Duma Key(35)

I kissed her. On the forehead. The skin was cool and damp. "Put your feet up, Miss Cookie - orders from headquarters."

She went. I turned on the faucet and hosed off the side of the Malibu, taking more time than the job really needed, wanting to make sure she was down for the count. And she was. When I peeked in through the half-open door of the second bedroom, I saw her lying on her side, sleeping just as she had as a kid: one hand tucked under her cheek and one knee drawn up almost to her chest. We think we change, but we don't really - that's what Wireman says.

Maybe s , maybe no - that's what Freemantle says.

xiv

There was something pulling me - maybe something that had been in me since the accident, but surely something that had come back from Duma Key Road with me. I let it pull. I'm not sure I could have stood against it in any case, but I didn't even try; I was curious.

My daughter's purse was on the coffee table in the living room. I opened it, took out her wallet, and flipped through the pictures inside. Doing this made me feel a little like a cad, but only a little. It's not as if you're stealing anything, I told myself, but of course there are many ways of stealing, aren't there?

Here was the photo of Carson Jones she'd shown me at the airport, but I didn't want that. I didn't want him by himself. I wanted him with her. I wanted a picture of them as a couple. And I found one. It looked as if it had been taken at a roadside stand; there were baskets of cucumbers and corn behind them. They were smiling and young and beautiful. Their arms were around each other, and one of Carson Jones's palms appeared to be resting on the swell of my daughter's blue jeans-clad ass. Oh you crazy Christian. My right arm was still itching, a low, steady skin-crawl like prickly heat. I scratched at it, scratched through it, and got my ribs instead for the ten thousandth time. This picture was also in a protective see-through envelope. I slid it out, glanced over my shoulder - nervous as a burglar on his first job - at the partially open door of the room where Ilse was sleeping, then turned the picture over.

I love you, Punkin!

"Smiley"

Could I trust a suitor who called my daughter Punkin and signed himself Smiley? I didn't think so. It might not be fair, but no - I didn't think so. Nevertheless, I had found what I was looking for. Not one, but both. I turned the picture over again, closed my eyes, and pretended I was touching their Kodachrome images with my right hand. Although pretending wasn't what it felt like; I suppose I don't have to tell you that by now.

After some passage of time - I don't know exactly how long - I returned the picture to its plastic sleeve and submerged her wallet beneath the tissues and cosmetics to approximately the same depth at which I had found it. Then I put her purse back on the coffee table and went into my bedroom to get Reba the Anger-Management Doll. I limped upstairs to Little Pink with her clamped between my stump and my side. I think I remember saying "I'm going to make you into Monica Seles" when I set Reba down in front of the window, but it could as easily have been Monica Goldstein; when it comes to memory, we all stack the deck. The gospel according to Wireman.

I'm clearer than I want to be about most of what happened on Duma, but that particular afternoon seems very vague to me. I know that I fell into a frenzy of drawing, and that the maddening itch in my nonexistent right arm disappeared completely while I was working; I do not know but am almost sure that the reddish haze which always hung over my vision in those days, growing thicker when I was tired, disappeared for awhile.

I don't know how long I was in that state. I think quite awhile. Long enough so I was both exhausted and famished when I was finished.

I went back downstairs and gobbled lunchmeat by the fridge's frosty glow. I didn't want to make an actual sandwich, because I didn't want Ilse to know I'd felt well enough to eat. Let her go on thinking our problems had been caused by bad mayonnaise. That way we wouldn't have to spend time hunting for other explanations.

None of the other explanations I could think of were rational.

After eating half a package of sliced salami and swilling a pint or so of sweet tea, I went into my bedroom, lay down, and fell into a sodden sleep.

xv

Sunsets.

Sometimes it seems to me that my clearest memories of Duma Key are of orange evening skies that bleed at the bottom and fade away at the top, green to black. When I woke up that evening, another day was going down in glory. I thudded into the big main room on my crutch, stiff and wincing (the first ten minutes were always the worst). The door to Ilse's room was standing open and her bed was empty.

"Ilse?" I called.

For a moment there was no answer. Then she called back from upstairs. "Daddy? Holy crow, did you do this? When did you do this?"

All thought of aches and pains left me. I got up to Little Pink as fast as I could, trying to remember what I'd drawn. Whatever it was, I hadn't made any effort to put it out of sight. Suppose it was something really awful? Suppose I'd gotten the bright idea of doing a crucifixion caricature, with The Gospel Hummingbird riding the cross?

Ilse was standing in front of my easel, and I couldn't see what was there. Her body was blocking it out. Even if she'd been standing to one side, the only light in the room was coming from that bloody sunset; the pad would have been nothing but a black rectangle against the glare.

I flicked on the lights, praying I hadn't done something to distress the daughter who had come all this way to make sure I was okay. From her voice, I hadn't been able to tell. "Ilse?"