Duma Key: A Novel Read online

  The slug was a black chip, slightly fragmented. It looked a little like a small ship. Like a rowboat floating on the caldo.

  I began to draw. I had meant only to draw his brain intact—no slug—but it ended up being more than that. I went on and added the water, you see, because the picture seemed to demand it. Or my missing arm. Or maybe they were the same. It was just a suggestion of the Gulf, but it was there, and it was enough to be successful, because I really was a talented sonofabitch. It only took twenty minutes, and when I was done I had drawn a human brain floating on the Gulf of Mexico. It was, in a way, way cool.

  It was also horrifying. It isn’t a word I want to use about my own work, but it’s unavoidable. As I took the X-ray down and compared it to my picture—slug in the science, no slug in the art—I realized something I perhaps should have seen much earlier. Certainly after I started the Girl and Ship series. What I was doing didn’t work just because it played on the nerve-endings; it worked because people knew—on some level they really did know—that what they were looking at had come from a place beyond talent. The feeling those Duma pictures conveyed was horror, barely held in check. Horror waiting to happen. Inbound on rotted sails.

  v

  I was hungry again. I made myself a sandwich and ate it in front of my computer. I was catching up with The Hummingbirds—they had become quite the little obsession with me—when the phone rang. It was Wireman.

  “My headache’s gone,” he said.

  “Do you always say hello like that?” I asked. “Can I maybe expect your next call to begin ‘I just evacuated my bowels’?”

  “Don’t make light of this. My head has ached ever since I woke up on the dining room floor after shooting myself. Sometimes it’s just background noise and sometimes it rings like New Year’s Eve in hell, but it always aches. And then, half an hour ago, it just quit. I was making myself a cup of coffee and it quit. I couldn’t believe it. At first I thought I was dead. I’ve been walking around on eggshells, waiting for it to come back and really wallop me with Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, and it hasn’t.”

  “Lennon-McCartney,” I said. “1968. And don’t tell me I’m wrong on that one.”

  He didn’t tell me anything. Not for a long time. But I could hear him breathing. Then, at last, he said: “Did you do something, Edgar? Tell Wireman. Tell your Daddy.”

  I thought about telling him I hadn’t done a damn thing. Then I considered him checking his X-ray folder and finding one was gone. I also considered my sandwich, wounded but far from dead. “What about your vision? Any change there?”

  “Nope, the left lamp is still out. And according to Principe, it ain’t coming back. Not in this life.”

  Shit. But hadn’t part of me known the job wasn’t done? This morning’s diddling with Sharpie and Cardboard had been nothing like the previous night’s full-blown orgasm. I was tired. I didn’t want to do anything more today but sit and stare at the Gulf. Watch the sun go down in the caldo largo without painting the fucking thing. Only this was Wireman. Wireman, goddammit.

  “You still there, muchacho?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Can you get Annmarie Whistler for a few hours later today?”

  “Why? What for?”

  “So you can sit for your portrait,” I said. “If your eye’s still out, I guess I need the actual Wireman.”

  “You did do something.” His voice was low. “Did you paint me already? From memory?”

  “Check the folder with your X-rays in it,” I said. “Be here around four. I want to take a nap first. And bring something to eat. Painting makes me hungry.” I thought of amending that to a certain kind of painting, and didn’t. I thought I’d said enough.

  vi

  I wasn’t sure I’d be able to nap, but I did. The alarm roused me at three o’clock. I went up to Little Pink and considered my store of blank canvases. The biggest was five feet long by three wide, and this was the one I chose. I pulled my easel’s support-strut to full extension and set up the blank canvas longways. That blank shape, like a white coffin on end, touched off a little flutter of excitement in my stomach and down my right arm. I flexed those fingers. I couldn’t see them, but I could feel them opening and closing. I could feel the nails digging into the palm. They were long, those nails. They had grown since the accident and there was no way to cut them.

  vii

  I was cleaning my brushes when Wireman came striding up the beach in his shambling, bearlike gait, the peeps fleeing before him. He was wearing jeans and a sweater, no coat. The temperatures had begun to moderate.

