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The Show






I

 

Someday, if your life is long and your thinking machinery stays in gear, you’ll live to remember the last good thing that ever happened to you. That’s not pessimism talking, just logic. I hope I haven’t run out of good things yet — there would be no purpose in living if I believed I had — but it’s been a long time between. I remember the last one clearly. It happened a little over four years ago, on the evening of April fifteenth, at the Scoto Gallery. It was between seven forty-five and eight o’clock, and the shadows on Palm Avenue were beginning to take on the first faint tinges of blue. I know the time, because I kept checking my watch. The Scoto was already packed — to the legal limit and probably a little beyond — but my family hadn’t arrived. I had seen Pam and Illy earlier in the day, and Wireman had assured me that Melinda’s flight was on time, but so far that evening there hadn’t been a sign of them. Or a call.

In the alcove to my left, where both the bar and eight of the Sunset With pictures had drawn a crowd, a trio from the local music conservatory was tinkling through a funereal version of “My Funny Valentine.” Mary Ire (holding a glass of champagne but sober so far) was expatiating on something artistic to an attentive little crowd. To the right was a bigger room, featuring a buffet. On one wall in there was Roses Grow from Shells and a painting called I See the Moon; on another, three views of Duma Road. I’d observed several people taking photographs of these with their camera-phones, although a sign on a tripod just inside the door announced that all photography was verboten.

I mentioned this to Jimmy Yoshida in passing, and he nodded, seeming not angry or even irritated, but rather bemused. “There are a great many people here I either don’t associate with the art scene or don’t recognize at all, ” he said. “The size of this crowd is outside of my experience.”

“Is that a bad thing? ”

“God, no! But after years of fighting to keep our corporate heads above water, it feels strange to be carried along this way.”

The Scoto’s center gallery was large, which was a good thing that night. In spite of the food, drink, and music in the smaller rooms, the center seemed to be where most of the visitors eventually gravitated. The Girl and Ship series had been mounted there on almost invisible cords, directly down the center of the room. Wireman Looks West was on the wall at the far end. That one and Girl and Ship No. 8 were the only paintings in the show which I had stickered NFS, Wireman because the painting was his, No. 8 because I simply couldn’t sell it.

“We keepin you up, boss? ” Angel Slobotnik said from my left, as oblivious to his wife’s elbow as ever.

“No, ” I said. “I was never more awake in my life, I just—”

A man in a suit that had to’ve cost two grand stuck out his hand. “Henry Vestick, Mr. Freemantle, First Sarasota Bank and Trust. Private Accounts. These are just marvelous. I am stunned. I am amazed. ”

“Thank you, ” I said, thinking he’d left out YOU MUST NOT STOP. “Very kind.”

A business card appeared between his fingers. It was like watching a street-busker do a magic trick. Or would have been, if street-buskers wore Armani suits. “If there’s anything I can do… I’ve written my phone numbers on the back — home, cell, office.”

“Very kind, ” I repeated. I couldn’t think of anything else to say, and really, what did Mr. Vestick think I was going to do? Call him at home and thank him again? Ask him for a loan and offer him a painting as collateral?

“May I bring my wife over later and introduce her? ” he asked, and I saw a look in his eyes. It wasn’t exactly like the look that had been in Wireman’s when he realized that I’d put the blocks to Candy Brown, but it was close. As if Vestick were a little afraid of me.

“Of course, ” I said, and he slipped away.

“You used to build branch banks for guys like that and then have to fight em when they didn’t want to pay the overage, ” Angel said. He was in a blue off-the-rack suit and looked on the verge of bursting out of it in nine different directions, like The Incredible Hulk. “Back then he woulda thought you were just some moke tryin to mess up his day. Now he looks at you like you could shit gold belt-buckles.”

“Angel, you stop! ” Helen Slobotnik cried, simultaneously throwing another elbow and grabbing for his glass of champagne. He held it serenely out of her reach.

“Tell her it’s the truth, boss! ”

“I think it sort of is, ” I said.

And it wasn’t only the banker I was getting that look from. The women… jeez. When my eyes met theirs, I caught a softening, a speculation, as if they were wondering how I might hold them with only the one arm. That was probably crazy, but —

I was grabbed from behind, almost yanked off my feet. My own glass of champagne would have spilled, but Angel snatched it deftly. I turned, and there was Kathi Green, smiling at me. She’d left the Rehab Gestapo far behind, at least for tonight; she was wearing a short, shimmery green dress that clung to every well-maintained inch of her, and in her heels she stood almost to my forehead. Standing beside her, towering over her, was Kamen. His enormous eyes swam benevolently behind his horn-rimmed glasses.

“Jesus, Kathi! ” I cried. “What would you’ve done if you’d knocked me over? ”

“Made you give me fifty, ” she said, smiling more widely than ever. Her eyes were full of tears. “Toldja that on the phone. Look at your tan, you handsome boy.” The tears spilled over and she hugged me.

I hugged back, then shook hands with Kamen. His hand swallowed mine whole.

“Your plane is the way for men my size to fly, ” he said, and people turned in his direction. He had one of those deep James Earl Jones voices that can make supermarket circulars sound like the Book of Isaiah. “I enjoyed myself to the max, Edgar.”

“It’s not really mine, but thank you, ” I said. “Have either of you—”

“Mr. Freemantle? ”

It was a lovely redhead whose generously freckled breasts were in danger of tumbling from the top of a fragile pink dress. She had big green eyes. She looked about my daughter Melinda’s age. Before I could say anything, she reached out and gently grasped my fingers.

“I just wanted to touch the hand that painted those pictures, ” she said. “Those wonderful, freaky pictures. God, you’re amazing. ” She lifted my hand and kissed it. Then she pressed it to one of her breasts. I could feel the rough pebble of the nipple through a thin gauze of chiffon. Then she was gone into the crowd.

“Does that happen often? ” Kamen asked, and at the same moment Kathi asked, “So how’s divorce treating you, Edgar? ” They looked at each other for a moment, then burst out laughing.

I understood what they were laughing at — Edgar’s Elvis moment — but to me it just seemed weird. The rooms of the Scoto began to look a little like chambers in an undersea grotto, and I realized I could paint it that way: undersea rooms with paintings on their walls, paintings that were being looked at by schooling peoplefish while Neptune’s Trio burbled “Octopus’s Garden.”

