Duma Key

i

I piloted the skiff out to the middle of Lake Phalen and killed the motor. We drifted toward the little orange marker I’d left there. A few pleasure boats buzzed back and forth on the glass-smooth surface, but no sailboats; the day was perfectly still. There were a few kids in the playground area, a few people in the picnic area, and a few on the nearest hiking trail skirting the water. On the whole, though, for a lake that’s actually within the city limits, the area was almost empty.

Wireman — looking strangely un-Florida in a fisherman’s hat and a Vikings pullover — commented on this.

“School’s still in,” I said. “Give it another couple of weeks and there’ll be boats buzzing everywhere.”

He looked uneasy. “Does that make this the right place for her, muchacho? I mean, if a fisherman should net her up—”

“No nets allowed on Lake Phalen,” I said, “and there are few rods and reels. This lake is pretty much for pleasure-boaters. And swimmers, in close to shore.” I bent and picked up the cylinder the Sarasota silversmith had made. It was three feet long, with a screw-down top at one end. It was filled with fresh water, and the water-filled flashlight was inside that. Perse was sealed in double darkness, and sleeping in a double blanket of fresh water. Soon she would be sleeping even deeper.

“This is a beautiful thing,” I said.

“That it is,” Wireman agreed, watching the afternoon sun flash from the cylinder as I turned it over in my hand. “And nothing on it to catch a hook. Although I’d still feel easier about dumping it in a lake up around the Canadian border.”

“Where someone really might come along dragging a net,” I said. “Hide in plain sight — it’s not a bad policy.”

Three young women in a sportabout went buzzing by. They waved. We waved back. One of them yelled, “We love cute guys!” and all three of them laughed.

Wireman tipped them a smiling salute, then turned back to me. “How deep is it out here? Do you know? That little orange flag suggests you do.”

“Well, I’ll tell you. I did a little research on Lake Phalen — probably overdue, since Pam and I have owned the place on Aster Lane going on twenty-five years. The average depth is ninety-one feet… except out here, where there’s a fissure.”

Wireman relaxed and pushed his cap back a little from his brow. “Ah, Edgar. Wireman thinks you’re still el zorro — still the fox.”

“Maybe sí, maybe no, but there’s three hundred and eighty feet of water under that little orange flag. Three hundred and eighty at least. A hell of a lot better than a twelve-foot cistern thumbed into a coral splinter on the edge of the Gulf of Mexico.”

“Amen.”

“You look well, Wireman. Rested.”

He shrugged. “That Gulfstream’s the way to fly. No standing in line at security, no one pawing through your carry-on to make sure you didn’t turn your little shitass can of Foamy into a bomb. And for once in my life I managed to fly north without a stop at fucking Atlanta. Thanks… although I could have afforded it myself, it looks like.”

“You settled with Elizabeth’s relatives, I take it?”

“Yep. Took your suggestion. Offered them the house and the north end of the Key in exchange for the cash and securities. They thought that was a hell of a deal, and I could see their lawyers thinking, ‘Wireman is a lawyer, and today he has a fool for a client.’”

“Guess I ain’t the only zorro in this boat.”

“I’ll end up with over eighty million bucks in liquid assets. Plus various keepsakes from the house. Including Miss Eastlake’s Sweet Owen cookie-tin. Think she was trying to tell me something with that, ’chacho?”

I thought of Elizabeth popping various china figures into the tin and then insisting Wireman throw it in the goldfish pond. Of course she had been trying to tell him something.

“The rels got the north end of Duma Key, development value… well, sky’s the limit. Ninety million?”

“Or so they think.”

“Yes,” he agreed, turning somber. “So they think.” We sat in silence for a little while. He took the cylinder from me. I could see my face in its side, but distorted by the curve. I didn’t mind looking at it that way, but I very rarely look at myself in a mirror anymore. It’s not that I’ve aged; I don’t care for the Freemantle fellow’s eyes these days. They have seen too much.

“How’s your wife and daughter?”

“Pam’s out in California with her mother. Melinda’s back in France. She stayed with Pam for awhile after Illy’s funeral, but then she went back. I think it was the right call. She’s getting on with it.”

“What about you, Edgar? Are you getting on with it?”

“I don’t know. Didn’t Scott Fitzgerald say there are no second acts in American life?”

“Yep, but he was a washed-up drunk when he said it.” Wireman put the cylinder at his feet and leaned forward. “Listen to me, Edgar, and listen good. There are actually five acts, and not just in American lives — in every life that’s fully lived. Same as in every Shakespearian play, tragedy and comedy alike. Because that’s what our lives are made up of — comedy and tragedy.”

“For me, the yuks have been in short supply just lately,” I said.

“Yeah,” he agreed, “but Act Three has potential. I’m in Mexico now. Told you, right? Beautiful little mountain town called Tamazunchale.”

I gave it a try.

“You like the way it rolls off your tongue. Wireman can see that you do.”

I smiled. “It do have a certain ring to it.”

“There’s this rundown hotel for sale there, and I’m thinking about buying it. It’d take three years of losses to put that kind of operation on a paying basis, but I’ve got a fat money-belt these days. I could use a partner who knows something about building and maintenance, though. Of course, if you’re still concentrating on matters artistic…”

“I think you know better.”

“Then what do you say? Let us marry our fortunes together.”

“Simon and Garfunkel, 1969,” I said. “Or thereabouts. I don’t know, Wireman. I can’t decide now. I do have one more picture to paint.”

