Duma Key, Page 48

  "Why? What do you want them for?"

  "I'm going to sketch the drawbridge with the machinery gone," I said. "And I'm going to do it when I hear the horn that means it's up to let a boat go through. I don't think the motor and the hydraulics will really disappear, but with luck I can fuck it up badly enough to keep everybody off for awhile. Car-traffic, anyway."

  "Are you serious? You really think you can sabotage the bridge?"

  "Given how often it breaks down on its own, that should be easy." I looked again at the dark water and thought of Tom Riley, who should have been fixed. Who had been fixed, dammit. "I only wish I could draw myself a good night's sleep."

  How to Draw a Picture (IX)

  Look for the picture inside the picture. It's not always easy to see, but it's always there. And if you miss it, you can miss the world. I know that better than anyone, because when I looked at the picture of Carson Jones and my daughter--of Smiley and his Punkin--I thought I knew what I was looking for and missed the truth. Because I didn't trust him? Yes, but that's almost funny. The truth was, I wouldn't have trusted any man who presumed to claim my darling, my favored one, my Ilse.

  I found a picture of him alone before I found the one of them together, but I told myself I didn't want the solo shot, that one wouldn't do me any good, if I wanted to know his intentions toward my daughter I had to touch them as a couple with my magic hand.

  I was already making assumptions, you see. Bad ones.

  If I'd touched the first one, really searched the first one--Carson Jones dressed in his Twins shirt, Carson alone--things might have been different. I might have sensed his essential harmlessness. Almost certainly would have. But I ignored that one. And I never asked myself why, if he was a danger to her, I had then drawn her alone, looking out at all those floating tennis balls.

  Because the little girl in the tennis dress was her, of course. Almost all the girls I drew and painted during my time on Duma Key were, even the ones that masqueraded as Reba, or Libbit, or--in one case--as Adriana.

  There was only one female exception: the red-robe.

  Her.

  When I touched the photograph of Ilse and her boyfriend, I had sensed death--I didn't admit it to myself at the time, but it was true. My missing hand sensed death, impending like rain in clouds.

  I assumed Carson Jones meant my daughter harm, and that was why I wanted her to stay away from him. But he was never the problem. Perse wanted to make me stop--was, I think, desperate to make me stop once I found Libbit's old drawings and pencils--but Carson Jones was never Perse's weapon. Even poor Tom Riley was only a stopgap, a make-do.

  The picture was there, but I made a wrong assumption, and missed the truth: the death I felt wasn't coming from him. It was hanging over her.

  And part of me must have known I missed it.

  Why else had I drawn those damned tennis balls?

  16--The End of the Game

  i

  Wireman offered a Lunesta to help me sleep. I was sorely tempted, but declined. I took one of the silver harpoons, however, and Wireman did likewise. With his hairy belly sloping slightly over his blue boxers and one of John Eastlake's specialty items in his right hand, he looked like some amusing Real Guy version of Cupid. The wind had gotten up even higher; it roared along the sides of the house and whistled around the corners.

  "Bedroom doors open, right?" he asked.

  "Check."

  "And if something happens in the night, holler like hell."

  "Roger that, Houston. You do the same."

  "Is Jack going to be all right, Edgar?"

  "If he burns the sketch, he'll be fine."

  "You doing okay with what happened to your friends?"

  Kamen, who taught me to think sideways. Tom, who had told me not to give up the home field advantage. Was I doing okay with what happened to my friends.

  Well, yes and no. I felt sad and stunned, but I'd be a liar if I didn't say I also felt a certain low and slinking relief; humans are, in some ways, such complete shits. Because Kamen and Tom, although close, stood just outside the charmed circle of those who really mattered to me. Those people Perse hadn't been able to touch. And if we moved fast, Kamen and Tom would be our only casualties.

  "Muchacho?"

  "Yeah," I said, feeling called back from a great distance. "Yeah, I'm okay. Call me if you need me, Wireman, and don't hesitate. I don't expect to get many winks."

  ii

  I lay looking up at the ceiling with the silver harpoon beside me on the bedtable. I listened to the steady rush of the wind and the steady tumble of the surf. I remember thinking, This is going to be a long night. Then sleep took me.