Far too weird. I wanted Wireman and Jack — also not here yet — but even more, I wanted my people. Illy most of all. If I had them, maybe this would start to feel like reality again. I glanced toward the door.

“If you’re looking for Pam and the girls, I expect they’ll be right along, ” Kamen said. “Melinda had a problem with her dress and went up to change at the last minute.”

Melinda, I thought. Of course, it would be Mel

And that was when I saw them, threading their way through the crowd of artistic gawkers, looking very northern and out of place amid the tans. Tom Riley and William Bozeman III — the immortal Bozie — paced behind them in dark suits. They stopped to look at three of the early sketches, which Dario had set up near the door in a triptych. It was Ilse who saw me first. She cried “ DADDY! ” and then cut through the crowd like a PT boat with her sister just behind her. Lin was tugging a tall young man in her wake. Pam waved, and also started toward me.

I left Kamen, Kathi, and the Slobotniks, Angel still holding my drink. Someone began, “Pardon me, Mr. Freemantle, I wonder if I could ask—” but I paid no attention. In that moment all I could see was Ilse’s glowing face and joyous eyes.

We met in front of the sign reading THE SCOTO GALLERY PRESENTS “THE VIEW FROM DUMA, ” PAINTINGS AND SKETCHES BY EDGAR FREEMANTLE. I was aware that she was wearing a powder-blue dress I had never seen before, and that with her hair up and what seemed like a swan’s length of neck showing, she looked startlingly adult. I was aware of an immense, almost overpowering love for her, and gratitude that she felt the same for me — it was in her eyes. Then I was holding her.

A moment later, Melinda was there with her young man standing behind her (and above her — he was one long, tall helicopter). I didn’t have an arm for her and her sister both, but she had one for me; she grabbed me and kissed the side of my face. “ Bonsoir, Dad, congratulations! ”

Then Pam was in front of me, the woman I had called a quitting birch not so long ago. She was wearing a dark blue pants suit, a light blue silk blouse, and a string of pearls. Sensible earrings. Sensible but good-looking low heels. Full Minnesota if ever I had seen it. She was obviously frightened to death by all the people and the strange environment, but there was a hopeful smile on her face just the same. Pam had been many things in the course of our marriage, but hopeless was never one of them.

“Edgar? ” Pam asked in a small voice. “Are we still friends? ”

“You better believe it, ” I said. I only kissed her briefly, but hugged her as thoroughly as a one-armed man can do it. Ilse was holding onto me on one side; Melinda had the other, squeezing hard enough to hurt my ribs, but I didn’t care. As if from a great distance, I heard the room erupt in spontaneous applause.

“You look good, ” Pam whispered in my ear. “No, you look wonderful. I’m not sure I would have known you on the street.”

I stepped back a little, looking at her. “You look pretty fine yourself.”

She laughed, blushing, a stranger with whom I had once spent my nights. “Make-up covers a multitude of sins.”

“Daddy, this is Ric Doussault, ” Melinda said.

Bonsoir and congratulations, Monsieur Freemantle, ” Ric said. He was holding a plain white box. He now held it out. “From Linnie and me. Un cadeau. The gift? ”

I knew what un cadeau was, of course; the real revelation was the exotic lilt his accent gave to my daughter’s nickname. It made me understand in a way nothing else could that she was now more his than mine.

It seemed to me that the majority of the people in the gallery had gathered around to watch me open my present. Tom Riley had made it almost to Pam’s shoulder. Bozie was next to him. From just behind them, Margaret Bozeman skated me a kiss from the heel of her palm. Next to her was Todd Jamieson, the doctor who had saved my life… two sets of aunts and uncles… Rudy Rudnick, my old secretary… Kamen, of course, he was impossible to miss… and Kathi by his side. They had all come, everyone but Wireman and Jack, and I was beginning to wonder if something had happened to keep them away. But for the moment that seemed secondary. I thought of waking up in my hospital bed, confused and separated from everything by unremitting pain, then I looked around at this and wondered how things could possibly have changed so completely. All these people had come back into my life for one night. I didn’t want to cry, but I was pretty sure I was going to; I could feel myself starting to dissolve like a tissue in a cloudburst.

“Open it, Daddy! ” Ilse said. I could smell her perfume, something sweet and fresh.

“Open it! Open it! ” Good-natured voices from the packed circle watching us.

I opened the box. Pulled out some white tissue paper and uncovered what I had expected… although I had expected something jokey, and this was no joke. The beret Melinda and Ric had brought me from France was dark red velvet, and smooth as silk to the touch. It had not come cheap.

“This is too nice, ” I said.

“No, Daddy, ” Melinda said. “Not nice enough. We only hope it fits.”

I took it out of the box and held it up. The audienced ohh-ed appreciatively. Melinda and Ric looked at each other happily, and Pam — who felt Lin somehow never got her proper share of affection or approval from me (and she was probably right) — gave me a look that was positively radiant. Then I put the beret on. It was a perfect fit. Melinda reached up, made one tiny adjustment, faced the watching audience, turned her palms outward to me, and said: “Voici mon pè re, ce magnifique artiste! ” They burst into applause and cries of Bravo! Ilse kissed me. She was crying and laughing. I remember the white vulnerability of her neck and the feel of her lips, just above my jaw.

I was the belle of the ball and I had my family around me. There was light and champagne and music. It happened four years ago, on the evening of April fifteenth, between seven forty-five and eight o’clock, while the shadows on Palm Avenue were just beginning to take on the first faint tinges of blue. This is a memory I keep.

 

Ii

 

I toured them around, with Tom and Bozie and the rest of the Minnesota crowd tagging after. Many of those present might have been first-time gallery attendees, but they were polite enough to give us some space.

Melinda paused for a full minute in front of Sunset with Sophora, then turned to me, almost accusingly. “If you could do this all along, Dad, why in God’s name did you waste thirty years of your life putting up County Extension buildings? ”

“Melinda Jean! ” Pam said, but absently. She was looking toward the center room, where the Girl and Ship paintings hung suspended.

“Well, it’s true, ” Melinda said. “Isn’t it? ”

“Honey, I didn’t know.”

