Duma Key

  "Same here."

  He looked at me--armless, all patchy-haired on one side--and nodded. Then for a little while we just looked out at the Gulf. I know that people come to Florida when they're old and sick because it's warm pretty much year-round, but I think the Gulf of Mexico has something else going for it. Just looking into that mild flat sunlit calm is healing. It's a big word, isn't it? Gulf, I mean. Big enough to drop a lot of things into and watch them disappear.

  After awhile Wireman said, "And who do you think owns the houses between your place and this one?" He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the white walls and orange tile. "Which, by the way, is listed on the county plat-maps as Heron's Roost and I call El Palacio de Asesinos."

  "Would that also be Miss Eastlake?"

  "You're two for two," he said.

  "Why do you call it Palace of Assassins?"

  "Well, it's 'Outlaw Hideout' when I think in English," Wireman said with an apologetic smile. "Because it looks like the place where the head bad guy in a Sam Peckinpah Western would hang his hat. Anyway, you've got six rather nice homes between Heron's Roost and Salmon Point--"

  "Which I call Big Pink," I said. "When I think in English."

  He nodded. "El Rosado Grande. Good name. I like it. You'll be there . . . how long?"

  "I have the place for a year, but I honestly don't know. I'm not afraid of hot weather--I guess they call it the mean season--but there's hurricanes to consider."

  "Yep, down here we all consider hurricane season, especially since Charley and Katrina. But the houses between Salmon Point and Heron's Roost will be empty long before hurricane season. Like the rest of Duma Key. Which could as easily have been called Eastlake Island, by the way."

  "Are you saying this is all hers?"

  "That's complicated even for a guy like me, who was a lawyer in his other life," Wireman said. "Once upon a time her father owned it all, along with a good swatch of the Florida mainland east of here. He sold everything in the thirties except for Duma. Miss Eastlake does own the north end, of that there is no doubt." Wireman waved his arm to indicate the northern tip of the island, the part he would later characterize as being as bald as a stripper's pussy. "The land and the houses on it, from Heron's Roost--the most luxurious--to your Big Pink, the most adventurous. They bring her an income she hardly needs, because her father also left her and her siblings mucho dinero."

  "How many of her brothers and sisters are still--"

  "None," Wireman said. "The Daughter of the Godfather is the last." He snorted and shook his head. "I have to quit calling her that," he said, more to himself than to me.

  "If you say so. What I really wonder about is why the rest of the island isn't developed. Given the never-ending housing and building boom in Florida, that's seemed insane to me from the first day I crossed the bridge."

  "You speak like a man with specialized knowledge. What are you in your other life, Edgar?"

  "A building contractor."

  "And those days are behind you now?"

  I could have hedged--I didn't know him well enough to put myself on the line--but I didn't. I'm sure our mutual fit of hysterics had a lot to do with that. "Yes," I said.

  "And what are you in this life?"

  I sighed and looked away from him. Out at the Gulf, where you could put all your old miseries and watch them disappear without a trace. "Can't tell yet for sure. I've been doing some painting." And waited for him to laugh.

  He didn't. "You wouldn't be the first painter to stay at Salm . . . Big Pink. It has quite an artistic history."

  "You're kidding." There was nothing in the house to suggest such a thing.

  "Oh yes," he said. "Alexander Calder stayed there. Keith Haring. Marcel Duchamp. All back before beach erosion put the place in danger of falling into the water." He paused. "Salvador Dali."

  "No shucking way!" I cried, then flushed when he cocked his head. For a moment I felt all the old frustrated rage rush in, seeming to clog my head and throat. I can do this, I thought. "Sorry. I had an accident awhile back, and--" Then I stopped.

  "Not hard to figure that one out," Wireman said. "In case you didn't notice, you're short a gizmo on the right side, muchacho."

  "Yes. And sometimes I get . . . I don't know . . . aphasic, I guess."

  "Uh-huh. In any case, I tell no lie about Dali. He stayed in your house for three weeks in nineteen eighty-one." Then, with hardly a pause: "I know what you're going through."

