Duma Key(128)

"Yes."

"Will you do it?"

I didn't know if I would or not, but I recognized her signs of growing agitation from my own not-so-distant past. "Yes." At that point, I would have promised her to jump to the moon in seven-league boots, if it would have eased her mind.

"Even then they may not be safe," she mused in an almost-horrified voice.

"Stop, now," I said, and patted her hand. "Stop thinking about this."

"All right. We'll talk more after your show. The three of us. I'll be stronger... clearer... and you, Edgar, will be able to pay attention. Do you have daughters? I seem to remember that you do."

"Yes, and they're staying on the mainland with their mother. At the Ritz. That's already arranged."

She smiled, but the corners drooped almost at once. It was as if her mouth were melting. "Crank me down, Wireman. I've been in the swamp... forty days and forty nights... so it feels... and I'm tired."

He cranked her down, and Annmarie came in with something in a glass on a tray. No chance Elizabeth was going to drink any of it; she had already corked off. Over her head, the loneliest girl in the world sat in a chair and looked out the window forever, face hidden by the fall of her hair, naked but for a pair of shoes.

x

For me, sleep was long in coming that night. It was after midnight before I finally slipped away. The tide had withdrawn, and the whispered conversation under the house had ceased. That didn't stop the whispered voices in my head, however.

Another Florida, Mary Ire whispered. That was another Florida.

Sell them. However many there are, you must sell them. That was Elizabeth, of course.

The grown Elizabeth. I heard another version of her, however, and because I had to make this voice up, what I heard was Ilse's voice as it had been as a child.

There's treasure, Daddy, this voice said. You can get it if you put on your mask and snorkel. I can show you where to look.

I drew a picture.

xi

I was up with the dawn. I thought I could go to sleep again, but not until I took one of the few Oxycontin pills I still had put aside, and until I made a telephone call. I took the pill, then dialed the Scoto and got the answering machine there wouldn't be a living person in the gallery for hours yet. Artistic types aren't morning people.

I pushed 11 for Dario Nannuzzi's extension, and after the beep I said: "Dario, it's Edgar. I've changed my mind about the Girl and Ship series. I want to sell them after all, okay? The only caveat is that they should all go to different people, if possible. Thanks."

I hung up and went back to bed. Lay there for fifteen minutes watching the overhead fan turn lazily and listening to the shells whisper beneath me. The pill was working, but I wasn't drifting off. And I knew why.

I knew exactly why.

I got up again, hit redial, listened to the recorded message, then punched in Dario's extension one more time. His recorded voice invited me to leave a message at the beep. "Except for No. 8, " I said. "That one is still NFS."

And why was it NFS?

Not because it was genius, although I think it was. Not even because when I looked at it, it was for me like listening to the darkest part of my heart telling its tale. It was because I felt that something had let me live just to paint it, and that to sell it would be to deny my own life, and all the pain I had undergone to reclaim it.

Yeah, that.

"That one's mine, Dario," I said.

Then I went back to bed, and that time I slept.

How to Draw a Picture (VII)

Remember that "seeing is believing" puts the cart before the horse. Art is the concrete artifact of faith and expectation, the realization of a world that would otherwise be little more than a veil of pointless consciousness stretched over a gulf of mystery. And besides if you don't believe what you see, who will believe your art?

The trouble after the treasure all had to do with belief. Elizabeth was fiercely talented, but she was only a child and with children, faith is a given. It's part of the standard equipment. Nor are children, even the talented ones ( especially the talented ones), in full possession of their faculties. Their reason still sleeps, and the sleep of reason breeds monsters.

Here's a picture I never painted:

Identical twins in identical jumpers, except one is red, with an L on the front, and the other is blue, with a T . The girls are holding hands as they run along the path that leads to Shade Beach. They call it that because for most of the day it's in the shadow of Hag's Rock. There are tear-tracks on their pale round faces, but they will soon be gone because by now they are too terrorized to cry.

If you can believe this, you can see the rest.

A giant crow flies slowly past them, upside-down, its wings outstretched. It speaks to them in their Daddy's voice.

Lo- Lo falls and cuts her knees on the shells. Tessie pulls her to her feet. They run on. It isn't the upside-down talking crow they are afraid of, nor the way the sky sometimes lenses from blue to a sunset red before going back to blue; it is the thing behind them.

The big boy.

Even with its fangs it still looks a little like one of the funny frogs Libbit used to draw, but this one is ever so much bigger, and real enough to cast a shadow. Real enough to stink and shake the ground each time it jumps. They have been frightened by all sorts of things since Daddy found the treasure, and Libbit says they dassn't come out of their room at night, or even look out their windows, but this is day, and the thing behind them is too real not to be believed, and it is gaining.