Duma Key

i

There was a bottle of single-malt in the living room liquor cabinet. I wanted a shot and didn’t take it. I wanted to wait, maybe eat one of my egg salad sandwiches and plan out what I was going to say to her, and I didn’t do that, either. Sometimes the only way to do it is to do it. I took the cordless phone out into the Florida room. It was chilly even with the glass sliders shut, but in a way that was good. I thought the cool air might sharpen me up a little. And maybe the sight of the sun dropping toward the horizon and painting its golden track across the water would calm me down. Because I wasn’t calm. My heart was pounding too hard, my cheeks felt hot, my hip hurt like a bastard, and I suddenly realized, with real horror, that my wife’s name had slipped my mind. Every time I dipped for it, all I came up with was peligro, the Spanish word for danger.

I decided there was one thing I did need before calling Minnesota.

I left the phone on the overstuffed couch, limped to the bedroom (using my crutch now; I and my crutch were going to be inseparable until bedtime), and got Reba. One look into her blue eyes was enough to bring Pam’s name back, and my heartbeat slowed. With my best girl clamped between my side and my stump, her boneless pink legs wagging, I made my way back to the Florida room and sat down again. Reba flopped onto my lap and I set her aside with a thump so she faced the westering sun.

“Stare at it too long, you’ll go blind,” I said. “Of course, that’s where the fun is. Bruce Springsteen, 1973 or so, muchacha.”

Reba did not reply.

“I should be upstairs, painting that,” I told her, “Doing fucking art for fucking art’s sake.”

No reply. Reba’s wide eyes suggested to the world in general that she was stuck with America’s nastiest man.

I picked up the cordless and shook it in her face. “I can do this,” I said.

Nothing from Reba, but I thought she looked doubtful. Beneath us, the shells continued their wind-driven argument: You did, I didn’t, oh yes you did.

I wanted to go on discussing the matter with my Anger-Management Doll. Instead I punched in the number of what used to be my house. No problem at all remembering that. I was hoping to get Pam’s answering machine. Instead I got the lady herself, sounding breathless. “Hey, Joanie, thank God you called back. I’m running late and was hoping our three-fifteen could be—”

“It’s not Joanie,” I said. I reached for Reba and drew her back onto my lap without even thinking about it. “It’s Edgar. And you might have to cancel your three-fifteen. We’ve got something to talk about, and it’s important.”

“What’s wrong?”

“With me? Nothing. I’m fine.”

“Edgar, can we talk later? I need to get my hair done and I’m running late. I’ll be back at six.”

“It’s about Tom Riley.”

Silence from Pam’s part of the world. It went on for maybe ten seconds. During those ten seconds, the golden track on the water darkened just a little. Elizabeth Eastlake knew her Emily Dickinson; I wondered if she also knew her Vachel Lindsay.

“What about Tom?” Pam asked at last. There was caution in her voice, deep caution. I was pretty sure that her hair appointment had left her mind.

“I have reason to believe he may be contemplating suicide.” I crooked the phone against my shoulder and began stroking Reba’s hair. “Know anything about that?”

“What do… What do I…” She sounded punched, breathless. “Why in God’s name would I…” She began to gain a little strength, grasping for indignation. It’s handy in such situations, I suppose. “You call out of a clear blue sky and expect me to tell you about Tom Riley’s state of mind? I thought you were getting better, but I guess that was wishful th—”

“Fucking him should give you some insight.” My hand wound into Reba’s fake orange hair and clutched, as if to tear it out by the roots. “Or am I wrong?”

“That is insane!” she nearly screamed. “You need help, Edgar! Either call Dr. Kamen or get help down there, and soon!”

The anger — and the accompanying certainty that I would begin to lose my words — suddenly disappeared. I relaxed my hold on Reba’s hair.

“Calm down, Pam. This isn’t about you. Or me. It’s about Tom. Have you seen signs of depression? You must have.”

No answer. But no hang-up click, either. And I could hear her breathing.

At last she said, “Okay. Okay, right. I know where you got this idea. Little Miss Drama Queen, correct? I suppose Ilse also told you about Max Stanton, out in Palm Desert. Oh, Edgar, you know how she is!”

At that the rage threatened to return. My hand reached out and grasped Reba by her soft middle. I can do this, I thought. It’s not about Ilse, either. And Pam? Pam’s only scared, because this came at her out of left field. She’s scared and angry, but I can do this. I have to do this.

Never mind that for a few moments I wanted to kill her. Or that, if she’d been there in the Florida room with me, I might have tried.

“Ilse didn’t tell me.”

“Enough lunacy, I’m hanging up now—”

“The only thing I don’t know is which one of them talked you into getting the tattoo on your breast. The little rose.”

She cried out. Just one soft cry, but that was enough. There was another moment of silence. It pulsed like black felt. Then she burst out: “That bitch! She saw it and told you! It’s the only way you could know! Well it means nothing! It proves nothing!”

“This isn’t court, Pam,” I said.

She made no reply, but I could hear her breathing.

“Ilse did have her suspicions about this guy Max, but she doesn’t have a clue about Tom. If you tell her, you’ll break her heart.” I paused. “And that’ll break mine.”

She was crying. “Fuck your heart. And fuck you. I wish you were dead, you know it? You lying, prying bastard, I wish you were dead.”

At least I no longer felt that way about her. Thank God.

The track on the water had darkened to burnished copper. Now the orange would begin to creep in.

“What do you know about Tom’s state of mind?”

“Nothing. And for your information I’m not having an affair with him. If I did have one, it lasted for all of three weeks. It’s over. I made that clear to him when I came back from Palm Desert. There are all sorts of reasons, but basically he’s too…” Abruptly she jumped back. “She must have told you. Melinda wouldn’t’ve, even if she’d known.” And, absurdly spiteful: “She knows what I’ve been through with you!”

It was surprising, really, how little interest I had in going down that road with her. I was interested in something else. “He’s too what?”

“Who’s too what?” she cried. “Jesus, I hate this! This interrogation!”

Like I was loving it. “Tom. You said ‘Basically he’s too,’ then stopped.”

“Too moody. He’s an emotional grab-bag. One day up, one day down, one day both, especially if he doesn’t take—”

She ceased abruptly.

“If he doesn’t take his pills,” I finished for her.

“Yeah, well, I’m not his psychiatrist,” she said, and that wasn’t tinny petulance in her voice; I was pretty sure it was blue steel. Jesus. The woman I’d been married to could be tough when the situation called for it, but I thought that unforgiving blue steel was a new thing: her part of my accident. I thought it was Pam’s limp.

