Duma Key

  Ilse.

  v

  She didn't walk; I didn't expect her to walk. She shambled. It was a miracle--a black one--that she could move at all.

  After that last phone call with Pam (you couldn't call it a conversation, exactly), I'd gone out Big Pink's back door and snapped the handle off the broom I used to sweep sand from the walk leading to the mailbox. Then I'd gone around to the beach, down to where the sand was wet and shining. I hadn't remembered what came after that, because I didn't want to. Obviously. Only now I did, now I had to, because now my handiwork was standing in front of me. It was Ilse, yet not Ilse. Her face was there, then it blurred and it wasn't. Her form was there, then it slipped toward shapelessness before firming up again. Little pieces of dead sea oats and bits of shell dropped from her cheeks and chest and hips and legs as she moved. The moonlight picked out an eye that was heartbreakingly clear, heartbreakingly hers, and then it was gone, only to reappear again, shining in the moonlight.

  The Ilse shambling toward me was made of sand.

  "Daddy," she said. Her voice was dry, with a grating undertone--as if there were shells caught in there somewhere. I supposed there were.

  You will want to, but you mustn't, Elizabeth had said . . . but sometimes we can't help ourselves.

  The sand-girl held out her arm. The wind gusted and the fingers at the end of the hand blurred as fine grains blew off them and thinned them to bones. More sand skirled up from around her and the hand fattened again. Her features shifted like a landscape under rapidly passing summer clouds. It was fascinating . . . hypnotic.

  "Give me the flashlight," she said. "Then we'll go on board together. On the ship I can be the way you remember me. Or . . . you don't have to remember anything."

  The waves were on the march. Under the stars they roared in, one after the other. Under the moon. Under Big Pink, the shells spoke loudly: my voice, arguing with itself. Bring the buddy. I win. Sit in the chum. You win. Here in front of me stood Ilse made of sand, a shifting houri by the light of a three-quarter moon, her features never the same from one second to the next. Now she was Illy at nine; now she was Illy at fifteen, headed out on her first real date; now she was Illy as she'd looked getting off the plane in December, Illy the college girl with an engagement ring on her finger. Here stood the one I'd always loved the best--wasn't that why Perse had killed her?--with her hand held out for the flashlight. The flashlight was my boarding pass for a long cruise on forgetful seas. Of course that part might be a lie . . . but sometimes we have to take a chance. And usually we do. As Wireman says, we fool ourselves so much we could do it for a living.

  "Mary brought salt with her," I said. "Bags and bags of salt. She put it in the tub. The police want to know why. But they'd never believe the truth, would they?"

  She stood before me with the thundering, incoming waves behind her. She stood there blowing away and re-forming from the sand beneath her, around her. She stood there and said nothing, only holding her arm outstretched to take what she had come for.

  "Drawing you in the sand wasn't enough. Even Mary drowning you wasn't enough. She had to drown you in salt water." I glanced down at the flashlight. "Perse told her just what to do. From my picture."

  "Give it to me, Daddy," the shifting sand-girl said. Her hand was still held out. Only with the wind blowing, sometimes it was a claw. Even with sand feeding up from the beach to keep it plump, sometimes it was a claw. "Give it to me and we can go."

  I sighed. Some things were inevitable, after all. "All right." I took a step toward her. Another of Wireman's sayings occurred to me: In the end we wear out our worries. "All right, Miss Cookie. But it'll cost you."

  "Cost me what?" Her voice was the sound of sand against a window. The grating sound of the shells. But it was also Ilse's voice. My If-So-Girl.

  "Just a kiss," I said, "while I'm still alive to feel it." I smiled. I couldn't feel my lips--they were numb--but I could feel the muscles around them stretching. Just a little. "I suppose it will be a sandy one, but I'll pretend you've been playing on the beach. Making castles."

  "All right, Daddy."

  She came closer, moving in a queer shamble-drift that wasn't walking, and up close the illusion collapsed entirely. It was like bringing a painting close to your eyes and watching as the scene--portrait, landscape, still life--collapses into nothing but strokes of color, most with the marks of the brush still embedded in them. Ilse's features disappeared. What I saw where they had been was nothing but a furious cyclone of sand and tiny bits of shell. What I smelled wasn't skin and hair but only salt water.

  Pallid arms reached for me. Membranes of sand smoked off them in the wind. The moon shone through them. I held up the flashlight. It was short. And its barrel was plastic rather than stainless steel.

  "You might want a look at this before you go giving away kisses, though," I said. "It came from the glove compartment of Jack Cantori's car. The one with Perse inside is locked in Elizabeth's safe."

  The thing froze, and when it did, the wind off the Gulf tore away the last semblance of humanity. In that moment I was confronting nothing but a whirling sand-devil. I took no chances, however; it had been a long day, and I had no intention of taking chances, especially if my daughter were somewhere . . . well, somewhere else . . . and waiting for her final rest. I swung my arm as hard as I could, the flashlight clamped in my fist and Nan Melda's silver bracelets sliding down my arm to my wrist. I had cleaned them carefully in the kitchen sink at El Palacio, and they jingled.

  I had one of the silver-tipped harpoons stuck in my belt, behind my left hip, for good measure, but I didn't need it. The sand-devil exploded outward and upward. A scream of rage and pain went through my head. Thank God it was brief, or I think it would have torn me apart. Then there was nothing but the sound of the shells under Big Pink and a brief dimming of the stars over the dunes to my right as the last of the sand blew away in a disorganized flurry. The Gulf was once more empty except for the moon-gilded rollers, marching in toward shore. The Perse had gone, if it had ever been there.

  The strength ran out of my legs and I sat down with a thump. Maybe I'd end up doing the Crawly-Gator the rest of the way, after all. If so, Big Pink wasn't far. Right now I thought I'd just sit here and listen to the shells. Rest a little. Then maybe I'd be able to get up and walk those last twenty yards or so, go in, and call Wireman. Tell him I was all right. Tell him it was done, that Jack could come and pick me up.

  But for now I would just sit here and listen to the shells, which no longer seemed to be talking in my voice, or anyone else's. Now I would just sit here by myself on the sand, and look out at the Gulf, and think about my daughter, Ilse Marie Freemantle, who had weighed six pounds and four ounces at birth, whose first word had been dog, who had once brought home a large brown balloon crayoned on a piece of construction paper, shouting exultantly, "I drawed a pitcher of you, Daddy!"

  Ilse Marie Freemantle.

  I remember her well.

  22--June

  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 Sa
rasota 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 si, 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 adios,
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.