Duma Key(102)

"What's your point? Or did you have one?"

"I did. The point is you're not going crazy, if that's what you're afraid of. On Duma Key, broken people seem to be special people. When they cease being broken, they cease being special. Me, I'm mended. You're still broken, so you're still special."

"I'm not sure what you're getting at."

"Because you're trying to make a simple thing hard. Look in front of you, muchacho, what do you see?"

"The Gulf. What you call the caldo largo."

"And what do you spend most of your time painting?"

"The Gulf. Sunsets on the Gulf."

"And what is painting?"

"Painting is seeing, I guess."

"No guess about it. And what is seeing on Duma Key?"

Feeling like a child reciting a lesson of which he's not quite sure, I said: " Special seeing?"

"Yes. So what do you think, Edgar? Were those dead girls there last night or not?"

I felt a chill up my back. "Probably they were."

"I think so, too. I think you saw the ghosts of her sisters."

"I'm frightened of them." I said this in a low voice.

"Edgar... I don't think ghosts can hurt people."

"Maybe not ordinary people in an ordinary place," I said.

He nodded, rather reluctantly. "All right. So what do you want to do?"

"What I don't want to do is leave. I'm not done here yet."

I wasn't just thinking of the show the bubble reputation. There was more. I just didn't know what the more was. Not yet. If I'd attempted putting it into words, it would have come out sounding stupid, like something written on a fortune cookie. Something with the word fate in it.

"Do you want to come down here to the Palacio? Move in with us?"

"No." I thought that might make matters even worse, somehow. And besides, Big Pink was my place. I had fallen in love with it. "But Wireman, will you see how much you can find out about the Eastlake family in general and those two girls in particular? If you can read again, then maybe you could dig around on the Internet-"

He gripped my arm. "I'll dig like a motherf*cker. Maybe you could do some good in that direction, as well. You're going to do an interview with Mary Ire, right?"

"Yes. They've scheduled it for the week after my so-called lecture."

"Ask her about the Eastlakes. Maybe you'll hit the jackpot. Miss Eastlake was a big patron of the arts in her time."

"Okay."

He grasped the handles of the sleeping old woman's wheelchair and turned it around so it faced the orange roofs of the estate house again. "Now let's go look at my portrait. I want to see what I looked like back when I still thought Jerry Garcia could save the world."

ii

I'd parked my car in the courtyard, beside Elizabeth Eastlake's silver Vietnam War-era Mercedes-Benz. I slid the portrait from my much humbler Chevrolet, set it on end, and held it up for Wireman to look at. As he stood there silently regarding it, a strange thought occurred to me: I was like a tailor standing beside a mirror in a men's clothing store. Soon my customer would either tell me he liked the suit I'd made for him, or shake his head regretfully and say it wouldn't do.

Far off to the south, in what I was coming to think of as the Duma Jungle, that bird took up its warning "Oh-oh!" cry again.

Finally I couldn't take it anymore. "Say something, Wireman. Say anything."

"I can't. I'm speechless."

"You? Not possible."

But when he looked up from the portrait, I realized it was true. He looked like someone had walloped him on the head with a hammer. I understood by then that what I was doing affected people, but none of those reactions were quite like Wireman's on that March morning.

What finally woke him up was a sharp knocking sound. It was Elizabeth. She was awake and rapping on her tray. "Smoke!" she cried. "Smoke! Smoke! " Some things survived even the fog of Alzheimer's, it seemed. The part of her brain that craved nicotine never decayed. She'd smoke until the end.

Wireman took a pack of American Spirits from the pocket of his shorts, shook one out, put it in his mouth, and lit it. Then he held it out to her. "If I let you handle this yourself, are you going to light yourself on fire, Miss Eastlake?"

" Smoke! "

"That's not very encouraging, dear."

But he gave it to her, and Alzheimer's or no Alzheimer's, she handled it like a pro, drawing in a deep drag and jetting it out through her nostrils. Then she settled back in her chair, looking for the moment not like Captain Bligh on the poop deck but FDR on the reviewing stand. All she needed was a cigarette-holder to clamp between her teeth. And, of course, some teeth.

Wireman returned his gaze to the portrait. "You don't seriously mean to just give this away, do you? You can't. It's incredible work."

"It's yours," I said. "No arguments."

"You have to put it in your show."

"I don't know if that's such a good idea-"

"You yourself said once they're done, any effect on the subject's probably over-"

"Yeah, probably."