“How can you have something this big inside you and not know? ” she demanded.

I didn’t have an answer for that, but Alice Aucoin rescued me. “Edgar, Dario wondered if you could step into Jimmy’s office for a few minutes? I’ll be happy to escort your family into the main room and you can join them there.”

“Okay… what do they want? ”

“Don’t worry, they’re all smiling, ” she said, and smiled herself.

“Go on, Edgar, ” Pam said. And, to Alice: “I’m used to him being called away. When we were married, it was a way of life.”

“Dad, what does this red circle on top of the frame mean? ” Ilse asked.

“That it’s sold, dear, ” Alice said.

I paused to look at Sunset with Sophora as I started away, and… sure enough, there was a little red circle on the upper right corner of the frame. That was a good thing — it was nice to know the crowd here was composed of more than just lookers drawn by the novelty of a one-armed dauber — but I still felt a pang, and wondered if it was normal to feel that way. I had no way of telling. I didn’t know any other artists to ask.

 

Iii

 

Dario and Jimmy Yoshida were in the office; so was a man I’d never met before. Dario introduced him to me as Jacob Rosenblatt, the accountant who kept the Scoto’s books in trim. My heart sank a little as I shook his hand, turning my own to do it because he offered the wrong one, as so many people do. Ah, but it’s a righties’ world.

“Dario, are we in trouble here? ” I asked.

Dario placed a silver champagne bucket on Jimmy’s desk. In it, reclining on a bed of crushed ice, was a bottle of Perrier-Jouë t. The stuff they were serving in the gallery was good, but not this good. The cork had been recently drawn; there was still faint breath drifting from the bottle’s green mouth. “Does this look like trouble? ” he asked. “I would have had Alice ask your family in, as well, but the office is too freaking small. Two people who should be here right now are Wireman and Jack Cantori. Where the hell are they? I thought they were coming together.”

“So did I. Did you try Elizabeth Eastlake’s house? Heron’s Roost? ”

“Of course, ” Dario said. “Got nothing but the answering machine.”

“Not even Elizabeth’s nurse? Annmarie? ”

He shook his head. “Just the answering machine.”

I started having visions of Sarasota Memorial. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

“Perhaps the three of them are on their way here right now, ” Rosenblatt said.

“I think that’s unlikely. She’s gotten very frail and short of breath. Can’t even use her walker anymore.”

“I’m sure the situation will resolve itself, ” Jimmy said. “Meanwhile, we should raise a glass.”

Must raise a glass, Edgar, ” Dario added.

“Thanks, you guys, that’s very kind, and I’d be happy to have a drink with you, but my family’s outside and I want to walk around with them while they look at the rest of my pictures, if that’s all right.”

Jimmy said, “Understandable, but—”

Dario interrupted, speaking quietly. “Edgar, the show’s a sell.”

I looked at him. “Beg your pardon? ”

“We didn’t think you’d had a chance to get around and see all the red dots, ” Jimmy said. He was smiling, his color so high he might have been blushing. “Every painting and sketch that was for sale has been sold.”

Jacob Rosenblatt, the accountant, said: “Thirty paintings and fourteen sketches. It’s unheard-of.”

“But…” My lips felt numb. I watched as Dario turned and this time took a tray of glasses from the shelf behind the desk. They were in the same floral pattern as the Perrier-Jouë t bottle. “But the price you put on Girl and Ship No. 7 was forty thousand dollars! ”

From the pocket of his plain black suit, Rosenblatt took a curl of paper that had to have come from an adding machine. “The paintings fetched four hundred and eighty-seven thousand dollars, the sketches an additional nineteen. The total comes to a little over half a million dollars. It’s the greatest sum the Scoto has ever taken in during the exhibition of a single artist’s work. An amazing coup. Congratulations.”

All of them? ” I said in a voice so tiny I could hardly hear it myself. I looked at Dario as he put a champagne glass in my hand.

He nodded. “If you had decided to sell Girl and Ship No. 8, I believe that one alone would have fetched a hundred thousand dollars.”

“Twice that, ” Jimmy said.

“To Edgar Freemantle, at the start of his brilliant career! ” Rosenblatt said, and raised his glass. We raised our glasses and drank, not knowing that my brilliant career was, for all practical purposes, at an end.

We caught a break there, muchacho.

 

Iv

 

Tom Riley fell in beside me as I moved back through the crowd toward my family, smiling and shaking conversational gambits as fast as I could. “Boss, these are incredible, ” he said, “but they’re a little spooky, too.”

“I guess that’s a compliment, ” I said. The truth was, talking to Tom felt spooky, knowing what I did about him.

“It’s definitely a compliment, ” he said. “Listen, you’re headed for your family. I’ll take a hike.” And he started to do just that, but I grabbed him by the elbow.

“Stick with me, ” I said. “Together we can repel all boarders. On my own, I may not get to Pam and the girls until nine o’clock.”

He laughed. Old Tommy looked good. He’d added some pounds since that day at Lake Phalen, but I’d read that antidepressants sometimes do that, especially to men. On him, a little more weight was okay. The hollows under his eyes had filled in.

“How’ve you been, Tom? ”

“Well… in truth… depressed.” He lifted one hand in the air, as if to wave off a commiseration I hadn’t offered. “It’s a chemical imbalance thing, and it’s a bitch getting used to the pills. They muddy up your thinking at first — they did mine, anyway. I went off them awhile, but I’m back on now and life’s looking better. It’s either the fake endorphins kicking in or the effect of springtime in The Land of a Billion Lakes.”

“And The Freemantle Company? ”

“The books are in the black, but it’s not the same without you. I came down here thinking I might pitch you on coming back. Then I got a look at what you’re doing and realized your days in the building biz are probably done.”

“I think so, yeah.”

He gestured toward the canvases in the main room. “What are they, really? I mean, no bullshit. Because — I wouldn’t say this to very many people — they remind me of the way life was inside my head when I wasn’t taking my pills.”

“They’re just make-believe, ” I said. “Shadows.”

“I know about shadows, ” he said. “You just want to be careful they don’t grow teeth. Because they can. Then, sometimes when you reach for the light-switch to make them go away, you discover the power’s out.”

“But you’re better now.”

