Duma Key(166)

Can I have it?

When she stood aside, I saw a little girl in a tennis dress. Her back was turned, but she was the focus of the picture. The red hair marked her as Reba, my little love, that girlfriend from my other life. Yet she was also Ilse Rowboat Ilse and Elizabeth's big sister Adriana as well, for that was Adie's tennis dress, the one with the fine blue loops along the hem. (I couldn't know this, but I did; it was news that had come whispering up from Elizabeth's pictures pictures done when she was still known as Libbit.)

Can I have it? This is the one I want.

Or the one something wanted her to want.

I tried Ilse, Pam had said. I wasn't sure I'd reach her, but she just got in.

All around the doll-girl's feet were tennis balls. Others floated shoreward on the mild waves.

She sounded tired, but she's okay.

Was she? Was she really? I had given her that damned picture. She was my Miss Cookie, and I could refuse her nothing. I had even named it for her, because she said artists had to name their pictures. The End of the Game, I'd told her, and now that clanged in my head like a bell.

iv

There was no phone extension in the guest bedroom, so I crept out into the hall with my silver harpoon clutched in one hand. In spite of my need to get through to Ilse as soon as possible, I took a moment to peer in through the open doorway across the hall. Wireman was lying on his back like a beached whale, snoring peacefully. His own silver harpoon was beside him, along with a glass of water.

I went past the family portrait, down the stairs, and into the kitchen. Here the rush of the wind and the roar of the surf was louder than ever. I picked up the phone and heard... nothing.

Of course. Did you think Perse would neglect the phones?

Then I looked at the handset and saw buttons for two lines. In the kitchen, at least, just picking up the phone wasn't enough. I said a little prayer under my breath, pushed the button marked LINE 1, and was rewarded with a dial tone. I moved my thumb to the button, then realized I couldn't remember Ilse's telephone number. My address book was back at Big Pink, and her telephone number had gone entirely out of my head.

v

The phone began to make a sirening sound. It was small I had laid the handset down on the counter but it seemed loud in the shadowy kitchen, and it made me think of bad things. Police cars responding to acts of violence. Ambulances rushing to the scenes of accidents.

I pushed the cut-off button, then leaned my head against the chilly brushed-steel front of El Palacio 's big refrigerator. In front of me was a magnet reading FAT IS THE NEW THIN. Right, and dead was the new alive. Next to the magnet was a magnetized pad-holder and a stub of pencil on a string.

I pushed the LINE 1 button again and dialed 411. The automated operator welcomed me to Verizon Directory Assistance and asked me for city and state. I said "Providence, Rhode Island," enunciating as though on stage. So far, so good, but the robot choked on Ilse no matter how carefully I enunciated. It rolled me over to a human operator, who checked and told me what I had already suspected: Ilse's number was unpublished. I told the operator I was calling my daughter, and the call was important. The operator said I could talk to a supervisor, who would probably be willing to make an enquiry call on my behalf, but not until eight AM eastern time. I looked at the clock on the microwave. It was 2:04.

I hung up and closed my eyes. I could wake up Wireman, see if he had Ilse in his little red address book, but I had a gnawing intuition even that might take too long.

"I can do this," I said, but with no real hope.

Of course you can, Kamen said. What is your weight?

It was a hundred and seventy-four, up from an all-time adult low of one-fifty. I saw these numbers in my mind: 174150. The numbers were red. Then five of them turned green, one after the other. Without opening my eyes, I seized the stub of the pencil and wrote them on the pad: 40175.

And what is your Social Security number? Kamen enquired further.

It appeared in darkness, bright red numbers. Four of them turned green, and I added them to what I had already scrawled. When I opened my eyes I had printed 401759082 in a drunken, downward-tending sprawl on the pad.

It was right, I recognized it, but I was still missing a number.

It doesn't matter, the Kamen inside my head told me. Keypad phones are an amazing gift to the memory-challenged. If you clear your mind and punch what you already have, you'll hit the last number with no problem. It's muscle memory.

Hoping he was right, I opened LINE 1 again and punched in the area code for Rhode Island and then 759-082. My finger never hesitated. It punched the last number, and somewhere in Providence, a phone began to ring.

vi

"Hel- lo?... Who... zit?"

For a moment I was sure I'd blown the number after all. The voice was female, but sounded older than my daughter. Much. And medicated. But I resisted my initial impulse to say "Wrong number" and hang up. She sounded tired, Pam had said, but if this was Ilse, she sounded more than tired; she sounded weary unto death.

"Ilse?"

No answer for a long time. I began to think the disembodied someone in Providence had hung up. I realized I was sweating, and heavily enough so I could smell myself, like a monkey on a branch. Then the same little refrain:

"Hel- lo?... Who... zit?"

"Ilse!"

Nothing. I sensed her getting ready to hang up. Outside the wind was roaring and the surf was pounding.