She watched the driver’s eyes grow wide with expectation. But even as he revved the motor, the laughter broke from her, seeping and sputtering out like water over a dam. The driver’s euphoria turned sour.
“Bitch!” he shouted.
“Damn straight!” yelled Mimi.
Mullet rolled up his window. He squealed away from the corner as the light turned green, and Mimi headed back toward the bench, not in a completely straight line but with her fist raised, triumphantly. She dragged her canister of mace out of her purse and turned toward the Chevy, now a block away, holding it up, ready to fire.
“Bite me!” she shouted.
“Whoa,” said Iris when Mimi rejoined them. She reached over and took the canister to look it over. She’d obviously never seen one before.
“Jay told me about the creep,” she said. “The other one, I mean. Up at the snye.”
“He’s gone,” said Mimi. “We scared him off. Right, partner?”
Jay shoved his own fist in the air. “Woo-hoo,” he said with as much energy as he could muster.
Mimi plumped herself down on the bench. “I leave one stalker creepoid behind in New York and- bam! — walk right into another. Well, kind of. ”
Then they sat, waiting, until suddenly Iris sat up straight.
“Oh,” she said. “It’s like that kid at school, remember?”
“Huh?”
“The guy who used to follow you around.”
Jay looked puzzled. He glanced at Mimi and shrugged. “She’s a history major, what can I say?”
“No, really!” said Iris. “I can’t remember his name. But he was always around.”
“See?” said Mimi, poking Jay in the shoulder. “You had a stalker, too.”
“Well, it wasn’t really like that,” said Iris. “I mean it wasn’t truly creepy.”
“It wasn’t truly anything,” said Jay. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Iris’s forehead bunched up in deep thought. “What was his name? He was one of those totally forgettable people, you know?” Then she covered her mouth. “That was shitty, what I said.”
“What do you mean?”
“About him being a totally forgettable person.”
“Well, it must be true,” said Jay. “I don’t remember him.”
“We talked about this,” said Iris.
“I don’t remember that, either.”
Iris turned to Mimi. “You know the kind of guy I mean?”
Mimi nodded. A nobody. Sure. But one who had a thing for Jay? She turned to him, a question on her face.
He held up his hands in surrender. “She’s on crack. I swear to God, I don’t remember any of this.”
The cab turned onto Forster and slowed down. Jay waved and it pulled a U-turn, stopping at the curb. They were all snug in the backseat heading out toward Riverside Drive when Iris said, “I remember why he freaked me out.”
“Who?” said Jay.
“The stalker,” said Mimi impatiently, and turned her attention back to Iris. “Go on.”
Iris leaned back in the seat, looking straight ahead and talking quietly as if not wanting to jar the memory. “There was this time I was trying to catch up with Jay. I don’t remember why-I mean why I was behind him, but I was. Anyway, my point is, there I was and I didn’t feel like running, so I just followed. And that’s when I realized that he-this kid-was following Jay, too. He was between us.”
“And he didn’t just live out that way?” said Mimi.
Iris shook her head again. “I don’t think so. I know it sounds lame, but I felt sure he was following Jay.”
“Get out of town,” said Jay.
“Actually, the guy looked like he had been bused in from Hick Holler, if you want to know the truth. Oops! I’m being a snob again. But really…”
“And?” said Mimi.
“And… nothing,” said Iris. “I mean he didn’t do anything. He was just always there, a little way off. Wherever our boy Jackson Page was so was the Fan.”
Jay chuckled. “Are you sure it wasn’t you he had the hots for?”
Mimi turned to Iris. She was gorgeous. It would be easy for some lonely guy to have a big-time crush on her. But Iris just kept shaking her head. “Uh-uh,” she said. “It was you, honey-bunch.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
She was alone. It was what Cramer had hoped for, dreamed of. In the four days he had off from Sunday through Wednesday, he saw Jay come and go but never stay the night. Who knows what had gone on the last eight days, but Cramer was full of hope. Mimi and Jay never held hands or kissed, as far as he could see. They were friends, just friends, he told himself, and almost managed to believe it. Cramer loved to listen to them talk-so quick and funny. He wished he could talk to a girl that way. He’d had girlfriends, sure, but no one like Mimi.
She would go for a run in the morning up the Valentine. She was gone forty minutes or so. She is running right by my place, he thought. And he was glad she wouldn’t see the little yellow house up on its knoll above the creek. He had told his mother he would bring a girl home to meet her, but he would never take Mimi there.
One morning there was a heavy dew, and Cramer boldly drew a message on the windshield of the Mini Cooper:
I
MIMI
She was late getting started that morning, and by the time she waded across the snye and put her Nikes on, the sun had more or less obliterated the message he had left her. She patted the car as she passed by and spoke to it-called it Ms. Cooper.
Look closer, he said under his breath, knowing that his message would not be entirely gone, would still be there, if she would only look.
The next morning he broke in.
The lock on the storm door surprised him at first but didn’t hold him back. The wood was punk; the screws in the hinges pulled away without too much effort. He needed to get inside. He needed to be sure about something. And, yes-yes! Mimi seemed to have taken over the bedroom downstairs; Jay’s mattress was up in the loft. Cramer wanted to shout his joy out loud but held it in.
He opened her laptop, a Mac PowerBook G4. There was no password. The desktop on the G4 was some picture from an old black-and-white movie: a guy with ridiculously curly hair and a funny face, wearing a baggy suit and playing the harp. There were too many icons on the screen. Cramer wanted to clean it up for her-such a waste of memory. He opened a folder called Screenplay. He opened something called Ideas. He checked her e-mail: a lot of messages from Jamila, the girl in the photograph. There wasn’t time to read anything now-he couldn’t concentrate. And anyway, all he was looking for were boys’ names, some boy’s name repeated too many times. There were two or three guys she chatted with, but nothing in the contents of those e-mails to indicate they were anything more than friends.
He checked iPhoto. There was a large library but no boys there, either, except the Asian guy in the documentary. Cramer didn’t think there was anything between them.
He checked iTunes, scrolled down a list of band names he had never heard of. He glanced out the window. He would see her coming from here; the way was clear. He clicked on a couple of tunes. He wanted to hear what she heard, like what she liked. He sat there for a few moments listening, noting the name of a group that was okay,