  He hollered a hello at the front door and I yelled for him to come on upstairs. He got most of the way and saw the big canvas on the easel. “Holy shit, amigo, when you said portrait, I got the idea we were talking about a headshot.”

  “That’s sort of what I’m planning,” I said, “but I’m afraid it’s not going to be that realistic. I’ve already done a little advance work. Take a look.”

  The pilfered X-ray and Sharpie sketch were on the bottom shelf of my workbench. I handed them to Wireman, then sat down again in front of my easel. The canvas waiting there was no longer completely blank and white. Three-quarters of the way up was a faintly drawn rectangle. I had made it by holding the shirt-cardboard against the canvas and running a No. 2 pencil around the edge.

  Wireman said nothing for almost two minutes. He kept looking back and forth between the X-ray and the picture I had drawn from it. Then, in a voice almost too low to hear: “What are we talking about here, muchacho? What are we saying?”

  “We’re not,” I said. “Not yet. Hand me the shirt-cardboard.”

  “Is that what this is?”

  “Yes, and be careful. I need it. We need it. The X-ray doesn’t matter anymore.”

  He passed me the shirt-cardboard picture with a hand that wasn’t quite steady.

  “Now go over to the wall where the finished pictures are. Look at the one on the far left. In the corner.”

  He went over, looked, and recoiled. “Holy shit! When did you do this?”

  “Last night.”

  He picked it up and turned it toward the light streaming through the big window. He looked at Tina, who was looking up at the mouthless, noseless Candy Brown.

  “No mouth, no nose, Brown dies, case closed,” Wireman said. His voice was no more than a whisper. “Jesus Christ, I’d hate to be the maricón de playa who kicked sand in your face.” He set the picture back down and stepped away from it … carefully, like it might explode if it were joggled. “What got into you? What possessed you?”

  “Goddam good question,” I said. “I almost didn’t show you. But … considering what we’re up to here …”

  “What are we up to here?”

  “Wireman, you know.”

  He staggered a little bit, as if he were the one with the bad leg. And he had come over sweaty. His face shone with it. His left eye was still red, but maybe not as red. Of course that might only have been the Department of Wishful Thinking. “Can you do it?”

  “I can try,” I said. “If you want me to.”

  He nodded, then stripped off his sweater. “Go for it.”

  “I need you by the window, so the light falls on your face nice and strong as the sun starts going down. There’s a stool in the kitchen you can sit on. How long have you got Annmarie for?”

  “She said she could stay until eight, and she’ll give Miss Eastlake dinner. I brought us lasagna. I’ll put it in your oven at five-thirty.”

  “Good.” By the time the lasagna was ready, the light would be gone, anyway. I could take some digital photos of Wireman, clip them to the easel, and work from those. I was a fast worker, but I already knew this was going to be a longer process—days, at least.

  When Wireman came back upstairs with the stool, he stopped dead. “What are you doing?”

  “What does it look like I’m doing?”

  “Cutting a hole in a perfectly good canvas.”

  “Go to the head of the cla
ss.” I laid aside the cut rectangle, then picked up the cardboard insert with the floating brain on it. I went behind the easel. “Help me glue this in place.”

  “When did you figure all this out, vato?”

  “I didn’t,” I said.

  “You didn’t?” He was looking at me through the canvas, like a thousand lookie-loos I’d seen peering through a thousand peepholes at construction sites in my other life.

  “Nope. Something’s kind of telling me as I go along. Come around to this side.”

  With Wireman’s help, the rest of the prep only took a couple of minutes. He blocked the rectangle with the shirt-cardboard. I fished a little tube of Elmer’s Glue from my breast pocket, and began fixing it in place. When I came back around, it was perfect. Looked that way to me, anyway.

  I pointed at Wireman’s forehead. “This is your brain,” I said. Then I pointed at my easel. “This is your brain on canvas.”

  He looked blank.

