Duma Key (52 page)

Here's a picture I never painted:

Identical twins in identical jumpers, except one is red, with an
L
on the front, and the other is blue, with a
T
. The girls are holding hands as they run along the path that leads to Shade Beach. They call it that because for most of the day it's in the shadow of Hag's Rock. There are tear-tracks on their pale round faces, but they will soon be gone because by now they are too terrorized to cry.

If you can believe this, you can see the rest.

A giant crow flies slowly past them, upside-down, its wings outstretched. It speaks to them in their Daddy's voice.

Lo-Lo falls and cuts her knees on the shells. Tessie pulls her to her feet. They run on. It
isn't the upside-down talking
crow they are afraid of, nor the way the sky sometimes lenses from blue to a sunset red before going back to blue; it is the thing behind them.

The big boy.

Even with its fangs it still looks a little like one of the funny frogs Libbit used to draw, but this one is ever so much bigger, and real enough to cast a shadow. Real enough to stink and shake the ground each time it jumps. They have been frightened by all sorts of things since Daddy found the treasure, and Libbit says they dassn't come out of their room at night, or even look out their windows, but this is
day,
and the thing behind them is too real not to be believed, and it is gaining.

The next time it's Tessie who falls and Lo-Lo who pulls her up, casting a terrified glance behind her at the thing chasing them. It's surrounded by dancing bugs it sometimes licks out of the air. Lo-Lo can see Tessie in one bulging, stupid eye. She herself is in the other.

They burst onto the beach gasping and out of breath and now there's nowhere to go but the water. Except maybe there is, because the boat is back again, the one they have seen more and more frequently in the last few weeks. Libbit says the boat
isn't what it seems, but now it's a floating white dream of safety, and besides
—
there is no choice. The big boy is almost at their heels.

It came out of the swimming pool just after they finished playing Adie's Wedding in Rampopo, the baby-house on the side lawn (today Lo-Lo got to play Adie). Sometimes Libbit can make these awful things go away by scribbling on her pad, but now Libbit is sleeping
—
she has had a great many troubled nights lately.

The big boy leaps off the path and onto the beach, spraying sand all around. Its bulging eyes stare. Its fragile white belly, so full of noisome guts, bulges. Its throat throbs.

The two girls, standing with their hands linked and their feet in the running boil of what Daddy calls the little surf, look at each other. Then they look at the ship, swinging at anchor with its sails furled and shining. It looks even closer, as if it has moved in to rescue them.

Lo-Lo says
We have to.

Tessie says
But I can't SWIM!

You can dogpaddle!

The big boy leaps. They can hear its guts slosh when it lands. They sound like wet garbage in a barrel of water. The blue fades from the sky and then the sky bleeds red. Then, slowly, it changes back again. It's been that kind of day. And
haven't they known this kind of day was coming?
Haven't they seen it in Libbit's haunted eyes? Nan Melda knows; even Daddy knows, and he's not here all the time. Today he's in Tampa, and when they look at the greenish-white horror that's almost upon them, they know that Tampa might as well be the far side of the moon. They are on their own.

Tessie grips Lo-Lo's shoulder with cold fingers.
What about the rip?

But Lo-Lo shakes her head.
The rip is good! The rip will take us to the boat!

There's no more time to talk. The frog-thing is getting ready to leap again. And they understand that, while it cannot be real, somehow it is. It can kill them. Better to chance the water. They turn, still holding hands, and throw themselves into the
caldo.
They fix their eyes on the slim white swallow swinging at anchor close to them. Surely they will be hauled aboard, and someone will use the ship-to-shore to call the Roost. “Netted us a pair of mermaids,” they'll say. “You know anyone who wants em?”

The rip parts their hands. It is ruthless, and Lo-Lo actually drowns first because she fights harder. Tessie hears her
cry out twice. First for help. Then, giving up, her sister's name.

Meanwhile, a vagary of the rip is sweeping Tessie straight for the ship, and holding her up at the same time. For a few magical moments it's as though she's on a surfboard, and her weak dogpaddle seems to be propelling her like an outboard motor. Then, just before a colder current reaches up and coils around her ankles, she sees the ship change into
—

Here's a picture I did paint, not once but again and again and again:

The whiteness of the hull
doesn't exactly disappear; it is sucked inward like blood fleeing the cheek of a terrified man. The ropes fray. The brightwork dulls. The glass in the windows of the aft cabin bursts outward. A junkheap clutter appears on the decking, rolling into existence from fore to aft. Except it was there all along. Tessie just
didn't see it. Now she sees.

Now she believes.

A creature comes from belowdecks. It creeps to the railing, where it stares down at the girl. It is a slumped thing in a hooded red robe. Hair that might not be hair at all flutters dankly around a melted face. Yellow hands grip splintered, punky wood. Then, one lifts slowly.

And waves to the girl who will soon be GONE.

It says
Come to me, child.

And, drowning, Tessie Eastlake thinks
It's a WOMAN!

She sinks. And does she feel still-warm hands, those of her freshly dead sister, gripping her calves and pulling her down?

Yes, of course. Of course she does.

Believing is also
feeling.

Any artist will tell you so.

i

Someday, if your life is long and your thinking machinery stays in gear, you'll live to remember the last good thing that ever happened to you. That's not pessimism talking, just logic. I hope I haven't run out of good things yet—there would be no purpose in living if I believed I had—but it's been a long time between. I remember the last one clearly. It happened a little over four years ago, on the evening of April fifteenth, at the Scoto Gallery. It was between seven forty-five and eight o'clock, and the shadows on Palm Avenue were beginning to take on the first faint tinges of blue. I know the time, because I kept checking my watch. The Scoto was already packed—to the legal limit and probably a little beyond—but my family hadn't arrived. I had seen Pam and Illy earlier in the day, and Wireman had assured me that Melinda's flight was on time, but so far that evening there hadn't been a sign of them. Or a call.

