Stephen King - Duma Key

"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 maric n 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 class." 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 willi-wags 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 adi s 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?"

"My friend Wireman thinks so. One-armed artist, and all that."

"But you're just good, Daddy!"

I thanked her, then moved on to Carson Jones. Asked what she heard from him.

"He's fine," she said.

"Really?"

"Sure - why?"

"I don't know. I just thought I heard a little cloud in your voice."

She laughed ruefully. "You know me too well. The fact is, they're SRO everyplace they play now - word's getting around. The tour was supposed to end on May fifteenth because four of the singers have other commitments, but the booking agent found three new ones. And Bridget Andreisson, who's become quite the star, got them to push back the start of her understudy pastorate in Arizona. Which was lucky." Her voice flattened as she said this last, and became the voice of some adult woman I didn't know. "So instead of finishing in mid-May, the tour has been extended to the end of June, with dates in the Midwest and a final concert at the Cow Palace in San Francisco. Some bigga-time, huh?" This was my phrase, used when Illy and Lin were little girls putting on what they called "ballet super-shows" in the garage, but I couldn't recall ever saying it in that sad tone of not-quite-sarcasm.