“I got enough of that shrinky-dink shit with you, Edgar. Just once I’d like to meet a man who was a man and not a pill-popping Magic 8-Ball. ‘Cannot say now, ask later when I’m not feeling so upset.’”

She sniffed in my ear, and I waited for the follow-up honk. It came. She cried the same way as always; some things apparently didn’t change.

“Fuck you, Edgar, for fucking up what was actually a pretty good day.”

“I don’t care who you sleep with,” I said. “We’re divorced. All I want is to save Tom Riley’s life.”

This time she screamed so loud I had to hold the phone away from my ear. “I’m not RESPONSIBLE for his life! WE’RE QUITS! Did you miss that?” Then, a little lower (but not much): “He’s not even in St. Paul. He’s on a cruise with his mother and that gayboy brother of his.”

Suddenly I understood, or thought I did. It was as if I were flying over it, getting an aerial view. Maybe because I had contemplated suicide, cautioning myself all the while that it must absolutely look like an accident. Not so the insurance money would get paid, but so that my daughters wouldn’t have to go through life with the stigma of everyone knowing —

And that was the answer, wasn’t it?

“Tell him you know. When he gets back, tell him you know he’s planning to kill himself.”

“Why would he believe me?”

“Because he is planning to. Because you know him. Because he’s mentally ill, and probably thinks he’s going around with a sign that says PLANNING SUICIDE taped to his back. Tell him you know he’s been ditching his antidepressants. You do know that, right? For a fact.”

“Yes. But telling him to take them never helped before.”

“Did you ever tell him you’d tattle on him if he didn’t start taking his medicine? Tattle to everyone?”

“No, and I’m not going to now!” She sounded appalled. “Do you think I want everyone in St. Paul to know I slept with Tom Riley? That I had a thing with him?”

“How about all of St. Paul knowing you care what happens to him? Would that be so goddam awful?”

She was silent.

“All I want is for you to confront him when he comes back—”

“All you want! Right! Your whole life has been about all you want! I tell you what, Eddie, if this is such a BFD to you, then you confront him!” It was that shrill hardness again, but this time with fear behind it.

I said, “If you were the one who broke it off, you probably still have power over him. Including — maybe — the power to make him save his life. I know that’s scary, but you’re stuck with it.”

“No I’m not. I’m hanging up.”

“If he kills himself, I doubt if you’ll spend the rest of your life with a bad conscience… but I think you will have one miserable year. Or two.”

“I won’t. I’ll sleep like a baby.”

“Sorry, Panda, I don’t believe you.”

It was an ancient pet name, one I hadn’t used in years, and I don’t know where it came from, but it broke her. She began to cry again. This time there was no anger in it. “Why do you have to be such a bastard? Why won’t you leave me alone?”

I wanted no more of this. What I wanted was a couple of pain pills. And maybe to sprawl on my bed and have a good cry myself, I wasn’t sure. “Tell him you know. Tell him to see his psychiatrist and start taking his antidepressants again. And here’s the most important thing — tell him that if he kills himself, you’ll tell everyone, starting with his mother and brother. That no matter how good he makes it look, everyone will know it was really suicide.”

“I can’t do that! I can’t!” She sounded hopeless.

I considered this, and decided I’d put Tom Riley’s life entirely in her hands — simply pass it down the telephone wire to her. That sort of letting-go hadn’t been in the old Edgar Freemantle’s repertoire, but of course that Edgar Freemantle would never have considered spending his time painting sunsets. Or playing with dolls.

“You decide, Panda. It might be useless anyway if he no longer cares for you, but—”

“Oh, he does.” She sounded more hopeless than ever.

“Then tell him he has to start living life again, like it or not.”

“Good old Edgar, still managing things,” she said wanly. “Even from his island kingdom. Good old Edgar. Edgar the monster.”

“That hurts,” I said.

“Lovely,” she said, and hung up. I sat on the couch awhile longer, watching as the sunset grew brighter and the air in the Florida room grew colder. People who think there is no winter in Florida are very mistaken. An inch of snow fell in Sarasota in 1977. I guess it gets cold everywhere. I bet it even snows in hell, although I doubt if it sticks.

ii

Wireman called the next day shortly after noon and asked if he was still invited to look at my pictures. I felt some misgivings, remembering his promise (or threat) to give me his unvarnished opinion, but told him to come ahead.

I set out what I thought were my sixteen best… although in the clear, cold daylight of that January afternoon they all looked pretty crappy to me. The sketch I’d made of Carson Jones was still on the shelf in my bedroom closet. I took it down, clipped it to a piece of fiberboard, and propped it at the end of the line. The penciled colors looked dowdy and plain compared to the oils, and of course it was smaller than the rest, but I still thought it had something the others lacked.

I considered putting out the picture of the red-robe, then didn’t. I don’t know why. Maybe just because it gave me the creeps. I put out Hello — the pencil sketch of the tanker — instead.

Wireman came buzzing up in a bright blue golf cart with sporty yellow pinstriping. He didn’t have to ring the bell. I was at the door to meet him.

“You’ve got a certain drawn look about you, muchacho,” he said, coming in. “Relax. I ain’t the doctor and this ain’t the doctor’s office.”

“I can’t help it. If this was a building and you were a building inspector, I wouldn’t feel this way, but—”

“But that was your other life,” Wireman said. “This be your new one, where you haven’t got your walking shoes broke in yet.”

“That’s about the size of it.”

“You’re damn right. Speaking of your prior existence, did you call your wife about that little matter you discussed with me?”

“I did. Do you want the blow-by-blow?”

“Nope. All I want to know is if you’re comfortable with the way the conversation turned out.”

“I haven’t had a comfortable conversation with Pam since I woke up in the hospital. But I’m pretty sure she’ll talk to Tom.”

“Then I guess that’ll do, pig. Babe, 1995.” He was all the way in now, and looking around curiously. “I like what you’ve done to the place.”

I burst out laughing. I hadn’t even removed the no-smoking sign on top of the TV. “I had Jack put in a treadmill upstairs, that’s new. You’ve been here before, I take it?”

He gave me an enigmatic little smile. “We’ve all been here before, amigo — this is bigger than pro football. Peter Straub, circa 1985.”

“I’m not following you.”

“I’ve been working for Miss Eastlake about sixteen months now, with one brief and uncomfortable diversion to St. Pete when the Keys were evacuated for Hurricane Frank. Anyway, the last people to rent Salmon Point — pardon me, Big Pink — stayed just two weeks of their eight-week lease and then went boogie-bye-bye. Either they didn’t like the house or the house didn’t like them.” Wireman raised ghost-hands over his head and took big wavery ghost-steps across the light blue living room carpet. The effect was to a large degree spoiled by his shirt, which was covered with tropical birds and flowers. “After that, whatever walked in Big Pink… walked alone!”