  I dreamed of little Libbit's sisters. Not the Big Meanies; the twins.

  The twins were running.

  The big boy was chasing them.

  It had TEEF.

  iii

  I woke with most of my body on the floor but one leg--my left--still propped on the bed and fast asleep. Outside, the wind and surf continued to roar. Inside, my heart was pounding almost as hard as the waves breaking on the beach. I could still see Tessie going down--drowning while those soft and implacable hands clasped her calves. It was perfectly clear, a hellish painting inside my head.

  But it wasn't the dream of the little girls fleeing the frog-thing that was making my heart pound, not the dream that caused me to wake up on the floor with my mouth tasting like copper and every nerve seeming to burn. It was, rather, the way you wake from a bad dream realizing that you forgot something important: to turn off the stove, for instance, and now the house is filled with the smell of gas.

  I pulled my foot off the bed and it hit the floor in a burst of pins and needles. I rubbed it, grimacing. At first it was like rubbing a block of wood, but then that numb sensation started to leave. The sensation that I'd forgotten something vital did not.

  But what? I had some hopes that our expedition to the south end of the Key might put an end to the whole nasty, festering business. The biggest hurdle, after all, was belief itself, and as long as we didn't backslide in the bright Florida sunshine tomorrow, we were over that one. It was possible we might see upside-down birds, or that a gigantic hop-frog monstrosity like the one in my dream might try to bar our way, but I had an idea those were essentially wraiths--excellent for dealing with six-year-old girls, not so good against grown men, especially when armed with silver-tipped harpoons.

  And, of course, I would have my pad and pencils.

  I thought Perse was now afraid of me and my newfound talent. Alone, still not recovered from my near-death experience (still suicidal, in fact), I might have been an asset instead of a problem. Because in spite of all his big talk, that Edgar Freemantle really hadn't had another life; that Edgar had just switched the backdrop of his invalid's existence from pines to palms. But once I had friends again . . . saw what was all around me and reached out to it . . .

  Then I'd become dangerous. I don't know exactly what she had in mind--other than regaining her place in the world, that is--but she must have thought that when it came to mischief-making, the potential for a talented one-armed artist was great. I could have sent poison paintings all over the globe, by God! But now I had turned in her hand, just as Libbit had. Now I was something first to be stopped, then discarded.

  "You're a little late for that, bitch," I whispered.

  So why did I still smell gas?

  The paintings--especially the most dangerous ones, the Girl and Ship series--were safely under lock and key, and off-island, just as Elizabeth had wished. According to Pam, nobody in our circle of family and friends had taken sketches except for Bozie, Tom, and Xander Kamen. It was too late for Tom and Kamen, and I'd have given a great deal to change that, but Bozie had promised to burn his, so that was all right. Even Jack was covered, because he'd owned up to his little act of thievery. It had been smart of Wireman to ask him, I thought. I was only surprised he hadn't asked if I'd given Jack some artwork myse--

  My breath
turned to glass in my throat. Now I knew what I'd forgotten. Now, in this deep crease of the night with the wind roaring outside. I'd been so fixated on the goddam show that I'd never thought much about who I might have given work to before the show.

  Can I have it?

  My memory, still apt to be so balky, sometimes surprised me with bursts of Technicolor brilliance. It provided one now. I saw Ilse standing barefoot in Little Pink, dressed in shorts and a shell top. She was standing by my easel. I had to ask her to move so I could see the picture she was so taken with. The picture I didn't even remember doing.

  Can I have it?

  When she stood aside, I saw a little girl in a tennis dress. Her back was turned, but she was the focus of the picture. The red hair marked her as Reba, my little love, that girlfriend from my other life. Yet she was also Ilse--Rowboat Ilse--and Elizabeth's big sister Adriana as well, for that was Adie's tennis dress, the one with the fine blue loops along the hem. (I couldn't know this, but I did; it was news that had come whispering up from Elizabeth's pictures--pictures done when she was still known as Libbit.)

  Can I have it? This is the one I want.

  Or the one something wanted her to want.