“Yes, ” he said. “Pam had a lot to do with that. Can I tell you something about her you might already know? ”

“Sure, ” I said, only hoping he wasn’t going to share the fact that she sometimes laughed way down in her throat when she came.

“She has great insight but little kindness, ” Tom said. “It’s a weirdly cruel mix.”

I said nothing… but not necessarily because I thought he was wrong.

“She gave me a brisk talking-to about taking care of myself not so long ago, and it hit home.”

“Yeah? ”

“Yeah. And from the look of her, you might be in for a talking-to yourself, Edgar. I think I might find your friend Kamen and engage him in a bit of a discourse. Excuse me.”

The girls and Ric were staring up at Wireman Looks West and chattering animatedly. Pam, however, was positioned about halfway down the line of Girl and Ship paintings, which hung like movie posters, and she looked disturbed. Not angry, exactly, just disturbed. Confused. She beckoned me over, and once I was there, she didn’t waste time.

“Is the little girl in these pictures Ilse? ” She pointed up at No. 1. “I thought at first this one with the red hair was supposed to be the doll Dr. Kamen gave you after your accident, but Ilse had a tic-tac-toe dress like that when she was little. I bought it at Rompers. And this one—” Now she pointed at No. 3. “I swear this is the dress she just had to have to start first grade in — the one she was wearing when she broke her damn arm that night after the stock car races! ”

Well, there you were. I remembered the broken arm as having come after church, but that was only a minor misstep in the grand dance of memory. There were more important things. One was that Pam was in a unique position to see through most of the smoke and mirrors that critics like to call art — at least in my case she was. In that way, and probably in a great many others, she was still my wife. It seemed that in the end, only time could issue a divorce decree. And that the decree would be partial at best.

I turned her toward me. We were being watched by a great many people, and I suppose to them it looked like an embrace. And in a way, it was. I got one glimpse of her wide, startled eyes, and then I was whispering in her ear.

“Yes, the girl in the rowboat is Ilse. I never meant her to be there, because I never meant anything. I never even knew I was going to paint these pictures until I started doing them. And because she’s back-to, no one else is ever going to know unless you or I tell them. And I won’t. But—” I pulled back. Her eyes were still wide, her lips parted as if to receive a kiss. “What did Ilse say? ”

“The oddest thing.” She took me by the sleeve and pulled me down to No. 7 and No. 8. In both of these, Rowboat Girl was wearing the green dress with straps that crossed over her bare back. “She said you must be reading her mind, because she ordered a dress like that from Newport News just this spring.”

She looked back at the pictures. I stood silently beside her and let her look.

“I don’t like these, Edgar. They’re not like the others, and I don’t like them.”

I thought of Tim Riley saying, Your ex has great insight but little kindness.

Pam lowered her voice. “You don’t know something about Illy that you shouldn’t, do you? The way you knew about—”

“No, ” I said, but I was more troubled by the Girl and Ship series than ever. Some of it was seeing them all hung in a line; the accumulated weirdness was like a punch.

Sell them. That was Elizabeth’s opinion. However many there are, you must sell them.

And I could understand why she thought so. I did not like seeing my daughter, not even in the guise of the child she had long outgrown, in such close proximity to that rotted sheerhulk. And in a way, I was surprised that perplexity and disquiet were all Pam felt. But of course, the paintings hadn’t had a chance to work on her yet.

And they were no longer on Duma Key.

The young people joined us, Ric and Melinda with their arms around each other. “Daddy, you’re a genius, ” Melinda said. “Ric thinks so, too, don’t you, Ric? ”

“Actually, ” Ric said, “I do. I came prepared to be… polite. Instead I am struggling for the words to say I am amazed.”

“That’s very kind, ” I said. “ Merci.

“I’m so proud of you, Dad, ” Illy said, and hugged me.

Pam rolled her eyes, and in that instant I could cheerfully have whacked her one. Instead I folded Ilse into my arm and kissed the top of her head. As I did, Mary Ire’s voice rose from the front of the Scoto in a cigarette-hoarsened shout that was full of amazed disbelief. “Libby Eastlake! I don’t believe my god-damned eyes! ”

It was my ears I didn’t believe, but when a spontaneous spatter of applause erupted from the doorway, where the real aficionados had gathered to chat and take a little fresh evening air, I understood why Jack and Wireman had been late.

 

V

 

“What? ” Pam asked. “ What? ” I had her on one side and Illy on the other as I moved toward the door; Linnie and Ric bobbed along in our wake. The applause grew louder. People turned toward the door and craned to see. “Who is it, Edgar? ”

“My best friends on the island.” Then, to Ilse: “One of them’s the lady from down the road, remember her? She turned out to be the Daughter of the Godfather instead of the Bride. Her name’s Elizabeth Eastlake, and she’s a sweetheart.”

Ilse’s eyes were shining with excitement. “The old gal in the big blue sneakers! ”

The crowd — many of them still applauding — parted for us, and I saw the three of them in the reception area, where two tables with a punch-bowl on each had been set up. My eyes began to sting and a lump rose in my throat. Jack was dressed in a slate gray suit. With his usually unruly surfer’s thatch tamed, he looked like either a junior executive in the Bank of America or an especially tall seventh-grader on Careers Day. Wireman, pushing Elizabeth’s chair, was wearing faded, beltless jeans and a round-collared white linen shirt that emphasized his deep tan. His hair was combed back, and I realized for the first time that he was good-looking the way Harrison Ford was in his late forties.

But it was Elizabeth who stole the show, Elizabeth who elicited the applause, even from the newbies who hadn’t the slightest idea who she was. She was wearing a black pantsuit of dull rough cotton, loose but elegant. Her hair was up and held with a gauzy snood that flashed like diamonds beneath the gallery’s downlighters. From her neck hung an ivory scrimshaw pendant on a gold chain, and on her feet were not big blue Frankenstein sneakers but elegant pumps of darkest scarlet. Between the second and third fingers of her gnarled left hand was an unlit cigarette in a gold-chased holder.

She looked left and right, smiling. When Mary came to the chair, Wireman stopped pushing long enough for the younger woman to kiss Elizabeth’s cheek and whisper in her ear. Elizabeth listened, nodded, then whispered back. Mary cawed laughter, then caressed Elizabeth’s arm.