“Shirley Jackson,” I said. “Circa whenever.”

“Yep. Anyway, Wireman was making a point, or trying to. Big Pink THEN!” He swept his arms out in an all-encompassing gesture. “Furnished in that popular Florida style known as Twenty-First Century Rent-A-House! Big Pink NOW! Furnished in Twenty-First Century Rent-A-House, plus Cybex treadmill upstairs, and…” He squinted. “Is that a Lucille Ball dolly I spy sitting on the couch in the Florida room?”

“That’s Reba, the Anger-Management Queen. She was given to me by my psychologist friend, Kramer.” But that wasn’t right. My missing arm began to itch madly. For the ten thousandth time I tried to scratch it and got my still-mending ribs instead. “Wait,” I said, and looked at Reba, who was staring out at the Gulf. I can do this, I thought. It’s like where you put money when you want to hide it from the government.

Wireman was waiting patiently.

My arm itched. The one not there. The one that sometimes wanted to draw. It wanted to draw then. I thought it wanted to draw Wireman. Wireman and the bowl of fruit. Wireman and the gun.

Stop the weird shit, I thought.

I can do this, I thought.

You hide money from the government in offshore banks, I thought. Nassau. The Bahamas. The Grand Caymans. And Bingo, there it was.

“Kamen,” I said. “That’s his name. Kamen gave me Reba. Xander Kamen.”

“Well now that we’ve got that solved,” Wireman said, “let’s look at the art.”

“If that’s what it is,” I said, and led the way upstairs, limping on my crutch. Halfway up, something struck me and I stopped. “Wireman,” I said, without looking back, “how did you know my treadmill was a Cybex?”

For a moment he said nothing. Then: “It’s the only brand I know. Now can you resume the upward ascent on your own, or do you need a kick in the ass to get going?”

Sounds good, rings false, I thought as I started up the stairs again. I think you’re lying, and you know what? I think you know I know.

iii

My work was leaning against the north wall of Little Pink, with the afternoon sun giving the paintings plenty of natural light. Looking at them from behind Wireman as he walked slowly down the line, sometimes pausing and once even backtracking to study a couple of canvases a second time, I thought it was far more light than they deserved. Ilse and Jack had praised them, but one was my daughter and the other my hired man.

When he reached the colored pencil drawing of the tanker at the very end of the line, Wireman squatted and stared at it for maybe thirty seconds with his forearms resting on his thighs and his hands hanging limply between his legs.

“What—” I began.

“Shhh,” he said, and I endured another thirty seconds of silence. At last he stood up. His knees popped. When he turned to face me, his eyes looked very large, and the left one was inflamed. Water — not a tear — was running from the inner corner. He pulled a handkerchief from the back pocket of his jeans and wiped it away, the automatic gesture of a man who does the same thing a dozen or more times a day.

“Holy God,” he said, and walked toward the window, stuffing the handkerchief back into his pocket.

“Holy God what?” I asked. “Holy God what?”

He stood looking out. “You don’t know how good these are, do you? I mean you really don’t.”

“Are they?” I asked. I had never felt so unsure of myself. “Are you serious?”

“Did you put them in chronological order?” he asked, still looking out at the Gulf. The joking, joshing, wisecracking Wireman had taken a hike. I had an idea the one I was listening to now had a lot more in common with the one juries had heard… always assuming he’d been that kind of lawyer. “You did, didn’t you? Other than the last couple, I mean. Those’re obviously much earlier.”

I didn’t see how anything of mine could qualify as “much earlier” when I’d only been doing pictures for a couple of months, but when I ran my eye over them, I saw he was right. I hadn’t meant to put them in chronological order — not consciously — but that was what I had done.

“Yes,” I said. “Earliest to most recent.”

He indicated the last four paintings — the ones I’d come to think of as my sunset-composites. To one I’d added a nautilus shell, to one a compact disc with the word Memorex printed across it (and the sun shining redly through the hole), to the third a dead seagull I’d found on the beach, only blown up to pterodactyl size. The last was of the shell-bed beneath Big Pink, done from a digital photograph. To this I had for some reason felt the urge to add roses. There were none growing around Big Pink, but there were plenty of photos available from my new pal Google.

“This last group of paintings,” he said. “Has anyone seen these? Your daughter?”

“No. These four were done after she left.”

“The guy who works for you?”

“Nope.”

“And of course you never showed your daughter the sketch you made of her boyfr—”

“God, no! Are you kidding?”

“No, of course you didn’t. That one has its own power, hasty as it obviously is. As for the rest of these things…” He laughed. I suddenly realized he was excited, and that was when I started to get excited. But cautious, too. Remember he used to be a lawyer, I told myself. He’s not an art critic.

“The rest of these fucking things…” He gave that little yipping laugh again. He walked in a circle around the room, stepping onto the treadmill and over it with an unconscious ease that I envied bitterly. He put his hands in his graying hair and pulled it out and up, as if to stretch his brains.

At last he came back. Stood in front of me. Confronted me, almost. “Look. The world has knocked you around a lot in the last year or so, and I know that takes a lot of gas out of the old self-image airbag. But don’t tell me you don’t at least feel how good they are.”

I remembered the two of us recovering from our wild laughing fit while the sun shone through the torn umbrella, putting little scars of light on the table. Wireman had said I know what you’re going through and I had replied I seriously doubt that. I didn’t doubt it now. He knew. This memory of the day before was followed by a dry desire — not a hunger but an itch — to get Wireman down on paper. A combination portrait and still life, Lawyer with Fruit and Gun.

He patted my cheek with one of his blunt-fingered hands. “Earth to Edgar. Come in, Edgar.”

“Ah, roger, Houston,” I heard myself say. “You have Edgar.”

“So what do you say, muchacho? Am I lyin or am I dyin? Did you or did you not feel they were good when you were doing them?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I felt like I was kicking ass and taking down names.”

He nodded. “It’s the simplest fact of art — good art almost always feels good to the artist. And the viewer, the committed viewer, the one who’s really looking—”

“I guess that’d be you,” I said. “You took long enough.”

He didn’t smile. “When it’s good and the person who’s looking opens up to it, there’s an emotional bang. I felt the bang, Edgar.”

“Good.”

“You bet it is. And when that guy at the Scoto gets a load of these, I think he’ll feel it, too. In fact, I’d bet on it.”