  "I seriously doubt that." I didn't mean to sound harsh, but that was how it sounded. That was how I felt, actually.

  Wireman said nothing for a little while. The torn umbrella flapped. I had time to think, Well this was a potentially interesting friendship that's not going to happen, but when he next spoke, his voice was calm and pleasant. It was as if our little side-trip had never occurred.

  "Part of Duma's development problem is simple overgrowth. The sea oats belong, but the rest of that shit has no business growing without irrigation. Somebody better investigate, that's what I think."

  "My daughter and I went exploring one day. It looked like outright jungle south of here."

  Wireman looked alarmed. "Duma Key Road's no excursion for a guy in your condition. It's in shit shape."

  "Tell me about it. What I want to know is how come it isn't four lanes wide with bike-paths on both sides and condos every eight hundred yards."

  "Because no one knows who owns the land? How about that, for a start?"

  "You serious?"

  "Yup. Miss Eastlake has owned from the tip of the island south to Heron's Roost free and clear since 1950. About that there's absolutely no doubt. It was in the wills."

  "Wills? Plural?"

  "Three of them. All holographic, all witnessed by different people, all different when it comes to Duma Key. All of them, however, make the north end of Duma a no-strings bequest to Elizabeth Eastlake from her father, John. The rest has been in the courts ever since. Sixty years of squabbling that makes Bleak House look like Dick and Jane."

  "I thought you said all Miss Eastlake's siblings were dead."

  "They are, but she has nieces and nephews and grandnieces and grandnephews. Like Sherwin-Williams Paint, they cover the earth. They're the ones doing the squabbling, but they squabble with each other, not her. Her only mention in the old man's multiple wills had to do with this piece of Duma Key, which was carefully marked off by two surveying companies, one just before World War II and one just after. This is all a matter of public record. And do you know what, amigo?"

  I shook my head.

  "Miss Eastlake thinks that's exactly what her old man wanted to happen. And, having cast my lawyerly eye over copies of the wills, so do I."

  "Who pays the taxes?"

  He looked surprised, then laughed. "I enjoy you more and more, vato."

  "My other life," I reminded him. I was already liking the sound of that other-life thing.

  "Right. Then you'll appreciate this," he said. "It's clever. All three of John Eastlake's last wills and testaments contained identical clauses setting up a trust fund to pay the taxes. The original investment company administering the trust has been absorbed since then--in fact the absorbing company has been absorbed--"

  "It's the way America does business," I said.

  "It is indeed. In any case, the fund has never been in danger of going broke and the taxes are paid like clockwork every year."

  "Money talks, bullshit walks."

  "It's the truth." He stood up, put his hands in the small of his back, and twisted it. "Would you like to come up to the house and meet the boss? She should be arising from her nap just about now. She has her problems, but even at eighty-five she's quite the babe."

  This wasn't the time to tell him I thought I already had met her--briefly--courtesy of my answering machine. "Another day. When the hilarity subsides."

  He nodded. "Walk down tomorrow afternoon, if you like."

  "Maybe I will. It's been real." I held out my hand again. He s
hook it again, looking at the stump of my right arm as he did so.

  "No prosthesis? Or do you just leave it off when you're not among the hoi polloi?"

  I had a story I told people about that--nerve-pain in the stump--but it was a lie, and I didn't want to lie to Wireman. Partly because he had a nose attuned to the delicate smell of bullshit, but mostly because I just didn't want to lie to him.

  "I was measured for one while I was still in the hospital, of course, and I got the hard sell on it from just about everyone--especially my physical therapist and this psychologist friend of mine. They said the quicker I learned to use it, the quicker I'd be able to get on with my life--"

  "Just put the whole thing behind you and go on dancing--"

  "Yes."

  "Only sometimes putting a thing behind you isn't so easy to do."

  "No."

  "Sometimes it's not even right," Wireman said.

  "That isn't it, exactly, but it's . . ." I trailed off and seesawed my hand in the air.

  "Close enough for rock and roll?"

  "Yes," I said. "Thanks for the cold drink."