Someone brushed by me. It was Jacob Rosenblatt, the accountant, his eyes wet and his nose red. Dario and Jimmy were behind him. Rosenblatt knelt by her wheelchair, his bony knees cracking like starter pistols, and cried, “Miss Eastlake! Oh, Miss Eastlake, so long we’re not seeing you, and now… oh, what a wonderful surprise! ”

“And you, Jake, ” she said, and cradled his bald head to her bosom. It looked like a very large egg lying there. “Handsome as Bogart! ” She saw me… and winked. I winked back, but it wasn’t easy to keep my happy face on. She looked haggard, dreadfully tired in spite of her smile.

I raised my eyes to Wireman’s, and he gave the tiniest of shrugs. She insisted, it said. I switched my gaze to Jack and got much the same.

Rosenblatt, meanwhile, was rummaging in his pockets. At last he came up with a book of matches so battered it looked as if it might have entered the United States without a passport at Ellis Island. He opened it and tore one out.

“I thought smoking was against the rules in all these public buildings now, ” Elizabeth said.

Rosenblatt struggled. Color rose up his neck. I almost expected his head to explode. Finally he exclaimed: “ Fuck the rules, Miss Eastlake! ”

“BRAVISSIMO! ” Mary shouted, laughing and throwing her hands to the ceiling, and at this there was another round of applause. A greater one came when Rosenblatt finally got the ancient match to ignite and held it out to Elizabeth, who placed her cigarette-holder between her lips.

“Who is she really, Daddy? ” Ilse asked softly. “Besides the little old lady who lives down the lane, I mean? ”

I said, “According to reports, at one time she was the Sarasota art scene.”

“I don’t understand why that gives her the right to muck up our lungs with her cigarette smoke, ” Linnie said. The vertical line was returning between her brows.

Ric smiled. “Oh, ché rie, this after all the bars we—”

This is not there, ” she said, the vertical line deepening, and I thought, Ric, you may be French, but you have a lot to learn about this particular American woman.

Alice Aucoin murmured to Dario, and from his pocket, Dario produced an Altoids tin. He dumped the mints into the palm of his hand and gave Alice the tin. Alice gave it to Elizabeth, who thanked her and tapped her cigarette ash into it.

Pam watched, fascinated, then turned to me. “What does she think of your pictures? ”

“I don’t know, ” I said. “She hasn’t seen them.”

Elizabeth was beckoning to me. “Will you introduce me to your family, Edgar? ”

I did, beginning with Pam and ending with Ric. Jack and Wireman also shook hands with Pam and the girls.

“After all the calls, I’m pleased to meet you in the flesh, ” Wireman told Pam.

“The same goes back to you, ” Pam said, sizing him up. She must have liked what she saw, because she smiled — and it was the real one, the one that lights her whole face. “We did it, didn’t we? He didn’t make it easy, but we did it.”

“Art is never easy, young woman, ” Elizabeth said.

Pam looked down at her, still smiling the genuine smile — the one I’d fallen in love with. “Do you know how long it’s been since anyone called me young woman? ”

“Ah, but to me you look very young and beautiful, ” Elizabeth said… and was this the woman who had been little more than a muttering lump of cheese slumped in her wheelchair only a week ago? Tonight that seemed hard to believe. Tired as she looked, it seemed impossible to believe. “But not as young and beautiful as your daughters. Girls, your father is — by all accounts — a very talented fellow.”

“We’re very proud of him, ” Melinda said, twisting her necklace.

Elizabeth smiled at her, then turned to me. “I should like to see the work and judge for myself. Will you indulge me, Edgar? ”

“I’d be happy to.” I meant it, but I was damned nervous, as well. Part of me was afraid to receive her opinion. That part was afraid she might shake her head and deliver her verdict with the bluntness to which her age entitled her: Facile… colorful… certainly lots of energy… but perhaps not up to much. In the end.

Wireman moved to grasp the handles of her chair, but she shook her head. “No — let Edgar push me, Wireman. Let him tour me.” She plucked the half-smoked cigarette from the holder, those gnarled fingers doing the job with surprising dexterity, and crushed it out on the bottom of the tin. “And the young lady’s right — I think we’ve all had quite enough of this reek.”

Melinda had the grace to blush. Elizabeth offered the tin to Rosenblatt, who took it with a smile and a nod. I have wondered since then — I know it’s morbid, but yes, I’ve wondered — if she would have smoked more of it if she had known it was to be her last.

 

Vi

 

Even those who didn’t know John Eastlake’s surviving daughter from a hole in the wall understood that a Personage had come among them, and the tidal flow which had moved toward the reception area at the sound of Mary Ire’s exuberant shout now reversed itself as I rolled the wheelchair into the alcove where most of the Sunset With pictures had been hung. Wireman and Pam walked on my left; Ilse and Jack were on my right, Ilse giving the wheelchair’s handle on that side little helping taps to make sure it stayed on course. Melinda and Ric were behind us, Kamen, Tom Riley, and Bozie behind them. Behind that trio came seemingly everyone else in the gallery.

I wasn’t sure there would be room to get her chair in between the makeshift bar set-up and the wall, but there was, just. I started to push it down that narrow aisle, grateful that we’d at least be leaving the rest of the retinue behind us, when Elizabeth cried: “ Stop!

I stopped at once. “Elizabeth, are you all right? ”

“Just a minute, honey — hush.”

We sat there, looking at the paintings on the wall. After a little bit, she fetched a sigh and said, “Wireman, do you have a Kleenex? ”

He had a handkerchief, which he unfolded and handed to her.

“Come around here, Edgar, ” she said. “Come where I can see you.”

I managed to get around between the wheelchair and the bar, with the bartender bracing the table to make sure it didn’t tip over.

“Are you able to kneel down, so we can be face to face? ”

I was able. My Great Beach Walks were paying dividends. She clutched her cigarette holder — both foolish and somehow magnificent — in one hand, Wireman’s handkerchief in the other. Her eyes were damp.

“You read me poems because Wireman couldn’t. Do you remember that? ”

“Yes, ma’am.” Of course I remembered. Those had been sweet interludes.