  I tried Ilse, Pam had said. I wasn't sure I'd reach her, but she just got in.

  All around the doll-girl's feet were tennis balls. Others floated shoreward on the mild waves.

  She sounded tired, but she's okay.

  Was she? Was she really? I had given her that damned picture. She was my Miss Cookie, and I could refuse her nothing. I had even named it for her, because she said artists had to name their pictures. The End of the Game, I'd told her, and now that clanged in my head like a bell.

  iv

  There was no phone extension in the guest bedroom, so I crept out into the hall with my silver harpoon clutched in one hand. In spite of my need to get through to Ilse as soon as possible, I took a moment to peer in through the open doorway across the hall. Wireman was lying on his back like a beached whale, snoring peacefully. His own silver harpoon was beside him, along with a glass of water.

  I went past the family portrait, down the stairs, and into the kitchen. Here the rush of the wind and the roar of the surf was louder than ever. I picked up the phone and heard . . . nothing.

  Of course. Did you think Perse would neglect the phones?

  Then I looked at the handset and saw buttons for two lines. In the kitchen, at least, just picking up the phone wasn't enough. I said a little prayer under my breath, pushed the button marked LINE 1, and was rewarded with a dial tone. I moved my thumb to the button, then realized I couldn't remember Ilse's telephone number. My address book was back at Big Pink, and her telephone number had gone entirely out of my head.

  v

  The phone began to make a sirening sound. It was small--I had laid the handset down on the counter--but it seemed loud in the shadowy kitchen, and it made me think of bad things. Police cars responding to acts of violence. Ambulances rushing to the scenes of accidents.

  I pushed the cut-off button, then leaned my head against the chilly brushed-steel front of El Palacio's big refrigerator. In front of me was a magnet reading FAT IS THE NEW THIN. Right, and dead was the new alive. Next to the magnet was a magnetized pad-holder and a stub of pencil on a string.

  I pushed the LINE 1 button again and dialed 411. The automated operator welcomed me to Verizon Directory Assistance and asked me for city and state. I said "Providence, Rhode Island," enunciating as though on stage. So far, so good, but the robot choked on Ilse no matter how carefully I enunciated. It rolled me over to a human operator, who checked and told me what I had already suspected: Ilse's number was unpublished. I told the operator I was calling my daughter, and the call was important. The operator said I could talk to a supervisor, who would probably be willing to make an enquiry call on my behalf, but not until eight AM eastern time. I looked at the clock on the microwave. It was 2:04.

  I hung up and closed my eyes. I could wake up Wireman, see if he had Ilse in his little red address book, but I had a gnawing intuition even that might take too long.

  "I can do this," I said, but with no real hope.

  Of course you can, Kamen said. What is your weight?

  It was a hundred and seventy-four, up from an all-time adult low of one-fifty. I saw these numbers in my mind: 174150. The numbers were red. Then five of them turned green, one after the other. Without opening my eyes, I seized the stub of the pencil and wrote them on the pad: 40175.

  And what is your Social Security number? Kamen enquired further.

  It appeared in darkness, bright red numbers. Four of them turned green, and I added them to what I had already scrawled. When I opened my eyes I had printed 401759082 in a drunken, downward-tending sprawl on the pad.

  It was right, I recognized it, but I was still missing a number.

  It doesn't matter, the Kamen inside my head told me. Keypad phones are an amazing gift to the memory-challenged. If you clear your mind and punch what you already have, you'll hit the last number with no problem. It's muscle memory.

  Hoping he was right, I opened LINE 1 again and punched in the area code for Rhode Island and then 759-082. My finger never hesitated. It punched the last number, and somewhere in Providence, a phone began to ring.

  vi

  "Hel-lo? . . . Who . . . zit?"

  For a moment I was sure I'd blown the number after all. The voice was female, but sounded older than my daughter. Much. And medicated. But I resisted my initial impulse to say "Wrong number" and hang up. She sounded tired, Pam had said, but if this was Ilse, she sounded more than tired; she sounded weary unto death.

  "Ilse?"

