Duma Key(137)

In that first version, the angle of the deathship was wrong to see anything of the name. In Girl and Ship No. 2, the angle had improved but the little girl (still with the false red hair and now also wearing Reba's polka-dotted dress) blocked out all but the letter P. In No. 3, P had become PER and Reba had pretty clearly become Ilse, even back-to. John Eastlake's spear-pistol lay in the rowboat.

If Elizabeth recognized this, she gave no indication. I pushed her slowly up the line as the ship bulked larger and closer, its black masts looming like fingers, its sails sagging like dead flesh. The furnace sky glared through the holes in the canvas. Now the name on the transom was PERSE. There might have been more there was room for more but if so, it was hidden by shadows. In Girl and Ship No. 6 (the ship now looming over the rowboat), the little girl was wearing what appeared to be a blue singlet with a yellow stripe around the neck. Her hair in that one was orange-ish; it was the only Rowboat Girl whose identity I wasn't sure of. Maybe it was Ilse, since the others were... but I wasn't entirely convinced. In this one the first few rose-petals had begun to appear on the water (plus one single yellow-green tennis ball with the letters DUNL visible on it), and an odd assortment of geegaws were heaped on deck: a tall mirror (which, reflecting the sunset, appeared filled with blood), a child's rocking horse, a steamer trunk, a pile of shoes. These same objects appeared in No. 7 and No. 8, where they had been joined by several others a young girl's bicycle leaning against the foremast, a pile of tires stacked on the stern, a great hourglass at midships. This last also reflected the sun and appeared to be full of blood instead of sand. In Girl and Ship No. 8 there were more rose-petals floating between the rowboat and the Perse. There were more tennis balls, too, at least half a dozen. And a rotting garland of flowers hung around the neck of the rocking horse. I could almost smell the stench of their perfume on the still air.

"Dear God, " Elizabeth whispered. "She has grown so strong." There had been color in her face but now it was all gone. She didn't look eighty-five; she looked two hundred.

Who? I tried to ask, but nothing came out.

"Ma'am... Miss Eastlake... you shouldn't tax yourself," Pam said.

I cleared my throat. "Can you get her a glass of water?"

"I will, Dad," Illy said.

Elizabeth was still staring at Girl and Ship No. 8. "How many of those... those souvenirs... do you recognize?" she asked.

"I don't... my imagination..." I fell silent. The girl in the rowboat of No. 8 was no souvenir, but she was Ilse. The green dress, with its bare back and crisscrossing straps, had seemed jarringly sexy for a little girl, but now I knew why: it was a dress Ilse had bought recently, from a mail-order catalogue, and Ilse was no longer a little girl. Otherwise, the tennis balls were still a mystery to me, the mirror meant nothing, nor did the stack of tires. And I didn't know for a fact that the bicycle leaning against the foremast had been Tina Garibaldi's, but I feared it... and my heart was somehow sure of it.

Elizabeth's hand, dreadfully cold, settled on my wrist. "There's no bullet on the frame of this last one."

"I don't know what you're-"

Her grip tightened. "You do. You know exactly what I mean. The show is a sell, Edgar, do you think I'm blind? A bullet on the frame of every painting we've looked at including No. 6, the one with my sister Adie in the rowboat but not this one!"

I looked back toward No. 6, where Rowboat Girl had orange hair. "That's your sister?"

She paid no attention. I don't think she even heard me. All her attention was bent upon Girl and Ship No. 8. "What do you mean to do? Take it back? Do you mean to take it back to Duma? " Her voice rang out in the quiet of the gallery.

"Ma'am... Miss Eastlake... you really shouldn't excite yourself this way," Pam said.

Elizabeth's eyes blazed in the hanging flesh of her face. Her nails dug into the scant meat of my wrist. "And what? Put it next to another one you've already started?"

"I haven't started another-" Or had I? My memory was playing me again, as it often did in moments of stress. If someone had at that moment demanded that I speak the name of my older daughter's French boyfriend, I probably would have said Ren . As in Magritte. The dream had tilted, all right; here was the nightmare, right on schedule.

"The one where the rowboat is empty?"

Before I could say anything, Gene Hadlock shoved through the crowd, followed by Wireman, followed by Ilse, holding a glass of water.

"Elizabeth, we should go," Hadlock said.

He reached for her arm. Elizabeth swept his hand away. On the follow-through she struck the glass Ilse was starting to proffer and it went flying, hitting one of the bare walls and shattering. Someone cried out and some woman, incredibly, laughed.

"Do you see the rocking horse, Edgar?" She held out her hand. It was trembling badly. Her nails had been painted coral pink, probably by Annmarie. "That belonged to my sisters, Tessie and Laura. They loved it. They dragged that damned thing with them everywhere. It was outside Rampopo the baby playhouse on the side lawn after they drowned. My father couldn't bear to look at it. He had it thrown into the water at the memorial service. Along with the garland, of course. The one around the horse's neck."

Silence except for the tearing rasp of her breath. Mary Ire staring with big eyes, her obsessive note-taking at an end, the pad hanging forgotten in one hand by her side. Her other hand had gone to her mouth. Then Wireman pointed to a door that was quite cleverly concealed in more of the brown burlappy stuff. Hadlock nodded. And suddenly Jack was there, and it was actually Jack who took charge. "Have you out in a jiff, Miz Eastlake," he said. "No worries." He seized the handles of her wheelchair.