“They’re really not so much. Re-heated Dalí, when you get right down to it.”

He put an arm around my shoulders and led me toward the stairs. “I’m not going to dignify that. Nor are we going to discuss the fact that you apparently painted your daughter’s boyfriend via some weird phantom-limb telepathy. I do wish I could see that tennis-ball picture, but what’s gone is gone.”

“Good riddance, too,” I said.

“But you have to be very careful, Edgar. Duma Key is a powerful place for… certain kinds of people. It magnifies certain kinds of people. People like you.”

“And you?” I asked. He didn’t answer immediately, so I pointed at his face. “That eye of yours is watering again.”

He took out the handkerchief and wiped it.

“Want to tell me what happened to you?” I asked. “Why you can’t read? Why it weirds you out to even look at pictures too long?”

For a long time he said nothing. The shells under Big Pink had a lot to say. With one wave they said the fruit. With the next they said the gun. Back and forth like that. The fruit, the gun, the gun, the fruit.

“No,” he said. “Not now. And if you want to draw me, sure. Knock yourself out.”

“How much of my mind can you read, Wireman?”

“Not much,” he said. “You caught a break there, muchacho.”

“Could you still read it if we were off Duma Key? If we were in a Tampa coffee shop, for instance?”

“Oh, I might get a tickle.” He smiled. “Especially after spending over a year here, soaking up the… you know, the rays.”

“Will you go to the gallery with me? The Scoto?”

“Amigo, I wouldn’t miss it for all the tea in China.”

iv

That night a squall blew in off the water and it rained hard for two hours. Lightning flashed and waves pounded the pilings under the house. Big Pink groaned but stood firm. I discovered an interesting thing: when the Gulf got a little crazy and those waves really poured in, the shells shut up. The waves lifted them too high for conversation.

I went upstairs at the boom-and-flash height of the festivities, and — feeling a little like Dr. Frankenstein animating his monster in the castle tower — drew Wireman, using a plain old Venus Black pencil. Until the very end, that was. Then I used red and orange for the fruit in the bowl. In the background I sketched a doorway, and in the doorway I put Reba, standing there and watching. I supposed Kamen would have said Reba was my representative in the world of the picture. Maybe sí, maybe no. The last thing I did was pick up the Venus Sky to color in her stupid eyes. Then it was done. Another Freemantle masterpiece is born.

I sat looking at it while the diminishing thunder rolled away and the lightning flashed a few goodbye stutters over the Gulf. There was Wireman, sitting at a table. Sitting there, I had no doubt, at the end of his other life. On the table was a bowl of fruit and the pistol he kept either for target practice (back then his eyes had been fine) or for home protection or both. I had sketched the pistol and then scribbled it in, giving it a sinister, slightly blobby look. That other house was empty. Somewhere in that other house a clock was ticking. Somewhere in that other house a refrigerator was whining. The air was heavy with the scent of flowers. The scent was terrible. The sounds were worse. The march of the clock. The relentless whine of the refrigerator as it went on making ice in a wifeless, childless world. Soon the man at the table would close his eyes, stretch out his hand, and pick a piece of fruit from the bowl. If it was an orange, he’d go to bed. If it was an apple, he would apply the muzzle of the gun to his right temple, pull the trigger, and air out his aching brains.

It had been an apple.

v

Jack showed up the next day with a borrowed van and plenty of soft cloth in which to wrap my canvases. I told him I’d made a friend from the big house down the beach, and that he’d be going with us. “No problem,” Jack said cheerfully, climbing the stairs to Little Pink and trundling a hand-dolly along behind him. “There’s plenty of room in the — whoa!” He had stopped at the head of the stairs.

“What?” I asked.

“Are these ones new? They must be.”

“Yeah.” Nannuzzi from the Scoto had asked to see half a dozen pictures, no more than ten, so I’d split the difference and set out eight. Four were the ones that had impressed Wireman the night before. “What do you think?”

“Dude, these are awesome!”

It was hard to doubt his sincerity; he’d never called me dude before. I mounted a couple more steps and then poked his bluejeaned butt with the tip of my crutch. “Make room.”

He stepped aside, pulling the dolly with him, so I could climb the rest of the way up to Little Pink. He was still staring at the pictures.

“Jack, is this guy at the Scoto really okay? Do you know?”

“My Mom says he is, and that’s good enough for me.” Meaning, I think, that it should be good enough for me, too. I guessed it would have to be. “She didn’t tell me anything about the other partners — I think there are two more — but she says Mr. Nannuzzi’s okay.”

Jack had called in a favor for me. I was touched.

“And if he doesn’t like these,” Jack finished, “he’s wack.”

“You think so, huh?”

He nodded.

From downstairs, Wireman called cheerfully: “Knock-knock! I’m here for the field trip. Are we still going? Who’s got my name-tag? Was I supposed to pack a lunch?”

vi

I had pictured a bald, skinny, professorial man with blazing brown eyes — an Italian Ben Kingsley — but Dario Nannuzzi turned out to be fortyish, plump, courtly, and possessed of a full head of hair. I was close on the eyes, though. They didn’t miss a trick. I saw them widen once — slightly but perceptibly — when Wireman carefully unwrapped the last painting I’d brought, Roses Grow from Shells. The pictures were lined up against the back wall of the gallery, which was currently devoted mostly to photographs by Stephanie Shachat and oils by William Berra. Better stuff, I thought, than I could do in a century.

Although there had been that slight widening of the eyes.

Nannuzzi went down the line from first to last, then went again. I had no idea if that was good or bad. The dirty truth was that I had never been in an art gallery in my life before that day. I turned to ask Wireman what he thought, but Wireman had withdrawn and was talking quietly with Jack, both of them watching Nannuzzi look at my paintings.

Nor were they the only ones, I realized. The end of January is a busy season in the pricey shops along Florida’s west coast. There were a dozen or so lookie-loos in the good-sized Scoto Gallery (Nannuzzi later used the far more dignified term “potential patrons”), eyeing the Shachat dahlias, William Berra’s gorgeous but touristy oils of Europe, and a few eyepopping, cheerfully feverish sculptures I’d missed in the anxiety of getting my own stuff unwrapped — these were by a guy named David Gerstein.

At first I thought it was the sculptures — jazz musicians, crazy swimmers, throbbing city scenes — that were drawing the casual afternoon browsers. And some glanced at them, but most didn’t even do that. It was my pictures they were looking at.

A man with what Floridians call a Michigan tan — that can mean skin that’s either dead white or burned lobster red — tapped me on the shoulder with his free hand. The other was interlaced with his wife’s fingers. “Do you know who the artist is?” he asked.

