The Uninvited Guest Read Online Free PDF Page B

passenger-side window.
    The way down into the property from the road was a narrow cut through thick pines, untrimmed, their lower branches brushing the ground in wide skirts. Stan inhaled deeply the combined scents of evergreen and lake water. Squirrels leapt from tree to tree thirty feet above his head.
    â€œThat’s your fresh air you’re smelling, Stan.” Gino slapped him on the back and took the opportunity of contact to pull him by the arm past the last of the pines, his left arm opening wide, like a maître d’ showing off the prize table. What remained of the property was a deep grass meadow speckled with yellow dandelions and buttercups. Here and there, giant weeping willow trees bent their long soft branches to the earth around elephantine bodies. The land ended at large boulders falling away into the gently rolling waters of the lake.
    â€œChrist Jesus,” Gino sighed, looking out across the water, “if every showing looked like this I’d have none of these lots left. You’ve hit it on a great day, I’ll say that.”
    The property was 150 feet wide and ran from road to lake another 150 feet, forming a near-perfect square. There was a small, falling-down cabin near the lake, doubling as living shack and boathouse, though no boat was present.
    â€œThe owner built that cabin in Shanty Bay and floated it here just as you see it. Easier than hauling the materials. That hazy patch of land there,” Gino pointed directly across the lake, “is Georgina Island—Indian reservation, but don’t worry, they can’t get you all the way over here—and that close bit of land there just the other side of the bay is Big Bay Point. There’s a lighthouse at the very end. Kind of comforting to look at after dark. If you head down the bay there you get back to Barrie and directly to the other end of the lake there is Orillia. You’re about right in the middle. A prime spot if you ask me, but I’m just the salesman, what the hell do I know?”
    Stan asked for a little time to himself, and walked back and forth across the shoreline, his shoreline he’d decided, while Gino smoked nervously back up by the car. Stan saw a family on this land. He saw continuance, and that was a lot better than anything he’d seen for himself back on Saulter Street. He could give himself no reason for the feeling; he was simply sure in his decision.
    Back in the realty office on Dunlop Street, Stan signed all the papers and pulled the fifteen-hundred-dollar total from his jacket pocket.
    â€œHello, darling!” Gino yelled, drawing the attention of the two other salesmen in the room.
    â€œHoly crap, man, if I’d known you were packing that much cash, I’d have hit you with a rock and dumped you in the lake.”
    â€œI know you would have,” Stan said, and the two other salesmen laughed.

Four
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    The Cup went missing in the summer of 1952. It was gone for almost two months. No details of its disappearance or its whereabouts while it was gone have ever been publicly known. Stan Cooper, now the head custodian and cleaner at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto, found the Cup at centre ice one morning when he happened to be the first person in the building. Training camp for the new season had just begun, and the ice had to be maintained every day even if the team spent the whole day in the gym. He threw the switch for the secondary lights, and there it was. The League had never reported it missing. The police had never been consulted. A private investigator worked for three weeks but was eventually fired after falling down drunk in the League president’s office while making a report. There were plans in the works to create a duplicate cup from photographs, and then one morning it just appeared at centre ice in Toronto.
    Stan walked out across the centre line still carrying his coffee and doughnut in a paper bag. He had seen the Cup in this building many