  "Come on back and get another one. I only take the sun between two and three--an hour a day is enough for me--but Miss Eastlake either sleeps or rearranges her china figurines most of the afternoon, and of course she never misses Oprah, so I have time. More than I know what to do with, actually. Who knows? We might find a lot to talk about."

  "All right," I said. "Sounds good."

  Wireman grinned. It made him handsome. He offered his hand and I shook with him again. "You know what I think? Friendships founded on laughter are always fortuitous."

  "Maybe your next job will be writing the fortunes in Chinese cookies," I said.

  "There could be worse jobs, muchacho. Far worse."

  iv

  Walking back, my thoughts turned to Miss Eastlake, an old lady in big blue sneakers and a wide straw hat who just happened to own (sort of) her own Florida Key. Not the Bride of the Godfather after all, but Daughter of the Land Baron and, apparently, Patroness of the Arts. My mind had done another of those weird slip-slides and I couldn't remember her father's name (something simple, only one syllable), but I remembered the basic situation as Wireman had outlined it. I'd never heard of anything similar, and when you build for a living, you see all sorts of strange property arrangements. I thought it was actually rather ingenious . . . if, that was, you wanted to keep most of your little kingdom in a state of undeveloped grace. The question was, why?

  I was most of the way back to Big Pink before I realized my leg was aching like a bastard. I limped inside, slurped water directly from the kitchen tap, then made my way across the living room to the main bedroom. I saw the light on the answering machine was blinking, but I wanted nothing to do with messages from the outside world right then. All I wanted was to get off my feet.

  I lay down and looked at the slowly revolving blades of the overhead fan. I hadn't done very well explaining my lack of a fake arm. I wondered if Wireman would've had better luck with What's a lawyer doing as a rich old spinster's houseman? What kind of other life is that?

  Still considering this, I drifted off into a dreamless and very satisfying nap.

  v

  When I woke up, I took a hot shower, then went into the living room to check my answering machine. I wasn't as stiff as I had expected, given my two-mile walk. I might get up tomorrow hobbling, but for tonight I thought I was going to be all right.

  The message was from Jack. He said his mother had connected him with someone named Dario Nannuzzi, and Nannuzzi would be happy to look at my pictures between four and five PM on Friday afternoon--could I bring no more than ten of those I considered best to the Scoto Gallery? No sketches; Nannuzzi only wanted to see finished work.

  I felt a tickle of unease at this--

  No, that's not even close to what I felt.

  My stomach cramped and I could have sworn my bowels dropped three inches. Nor was that the worst. That half-itch, half-pain swarmed up my right side and down the arm that was no longer there. I told myself such feelings--which amounted to three-days-in-advance flop-sweat--were stupid. I had once made a ten-million-dollar pitch to the St. Paul City Council, which at that time had included a man who'd gone on to become the Governor of Minnesota. I'd seen two girls through first dance recitals, cheerleading tryouts, driving lessons, and the hell of adolescence. What was showing some of my paintings to an art gallery guy compared to that?

  Nevertheless, I made my way up the stairs to Little Pink with leaden heels.

  The sun was going down, flooding the big room with gorgeous and improbable tangerine light, but I felt no urge to try and capture it--not this evening. The light called to me, just the same. As the photograph of some long-gone love, happened on by accident while going through an old box of souvenirs, may call to you. And the tide was in. Even upstairs I could hear the grinding voice of the shells. I sat down and began poking at the clutter of items on my junk-table--a feather, a water-smoothed stone, a disposable lighter rinsed to an anonymous gray. Now it wasn't Emily Dickinson I thought of, but some old folk-song: Don't the sun look good, Mama, shinin through the trees. No trees out there, of course, but I could put one on the horizon if I wanted to. I could put one out there for the red sunset to shine through. Hello, Dali.

  I wasn't afraid of being told I had no talent. I was afraid of Signor Nannuzzi telling me I had a leetle talent. Of having him hold his thumb and forefinger maybe a quarter of an inch apart and advising me to reserve a space at the Venice Sidewalk Art Festival, that I would certainly find success there, many tourists would surely be taken by my charming Dali imitations.