“Me,” I muttered, and felt my face grow hot. I felt as if I were confessing to having spent the last week or so downloading pictures of Lindsay Lohan.

“Good for you!” his wife said warmly. “Will you be showing?”

Now they were all looking at me. Sort of the way you might look at a new species of puffer-fish that may or may not be the sushi du jour. That was how it felt, anyway.

“I don’t know if I’ll be snowing. Showing.” I could feel more blood stacking up in my cheeks. Shame-blood, which was bad. Anger-blood, which was worse. If it spilled out, it would be anger at myself, but these people wouldn’t know that.

I opened my mouth to pour out words, and closed it. Take it slow, I thought, and wished I had Reba. These people would probably view a doll-toting artist as normal. They had lived through Andy Warhol, after all.

Take it slow. I can do this.

“What I mean to say is I haven’t been working long, and I don’t know what the procedure is.”

Quit fooling yourself, Edgar. You know what they’re interested in. Not your pictures but your empty sleeve. You’re Artie the One-Armed Artist. Why not just cut to the chase and tell them to fuck off?

That was ridiculous, of course, but —

But now I was goddamned if everyone in the gallery wasn’t standing around. Those who’d been up front looking at Ms. Shachat’s flowers had been drawn by simple curiosity. It was a familiar grouping; I had seen similar clusters standing around the peepholes in board fences at a hundred construction sites.

“I’ll tell you what the procedure is,” said another fellow with a Michigan tan. He was swag-bellied, sporting a little garden of gin-blossoms on his nose, and wearing a tropical shirt that hung almost to his knees. His white shoes matched his perfectly combed white hair. “It’s simple. Just two steps. Step one is you tell me how much you want for that one.” He pointed to Sunset with Seagull. “Step two is I write the check.”

The little crowd laughed. Dario Nannuzzi didn’t. He beckoned to me.

“Excuse me,” I said to the white-haired man.

“Price of poker just went up, my friend,” someone said to Gin-Blossoms, and there was laughter. Gin-Blossoms joined in, but didn’t look really amused.

I noticed all this as though in a dream.

Nannuzzi smiled at me, then turned to the patrons, who were still looking at my paintings. “Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Freemantle didn’t come in to sell anything today, only for an opinion on his work. Please respect his privacy and my professional situation.” Whatever that is, I thought, bemused. “May I suggest that you browse the works on display while we step into the rear quarters for a little while? Ms. Aucoin, Mr. Brooks, and Mr. Castellano will be pleased to answer all your questions.”

“My opinion is that you ought to sign this man up,” said a severe-looking woman with her graying hair drawn back into a bun and a kind of wrecked beauty still lingering on her face. There was actually a smattering of applause. My feeling of being in a dream deepened.

An ethereal young man floated toward us from the rear. Nannuzzi might have summoned him, but I was damned if I knew just how. They spoke briefly, and then the young man produced a big roll of stickers. They were ovals with the letters NFS embossed on them in silver. Nannuzzi removed one, bent toward the first painting, then hesitated and gave me a look of reproach. “These haven’t been sealed in any way.”

“Uh… guess not,” I said. I was blushing again. “I don’t… exactly know what that is.”

“Dario, what you’re dealing with here is a true American primitive,” said the severe-looking woman. “If he’s been painting longer than three years, I’ll buy you dinner at Zoria’s, along with a bottle of wine.” She turned her wrecked but still almost gorgeous face to me.

“When and if there’s something for you to write about, Mary,” Nannuzzi said, “I’ll call you myself.”

“You’d better,” she said. “And I’m not even going to ask his name — do you see what a good girl I am?” She twiddled her fingers at me and slipped through the little crowd.

“Not much need to ask,” Jack said, and of course he was right. I had signed each of the oils in the lower left corner, just as neatly as I had signed all invoices, work orders, and contracts in my other life: Edgar Freemantle.

vii

Nannuzzi settled for dabbing his NFS stickers on the upper righthand corners of the paintings, where they stuck up like the tabs of file-folders. Then he led Wireman and me into his office. Jack was invited but elected to stay with the pictures.

In the office, Nannuzzi offered us coffee, which we declined, and water, which we accepted. I also accepted a couple of Tylenol capsules.

“Who was that woman?” Wireman asked.

“Mary Ire,” Nannuzzi said. “She’s a fixture on the Suncoast art scene. Publishes a free culture-vulture newspaper called Boulevard. It comes out once a month during most of the year, once every two weeks during the tourist season. She lives in Tampa — in a coffin, according to some wits in this business. New local artists are her favorite thing.”

“She looked extremely sharp,” Wireman said.

Nannuzzi shrugged. “Mary’s all right. She’s helped a lot of artists, and she’s been around forever. That makes her important in a town where we live — to a large extent — on the transient trade.”

“I see,” Wireman said. I was glad someone did. “She’s a facilitator.”

“More,” Nannuzzi said. “She’s a kind of docent. We like to keep her happy. If we can, of course.”

Wireman was nodding. “There’s a nice artist-and-gallery economy here on the west coast of Florida. Mary Ire understands it and fosters it. So if the Happy Art Galleria down the street discovers they can sell paintings of Elvis done in macaroni on velvet for ten thousand dollars a pop, Mary would—”

“She’d blow them out of the water,” Nannuzzi said. “Contrary to the belief of the art snobs — you can usually pick them out by their black clothes and teeny-tiny cell phones — we’re not venal.”

“Got it off your chest?” Wireman asked, not quite smiling.

“Almost,” he said. “All I’m saying is that Mary understands our situation. We sell good stuff, most of us, and sometimes we sell great stuff. We do our best to find and develop new artists, but some of our customers are too rich for their own good. I’m thinking of fellows like Mr. Costenza out there, who was waving his checkbook around, and the ladies who come in with their dogs dyed to match their latest coats.” Nannuzzi showed his teeth in a smile I was willing to bet not many of his richer clients ever saw.

I was fascinated. This was another world.

“Mary reviews every new show she can get to, which is most of them, and believe me, not all her reviews are raves.”

“But most are?” Wireman said.

“Sure, because most of the shows are good. She’d tell you very little of the stuff she sees is great, because that isn’t what tourist-track areas as a rule produce, but good? Yes. Stuff anyone can hang, then point to and say ‘I bought that’ without a quaver of embarrassment.”

I thought Nannuzzi had just given a perfect definition of mediocrity — I had seen the principle at work in hundreds of architectural drawings — but again I kept silent.

“Mary shares our interest in new artists. There may come a time when it would be in your interest to sit down with her, Mr. Freemantle. Prior to a showing of your work, let us say.”