“If I were to say ‘Speak, memory’ to you, you’d think of the man — I can’t recall his name — who wrote Lolita, wouldn’t you? ”

I had no idea who she was talking about, but I nodded.

“But there’s a poem, too. I can’t remember who wrote it, but it begins, ‘Speak, memory, that I may not forget the taste of roses nor the sound of ashes in the wind; That I may once more taste the green cup of the sea.’ Does it move you? Yes, I see it does.”

The hand with the cigarette holder in it opened. Then it reached out and caressed my hair. The idea occurred to me (and has since recurred) that all my struggle to live and regain a semblance of myself may have been paid back by no more than the touch of that old woman’s hand. The eroded smoothness of the palm. The bent strength of those fingers.

“Art is memory, Edgar. There is no simpler way to say it. The clearer the memory, the better the art. The purer. These paintings — they break my heart and then make it new again. How glad I am to know they were done at Salmon Point. No matter what.” She lifted the hand she’d caressed my head with. “Tell me what you call that one.”

Sunset with Sophora.

“And these are… what? Sunset with Conch, Numbers 1 through 4? ”

I smiled. “Well, there were sixteen of them, actually, starting with colored pencil-sketches. Some of those are out front. I picked the best oils for in here. They’re surreal, I know, but—”

“They’re not surreal, they’re classical. Any fool can see that. They contain all the elements: earth… air… water… fire.”

I saw Wireman mouth: Don’t tire her out!

“Why don’t I give you a quick tour of the rest and then get you a cold drink? ” I asked her, and now Wireman was nodding and giving me a thumb-and-forefinger circle. “It’s hot in here, even with the air conditioning.”

“Fine, ” she said. “I am a little tired. But Edgar? ”

“Yes? ”

“Save the ship paintings for the last. After them I’ll need a drink. Perhaps in the office. Just one, but something stiffer than Co’-Cola.”

“You’ve got it, ” I said, and edged my way back to the rear of the chair.

“Ten minutes, ” Wireman whispered in my ear. “No more. I’d want to get her out before Gene Hadlock shows up, if possible. He sees her, he’s going to shit a brick. And you know who he’ll throw it at.”

“Ten, ” I said, and rolled Elizabeth into the buffet room to look at the paintings in there. The crowd was still following. Mary Ire had begun taking notes. Ilse slipped one hand into the crook of my elbow and smiled at me. I smiled back, but I was having that I’m-in-a-dream feeling again. The kind that may tilt you into a nightmare at any moment.

Elizabeth exclaimed over I See the Moon and the Duma Road series, but it was the way she reached her hands out to Roses Grow from Shells, as if to embrace it, that gave me goosebumps. She lowered her arms again and looked over her shoulder at me. “That’s the essence of it, ” she said. “The essence of Duma. Why those who’ve lived there awhile can never really leave. Even if their heads carry their bodies away, their hearts stay.” She looked at the picture again and nodded. “ Roses Grow from Shells. That is correct.”

“Thank you, Elizabeth.”

“No, Edgar — thank you. ”

I glanced back for Wireman and saw him talking to that other lawyer from my other life. They seemed to be getting along famously. I only hoped Wireman wouldn’t slip and call him Bozie. Then I turned to Elizabeth again. She was still looking at Roses Grow from Shells, and wiping her eyes.

“I love this, ” she said, “but we should move along.”

After she’d seen the other paintings and sketches in the buffet room, she said, as if to herself: “Of course I knew someone would come. But I never would have guessed it would be someone who could produce works of such power and sweetness.”

Jack tapped me on the shoulder, then leaned close to murmur in my ear. “Dr. Hadlock has entered the building. Wireman wants you to speed this up if you can.”

The main gallery — where the Girl and Ship paintings hung — was on the way to the office, and Elizabeth could leave by the loading door in back after having her drink; it would actually be more convenient for her wheelchair. Hadlock could accompany her, if he so desired. But I dreaded taking her past the Ship series, and it was no longer her critical opinion I was worried about.

“Come on, ” she said, and clicked her amethyst ring on the arm of her wheelchair. “Let’s look at them. No hesitating.”

“All right, ” I said, and began pushing her toward the main gallery.

“Are you all right, Eddie? ” Pam asked in a low voice.

“Fine, ” I said.

“You’re not. What’s wrong? ”

I only shook my head. We were in the main room now. The pictures were suspended at a height of about six feet; the room was otherwise open. The walls, covered with coarse brown stuff that looked like burlap, were bare except for Wireman Looks West. I rolled Elizabeth’s chair slowly along. The wheels were soundless on the pale blue carpet. The murmur of the crowd behind us had either stopped or my ears had filtered it out. I seemed to see the paintings for the first time, and they looked oddly like stills culled from a strip of movie film. Each image was a little clearer, a little more in focus, but always essentially the same, always the ship I had first glimpsed in a dream. It was always sunset, and the light filling the west was always a titanic red anvil that spread blood across the water and infected the sky. The ship was a three-masted corpse, something that had floated in from a plaguehouse of the dead. Its sails were rags. Its deck was deserted. There was something horrible in every angular line, and although it was impossible to say just what, you feared for the little girl alone in her rowboat, the little girl who first appeared in a tic-tac-toe dress, the little girl afloat on the wine-dark Gulf.

In that first version, the angle of the deathship was wrong to see anything of the name. In Girl and Ship No. 2, the angle had improved but the little girl (still with the false red hair and now also wearing Reba’s polka-dotted dress) blocked out all but the letter P. In No. 3, P had become PER and Reba had pretty clearly become Ilse, even back-to. John Eastlake’s spear-pistol lay in the rowboat.

