INT. OFFICE AT UNIVERSITY-DAY
ZORBA
For Christ’s sake, pick up the phone! Little bitch.
Her cell phone rang again. “Let me go, let me go, let me go!” She was beginning to hate “Bohemian Rhapsody.” She checked the caller, didn’t recognize the number; she didn’t answer. If it was Lazar calling from some booth, she had to shudder at his uncanny timing.
EXT. PASTORAL SETTING-DAY
SASHA steps into the stream, bends down, and lowers her screaming cell phone below the water. She holds it there until it stops.
She pushed the laptop out of the way and flopped her head onto the desk. She closed her eyes and listened to the rain. There was a drip somewhere inside she didn’t have the energy to deal with. She checked that it wasn’t directly over her bed. Then she went upstairs and checked on Jay’s computer, his instruments. Everything was fine. She sat for a moment and picked up the fat electric guitar. She had learned a song once, from Jamila. She tried to recall the chords. But then the cell phone rang. Again. Shit.
Jay was right. She should get a new one. She’d been here long enough; there was a place in town, but she kept putting it off. Why? Because she expected Lazar to stop. She expected him to get the message-to give up. To do the right thing. To act his age! That was part of it. Why should she be turning her life upside down because this supposedly mature- way mature-man couldn’t take no for an answer? But it was more than that. She knew at some point she would have to pick up; she would have to have it out with him. But not until she was good and ready. And she wasn’t ready yet. She was frightened of Lazar Cosic, and she didn’t want him to know that, didn’t want her voice to betray her.
She had brought with her a box of dishes and silverware, for one. And she had planned on buying a microwave or toaster oven if necessary. But the stove worked, and so she had purchased a tiny little beer fridge at the Canadian Tire store in Ladybank. A beer fridge from a tire store. Go figure. She kept soy milk and veggies in her little blue beer fridge. And wine.
She had settled in.
The first few days had been fun, a chance to get to know each other. A brother. She had a brother. The idea still seemed impossible. She had yet to phone her father to confront him with the news, which, apparently, wasn’t news to him. She was still too angry, and yet she wasn’t really sure why. And what was the point of being angry with him, anyway? Anger slid off his hide like water off a duck.
INT. SOHO STUDIO-NIGHT
HENRI
So, you’ve met him. Hell, I’d forgotten all about the boy. What do you think?
HENRI sips from a glass of wine. Dabs a Venetian blue smear across his canvas.
SASHA
Has it ever occurred to you that you are a first-class schmuck?
HENRI
So I’m told. But seriously, what’s he like?
SASHA pours herself a large refill of the wine, then hurls the contents all over the canvas.
She hadn’t told her mother about Jay, either. Not yet. She had fished to see if Grier knew anything about other siblings. She didn’t seem to. So the only person back home who knew was Jamila. And when Jamila had gotten over the shock, she had said, “Oh, my God, welcome to the club!” Because Jamila had four brothers, and she had promised to get Mimi up to speed on the whole thing. They had chatted furiously back and forth by e-mail while Mimi was still staying at the Pages’, but there was no Internet connection out here. And, for that matter, the connection at the Pages’ had been dial-up, so not exactly a furious rate. They were too far out of town for the local tower to get high-speed, although there were rumors of a new tower going up soon. So Mimi had felt very far from home. She was welcome to use the dial-up at the Page house anytime-welcome to stay there whenever she wanted. Lou had given her a key. There was also a great little Internet cafe in town right on the park. But Mimi was trying very hard to do what she had set out to do, which was to be on her own, sorting things out, digging deep. Trying, in one way or another, to figure out who the sap was who had gotten herself in so deep with an almost forty-year-old professor who just might be mentally unstable.
She had been so happy to see Jay arrive that morning. But he was only stopping by to give her the news about his trip to Toronto. The news about Iris.
“Oh, and these,” he said, heading back to the SUV. He returned with a neat pile of sunshine-yellow folded material. Curtains. “Lou figured it might be good on the downstairs windows, anyway.”
Mimi opened one out. “Lou made these?”
“Yeah, I know. A woman of many talents.”
When she and Jo had carted out a “few sticks of furniture,” as Jo called it, Lou had measured the five downstairs windows. Mimi hadn’t even noticed. Jay had picked up curtain rods on his way out. Mimi was surprised at how happy she was. Curtains!
Jay had dragged his mother’s kayak upstream a few days earlier so that they could both go down to the big house whenever they wanted without the long roundabout drive. Mimi laughed herself silly her first time out. “Hey, New York!” she shouted. “Look at me-Mimi Shapiro in a boat!” She imagined herself going back to the city buff and tanned. Yeah, right. Sore and drenched was more like it! She flipped three times the first day. She never felt really comfortable that first trip, though she was okay as long as she hugged the shore and moved at about five strokes per hour.
“You go ahead, for God’s sake!” she said as Jay circled back to give helpful advice. “You’re making me nervous.”
But he stayed close.
“And to think the Eskimos hunt whales in these things,” she shouted.
“Inuit,” he said.
She looked at him, thinking maybe he was giving advice.
“They’re not Eskimos; they’re Inuit.”
Well, she certainly wasn’t Inuit.
“Don’t worry, Ms. Cooper,” she said to no one. “You will always be my favorite mode of transportation.”
He had first left her alone on Friday night. He was meeting up with some friend who was in town.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine. Get! Scoot!”
She had waved him off down the snye, standing barefoot in the shallow water as he glided off into the gloaming. He had to lie back on the kayak to pass under the arch of the bridge.
“Have a good trip, honey,” she called after him. It was meant to be a joke. Jay laughed. Good.
But the truth was she did feel like some hausfrau waving her hubby off to work. Then, as soon as he was out of sight, she returned to the little house, locked the doors, and checked the panic room. She hoisted up her mattress, opened the trapdoor, and dropped down to the earthen room, then shimmied along the tunnel with her flashlight in her teeth until she came to the door that led to the outside. Jay had put a good hefty hasp on it and padlocked it. So there were just the windows to worry about. She had gone to sleep the first couple of nights to the imagined tinkling of broken glass.
But there was no broken glass and there were no dead birds or snake skins or messages of any kind.
She had worried about the car, too, wished she could bring it closer, in sight of the house. Jay had suggested laying some boards down over the broken expanse of bridge-only a few feet, after all. But she couldn’t quite imagine driving on such a makeshift overpass. Worse still was the thought of having to escape the house and finding the planks gone! So she checked the car first thing every morning when she went out for her run. She checked the ground around it for signs of footsteps. For a week now, there had been nothing more serious than dew to contend with. Dew and the odd petal of a flowering tree.
And once deer tracks.
She imagined some deer peering into the Mini looking for whatever it was deer ate. Jelly beans? Cedar- flavored jelly beans.
And so, bit by bit, she let the magic place settle down around her. She got into a kind of rhythm that was comforting and stimulating at the same time in ways she had never imagined possible. Up at seven, a jog down the
