Duma Key(16)

"Ah, roger, Freemantle, we copy."

"Ah, we have bologna, Houston, that's a go on the bologna, do you copy?"

"Roger, Freemantle, we read you loud and clear. What's your mayo situation?"

We were a go for mayo, too. I made two bologna sandwiches on white - where I grew up, children are raised to believe mayonnaise, bologna, and white bread are the food of the gods - and ate them at the kitchen table. In the pantry I found a stack of Table Talk Pies, both apple and blueberry. I began to think of changing my will in favor of Jack Cantori.

Almost sloshing with food, I went back to the living room, snapped on all the lights, and looked at Hello. It wasn't very good. But it was interesting. The scribbled afterglow had a sullen, furnacey quality that was startling. The ship wasn't the one I'd seen, but mine was interesting in a spooky sort of way. It was little more than a scarecrow ship, and the overlapping scribbles of yellow and orange had turned it into a ghost-ship, as well, as if that peculiar sunset were shining right through it.

I propped it atop the TV, against the sign reading THE OWNER REQUESTS THAT YOU AND YOUR GUESTS DO NOT SMOKE INDOORS. I looked at it a moment longer, thinking it needed something in the foreground - a smaller boat, maybe, just to lend the one on the horizon some perspective - but I no longer wanted to draw. Besides, adding something might f**k up what little charm the thing had. I tried the telephone instead, thinking if it wasn't working yet I could call Ilse on my cell, but Jack had been on top of that, too.

I thought I'd probably get her machine - college girls are busy girls - but she answered on the first ring. "Daddy?" That startled me so much that at first I couldn't speak and she said it again. "Dad?"

"Yes," I said. "How did you know?"

"The callback number's got a 941 area code. That's where that Duma place is. I checked."

"Modern technology. I can't catch up. How are you, kiddo?"

"Fine. The question is, how are you?"

"I'm all right. Better than all right, actually."

"The fellow you hired -?"

"He's got game. The bed's made and the fridge is full. I got here and took a five-hour nap."

There was a pause, and when she spoke again she sounded more concerned than ever. "You're not hitting those pain pills too hard, are you? Because Oxycontin's supposed to be sort of a Trojan horse. Not that I'm telling you anything you didn't already know."

"Nope, I stick to the prescribed dosage. In fact-" I stopped.

"What, Daddy? What?" Now she sounded almost ready to hail a cab and take a plane.

"I was just realizing I skipped the five o'clock Vicodin... " I checked my watch. "And the eight o'clock Oxycontin, too. I'll be damned."

"How bad's the pain?"

"Nothing a couple of Tylenol won't handle. At least until midnight."

"It's probably the change in climate," she said. "And the nap."

I had no doubt those things were part of it, but I didn't think they were all of it. Maybe it was crazy, but I thought drawing had played a part. In fact, it was something I sort of knew.

We talked for awhile, and little by little I could hear that concern going out of her voice. What replaced it was unhappiness. She was understanding, I suppose, that this thing was really happening, that her mother and father weren't just going to wake up one morning and take it back. But she promised to call Pam and e-mail Melinda, let them know I was still in the land of the living.

"Don't you have e-mail there, Dad?"

"I do, but tonight you're my e-mail, Cookie."

She laughed, sniffed, laughed again. I thought to ask if she was crying, then thought again. Better not to, maybe.

"Ilse? I better let you go now, honey. I want to shower off the day."

"Okay, but..." A pause. Then she burst out: "I hate to think of you all the way down there in Florida by yourself! Maybe falling on your ass in the shower! It's not right!"

"Cookie, I'm fine. Really. The kid - his name's..." Hurricanes, I thought. Weather Channel. "His name's Jim Cantori." But that was a case of right church, wrong pew. "Jack, I mean."

"That's not the same, and you know it. Do you want me to come?"

"Not unless you want your mother to scalp us both bald," I said. "What I want is for you to stay right where you are and TCB, darlin. I'll stay in touch."

"'Kay. But take care of yourself. No stupid shit."

"No stupid shit. Roger that, Houston."

"Huh?"

"Never mind."

"I still want to hear you promise, Dad."

For one terrible and surpassingly eerie moment I saw Ilse at eleven, Ilse dressed in a Girl Scout's uniform and looking at me with Monica Goldstein's shocked eyes. Before I could stop the words, I heard myself saying, "Promise. Big swear. Mother's name."

She giggled. "Never heard that one before."

"There's a lot about me you don't know. I'm a deep one."

"If you say so." A pause. Then: "Love you."

"Love you, too."

I put the phone gently back into its cradle and stared at it for a long time.