“Would you be interested in having such a showing here at the Scoto?” Wireman asked me.

My lips were dry. I attempted to moisten them with my tongue, but that was dry, too. So I took a sip of my water and then said, “That’s getting the harm before the force.” I paused. Gave myself time. Took another sip of water. “Sorry. Cart before the horse. I came in to find out what you think, Signor Nannuzzi. You’re the expert.”

He unlaced his fingers from the front of his vest and leaned forward. The squeak his chair made in the small room seemed very loud to me. But he smiled and the smile was warm. It brightened his eyes, made them compelling. I could see why he was a success when it came to selling pictures, but I don’t think he was selling just then. He reached across his desk and took my hand — the one I painted with, the only one I had left.

“Mr. Freemantle, you do me honor, but my father Augustino is the Signor of our family. I am happy to be a mister. As for your paintings, yes, they’re good. Considering how long you’ve been at work, they are very good indeed. Maybe more than good.”

“What makes them good?” I asked. “If they’re good, what makes them good?”

“Truth,” he said. “It shines through in every stroke.”

“But most of them are only sunsets! The things I added…” I lifted my hand, then dropped it. “They’re just gimmicks.”

Nannuzzi laughed. “You’ve learned such mean words! Where? Reading The New York Times art pages? Listening to Bill O’Reilly? Both?” He pointed to the ceiling. “Lightbulb? Gimmick!” He pointed to his own chest. “Pacemaker? Gimmick!” He tossed his hands in the air. The lucky devil had two to toss. “Throw out your mean words, Mr. Freemantle. Art should be a place of hope, not doubt. And your doubts rise from inexperience, which is not a dishonorable thing. Listen to me. Will you listen?”

“Sure,” I said. “That’s why I came.”

“When I say truth, I mean beauty.”

“John Keats,” Wireman said. “‘Ode On A Grecian Urn.’ All we know, all we need to know. An oldie but still a goodie.”

Nannuzzi paid no attention. He was leaning forward over his desk and looking at me. “For me, Mr. Freemantle—”

“Edgar.”

“For me, Edgar, that sums up what all art is for, and the only way it can be judged.”

He smiled — a trifle defensively, I thought.

“I don’t want to think too much about art, you see. I don’t want to criticize it. I don’t want to attend symposia, listen to papers, or discuss it at cocktail parties — although sometimes in my line of work I’m forced to do all those things. What I want to do is clutch my heart and fall down when I see it.”

Wireman burst out laughing and raised both hands in the air. “Yes, Lawd!” he proclaimed. “I don’t know if that guy out there was clutching his heart and falling down, but he surely was ready to clutch his checkbook.”

Nannuzzi said, “Inside himself, I think he did fall down. I think they all did.”

“Actually, I do too,” Wireman said. He was no longer smiling.

Nannuzzi remained fixed on me. “No talk of gimmicks. What you are after in most of these paintings is perfectly straightforward: you’re looking for a way to re-invent the most popular and hackneyed of all Florida subjects, the tropical sunset. You’ve been trying to find your way past the cliché.”

“Yes, that’s pretty much it. So I copied Dalí—”

Nannuzzi waved a hand. “Those paintings out there are nothing like Dalí. And I won’t discuss schools of art with you, Edgar, or stoop to using words ending in ism. You don’t belong to any school of art, because you don’t know any.”

“I know buildings,” I said.

“Then why don’t you paint buildings?”

I shook my head. I could have told him the thought had never crossed my mind, but it would have been closer to the truth to say it had never crossed my missing arm.

“Mary was right. You’re an American primitive. Nothing wrong with that. Grandma Moses was an American primitive. Jackson Pollock was another. The point is, Edgar, you’re talented.”

I opened my mouth. Closed it. I simply couldn’t figure out what to say. Wireman helped me.

“Thank the man, Edgar,” he said.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Very welcome. And if you do decide to show, Edgar, please come to the Scoto first. I’ll make you the best deal of any gallery on Palm Avenue. That’s a promise.”

“Are you kidding? Of course I’ll come here first.”

“And of course I’ll vet the contract,” Wireman said with a choirboy’s smile.

Nannuzzi smiled in return. “You should and I welcome it. Not that you’ll find a lot to vet; the standard Scoto first-artist contract is a page and half long.”

“Mr. Nannuzzi,” I said, “I really don’t know how to thank you.”

“You already did,” he said. “I clutched my heart — what’s left of it — and fell down. Before you go, there’s one more matter.” He found a pad on his desk, scribbled on it, then tore off the sheet and handed it to me like a doctor handing a patient a prescription. The word written on it in large slanting capitals even looked like a word you’d see on a doctor’s prescription: LIQUIN.

“What’s Liquin?” I asked.

“A preservative. I suggest you begin by putting it on finished works with a paper towel. Just a thin coat. Let it dry for twenty-four hours, then put on a second coat. That will keep your sunsets bright and fresh for centuries.” He looked at me so solemnly I felt my stomach rise a little toward my chest. “I don’t know if they’re good enough to deserve such longevity, but maybe they are. Who knows? Maybe they are.”

viii

We ate dinner at Zoria’s, the restaurant Mary Ire had mentioned, and I let Wireman buy me a bourbon before the meal. It was the first truly stiff drink I’d had since the accident, and it hit me in a funny way. Everything seemed to grow sharper until the world was drenched with light and color. The angles of things — doors, windows, even the cocked elbows of the passing waiters — seemed sharp enough to cut the air open and allow some darker, thicker atmosphere to come flowing out like syrup. The swordfish I ordered was delicious, the green beans snapped between my teeth, and the crème brûlée was almost too rich to finish (but too rich to leave). The conversation among the three of us was cheerful; there was plenty of laughter. Still, I wanted the meal to be over. My head still ached, although the throb had slid to the back of my skull (like a weight in one of those barroom bowling games), and the bumper-to-bumper traffic we could see on Main Street was distracting. Every horn-honk sounded ill-tempered and menacing. I wanted Duma. I wanted the blackness of the Gulf and the quiet conversation of the shells below me as I lay in my bed with Reba on the other pillow.

And by the time the waiter came to ask if we wanted more coffee, Jack was carrying the conversation almost single-handed. In my state of hyper-awareness I could see that I wasn’t the only one who needed a change of venue. Given the low lighting in the restaurant and Wireman’s mahogany tan, it was hard to tell just how much color he’d lost, but I thought quite a bit. Also, that left eye of his was weeping again.

