Duma Key(59)

"Shirley Jackson," I said. "Circa whenever."

"Yep. Anyway, Wireman was making a point, or trying to. Big Pink THEN!" He swept his arms out in an all-encompassing gesture. "Furnished in that popular Florida style known as Twenty-First Century Rent-A-House! Big Pink NOW! Furnished in Twenty-First Century Rent-A-House, plus Cybex treadmill upstairs, and..." He squinted. "Is that a Lucille Ball dolly I spy sitting on the couch in the Florida room?"

"That's Reba, the Anger-Management Queen. She was given to me by my psychologist friend, Kramer." But that wasn't right. My missing arm began to itch madly. For the ten thousandth time I tried to scratch it and got my still-mending ribs instead. "Wait," I said, and looked at Reba, who was staring out at the Gulf. I can do this, I thought. It's like where you put money when you want to hide it from the government.

Wireman was waiting patiently.

My arm itched. The one not there. The one that sometimes wanted to draw. It wanted to draw then. I thought it wanted to draw Wireman. Wireman and the bowl of fruit. Wireman and the gun.

Stop the weird shit, I thought.

I can do this, I thought.

You hide money from the government in offshore banks, I thought. Nassau. The Bahamas. The Grand Caymans. And Bingo, there it was.

"Kamen," I said. "That's his name. Kamen gave me Reba. Xander Kamen."

"Well now that we've got that solved," Wireman said, "let's look at the art."

"If that's what it is," I said, and led the way upstairs, limping on my crutch. Halfway up, something struck me and I stopped. "Wireman," I said, without looking back, "how did you know my treadmill was a Cybex?"

For a moment he said nothing. Then: "It's the only brand I know. Now can you resume the upward ascent on your own, or do you need a kick in the ass to get going?"

Sounds good, rings false, I thought as I started up the stairs again. I think you're lying, and you know what? I think you know I know.

iii

My work was leaning against the north wall of Little Pink, with the afternoon sun giving the paintings plenty of natural light. Looking at them from behind Wireman as he walked slowly down the line, sometimes pausing and once even backtracking to study a couple of canvases a second time, I thought it was far more light than they deserved. Ilse and Jack had praised them, but one was my daughter and the other my hired man.

When he reached the colored pencil drawing of the tanker at the very end of the line, Wireman squatted and stared at it for maybe thirty seconds with his forearms resting on his thighs and his hands hanging limply between his legs.

"What- " I began.

"Shhh," he said, and I endured another thirty seconds of silence. At last he stood up. His knees popped. When he turned to face me, his eyes looked very large, and the left one was inflamed. Water not a tear was running from the inner corner. He pulled a handkerchief from the back pocket of his jeans and wiped it away, the automatic gesture of a man who does the same thing a dozen or more times a day.

"Holy God," he said, and walked toward the window, stuffing the handkerchief back into his pocket.

"Holy God what?" I asked. "Holy God what?"

He stood looking out. "You don't know how good these are, do you? I mean you really don't."

"Are they?" I asked. I had never felt so unsure of myself. "Are you serious?"

"Did you put them in chronological order?" he asked, still looking out at the Gulf. The joking, joshing, wisecracking Wireman had taken a hike. I had an idea the one I was listening to now had a lot more in common with the one juries had heard... always assuming he'd been that kind of lawyer. "You did, didn't you? Other than the last couple, I mean. Those're obviously much earlier."

I didn't see how anything of mine could qualify as "much earlier" when I'd only been doing pictures for a couple of months, but when I ran my eye over them, I saw he was right. I hadn't meant to put them in chronological order not consciously but that was what I had done.

"Yes," I said. "Earliest to most recent."

He indicated the last four paintings the ones I'd come to think of as my sunset-composites. To one I'd added a nautilus shell, to one a compact disc with the word Memorex printed across it (and the sun shining redly through the hole), to the third a dead seagull I'd found on the beach, only blown up to pterodactyl size. The last was of the shell-bed beneath Big Pink, done from a digital photograph. To this I had for some reason felt the urge to add roses. There were none growing around Big Pink, but there were plenty of photos available from my new pal Google.

"This last group of paintings," he said. "Has anyone seen these? Your daughter?"

"No. These four were done after she left."

"The guy who works for you?"

"Nope."

"And of course you never showed your daughter the sketch you made of her boyfr-"

"God, no! Are you kidding?"

"No, of course you didn't. That one has its own power, hasty as it obviously is. As for the rest of these things..." He laughed. I suddenly realized he was excited, and that was when I started to get excited. But cautious, too. Remember he used to be a lawyer, I told myself. He's not an art critic.

"The rest of these f**king things..." He gave that little yipping laugh again. He walked in a circle around the room, stepping onto the treadmill and over it with an unconscious ease that I envied bitterly. He put his hands in his graying hair and pulled it out and up, as if to stretch his brains.