Duma Key(136)

The hand with the cigarette holder in it opened. Then it reached out and caressed my hair. The idea occurred to me (and has since recurred) that all my struggle to live and regain a semblance of myself may have been paid back by no more than the touch of that old woman's hand. The eroded smoothness of the palm. The bent strength of those fingers.

"Art is memory, Edgar. There is no simpler way to say it. The clearer the memory, the better the art. The purer. These paintings they break my heart and then make it new again. How glad I am to know they were done at Salmon Point. No matter what." She lifted the hand she'd caressed my head with. "Tell me what you call that one."

" Sunset with Sophora. "

"And these are... what? Sunset with Conch, Numbers 1 through 4?"

I smiled. "Well, there were sixteen of them, actually, starting with colored pencil-sketches. Some of those are out front. I picked the best oils for in here. They're surreal, I know, but-"

"They're not surreal, they're classical. Any fool can see that. They contain all the elements: earth... air... water... fire."

I saw Wireman mouth: Don't tire her out!

"Why don't I give you a quick tour of the rest and then get you a cold drink?" I asked her, and now Wireman was nodding and giving me a thumb-and-forefinger circle. "It's hot in here, even with the air conditioning."

"Fine," she said. "I am a little tired. But Edgar?"

"Yes?"

"Save the ship paintings for the last. After them I'll need a drink. Perhaps in the office. Just one, but something stiffer than Co'-Cola."

"You've got it," I said, and edged my way back to the rear of the chair.

"Ten minutes," Wireman whispered in my ear. "No more. I'd want to get her out before Gene Hadlock shows up, if possible. He sees her, he's going to shit a brick. And you know who he'll throw it at."

"Ten," I said, and rolled Elizabeth into the buffet room to look at the paintings in there. The crowd was still following. Mary Ire had begun taking notes. Ilse slipped one hand into the crook of my elbow and smiled at me. I smiled back, but I was having that I'm-in-a-dream feeling again. The kind that may tilt you into a nightmare at any moment.

Elizabeth exclaimed over I See the Moon and the Duma Road series, but it was the way she reached her hands out to Roses Grow from Shells, as if to embrace it, that gave me goosebumps. She lowered her arms again and looked over her shoulder at me. "That's the essence of it," she said. "The essence of Duma. Why those who've lived there awhile can never really leave. Even if their heads carry their bodies away, their hearts stay." She looked at the picture again and nodded. " Roses Grow from Shells. That is correct."

"Thank you, Elizabeth."

"No, Edgar thank you."

I glanced back for Wireman and saw him talking to that other lawyer from my other life. They seemed to be getting along famously. I only hoped Wireman wouldn't slip and call him Bozie. Then I turned to Elizabeth again. She was still looking at Roses Grow from Shells, and wiping her eyes.

"I love this," she said, "but we should move along."

After she'd seen the other paintings and sketches in the buffet room, she said, as if to herself: "Of course I knew someone would come. But I never would have guessed it would be someone who could produce works of such power and sweetness."

Jack tapped me on the shoulder, then leaned close to murmur in my ear. "Dr. Hadlock has entered the building. Wireman wants you to speed this up if you can."

The main gallery where the Girl and Ship paintings hung was on the way to the office, and Elizabeth could leave by the loading door in back after having her drink; it would actually be more convenient for her wheelchair. Hadlock could accompany her, if he so desired. But I dreaded taking her past the Ship series, and it was no longer her critical opinion I was worried about.

"Come on," she said, and clicked her amethyst ring on the arm of her wheelchair. "Let's look at them. No hesitating."

"All right," I said, and began pushing her toward the main gallery.

"Are you all right, Eddie?" Pam asked in a low voice.

"Fine," I said.

"You're not. What's wrong?"

I only shook my head. We were in the main room now. The pictures were suspended at a height of about six feet; the room was otherwise open. The walls, covered with coarse brown stuff that looked like burlap, were bare except for Wireman Looks West. I rolled Elizabeth's chair slowly along. The wheels were soundless on the pale blue carpet. The murmur of the crowd behind us had either stopped or my ears had filtered it out. I seemed to see the paintings for the first time, and they looked oddly like stills culled from a strip of movie film. Each image was a little clearer, a little more in focus, but always essentially the same, always the ship I had first glimpsed in a dream. It was always sunset, and the light filling the west was always a titanic red anvil that spread blood across the water and infected the sky. The ship was a three-masted corpse, something that had floated in from a plaguehouse of the dead. Its sails were rags. Its deck was deserted. There was something horrible in every angular line, and although it was impossible to say just what, you feared for the little girl alone in her rowboat, the little girl who first appeared in a tic-tac-toe dress, the little girl afloat on the wine-dark Gulf.