“Indeed you do. Just how big is this storm going to be?”

“Dunno. But Channel 6 is gonna love it.”

“Plenty of warning, though, right? Property damage is fine, but no one gets killed.”

“No one gets killed,” I agreed, hoping this would be true, but once that phantom limb was given free rein, all bets were off. That’s why my second career had to end. But there would be this one final picture, because I meant to be fully avenged. And not just for Illy; for Perse’s other victims, as well.

“Do you hear from Jack?” Wireman asked.

“Just about every week. He’s going to FSU in Tallahassee in the fall. My treat. In the meantime, he and his Mom are moving down the coast to Port Charlotte.”

“Was that also your treat?”

“Actually… yes.” Since Jack’s father died of Crohn’s Disease, he and his mother had had a bit of a tough skate.

“And your idea?”

“Right again.”

“So you think Port Charlotte’s going to be far enough south to be safe.”

“I think so.”

“And north? What about Tampa?”

“Rain-showers at most. It’s going to be a small storm. Small but powerful.”

“A tight little Alice. Like the one in 1927.”

“Yes.”

We sat looking at each other, and the girls cruised by again in their sportabout, laughing louder and waving more enthusiastically than before. Sweet bird of youth, flying on afternoon wine coolers. We saluted them.

When they were gone, Wireman said: “Miss Eastlake’s surviving relatives are never going to have to worry about getting building permits for their new property, are they?”

“I don’t think so, no.”

He thought it over, then nodded. “Good. Send the whole island to Davy Jones’s locker. Works for me.” He picked up the silver cylinder, turned his attention to the little orange flag over the fissure that splits the middle of Lake Phalen, then looked back at me. “Want to say any final words, muchacho?”

“Yes,” I said, “but not many.”

“Get em ready, then.” Wireman turned on his knees and held the silver cylinder out. The sun sparkled on it for what I hoped would be the final time in at least a thousand years… but I had an idea Perse was good at finding her way to the surface. That she had done it before, and would again. Even from Minnesota, she would somehow find the caldo.

I said the words I’d been holding in my mind. “Sleep forever.”

Wireman’s fingers opened. There was a small splash. We leaned over the side of the boat and watched the silver cylinder slide smoothly out of sight with one final glimmer of sunlight to mark its descent.

ii

Wireman stayed that night, and the next. We ate rare steaks, drank green tea in the afternoon, and talked about anything but old times. Then I took him to the airport, where he’d fly to Houston. There he planned to rent a car and drive south. See some of the country, he said.

I offered to go with him as far as security, and he shook his head. “You shouldn’t have to watch as Wireman removes his shoes for a business school graduate,” he said. “This is where we say adiós, Edgar.”

“Wireman—” I said, and could say no more. My throat was filled with tears.

He pulled me into his arms and kissed me firmly on both cheeks. “Listen, Edgar. It’s time for Act Three. Do you understand me?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Come down to Mexico when you’re ready. And if you want to.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“You do that. Con Dios, mi amigo; siempre con Dios.”

“And you, Wireman. And you.”

I watched him walk away with his tote-bag slung over one shoulder. I had a sudden brilliant memory of his voice the night Emery had attacked me in Big Pink, of Wireman shouting cojudo de puta madre just before driving the candlestick into the dead thing’s face. He had been magnificent. I willed him to turn back one final time… and he did. Must have caught a thought, my mother would have said. Or had an intuition. That’s what Nan Melda would have said.

He saw me still standing there and his face lit in a grin. “Do the day, Edgar!” he cried. People turned to look, startled.

“And let the day do you!” I called back.

He saluted me, laughing, then walked into the jetway. And of course I did eventually come south to his little town, but although he’s always alive for me in his sayings — I never think of them in anything but the present tense — I never saw the man himself again. He died of a heart attack two months later, in Tamazunchale’s open-air market, while dickering for fresh tomatoes. I thought there would be time, but we always think stuff like that, don’t we? We fool ourselves so much we could do it for a living.

iii

Back at the place on Aster Lane, my easel stood in the living room, where the light was good. The canvas on it was covered with a piece of toweling. Beside it, on the table with my oil paints, were several aerial photos of Duma Key, but I’d hardly glanced at them; I saw Duma in my dreams, and still do.

I tossed the towel on the couch. In the foreground of my painting — my last painting — stood Big Pink, rendered so realistically I could almost hear the shells grating beneath it with each incoming wave.

Propped against one of the pilings, the perfect surreal touch, were two red-headed dolls, sitting side by side. On the left was Reba. On the right was Fancy, the one Kamen had fetched from Minnesota. The one that had been Illy’s idea. The Gulf, usually so blue during my time on Duma Key, I had painted a dull and ominous green. Overhead, the sky was filled with black clouds; they massed to the top of the canvas and out of sight.

My right arm began to itch, and that remembered sensation of power began to flow first into me and then through me. I could see my picture almost with the eye of a god… or a goddess. I could give this up, but it would not be easy.

When I made pictures, I fell in love with the world.

When I made pictures, I felt whole.

I painted awhile, then put the brush aside. I mixed brown and yellow together with the ball of my thumb, then skimmed it over the painted beach… oh so lightly… and a haze of sand lifted, as if on the first hesitant puff of air.

On Duma Key, beneath the black sky of an inriding June storm, a wind began to rise.