Duma Key(80)

"Esmeralda," Wireman said. "The other half of my heart."

"Esmeralda," I said. I thought the eyes looking out of this photograph and the eyes looking up at Candy Brown in The Picture were almost the same. But maybe all children's eyes are the same. My arm began to itch. The one that had been burnt up in a hospital incinerator. I scratched at it and got my ribs. No news there.

Wireman took the pictures back, kissed each with a brief, dry ardor that was terrible to see, and returned them to their transparent sleeves. It took him a little while, because his hands had picked up a tremble. And, I suppose, he was having trouble seeing. "You actually don't even have to watch those old numbers, amigo. If you close your eyes you can hear them falling into place: Click and click and click. Some guys just strike lucky. Hotcha! " He popped his tongue against the roof of his mouth. The sound was shockingly loud in the little sedan.

"When Ez was three, Julia signed on part-time with an outfit called Work Fair, Immigration Solutions in downtown Omaha. She helped Spanish-speakers with and without green cards get jobs, and she helped start illegals who wanted citizenship on the right road. Just a little storefront outfit, low profile, but they did a lot more practical good than all the marches and sign-waving. In Wireman's humble opinion."

He pressed his hands against his eyes and drew a deep, shuddering breath. Then he let his palms fall on top of the file-folder with a thump.

"When it happened, I was in Kansas City on business. Julia spent Monday to Thursday mornings at Work Fair. Ez went to a daycare. A good one. I could have sued and broken that place beggared the women who ran it but I didn't. Because even in my grief, I understood that what happened to Esmeralda could have happened to anyone's child. It's all just la loter a, entiendes? Once our firm sued a Venetian blind company I wasn't personally involved when a baby lying in his crib got hold of the draw-cord, swallowed it, and choked to death. The parents won and there was a payout, but their baby was just as dead, and if it hadn't been the cord, it might have been something else. A Matchbox car. The ID tag off the dog's collar. A marble." Wireman shrugged. "With Ez it was the marble. She pulled it down her throat during playtime and choked to death."

"Wireman, Jesus! I'm so sorry!"

"She was still alive when they got her to the hospital. The woman from the daycare called both Julia's office and mine. She was babbling-crazy, insane. Julia went tearing out of Work Fair, got into her car, drove like hell. Three blocks from the hospital she had a head-on collision with an Omaha Public Works truck. She was killed instantly. By then our daughter had probably already been dead for twenty minutes. That Mary medallion you held for me... that was Julia's."

He fell silent, and the silence spun out. I didn't fill it; there's nothing to say to a story like that. Eventually he resumed.

"Just another version of the Powerball. Five numbers, plus that all-important Bonus Number. Click, click, click, click, click. And then clack for good measure. Did I think such a thing could happen to me? No, muchacho, never in my wildest, and God punishes us for what we can't imagine. My mother and dad begged me to go see a psychiatrist, and for a little while eight months after the funerals I did indeed go. I was tired of floating through the world like a balloon tethered three feet over my own head."

"I know the feeling," I said.

"I know you do. We checked into hell on different shifts, you and me. And out again, I suppose, although my heels are still smoking. How about yours?"

"Yeah."

"The psychiatrist... nice man, but I couldn't talk to him. With him I was inarticulate. With him I found myself grinning a lot. I kept expecting a cute chick in a bathing suit to trot out my big cardboard check. The audience would see it and applaud. And eventually a check did come. When we married, I'd taken out a joint life insurance policy. When Ez came, I added to it. So I really did win la loter a. Especially when you add in the compensation Julia received from the accident in the supermarket parking lot. Which brings us to this."

He held up the slim gray folder.

"The thought of suicide had been out there, circling closer and closer. The primary attraction was the idea that Julia and Esmeralda might also still be out there, waiting for me to catch up... but they might not wait forever. I'm not a conventionally religious man, but I think there's at least a chance that there is life after death, and that we survive as... you know, ourselves. But of course..." A wintry smile touched the sides of his mouth. "Mostly I was just depressed. I had a gun in my safe. A.22. I bought it for home protection after Esmeralda was born. One night I sat down with it at the dining room table, and... I believe you might know this part of the story, muchacho."

I raised one hand and seesawed it in a maybe s , maybe no gesture.

"I sat down at the dining room table in my empty house. There was a bowl of fruit there, courtesy of the home shopper I employed. I put the gun on the table, and then I closed my eyes. I spun the bowl of fruit around two or three times. I told myself if I picked an apple out of the bowl, I'd put the gun to my temple and end my life. If it was an orange, however... then I'd take my lottery winnings and go to Disney World."

"You could hear the refrigerator," I said.

"That's right," he said without surprise. "I could hear the fridge both the hum of the motor and the clunk of the ice-maker. I reached out and I picked an apple."