“Just the check,” Wireman said, and then managed a smile. “Sorry to cut the celebration short, but I want to get back to my lady. If that’s okay with you guys.”

“Fine by me,” Jack said. “A free meal and home in time to watch SportsCenter? Such a deal.”

Wireman and I waited outside the parking garage while Jack went to get the rented van. Here the light was brighter, but what it showed didn’t make me feel better about my new friend; in the glow spilling out of the garage, his complexion looked almost yellow. I asked him if he was okay.

“Wireman’s as fine as paint,” he said. “Miss Eastlake, on the other hand, has put in a few restless, shitty nights. Calling for her sisters, calling for her Pa, calling for everything but her pipe and bowl and fiddlers three. There’s something to that full-moon shit. It makes no logical sense, but there it is. Diana calls on a wavelength to which only the tottering mind is attuned. Now that it’s in its last quarter, she’ll start sleeping through again. Which means I can start sleeping through again. I hope.”

“Good.”

“If I were you, Edgar, I’d sleep on this gallery thing, and for more than one night. Also, keep painting. You’ve been a busy bee, but I doubt if you have enough pictures yet to—”

There was a tiled pillar behind him. He staggered back against it. If it hadn’t been there, I’m pretty sure he would have gone down. The effects of the bourbon were wearing off a little, but there was enough of that hyper-reality left for me to see what happened to his eyes when he lost his equilibrium. The right one looked down, as if to check out his shoes, while the bloodshot and weepy left one rolled up in its socket until the iris was no more than an arc. I had time to think that what I was seeing was surely impossible, eyes couldn’t go in two completely different directions like that. And that was probably true for people who were healthy. Then Wireman started to slide.

I grabbed him. “Wireman? Wireman!”

He gave his head a shake, then looked at me. Eyes front and all accounted for. The left one was glistening and bloodshot, that was all. He took out his hankie and wiped his cheek. He laughed. “I’ve heard of putting other people to sleep with a boring line of quack, but oneself? That’s ridiculous.”

“You weren’t dozing off. You were… I don’t know what you were.”

“Don’t be seely, dollink,” Wireman said.

“No, your eyes got all funny.”

“That’s called going to sleep, muchacho.” He gave me one of his patented Wireman looks: head cocked, eyebrows raised, corners of the mouth dimpled in the beginnings of a smile. But I thought he knew exactly what I was talking about.

“I have to see a doctor, have a checkup,” I said. “Do the MRI thing. I promised my friend Kamen. How about I make it a twofer?”

Wireman was still leaning against the pillar. Now he straightened up. “Hey, here’s Jack with the van. That was quick. Step lively, Edgar — last bus to Duma Key, leaving now.”

ix

It happened again, on the way back, and worse, although Jack didn’t see it — he was busy piloting the van along Casey Key Road — and I’m pretty sure Wireman himself never knew. I had asked Jack if he minded skipping the Tamiami Trail, which is west coast Florida’s engagingly tacky Main Street, in favor of the narrower, twistier way. I wanted to watch the moon on the water, I said.

“Gettin those little artist eccentricities, muchacho,” Wireman said from the back seat, where he was stretched out with his feet up. He wasn’t much of a stickler when it came to seatbelts, it seemed. “Next thing we know, you’ll be wearing a beret.” He pronounced it so it rhymed with garret.

“Fuck you, Wireman,” I said.

“I been fucked to the east and I been fucked to the west,” Wireman recited in tones of sentimental recollection, “but when it comes to the fuckin, yo mamma’s the best.” With that he lapsed into silence.

I watched the moon go swimming through the black water to my right. It was hypnotic. I wondered if it would be possible to paint it the way it looked from the van: a moon in motion, a silver bullet just beneath the water.

I was thinking these thoughts (and maybe drifting toward a doze) when I became aware of ghostly movement above the moon in the water. It was Wireman’s reflection. For a moment I had the crazy idea that he was jerking off back there, because his thighs appeared to be opening and closing and his hips seemed to be moving up and down. I shot a peek at Jack, but the Casey Key Road is a symphony of curves and Jack was absorbed in his driving. Besides, most of Wireman was right behind Jack’s seat, not even visible in the rearview mirror.

I looked over my left shoulder. Wireman wasn’t masturbating. Wireman wasn’t sleeping and having a vivid dream. Wireman was having a seizure. It was quiet, probably petit mal, but it was a seizure, all right; I’d employed an epileptic draftsman during the first ten years of The Freemantle Company’s existence, and I knew a seizure when I saw one. Wireman’s torso lifted and dropped four or five inches as his buttocks clenched and released. His hands jittered on his stomach. His lips were smacking as though he tasted something particularly good. And his eyes looked as they had outside the parking garage. By starlight that one-up, one-down look was weird beyond my ability to describe. Spittle ran from the left corner of his mouth; a tear from his welling left eye trickled into his shaggy sideburn.

It went on for perhaps twenty seconds, then ceased. He blinked, and his eyes went back where they belonged. He was completely quiet for a minute. Maybe two. He saw me looking at him and said, “I’d kill for another drink or a peanut butter cup, and I suppose a drink is out of the question, huh?”

“I guess it is if you want to make sure you hear her ring in the night,” I said, hoping I sounded casual.

“Bridge to Duma Key dead ahead,” Jack told us. “Almost home, guys.”

Wireman sat up and stretched. “It’s been a hell of a day, but I won’t be sorry to see my bed tonight, boys. I guess I’m getting old, huh?”

x

Although my leg was stiff, I got out of the van and stood next to him while he opened the door of the little iron box beside the gate to reveal a state-of-the-art security keypad.

“Thanks for coming with me, Wireman.”

“Sure,” he said. “But if you thank me again, muchacho, I’m going to have to punch you in the mouth. Sorry, but that’s just the way it’s gotta be.”

“Good to know,” I said. “Thanks for sharing.”

He laughed and clapped me on the shoulder. “I like you, Edgar. You got style, you got class, you got the lips to kiss my ass.”

“Beautiful. I may cry. Listen, Wireman…”

I could have told him about what had just happened to him. I came close. In the end, I decided not to. I didn’t know if it was the right decision or the wrong one, but I did know he might have a long night with Elizabeth Eastlake ahead of him. Also, that headache was still sitting in the back of my skull. I settled for asking him again if he wouldn’t consider letting me turn my promised doctor’s appointment into a double date.

“I will consider it,” he said. “And I’ll let you know.”

“Well don’t wait too long, because—”

He raised a hand, stilling me, and for once his face was unsmiling. “Enough, Edgar. Enough for one night, okay?”

“Okay,” I said. I watched him go in, then went back to the van.

