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.
