Duma Key(37)

The line smoothed out. "Good, that's settled. You deserve to get better, you know. Sometimes I wonder if you really believe that."

"Of course I do," I said.

Ilse went on as if she hadn't heard. "Because what happened wasn't your fault."

I felt tears well up at that. I suppose I did know, but it was nice to hear someone else say it out loud. Someone besides Kamen, that is, whose job it was to scrape caked-on grime off those troublesome unwashed pots in the sinks of the subconscious.

She nodded at me. "You are going to get better. I say so, and I'm tr s bossy."

The loudspeaker honked: Delta flight 559, service to Cincinnati and Cleveland. The first leg of Ilse's trip home.

"Go on, hon, better let em wand your bod and check your shoes."

"I have one other thing to say first."

I threw up the one hand I still had. "What now, precious girl?"

She smiled at that: it was what I'd called both girls when my patience was finally nearing an end.

"Thank you for not telling me that Carson and I are too young to be engaged."

"Would it have done any good?"

"No."

"No. Besides, your mother will do an adequate job of that for both of us, I think."

Ilse scrunched her mouth into an ouch shape, then laughed. "So will Linnie... but only cause I got ahead of her for once."

She gave me one more strong hug. I breathed deep of her hair - that good sweet smell of shampoo and young, healthy woman. She pulled back and looked at my man-of-all-work, standing considerately off to one side. "You better take good care of him, Jack. He's the goods."

They hadn't fallen in love - no breaks there, muchacho - but he gave her a warm smile. "I'll do my best."

"And he promised to get an opinion on his pictures. You're a witness."

Jack smiled and nodded.

"Good." She gave me one more kiss, this one on the tip of the nose. "Be good, father. Heal thyself." Then she went through the doors, festooned with bags but still walking briskly. She looked back just before they closed. "And get some paints!"

"I will!" I called back, but I don't know if she heard me; in Florida, doors whoosh shut in a hurry to save the air conditioning. For a moment or two everything in the world blurred and grew brighter; there was a pounding in my temples and a damp prickle in my nose. I bent my head and worked briskly at my eyes with the thumb and second finger of my hand while Jack once more pretended to see something interesting in the sky. There was a word and it wouldn't come. I thought borrow, then tomorrow.

Give it time, don't get mad, tell yourself you can do this, and the words usually come. Sometimes you don't want them, but they come, anyway. This one was sorrow.

Jack said, "You want to wait for me to bring the car, or-"

"No, I'm good to walk." I wrapped my fingers around the grip of my crutch. "Just keep an eye on the traffic. I don't want to get run down crossing the road. Been there, done that."

xvii

We stopped at Art Artifacts of Sarasota on our way back, and while we were in there, I asked Jack if he knew anything about Sarasota art galleries.

"Way ahead of you, boss. My Mom used to work in one called the Scoto. It's on Palm Avenue."

"Is that supposed to mean something to me?"

"It's the hot-shit gallery on the arty side of town," he said, then rethought that. "I mean that in a nice way. And the people who run it are nice... at least they always were to my Mom, but... you know..."

"It is a hot-shit gallery."

"Yeah."

"Meaning big prices?"

"It's where the elite meet." He spoke solemnly, but when I burst out laughing, he joined me. That was the day, I think, when Jack Cantori became my friend rather than my part-time gofer.

"Then that's settled," I said, "because I am definitely elite. Give it up, son."

I raised my hand, and Jack gave it a smack.

xviii

Back at Big Pink, he helped me into the house with my loot - five bags, two boxes, and a stack of nine stretched canvases. Almost a thousand dollars' worth of stuff. I told him we'd worry about getting it upstairs the next day. Painting was the last thing on earth I wanted to do that night.

I limped across the living room toward the kitchen, meaning to put together a sandwich, when I saw the message light on the answering machine blinking. I thought it must be Ilse, saying her flight had been cancelled due to weather or equipment problems.

It wasn't. The voice was pleasant but cracked with age, and I knew who it was at once. I could almost see those enormous blue sneakers propped on the bright footplates of her wheelchair.

"Hello, Mr. Freemantle, welcome to Duma Key. It was a pleasure to see you the other day, if only briefly. One assumes the young lady with you was your daughter, given the resemblance. Have you taken her back to the airport? One rather hopes so."

There was a pause. I could hear her breathing, the loud, not-quiteemphysemic respiration of a person who has probably spent a great deal of her life with a cigarette in one hand. Then she spoke again.

"All things considered, Duma Key has never been a lucky place for daughters."

I found myself thinking of Reba in a very unlikely tennis dress, surrounded by small fuzzy balls as more came in on the next wave.