Duma Key(14)

"Yes." I reached in my pocket and brought out my money-clip. "I want to give you a little extra. You've been great."

He waved it away. "Nah. This is a sweet gig, Mr. Freemantle. Good pay and good hours. I'd feel like a hound taking any extra."

That made me laugh, and I put my dough back in my pocket. "Okay."

"Maybe you ought to take a nap," he said, getting up.

"Maybe I will." It was odd to be treated like Grandpa Walton, but I supposed I'd better get used to it. "What happened to the other house at the north end of Casey Key?"

"Huh?"

"You said one went into the drink. What happened to the other one?"

"Far as I know, it's still there. Although if a big storm like Charley ever hits this part of the coast dead-on, it's gonna be like a going-out-of-business sale: everything must go." He walked over to me, and stuck out his hand. "Anyway, Mr. Freemantle, welcome to Florida. I hope it treats you real well."

I shook with him. "Thank you..." I hesitated, probably not long enough for him to notice, and I didn't get angry. Not at him, anyway. "Thanks for everything."

"Sure." He gave me the smallest of puzzled looks as he went out, so maybe he did notice. Maybe he did notice, at that. I didn't care. I was on my own at last. I listened to shells and gravel popping under his tires as his car started to roll. I listened to the motor fade. Less, least, gone. Now there was only the mild steady sighing of the Gulf. And the beat of my own heart, soft and low. No clocks. Not ringing, not bonging, not even ticking. I breathed deep and smelled the musty, slightly damp aroma of a place that's been shut up for a fairly long time except for the weekly (or bi-weekly) ritual airing. I thought I could also smell salt and subtropical grasses for which I as yet had no names.

Mostly I listened to the sigh of the waves, so like the breath of some large sleeping creature, and looked out through the glass wall that fronted on the water. Because of Big Pink's elevation, I couldn't see the beach at all from where I was sitting, fairly deep in the living room; from my armchair I might have been on one of those big tankers that trudge their oily courses from Venezuela to Galveston. A high haze had crept over the dome of the sky, muting the pinpricks of light on the water. To the left were three palm trees silhouetted against the sky, their fronds ruffling in the mildest of breezes: the subjects of my first tentative post-accident sketch. Don't look much like Minnesota, dere, Tom Riley had said.

Looking at them made me want to draw again - it was like a dry hunger, but not precisely in the belly; it made my mind itch. And, oddly, the stump of my amputated arm. "Not now," I said. "Later. I'm whipped."

I heaved myself out of the chair on my second try, glad the kid wasn't there to see the first backward flop and hear my childish ("Cunt licker! ") cry of exasperation. Once I was up I stood swaying on my crutch for a moment, marveling at just how tired I was. Usually "whipped" was just something you said, but at that moment it was exactly how I felt.

Moving slowly - I had no intention of falling in here on my first day - I made my way into the master bedroom. The bed was a king, and I wanted nothing more than to go to it, sit on it, sweep the foolish decorative throw-pillows (one bearing the likenessness of two cavorting Cockers and the rather startling idea that MAYBE DOGS ARE ONLY PEOPLE AT THEIR BEST) to the floor with my crutch, lie down, and sleep for two hours. Maybe three. But first I went to the bench at the end of the bed - still moving carefully, knowing how very easy it would be to tangle my feet and fall when I was at this level of exhaustion - where the kid had stacked two of my three suitcases. The one I wanted was on the bottom, of course. I shoved the one on top to the floor without hesitation and unzipped the front pocket of the other.

Glassy blue eyes looked out with their expression of eternal disapproving surprise: Oouuu, you nasty man! I been in here all this time! A fluff of lifeless orange-red hair sprang from confinement. Reba the Anger-Management Doll in her best blue dress and black Mary Janes.

I lay on the bed with her crooked between my stump and my side. When I had made an adequate space for myself among the ornamental pillows (it was mostly the cavorting Cockers I'd wanted on the floor), I laid her beside me.

"I forgot his name," I said. "I remembered it the whole way out here, then forgot it." Reba looked up at the ceiling, where the blades of the overhead fan were still and unmoving. I'd forgotten to turn it on. Reba didn't care if my new part-time hired man was Ike, Mike, or Andy Van Slyke. It was all the same to her, she was just rags stuffed into a pink body, probably by some unhappy child laborer in Cambodia or f**king Uruguay.

"What is it?" I asked her. Tired as I was, I could feel the old dismal panic setting in. The old dismal anger. The fear that this would go on for the rest of my life. Or get worse! Yes, possible! They'd take me back into the convalescent home, which was really just hell with a fresh coat of paint.

Reba didn't answer, that boneless bitch.

"I can do this," I said, although I didn't believe it. And I thought: Jerry. No, Jeff. Then You're thinking about Jerry Jeff Walker, ass**le. Johnson? Gerald? Great Jumping Jehosaphat?

Starting to drift away. Starting to drift into sleep in spite of the anger and panic. Tuning in to the mild respiration of the Gulf.

I can do this, I thought. Crosspatch. Like when you remembered what B-and-C stood for.