  And if he did that, held his thumb and forefinger a quarter of an inch apart and said leetle, what did I do then? Could some stranger's verdict take away my new confidence in myself, steal my peculiar new joy?

  "Maybe," I said.

  Yes. Because painting pictures wasn't like putting up shopping malls.

  The easiest thing would be just to cancel the appointment . . . except I'd sort of promised Ilse, and I wasn't in the habit of breaking the promises I made to my children.

  My right arm was still itching, itching almost hard enough to hurt, but I barely noticed. There were eight or nine canvases lined up against the wall to my left. I turned toward them, thinking I'd try to decide which ones were best, but I never so much as looked at them.

  Tom Riley was standing at the head of the stairs. He was naked except for a pair of light blue pajama pants, darker at the crotch and down the inside of one leg, where he had wet them. His right eye was gone. There was a matted socket full of red and black gore where it had been. Dried blood streaked back along his right temple like war paint, disappearing into graying hair above his ear. His other eye stared out at the Gulf of Mexico. Carnival sunset swam over his narrow, pallid face.

  I shrieked in surprise and terror, recoiled, and fell off my chair. I landed on my bad hip and yelled out again, this time from pain. I jerked and my foot struck the chair I'd been sitting in, knocking it over. When I looked toward the stairs again, Tom was gone.

  vi

  Ten minutes later I was downstairs, dialing his home number. I had descended the stairs from Little Pink in the sitting position, thumping down one riser at a time on my ass. Not because I'd hurt my hip falling off the chair, but because my legs were trembling so badly I didn't trust myself on my feet. I was afraid I might take a header, even going down backward so I could clutch the banister with my left hand. Hell, I was afraid I might faint.

  I kept remembering the day at Lake Phalen I'd turned to see Tom with that unnatural shine in his eyes, Tom trying not to embarrass me by actual bawling. Boss, I can't get used to seeing you this way . . . I'm so sorry.

  The telephone began to ring in Tom's nice Apple Valley home. Tom, who'd been married and divorced twice, Tom who had advised me against moving out of the house in Mendota Heights--It's like giving up home field advantage in a playoff game, he'd said. Tom
who'd gone on to enjoy my home field quite a little bit himself, if Friends with Benefits were to be believed . . . and I did believe it.

  I believed what I'd seen upstairs, too.

  One ring . . . two . . . three.

  "Come on," I muttered. "Pick the motherfucker up." I didn't know what I'd say if he did, and didn't care. All I wanted right then was to hear his voice.

  I did, but on a recording. "Hi, you've reached Tom Riley," he said. "My brother George and I are off with our mother, on our annual cruise--it's Nassau this year. What do you say, Mother?"

  "That I'm a Bahama Mama!" said a cigarette-cracked but undeniably cheerful voice.

  "That's right, she is," Tom resumed. "We'll be back February eighth. In the meantime, you can leave a message . . . when, George?"

  "At the zound of the zeep!" cried a male voice.

  "Right!" Tom agreed. "Zound of the zeep. Or you can call my office." He gave the number, and then all three of them said "BON VOYAGE!"

  I hung up without saying anything. It hadn't sounded like the outgoing message of a man contemplating suicide, but of course he had been with his nearest and dearest (the ones who, later on, were most apt to say "He seemed fine"), and--

  "Who says it's going to be suicide?" I asked the empty room . . . and then looked around fearfully to make sure it was empty. "Who says it might not be an accident? Or even murder? Assuming it hasn't happened already?"

  But if it had already happened, someone would probably have called me. Maybe Bozie, but most likely Pam. Also . . .

  "It's suicide." This time telling the room. "It's suicide and it hasn't happened yet. That was a warning."

  I got up and crutched into the bedroom. I'd been using the crutch less lately, but I wanted it tonight, indeed I did.

  My best girl was propped against the pillows on the side of the bed that would have belonged to a real woman, if I'd still had one. I sat down, picked her up and looked into those big blue peepers, so full of cartoon surprise: Ouuuu, you nasty man! My Reba, who looked like Lucy Ricardo.

  "It was like Scrooge getting visited by the Ghost of Christmas Yet-To-Come," I told her. " 'These are things that may be.' "