Duma Key(121)

"What's that?" Jack asked, looking over, then answered his own question. "Little red picnic basket. Cute. But what's a Purse?"

"You say it persie."

"I'll take your word for it." The barrier at our end of the drawbridge went up and Jack rolled across onto Duma Key.

I looked at the little red picnic basket I'd drawn only I thought you called this kind, the kind with wicker sides, a hamper and wondered why it looked so familiar. Then I realized it didn't, not exactly. It was the phrase that was familiar. Look for Nan Somebody's picnic basket, Elizabeth had said on the night I brought Wireman back from Sarasota Memorial. The last night I had seen her compos mentis, I realized now. It's in the attic. It's red. And: You'll find it, I'm sure. And: They're inside. Only when I had asked her what she was talking about, she hadn't been able to tell me. She had slipped away.

It's in the attic. It's red.

"Of course it is," I said. "Everything is."

"What, Edgar?"

"Nothing," I said, looking at the stolen pen. "Just thinking out loud."

v

Girl and Ship No. 8 the last in the series, I felt almost sure really was done, but I stood considering it in the lengthening light with my shirt off and The Bone blasting "Copperhead Road." I had worked on it longer than any of the others had come to realize that in many ways it summed up the others and it was disturbing. That was why I covered it with a piece of sheet at the end of my sessions. Now, looking at it with what I hoped was a dispassionate eye, I realized disturbing was probably the wrong word; that baby was f**king terrifying. Looking at it was like looking at a mind turned sideways.

And maybe it would never be completely done. Certainly there was still room for a red picnic basket. I could hang it over the Perse 's bowsprit. What the hell, why not? The damned thing was crammed with figures and details as it was. Always room for one more.

I was reaching out a brush loaded with what could have been blood to do just that when the phone rang. I almost let it go surely would have done, if I'd been in one of my painting trances but I wasn't. The picnic basket was only meant to be a grace note, and I had already added others. I put the brush back and picked up the phone. It was Wireman, and he sounded excited.

"She had a clear patch late this afternoon, Edgar! It might not mean anything I'm trying to keep my hopes low but I've seen this before. First one clear interval, then another, then another, then they start to merge together and she's herself again, at least for awhile."

"She knows who she is? Where she is?"

"Not now, but for half an hour or so, starting around five-thirty, she knew that stuff and who I was, too. Listen, muchacho she lit her own damn cigarette!"

"I'll be sure to tell the Surgeon General," I said, but I was thinking. Five-thirty. Right around the time Jack and I had been waiting for the drawbridge. Around the time I'd felt that urge to draw.

"Did she want anything besides a cigarette?"

"She asked for food. But before that, she asked to go to the China Village. She wanted her chinas, Edgar! Do you know how long it's been?"

I did, actually. And it was good to hear him excited on her behalf.

"She started to fade after I got her there, though. She looked around and asked me where Percy was. She said she wanted Percy, that Percy needed to go in the cookie-tin."

I looked at my painting. At my ship. It was mine now, all right. My Perse. I licked my lips, which suddenly felt leathery. The way they always had when I first woke up after the accident. When some of the time I couldn't remember who I was. Do you know what's queer? Remembering forgetting. It's like looking into a hall of mirrors. "Which one is Percy?"

"Damned if I know. When she wants me to throw the cookie-tin in the goldfish pond, she always insists on putting a girl china in it. Usually the shepherdess with her face chipped off."

"Did she say anything else?"

"She wanted food, I told you. Tomato soup. And peaches. By then she'd stopped looking at the chinas, and she was getting confused again."

Had she gotten confused because Percy wasn't there? Or the Perse? Maybe... but if she'd ever had a china boat, I'd never seen it. I thought not for the first time that Perse was a funny word. You couldn't trust it. It kept changing.

Wireman said, "At one point she told me the table was leaking."

"And was it?"

There was a brief pause. Then he said, not very humorously: "Are we having a little joke at Wireman's expense, mi amigo?"

"No, I'm curious. What did she say? Exactly?"

"Just that. 'The table is leaking.' But her chinas are on a table-table, as you well know, not a water-table."

"Calm down. Don't lose your good thoughts."

"I'm trying not to, but I have to say you seem a little off your conversational game, Edster."

"Don't call me Edster, it sounds like a vintage Ford. You brought her soup, and she was... what? Gone again?"

"Pretty much, yeah. She'd broken a couple of her china figures on the floor a horse and a rodeo girl." He sighed.

"Did she say 'It's leaking' before or after you brought her the food?"

"After, before, what does it matter?"