Duma Key(105)

Hope you can come love you either way, Pony Girl -

Dad

I closed the letter that was also a brochure that was also an invitation and sat staring silently down at it for a few moments. I did not entirely trust myself to speak.

"That's just a rough draft, of course." Wireman sounded tentative. In other words, not like himself at all. "If you hate it, I'll junk it and start again. No harm, no foul."

"You didn't get that picture from Ilse," I said.

"No, muchacho. Pam found it in one of her old photo albums."

All at once everything made sense.

"How many times have you talked to her, Jerome?"

He winced. "That hurts, but maybe you have a right. Probably half a dozen times. I started by telling her you were getting yourself in a jam down here, and that you were taking a lot of other people with you-"

"What the f**k!" I cried, stung.

"People who'd invested a lot of hope and trust in you, not to mention money-"

"I'm perfectly capable of refunding any money the people at the Scoto may have laid out on-"

"Shut up," he said, and I had never heard such coldness in his voice. Or seen it in his eyes. "You ain't an ass**le, muchacho, so don't act like one. Can you refund their trust? Can you refund their prestige, if the great new artist they've promised their customers doesn't materialize for either the lecture or the show?"

"Wireman, I can do the show, it's just the goddam lecture -"

" They don't know that!" he shouted. He had a hell of a shouting voice on him, a real courtroom bellow. Elizabeth took no notice, but peeps took off from the water's edge in a brown sheet. "They have this funny idea that maybe on April fifteenth you'll be a no -show, or that you'll yank your stuff altogether and they'll have a bunch of empty rooms during the tenderloin of the tourist season, when they're used to doing a third of their yearly business."

"They have no reason to think that," I said, but my face was throbbing like a hot brick.

"No? How did you think about this kind of behavior in your other life, amigo? What conclusions did you draw about a supplier who contracted for cement and then didn't show up on the dime? Or a plumbing sub who got the job on a new bank and wasn't there on the day he was supposed to start? Did you feel real, I dunno, confident about guys like that? Did you believe their excuses?"

I said nothing.

"Dario sends you e-mails asking for decisions, he gets no answer. He and the others call on the phone and get vague replies like 'I'll think about it.' This would make them nervous if you were Jamie Wyeth or Dale Chihuly, and you're not. Basically you're just some guy who walked in off the street. So they call me, and I do the best I can I'm your f**kin agent, after all but I'm no artist, and neither are they, not really. We're like a bunch of cab-drivers trying to deliver a baby."

"I get it," I said.

"I wonder if you do." He sighed. Big sigh. "You say it's just stage fright about the lecture and you're going to go through with the show. I'm sure part of you believes that, but amigo, I gotta say that I think part of you has no intention of showing up at the Scoto Gallery on April fifteenth."

"Wireman, that's just-"

"Bullshit? Is it? I call the Ritz-Carlton and ask if a Mr. Freemantle has reserved any rooms for mid-April and get the big non, non, Nannette. So I take a deep breath and get in touch with your ex. She's no longer in the phone book, but your Realtor gives me the number when I tell her it's sort of an emergency. And right away I discover Pam still cares about you. She actually wants to call and tell you that, but she's scared you'll blow her off."

I gaped at him.

"The first thing we establish once we get past the introductions is Pam Freemantle knows zip and zoop about a big art exhibition five weeks hence by her ex-husband. The second thing she makes a phone call while Wireman dangles on hold and does a crossword puzzle with his newly restored vision is that her ex has done bupkes about chartering a plane, at least with the company she knows. Which leads us to discuss if, deep down, Edgar Freemantle has decided that when the time comes, he's just going to in the words of my misspent youth cry f**k it and crawl in the bucket."

"No, you've got it all wrong," I said, but these words came out in a listless drone that did not sound especially convincing. "It's just that all the organizational stuff drives me crazy, and I kept... you know, putting it off."

Wireman was relentless. If I'd been on the witness stand, I think I'd have been a little puddle of grease and tears by then; the judge would have called a recess to allow the bailiff time to either mop me up or buff me to a shine. "Pam says if you subtracted The Freemantle Company buildings from the St. Paul skyline, it would look like Des Moines in nineteen seventy-two."

"Pam exaggerates."

He took no notice. "Am I supposed to believe that a guy who organized that much work couldn't organize some plane tickets and two dozen hotel rooms? Especially when he could reach out to an office staff that would absolutely love to hear from him?"

"They don't... I don't... they can't just..."

"Are you getting pissed?"

"No." But I was. The old anger was back, wanting to raise its voice until it was shouting as loud as Axl Rose on The Bone. I raised my fingers to a spot just over my right eye, where a headache was starting up. There would be no painting for me today, and it was Wireman's fault. Wireman was to blame. For one moment I wished him blind. Not just half-blind but blind blind, and realized I could paint him that way. At that the anger collapsed.