If Elizabeth recognized this, she gave no indication. I pushed her slowly up the line as the ship bulked larger and closer, its black masts looming like fingers, its sails sagging like dead flesh. The furnace sky glared through the holes in the canvas. Now the name on the transom was PERSE. There might have been more — there was room for more — but if so, it was hidden by shadows. In Girl and Ship No. 6 (the ship now looming over the rowboat), the little girl was wearing what appeared to be a blue singlet with a yellow stripe around the neck. Her hair in that one was orange-ish; it was the only Rowboat Girl whose identity I wasn’t sure of. Maybe it was Ilse, since the others were… but I wasn’t entirely convinced. In this one the first few rose-petals had begun to appear on the water (plus one single yellow-green tennis ball with the letters DUNL visible on it), and an odd assortment of geegaws were heaped on deck: a tall mirror (which, reflecting the sunset, appeared filled with blood), a child’s rocking horse, a steamer trunk, a pile of shoes. These same objects appeared in No. 7 and No. 8, where they had been joined by several others — a young girl’s bicycle leaning against the foremast, a pile of tires stacked on the stern, a great hourglass at midships. This last also reflected the sun and appeared to be full of blood instead of sand. In Girl and Ship No. 8 there were more rose-petals floating between the rowboat and the Perse. There were more tennis balls, too, at least half a dozen. And a rotting garland of flowers hung around the neck of the rocking horse. I could almost smell the stench of their perfume on the still air.

“Dear God, ” Elizabeth whispered. “She has grown so strong.” There had been color in her face but now it was all gone. She didn’t look eighty-five; she looked two hundred.

Who? I tried to ask, but nothing came out.

“Ma’am… Miss Eastlake… you shouldn’t tax yourself, ” Pam said.

I cleared my throat. “Can you get her a glass of water? ”

“I will, Dad, ” Illy said.

Elizabeth was still staring at Girl and Ship No. 8. “How many of those… those souvenirs … do you recognize? ” she asked.

“I don’t… my imagination…” I fell silent. The girl in the rowboat of No. 8 was no souvenir, but she was Ilse. The green dress, with its bare back and crisscrossing straps, had seemed jarringly sexy for a little girl, but now I knew why: it was a dress Ilse had bought recently, from a mail-order catalogue, and Ilse was no longer a little girl. Otherwise, the tennis balls were still a mystery to me, the mirror meant nothing, nor did the stack of tires. And I didn’t know for a fact that the bicycle leaning against the foremast had been Tina Garibaldi’s, but I feared it… and my heart was somehow sure of it.

Elizabeth’s hand, dreadfully cold, settled on my wrist. “There’s no bullet on the frame of this last one.”

“I don’t know what you’re—”

Her grip tightened. “You do. You know exactly what I mean. The show is a sell, Edgar, do you think I’m blind? A bullet on the frame of every painting we’ve looked at — including No. 6, the one with my sister Adie in the rowboat — but not this one! ”

I looked back toward No. 6, where Rowboat Girl had orange hair. “That’s your sister? ”

She paid no attention. I don’t think she even heard me. All her attention was bent upon Girl and Ship No. 8. “What do you mean to do? Take it back? Do you mean to take it back to Duma? ” Her voice rang out in the quiet of the gallery.

“Ma’am… Miss Eastlake… you really shouldn’t excite yourself this way, ” Pam said.

Elizabeth’s eyes blazed in the hanging flesh of her face. Her nails dug into the scant meat of my wrist. “And what? Put it next to another one you’ve already started? ”

“I haven’t started another—” Or had I? My memory was playing me again, as it often did in moments of stress. If someone had at that moment demanded that I speak the name of my older daughter’s French boyfriend, I probably would have said René. As in Magritte. The dream had tilted, all right; here was the nightmare, right on schedule.

“The one where the rowboat is empty? ”

Before I could say anything, Gene Hadlock shoved through the crowd, followed by Wireman, followed by Ilse, holding a glass of water.

“Elizabeth, we should go, ” Hadlock said.

He reached for her arm. Elizabeth swept his hand away. On the follow-through she struck the glass Ilse was starting to proffer and it went flying, hitting one of the bare walls and shattering. Someone cried out and some woman, incredibly, laughed.

“Do you see the rocking horse, Edgar? ” She held out her hand. It was trembling badly. Her nails had been painted coral pink, probably by Annmarie. “That belonged to my sisters, Tessie and Laura. They loved it. They dragged that damned thing with them everywhere. It was outside Rampopo — the baby playhouse on the side lawn — after they drowned. My father couldn’t bear to look at it. He had it thrown into the water at the memorial service. Along with the garland, of course. The one around the horse’s neck.”

Silence except for the tearing rasp of her breath. Mary Ire staring with big eyes, her obsessive note-taking at an end, the pad hanging forgotten in one hand by her side. Her other hand had gone to her mouth. Then Wireman pointed to a door that was quite cleverly concealed in more of the brown burlappy stuff. Hadlock nodded. And suddenly Jack was there, and it was actually Jack who took charge. “Have you out in a jiff, Miz Eastlake, ” he said. “No worries.” He seized the handles of her wheelchair.

“Look at the ship’s wake! ” Elizabeth shouted at me as she was borne out of the public eye for the last time. “For Christ’s sake, don’t you see what you’ve painted? ”

I looked. So did my family.

“There’s nothing there, ” Melinda said. She looked mistrustfully toward the office door, which was just closing behind Jack and Elizabeth. “Is she dotty, or what? ”

Illy was standing on tiptoe, craning for a closer look. “Daddy, ” she said hesitantly. “Are those faces? Faces in the water? ”

“No, ” I said, surprised at the steadiness of my own voice. “All you’re seeing is an idea she put in your head. Will you guys excuse me for a minute? ”

“Of course, ” Pam said.

“May I be of assistance, Edgar? ” Kamen asked in his booming basso.

I smiled. I was surprised at how easily that came, too. Shock has its purposes, it seems. “Thanks, but no. Her doctor’s in with her.”

I hurried toward the office door, resisting an urge to look back. Melinda hadn’t seen it; Ilse had. My guess was that not many people would, even if it were pointed out to them… and even then, most would dismiss it as either coincidence or a small artistic wink.

Those faces.

Those screaming drowned faces in the ship’s sunset wake.

Tessie and Laura were there, most certainly, but others as well, just below them where the red faded to green and the green to black.

One might be a carrot-topped girl in an old-fashioned singlet-style bathing suit: Elizabeth’s oldest sister, Adriana.

 

Vii

 

Wireman was giving her sips of what looked like Perrier while Rosenblatt fussed at her side, literally wringing his hands. The office seemed packed with people. It was hotter than the gallery, and getting hotter.

“I want you all out! ” Hadlock said. “Everyone but Wireman! Now! Right now! ”

Elizabeth pushed aside the glass with the back of her hand. “Edgar, ” she said in a husky voice. “Edgar stays.”