  “It’s a joke, Wireman.”

  “I don’t get it,” he said.

  viii

  We ate like football players that night. I asked Wireman if he was seeing any better and he shook his head regretfully. “Things are still mighty black on the left side of my world, Edgar. Wish I could tell you different, but I can’t.”

  I played him Nannuzzi’s message. Wireman laughed and pumped his fist. It was hard not to be touched by his pleasure, which bordered on glee. “You’re on your way, muchacho—this is your other life for sure. Can’t wait to see you on the cover of Time.” He held his hands up, as if framing a cover.

  “There’s only one thing about it that worries me,” I said … and then had to laugh. Actually a lot of things about it worried me, including the fact that I had not the slightest idea what I was letting myself in for. “My daughter may want to come. The one who visited me down here.”

  “What’s wrong with that? Most men would be delighted to have their daughters watch them turn pro. You going to eat that last piece of lasagna?”

  We split it. Being of artistic temperament, I took the bigger half.

  “I’d love her to come. But your boss-lady says Duma Key is no place for daughters, and I sort of believe her.”

  “My boss-lady has Alzheimer’s, and it’s really starting to bite. The bad news about that is she doesn’t know her ass from her elbow anymore. The good news is she meets new people every day. Including me.”

  “She said the thing about daughters twice, and she wasn’t fogged out either time.”

  “And maybe she’s right,” he said. “Or possibly it’s just a bee in Miss Eastlake’s bonnet, based on the fact that a couple of her sisters died here when she was four.”

  “Ilse vomited down the side of my car. When we got back here she was still so sick she could hardly walk.”

  “She probably just ate the wrong thing on top of too much sun. Look—you don’t want to take a chance and I respect that. So what you’re going to do is put both daughters up in a good hotel where there’s twenty-four-hour room service and the concierge sucks up harder than an Oreck. I suggest the Ritz-Carlton.”

  “Both? Melinda won’t be able to—”

  He took a last bite of his lasagna and put it aside. “You ain’t looking at this straight, muchacho, but Wireman, grateful bastard that he is—”

  “You’ve got nothing to be grateful for yet—”

  “—will set you straight. Because I can’t stand to see a bunch of needless worries steal away your happiness. And Jesus-Krispies, you should be happy. Do you know how many people there are on the west coast of Florida who’d kill for a show on Palm Avenue?”

  “Wireman, did you just say Jesus-Krispies?”

  “Don’t change the subject.”

  “They haven’t exactly offered me a show yet.”

  “They will. They ain’t bringing a sample contract out here to the williwags just for shits and giggles. So listen to me, now. Are you listening?”

  “Sure.”

  “Once this show is scheduled—and it will be—you’re going to do what any artist new on the scene would be expected to do: publicity. Interviews, starting with Mary Ire and going on from there to the newspapers and Channel 6. If they want to play up your missing arm, so much the better.” He did the framing thing with his hands again. “Edgar Freemantle Bursts Upon the Suncoast Art Scene Like a Phoenix from the Smoking Ashes of Tragedy!”

  “Smoke this, amigo,” I said, and gripped my crotch. But I couldn’t help smiling.

  Wireman took no notice of my vulgarity. He was on a roll. “That missing brazo of yours gonna be golden.”

  “Wireman, you are one cynical mongrel.”

  He took this for the compliment it sort of was. He nodded and waved it aside magnanimously. “I’ll serve as your lawyer. You’re going to pick the paintings; Nannuzzi consults. Nannuzzi sets the show arrangement; you consult. Sound about right?”

  “I guess so, yeah. If that’s how it’s done.”

  “It’s how this is going to be done. And, Edgar—last but very far from least—you’re going to call everyone you care for and invite them to your show.”

  “But—”

  “Yes,” he said, nodding. “Everyone. Your shrink, your ex, both daughters, this guy Tom Riley, the woman who rehabbed you—”

  “Kathi Green,” I said, bemused. “Wireman, Tom won’t come. No way in hell. Neither will Pam. And Lin’s in France. With strep, for God’s sake.”