Jack had the volume up. It was “Renegade.” He went to turn it down and I said, “No, that’s okay. Crank it.”

“Really?” He turned around and headed back up the road. “Great band. You ever heard em before?”

“Jack,” I said, “that’s Styx. Dennis DeYoung? Tommy Shaw? Where have you been all your life? In a cave?”

Jack smiled guiltily. “I’m into country and even more into old standards,” he said. “To tell you the truth, I’m a Rat Pack kind of guy.”

The idea of Jack Cantori hanging with Dino and Frank made me wonder — and not for the first time that day — if any of this was really happening. I also wondered how I could remember that Dennis DeYoung and Tommy Shaw had been in Styx — that Shaw had in fact written the song currently blasting out of the van’s speakers — and sometimes not be able to remember my own ex-wife’s name.

xi

Both lights on the answering machine next to the living room phone were blinking: the one indicating that I had messages and the one indicating that the tape for recording messages was full. But the number in the MESSAGES WAITING window was only 1. I considered this with foreboding while the weight with my headache inside it slid a little closer to the front of my skull. The only two people I could think of who might call and leave a message so long it would use up the whole tape were Pam and Ilse, and in neither case would hitting PLAY MESSAGES be apt to bring me good news. It doesn’t take five minutes of recording-time to say Everything’s fine, call when you get a chance.

Leave it until tomorrow, I thought, and a craven voice I hadn’t even known was in my mental repertoire (maybe it was new) was willing to go further. It suggested I simply delete the message without listening to it at all.

“That’s right, sure,” I said. “And when whichever one it is calls back, I can just tell her the dog ate my answering machine.”

I pushed PLAY. And as so often happens when we are sure we know what to expect, I drew a wild card. It wasn’t Pam and it wasn’t Ilse. The wheezy, slightly emphysematic voice coming from the answering machine belonged to Elizabeth Eastlake.

“Hello, Edgar,” she said. “One hopes you had a fruitful afternoon and are enjoying your evening out with Wireman as much as I am my evening in with Miss… well, I forget her name, but she’s very pleasant. And one hopes you’ll notice that I have remembered your name. I’m enjoying one of my clear patches. I love and treasure them, but they make me sad, as well. It’s like being in a glider and rising on a gust of wind above a low-lying groundmist. For a little while one can see everything so clearly… and at the same time one knows the wind will die and one’s glider will sink back into the mist again. Do you see?”

I saw, all right. Things were better for me now, but that was the world I’d woken up to, one where words clanged senselessly and memories were scattered like lawn furniture after a windstorm. It was a world where I had tried to communicate by hitting people and the only two emotions I really seemed capable of were fear and fury. One progresses beyond that state (as Elizabeth might say), but afterward one never quite loses the conviction that reality is gossamer. Behind its webwork? Chaos. Madness. The real truth, maybe, and the real truth is red.

“But enough of me, Edgar. I called to ask a question. Are you one who creates art for money, or do you believe in art for art’s sake? I’m sure I asked when I met you — I’m almost positive — but I can’t remember your answer. I believe it must be art for art’s sake, or Duma should not have called you. But if you stay here for long…”

Clear anxiety crept into her voice.

“Edgar, one is sure you’ll make a very nice neighbor, I have no doubts on that score, but you must take precautions. I think you have a daughter, and I believe she visited you. Didn’t she? I seem to remember her waving to me. A pretty thing with blond hair? I may be confusing her with my sister Hannah — I tend to do that, I know I do — but in this case, I think I’m right. If you mean to stay, Edgar, you mustn’t invite your daughter back. Under no circumstances. Duma Key isn’t a safe place for daughters.”

I stood looking down at the recorder. Not safe. Before she had said not lucky, or at least that was my recollection. Did those two things come to the same or not?

“And your art. There is the matter of your art.” She sounded apologetic and a little breathless. “One does not like to tell an artist what to do; really, one cannot tell an artist what to do, and yet… oh dear…” She broke out in the loose, rattlebox cough of the lifelong smoker. “One does not like to speak of these things directly… or even know how to speak of them directly… but might I give you a word of advice, Edgar? As one who only appreciates, to one who creates? Might I be allowed that?”

I waited. The machine was silent. I thought perhaps the tape had run its course. Under my feet the shells murmured quietly, as if sharing secrets. The gun, the fruit. The fruit, the gun. Then she began again.

“If the people who run the Scoto or the Avenida should offer you a chance to show your work, I would advise you most strongly to say yes. So others can enjoy it, of course, but mainly to get as much of it off Duma as soon as you can.” She took a deep, audible breath, sounding like a woman preparing to finish some arduous chore. She also sounded completely and utterly sane, totally there and in the moment. “Do not let it accumulate. That is my advice to you, well-meant and without any… any personal agenda? Yes, that’s what I mean. Letting artistic work accumulate here is like letting too much electricity accumulate in a battery. If you do that, the battery may explode.”

I didn’t know if that was actually true or not, but I took her meaning.

“I can’t tell you why that should be, but it is,” she went on… and I had a sudden intuition that she was lying about that. “And surely if you believe in art for art’s sake, the painting is the important part, isn’t it?” Her voice was almost wheedling now. “Even if you don’t need to sell your paintings to buy your daily bread, sharing work… giving it to the world… surely artists care about such things, don’t they? The giving?”

How would I know what was important to artists? I had only that day learned what sort of finish to put on my pictures to preserve them when I was done with them. I was a… what had Nannuzzi and Mary Ire called me? An American primitive.

Another pause. Then: “I think I’ll stop now. I’ve said my piece. Just please think about what I’ve said if you mean to stay, Edward. And I look forward to you reading to me. Many poems, I hope. That will be a treat. Goodbye for now. Thank you for listening to an old woman.” A pause. Then she said, “The table is leaking. It must be. I’m so sorry.”

I waited twenty seconds, then thirty. I had just about decided that she’d forgotten to hang up on her end and was reaching to push the STOP button on the answering machine when she spoke again. Just six words, and they made no more sense than the thing about the leaking table, but still they brought gooseflesh out on my arms and turned the hair on the nape of my neck into hackles.

“My father was a skin diver,” Elizabeth Eastlake said. Each word was clearly enunciated. Then came the clear click of the phone being hung up on her end.

“No more messages,” the phone robot said. “The message tape is full.”

I stood staring down at the machine, thought of erasing the tape, then decided to save it and play it for Wireman. I undressed, brushed my teeth, and went to bed. I lay in the dark, feeling the soft throb of my head, while below me the shells whispered the last thing she’d said over and over: My father was a skin diver.