Duma Key(53)

"Freemantle," I said. "Edgar Freemantle."

I joined them at her play-table; she offered her hand. It wasn't muscular, but was, like her feet, of a good size. She hadn't forgotten the fine art of greeting, and gripped as well as she could. Also, she looked at me with cheerful interest as we shook. I liked her for her frank admission of memory troubles. And, Alzheimer's or not, I did far more mental and verbal stuttering than I'd seen so far from her.

"It's good to know you, Edgar. I have seen you before, but I don't recall when. It will come to me. Big Pink! That's sassy!"

"I like the house, ma'am."

"Good. I'm very glad if it gives satisfaction. It's an artist's house, you know. Are you an artist, Edgar?"

She was looking at me with her guileless blue eyes. "Yes," I said. It was the easiest, the quickest, and maybe it was the truth. "I guess I am."

"Of course you are, hon, I knew right away. I'll need one of your pictures. Wireman will strike a price with you. He's a lawyer as well as an excellent cook, did he tell you that?"

"Yes... no... I mean-" I was lost. Her conversation seemed to have developed too many threads, and all at once. Wireman, that dog, looked as if he were struggling not to laugh. Which made me feel like laughing, of course.

"I try to get pictures from all the artists who've stayed in your Big Pink. I have a Haring that was painted there. Also a Dal sketch."

That stopped any impulse to laugh. "Really?"

"Yes! I'll show you in a bit, one really can't avoid it, it's in the television room and we always watch Oprah. Don't we, Wireman?"

"Yes," he said, and glanced at the face of his watch on the inside of his wrist.

"But we don't have to watch it on the dot, because we have a wonderful gadget called..." She paused, frowned, and put a finger to the dimple in one side of her plump chin. "Vito? Is it Vito, Wireman?"

He smiled. "TiVo, Miss Eastlake."

She laughed. "TiVo, isn't that a funny word? And isn't it funny how formal we are? He's Wireman to me, I'm Miss Eastlake to him - unless I'm upset, as I sometimes am when things slip my mind. We're like characters in a play! A happy one, where one knows that soon the band will strike up and everyone in the company will sing!" She laughed to show what a charming idea it was, but there was something a little frantic in it. For the first time her accent made me think of Tennessee Williams instead of Margaret Mitchell.

Gently - very gently - Wireman said: "Maybe we ought to go into the other room for Oprah now. I think you ought to sit down. You can have a cigarette when you watch Oprah, and you know you like that."

"In a minute, Wireman. In just a minute. We have so little company here." Then back to me. "What kind of artist are you, Edgar? Do you believe in art for art's sake?"

"Definitely art for art's sake, ma'am."

"I'm glad. That's the kind Salmon Point likes best. What do you call it?"

"My art?"

"No, hon - Salmon Point."

"Big Pink, ma'am."

"Big Pink it shall be. And I shall be Elizabeth to you."

I smiled. I had to, because she was earnest rather than flirty. "Elizabeth it is."

"Lovely. In a moment or two we shall go to the television room, but first..." She turned her attention back to the play-table. "Well, Wireman? Well, Edgar? Do you see how I've arranged the children?"

There were about a dozen, all facing the left side of the schoolhouse. Low student enrollment.

"What does it say to you?" she asked. "Wireman? Edward? Either?"

That was a very minor slip, but of course I was attuned to slips. And that time my own name was the banana peel.

"Recess?" Wireman asked, and shrugged.

"Of course not," she said. "If it were recess, they'd be playing, not all bunched together and gawking."

"It's either a fire or a fire drill," I said.

She leaned over her walker (Wireman, vigilant, grabbed her shoulder to keep her from overbalancing), and planted a kiss on my cheek. It surprised hell out of me, but not in a bad way. "Very good, Edward!" she cried. "Now which do you say it is?"

I thought it over. It was easy if you took the question seriously. "A drill."

"Yes!" Her blue eyes blazed with delight. "Tell Wiring why."

"If it was a fire, they'd be scattering in all directions. Instead, they're-"

"Waiting to go back in, yes." But when she turned to Wireman, I saw a different woman, one who was frightened. "I called you by the wrong name again."

"It's all right, Miss Eastlake," he said, and kissed the hollow of her temple with a tenderness that made me like him very much.

She smiled at me. It was like watching the sun sail out from behind a cloud. "As long as he is still addressing one by one's surname, one knows..." But now she seemed lost, and her smile began to falter. "One knows that..."

"That it's time to watch Oprah, " Wireman said, and took her arm. Together they turned her walker away from the play-table, and she began to clump with surprising speed toward a door in the far end of the room. He walked watchfully beside her.