  Wireman took no notice. “You mentioned a lawyer—”

  “William Bozeman the Third. Bozie.”

  “Invite him. Oh, your mom and dad, of course. Your sisters and brothers.”

  “My parents are dead and I was an only child. Bozie …” I nodded. “Bozie would come. But don’t call him that, Wireman. Not to his face.”

  “Call another lawyer Bozie? Do you think I’m stupid?” He considered. “I shot myself in the head and didn’t manage to kill myself, so you better not answer that.”

  I wasn’t paying much attention, because I was thinking. For the first time I understood that I could throw a coming-out party for my other life … and people might show up. The idea was both thrilling and daunting.

  “They might all come, you know,” he said. “Your ex, your globe-trotting daughter, and your suicidal accountant. Think of it—a mob of Michiganders.”

  “Minnesotans.”

  He shrugged and flipped up his hands, indicating they were both the same to him. Pretty snooty for a guy from Nebraska.

  “I could charter a plane,” I said. “A Gulfstream. Take a whole floor at the Ritz-Carlton. Blow a big wad. Why the fuck not?”

  “That’s right,” he said, and snickered. “Really do the starving artist bit.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Put out a sign in the window. ‘WILL WORK FOR TRUFFLES.’ ”

  Then we were both laughing.

  ix

  After our plates and glasses were in the dishwasher, I led him back upstairs, but just long enough so I could take half a dozen digital photos of him—big, charmless close-ups. I have taken a few good photographs in my life, but always by accident. I hate cameras, and the cameras seem to know it. When I was done, I told him he could go home and spell Annmarie. It was dark outside, and I offered him my Malibu.

  “Gonna walk. The air will be good for me.” Then he pointed at the canvas. “Can I take a look?”

  “Actually, I’d rather you didn’t.”

  I thought he might protest, but he just nodded and went back downstairs, almost trotting. There was a new spring in his step—that was surely not my imagination. At the door he said, “Call Nannuzzi in the morning. Don’t let the grass grow under your heels.”

  “All right. And you call me if anything changes with your …” I gestured at his face with my paint-stippled hand.

  He grinned. “You’ll be the first to know. For the time being, I can settle for being headache-free.” The grin faded. “Are you sure it won’t come back?”

  “I’m
sure of nothing.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, that’s the human condition, ain’t it? But I thank you for trying.” And before I knew he was going to do it, he had taken my hand and kissed the back of it. A gentle kiss in spite of the bristles on his upper lip. Then he told me adiós and was gone into the dark and the only sound was the sigh of the Gulf and the whispering conversation of the shells under the house. Then there was another sound. The phone was ringing.

  x

  It was Ilse, calling to chat. Yes, her classes were going fine, yes, she felt well—great, in fact—yes, she was calling her mother once a week and staying in touch with Lin by e-mail. In Ilse’s opinion, Lin’s strep was probably so much self-diagnosed bullcrap. I told her I was stunned by her generosity of feeling and she laughed.

  I told her there was a possibility that I might be showing my work at a gallery in Sarasota, and she shrieked so loudly I had to hold the phone away from my ear.

  “Daddy, that’s wonderful! When? Can I come?”

  “Sure, if you want to,” I said. “I’m going to invite everybody.” This was a decision I hadn’t entirely made until I heard myself telling her. “We’re thinking mid-April.”

  “Shit! That’s when I was planning to catch up with The Hummingbirds tour.” She paused. Thinking. Then: “I can work them both in. A little tour of my own.”

  “You think?”

  “Yes, of course. You just give me the date and I am there.”

  Tears pricked the backs of my eyelids. I don’t know what it’s like to have sons, but I’m sure it can’t be as rewarding—as plain nice—as having daughters. “I appreciate that, hon. Do you think … is there any possibility your sister might come?”

  “You know what, I think she will,” Ilse said, “She’ll be crazy to see what you’re doing that’s got people in the know so excited. Will you get written up?”