mattress erupted behind them as the trapdoor flew back on its chains, and in the same moment that Mavis spun around and Mimi drew the canister, Cramer emerged, head and shoulders, from the hidey-hole, his arm shooting out across the floor, grabbing Mavis by the ankles and pulling her off her feet.
She crashed to the ground, and her flailing arm knocked the canister right out of Mimi’s hand. Mavis writhed on the floor, kicking out at Cramer’s grasping hands.
“Run!” shouted Cramer.
Mimi pasted herself against the wall behind Mavis, inching toward the door, but Mavis, from where she lay, twisted around, so that the gun was aimed up at Mimi.
“Mimi!” Now Jay was at the bedroom door, and Mavis swung around to face him.
“Don’t do it!” screamed Cramer, clawing at his mother’s leg.
“You!” said Mavis, swinging her attention back to him. “You!”
Then the gun went off. The trapdoor shuddered with the impact of the shot, and Cramer, howling in pain, crumpled out of sight.