  No answer for a long time. I began to think the disembodied someone in Providence had hung up. I realized I was sweating, and heavily enough so I could smell myself, like a monkey on a branch. Then the same little refrain:

  "Hel-lo? . . . Who . . . zit?"

  "Ilse!"

  Nothing. I sensed her getting ready to hang up. Outside the wind was roaring and the surf was pounding.

  "Miss Cookie!" I shouted. "Miss Cookie, don't you dare hang up this phone!"

  That got through. "Dad . . . dee?" There was a world of wonder in that broken word.

  "Yeah, honey--Dad."

  "If you're really Daddy . . ." A long pause. I could see her in her own kitchen, barefoot (as she had been that day in Little Pink, looking at the picture of the doll and the floating tennis balls), head down, hair hanging around her face. Distracted, maybe almost to the point of madness. And for the first time I began to hate Perse as well as fear her.

  "Ilse . . . Miss Cookie . . . I want you to listen to me--"

  "Tell me my screen name." There was a certain shocked cunning in the voice now. "If you're really my Daddy, tell me my screen name."

  And if I didn't, I realized, she'd hang up. Because something had been at her. Something had been fooling her, pawing her over, drawing its webs around her. Only not an it. She.

  Illy's screen name.

  For a moment I couldn't remember that, either.

  You can do this, Kamen said, but Kamen was dead.

  "You're not . . . my Daddy," said the distracted girl on the other end of the line, and again she was on the verge of hanging up.

  Think sideways, Kamen advised calmly.

  Even then, I thought, without knowing why I was thinking it. Even then, even later, even now, even so--

  "You're not my Daddy, you're her," Ilse said. That drugged and dragging voice, so unlike her. "My Daddy's dead. I saw it in a dream. Goodb--"

  "If so!" I shouted, not caring if I woke Wireman or not. Not even thinking about Wireman. "You're If-So-Girl!"

  A long pause from the other end. Then: "What's the rest of it?"

  I had another moment of horrible blankness, and then I thought: Alicia Keyes, keys on a piano--

  "88," I said. "You're If-So-Girl88."

  There was a long, long pause. It seemed forever. Then she began to cry.


  vii

  "Daddy, she said you were dead. That was the one thing I believed. Not just because I dreamed it but because Mom called and said Tom died. I dreamed you were sad and walked into the Gulf. I dreamed the undertow took you and you drowned."

  "I didn't drown, Ilse. I'm okay, I promise you."

  The story came out in fragments and bursts, interrupted by tears and digressions. It was clear to me that hearing my voice had steadied her but not cured her. She was wandering, strangely unfixed in time; she referred to the show at the Scoto as if it had occurred at least a week ago, and interrupted herself once to tell me that a friend of hers had been arrested for "cropping." This made her laugh wildly, as if she were drunk or stoned. When I asked her what cropping was, she told me it didn't matter. She said it might even have been part of her dream. Now she sounded sober again. Sober . . . but not right. She said the she was a voice in her head, but it also came from the drains and the toilet.

  Wireman came in at some point during our conversation, turned on the kitchen fluorescents, and sat down at the table with his harpoon in front of him. He said nothing, only listened to my end.

  Ilse said she had begun to feel strange--"eerie-feary" was what she actually said--from the first moment she came back into her apartment. At first it was just a spaced-out feeling, but soon she was experiencing nausea, as well--the kind she'd felt the day we had tried to prospect south along Duma Key's only road. It had gotten worse and worse. A woman spoke to her from the sink, told her that her father was dead. Ilse said she'd gone out for a walk to clear her head after that, but decided to come right back.

  "It must be those Lovecraft stories I read for my Senior English Project," she said. "I kept thinking someone was following me. That woman."

  Back in the apartment, she'd started to cook some oatmeal, thinking it might settle her stomach, but the very sight of it when it started to thicken nauseated her--every time she stirred it, she seemed to see things in it. Skulls. The faces of screaming children. Then a woman's face. The woman had too many eyes, Ilse said. The woman in the oatmeal said her father was dead and her mother didn't know yet, but when she did, she would have a party.

  "So I went and lied down," she said, unconsciously reverting to the diction of childhood, "and that's when I dreamed the woman was right and you were dead, Daddy."