Duma Key(58)

"How about all of St. Paul knowing you care what happens to him? Would that be so goddam awful?"

She was silent.

"All I want is for you to confront him when he comes back-"

"All you want! Right! Your whole life has been about all you want! I tell you what, Eddie, if this is such a BFD to you, then you confront him!" It was that shrill hardness again, but this time with fear behind it.

I said, "If you were the one who broke it off, you probably still have power over him. Including maybe the power to make him save his life. I know that's scary, but you're stuck with it."

"No I'm not. I'm hanging up."

"If he kills himself, I doubt if you'll spend the rest of your life with a bad conscience... but I think you will have one miserable year. Or two."

"I won't. I'll sleep like a baby."

"Sorry, Panda, I don't believe you."

It was an ancient pet name, one I hadn't used in years, and I don't know where it came from, but it broke her. She began to cry again. This time there was no anger in it. "Why do you have to be such a bastard? Why won't you leave me alone?"

I wanted no more of this. What I wanted was a couple of pain pills. And maybe to sprawl on my bed and have a good cry myself, I wasn't sure. "Tell him you know. Tell him to see his psychiatrist and start taking his antidepressants again. And here's the most important thing tell him that if he kills himself, you'll tell everyone, starting with his mother and brother. That no matter how good he makes it look, everyone will know it was really suicide."

"I can't do that! I can't!" She sounded hopeless.

I considered this, and decided I'd put Tom Riley's life entirely in her hands simply pass it down the telephone wire to her. That sort of letting-go hadn't been in the old Edgar Freemantle's repertoire, but of course that Edgar Freemantle would never have considered spending his time painting sunsets. Or playing with dolls.

"You decide, Panda. It might be useless anyway if he no longer cares for you, but-"

"Oh, he does." She sounded more hopeless than ever.

"Then tell him he has to start living life again, like it or not."

"Good old Edgar, still managing things," she said wanly. "Even from his island kingdom. Good old Edgar. Edgar the monster."

"That hurts," I said.

"Lovely," she said, and hung up. I sat on the couch awhile longer, watching as the sunset grew brighter and the air in the Florida room grew colder. People who think there is no winter in Florida are very mistaken. An inch of snow fell in Sarasota in 1977. I guess it gets cold everywhere. I bet it even snows in hell, although I doubt if it sticks.

ii

Wireman called the next day shortly after noon and asked if he was still invited to look at my pictures. I felt some misgivings, remembering his promise (or threat) to give me his unvarnished opinion, but told him to come ahead.

I set out what I thought were my sixteen best... although in the clear, cold daylight of that January afternoon they all looked pretty crappy to me. The sketch I'd made of Carson Jones was still on the shelf in my bedroom closet. I took it down, clipped it to a piece of fiberboard, and propped it at the end of the line. The penciled colors looked dowdy and plain compared to the oils, and of course it was smaller than the rest, but I still thought it had something the others lacked.

I considered putting out the picture of the red-robe, then didn't. I don't know why. Maybe just because it gave me the creeps. I put out Hello the pencil sketch of the tanker instead.

Wireman came buzzing up in a bright blue golf cart with sporty yellow pinstriping. He didn't have to ring the bell. I was at the door to meet him.

"You've got a certain drawn look about you, muchacho, " he said, coming in. "Relax. I ain't the doctor and this ain't the doctor's office."

"I can't help it. If this was a building and you were a building inspector, I wouldn't feel this way, but-"

"But that was your other life," Wireman said. "This be your new one, where you haven't got your walking shoes broke in yet."

"That's about the size of it."

"You're damn right. Speaking of your prior existence, did you call your wife about that little matter you discussed with me?"

"I did. Do you want the blow-by-blow?"

"Nope. All I want to know is if you're comfortable with the way the conversation turned out."

"I haven't had a comfortable conversation with Pam since I woke up in the hospital. But I'm pretty sure she'll talk to Tom."

"Then I guess that'll do, pig. Babe, 1995." He was all the way in now, and looking around curiously. "I like what you've done to the place."

I burst out laughing. I hadn't even removed the no-smoking sign on top of the TV. "I had Jack put in a treadmill upstairs, that's new. You've been here before, I take it?"

He gave me an enigmatic little smile. "We've all been here before, amigo this is bigger than pro football. Peter Straub, circa 1985."

"I'm not following you."

"I've been working for Miss Eastlake about sixteen months now, with one brief and uncomfortable diversion to St. Pete when the Keys were evacuated for Hurricane Frank. Anyway, the last people to rent Salmon Point pardon me, Big Pink stayed just two weeks of their eight-week lease and then went boogie-bye-bye. Either they didn't like the house or the house didn't like them." Wireman raised ghost-hands over his head and took big wavery ghost-steps across the light blue living room carpet. The effect was to a large degree spoiled by his shirt, which was covered with tropical birds and flowers. "After that, whatever walked in Big Pink... walked alone!"