In the alcove to my left, where both the bar and eight of the
Sunset With
pictures had drawn a crowd, a trio from the local music conservatory was tinkling through a funereal version of “My Funny Valentine.” Mary Ire (holding a glass of champagne but sober so far) was expatiating on something artistic to an attentive little crowd. To the right was a bigger room,
featuring a buffet. On one wall in there was
Roses Grow from Shells
and a painting called
I See the Moon
; on another, three views of Duma Road. I'd observed several people taking photographs of these with their camera-phones, although a sign on a tripod just inside the door announced that all photography was
verboten.

I mentioned this to Jimmy Yoshida in passing, and he nodded, seeming not angry or even irritated, but rather bemused. “There are a great many people here I either don't associate with the art scene or don't recognize at all,” he said. “The size of this crowd is outside of my experience.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“God, no! But after years of fighting to keep our corporate heads above water, it feels strange to be carried along this way.”

The Scoto's center gallery was large, which was a good thing that night. In spite of the food, drink, and music in the smaller rooms, the center seemed to be where most of the visitors eventually gravitated. The
Girl and Ship
series had been mounted there on almost invisible cords, directly down the center of the room.
Wireman Looks West
was on the wall at the far end. That one and
Girl and Ship No. 8
were the only paintings in the show which I had stickered NFS,
Wireman
because the painting was his,
No. 8
because I simply couldn't sell it.

“We keepin you up, boss?” Angel Slobotnik said from my left, as oblivious to his wife's elbow as ever.

“No,” I said. “I was never more awake in my life, I just—”

A man in a suit that had to've cost two grand stuck out his hand. “Henry Vestick, Mr. Freemantle, First
Sarasota Bank and Trust. Private Accounts. These are just marvelous. I am
stunned
. I am
amazed
.”

“Thank you,” I said, thinking he'd left out YOU MUST NOT STOP. “Very kind.”

A business card appeared between his fingers. It was like watching a street-busker do a magic trick. Or would have been, if street-buskers wore Armani suits. “If there's anything I can do . . . I've written my phone numbers on the back—home, cell, office.”

“Very kind,” I repeated. I couldn't think of anything else to say, and really, what did Mr. Vestick think I was going to do? Call him at home and thank him again? Ask him for a loan and offer him a painting as collateral?

“May I bring my wife over later and introduce her?” he asked, and I saw a look in his eyes. It wasn't exactly like the look that had been in Wireman's when he realized that I'd put the blocks to Candy Brown, but it was close. As if Vestick were a little afraid of me.

“Of course,” I said, and he slipped away.

“You used to build branch banks for guys like that and then have to fight em when they didn't want to pay the overage,” Angel said. He was in a blue off-the-rack suit and looked on the verge of bursting out of it in nine different directions, like The Incredible Hulk. “Back then he woulda thought you were just some moke tryin to mess up his day. Now he looks at you like you could shit gold belt-buckles.”

“Angel, you stop!” Helen Slobotnik cried, simultaneously throwing another elbow and grabbing for his glass of champagne. He held it serenely out of her reach.

“Tell her it's the truth, boss!”

“I think it sort of is,” I said.

And it wasn't only the banker I was getting that look from. The women . . . jeez. When my eyes met theirs, I caught a softening, a speculation, as if they were wondering how I might hold them with only the one arm. That was probably crazy, but—

I was grabbed from behind, almost yanked off my feet. My own glass of champagne would have spilled, but Angel snatched it deftly. I turned, and there was Kathi Green, smiling at me. She'd left the Rehab Gestapo far behind, at least for tonight; she was wearing a short, shimmery green dress that clung to every well-maintained inch of her, and in her heels she stood almost to my forehead. Standing beside her, towering over her, was Kamen. His enormous eyes swam benevolently behind his horn-rimmed glasses.

“Jesus, Kathi!” I cried. “What would you've done if you'd knocked me over?”

“Made you give me fifty,” she said, smiling more widely than ever. Her eyes were full of tears. “Toldja that on the phone. Look at your tan, you handsome boy.” The tears spilled over and she hugged me.

I hugged back, then shook hands with Kamen. His hand swallowed mine whole.

“Your plane is the way for men my size to fly,” he said, and people turned in his direction. He had one of those deep James Earl Jones voices that can make supermarket circulars sound like the Book of Isaiah. “I enjoyed myself to the
max,
Edgar.”

“It's not really mine, but thank you,” I said. “Have either of you—”

“Mr. Freemantle?”

It was a lovely redhead whose generously freckled breasts were in danger of tumbling from the top of a
fragile pink dress. She had big green eyes. She looked about my daughter Melinda's age. Before I could say anything, she reached out and gently grasped my fingers.

“I just wanted to touch the hand that painted those pictures,” she said. “Those wonderful,
freaky
pictures. God, you're
amazing
.” She lifted my hand and kissed it. Then she pressed it to one of her breasts. I could feel the rough pebble of the nipple through a thin gauze of chiffon. Then she was gone into the crowd.

“Does that happen often?” Kamen asked, and at the same moment Kathi asked, “So how's divorce treating you, Edgar?” They looked at each other for a moment, then burst out laughing.

I understood what they were laughing at—Edgar's Elvis moment—but to me it just seemed weird. The rooms of the Scoto began to look a little like chambers in an undersea grotto, and I realized I could paint it that way: undersea rooms with paintings on their walls, paintings that were being looked at by schooling peoplefish while Neptune's Trio burbled “Octopus's Garden.”

Far too weird. I wanted Wireman and Jack—also not here yet—but even more, I wanted my people. Illy most of all. If I had them, maybe this would start to feel like reality again. I glanced toward the door.