“No, Edgar goes, ” Hadlock said. “You’ve excited yourself quite en—”

His hand was in front of her. She seized it and squeezed it. With some force, it seemed, because Hadlock’s eyes widened.

“Stays.” It was only a whisper, but a powerful one.

People began to leave. I heard Dario telling the crowd gathered outside that everything was fine, Miss Eastlake felt a little faint but her doctor was with her and she was recovering. Jack was going out the door when Elizabeth called, “Young man! ” He turned.

“Don’t forget, ” she told him.

He gave her a brief grin and knocked off a salute. “No, ma’am, I sure won’t.”

“I should have trusted you in the first place, ” she said, and Jack went out. Then, in a lower voice, as if her strength were fading: “He’s a good boy.”

“Trusted him for what? ” Wireman asked her.

“To search the attic for a certain picnic basket, ” she said. “In the picture on the landing, Nan Melda is holding it.” She looked at me reproachfully.

“I’m sorry, ” I said. “I remember you telling me, but I just… I got painting, and…”

“I don’t blame you, ” she said. Her eyes had receded deep in their sockets. “I should have known. It’s her power. The same power that drew you here in the first place.” She looked at Wireman. “And you.”

“Elizabeth, that’s enough, ” Hadlock said. “I want to take you to the hospital and run some tests. Run some fluids into you while I’m at it. Get you some rest—”

“I’ll be getting all the rest I need very soon now, ” she told him, and smiled. The smile exposed a large and rather gruesome ring of dentures. Her eyes returned to me. “Trixie pixie nixie, ” she said. “To her it’s all a game. All our sorrow. And she’s awake again.” Her hand, very cold, settled on my forearm. “Edgar, she’s awake! ”

“Who? Elizabeth, who? Perse? ”

She shuddered backward in her chair. It was as if an electrical current were passing through her. The hand on my arm tightened. Her coral nails punched through my skin, leaving a quartet of red crescents. Her mouth opened, exposing her teeth this time in a snarl instead of a smile. Her head went backward and I heard something in there snap.

Catch the chair before it goes over! ” Wireman roared, but I couldn’t — I had only one arm, and Elizabeth was clutching it. Was docked in it.

Hadlock grabbed one of the push-handles and the chair skittered sideways instead of toppling backwards. It struck Jimmy Yoshida’s desk. Now Elizabeth was in full seizure mode, jittering back and forth in her chair like a puppet. The snood came loose from her hair and flailed, sparkling, in the light of the overhead fluorescents. Her feet jerked and one of her scarlet pumps went flying off. The angels want to wear my red shoes, I thought, and as if the line had summoned it, blood burst from her nose and mouth.

“Hold her! ” Hadlock shouted, and Wireman threw himself across the arms of the chair.

She did this, I thought coldly. Perse. Whoever she is.

“I’ve got her! ” Wireman said. “Call 911, doc, for Christ’s sake! ”

Hadlock hurried around the desk, picked up the phone, dialed, listened. “Fuck! I just get more dial-tone! ”

I snatched it from him. “You must have to dial 9 for an outside line, ” I said, and did it with the phone cradled between my ear and shoulder. And when the calm-voiced woman on the other end asked me the nature of my emergency, I was able to tell her. It was the address I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t even remember the name of the gallery.

I handed the phone to Hadlock and went back around the desk to Wireman.

“Christ Jesus, ” he said. “I knew we shouldn’t have brought her, I knew … but she was so fucking insistent. ”

“Is she out? ” I looked at her, slumped in her chair. Her eyes were open, but they looked vacantly at a point in the far corner. “Elizabeth? ” There was no response.

“Was it a stroke? ” Wireman asked. “I never knew they could be so violent. ”

“That was no stroke. Something shut her up. Go to the hospital with her—”

“Of course I’ll—”

“And if she says anything else, listen. ”

Hadlock came back. “They’re waiting for her at the hospital. An ambulance will be here any minute.” He stared hard at Wireman, and then his look softened. “Oh, all right, ” he said.

“Oh all right? ” Wireman asked. “What does that mean, oh all right? ”

“It means if something like this was going to happen, ” Hadlock said, “where do you think she would have wanted it to happen? At home in bed, or in one of the galleries where she spent so many happy days and nights? ”

Wireman took in a deep, shaky breath, let it out, nodded, then knelt beside her and began to brush at her hair. Elizabeth’s face was patchy-red in places, and bloated, as if she were having an extreme allergic reaction.

Hadlock bent and tilted her head back, trying to ease her terrible rasping. Not long after, we heard the approaching warble of the ambulance.

 

Viii

 

The show dragged on and I stuck it out, partly because of all the effort Dario, Jimmy, and Alice had put into the thing, but mostly for Elizabeth. I thought it was what she would have wanted. My moment in the sun, she’d called it.

I didn’t go to the celebratory dinner afterwards, though. I made my excuses, then sent Pam and the girls on with Kamen, Kathi, and some others from Minneapolis. Watching them pull away, I realized I hadn’t made arrangements for a ride to the hospital. While I was standing there in front of the gallery, wondering if Alice Aucoin had left yet, a beat-to-shit old Mercedes pulled up beside me, and the passenger window slid down.

“Get in, ” Mary Ire said. “If you’re going to Sarasota Memorial, I’ll drop you off.” She saw me hesitate and smiled crookedly. “Mary’s had very little to drink tonight, I assure you, and in any case, the Sarasota traffic goes from clogged to almost zero after ten PM — the old folks take their Scotch and Prozac and then curl up to watch Bill O’Reilly on TiVo.”

I got in. The door clunked when it shut, and for one alarming moment I thought my ass was going to keep descending until it was actually on Palm Avenue. Finally my downward motion stopped. “Listen, Edgar, ” she said, then hesitated. “Can I still call you Edgar? ”

“Of course.”

She nodded. “Lovely. I couldn’t remember with perfect clarity what sort of terms we parted on. Sometimes when I drink too much…” She shrugged her bony shoulders.

“We’re fine, ” I said.

“Good. As for Elizabeth… not so good. Is it? ”

I shook my head, not trusting myself to speak. The streets were almost deserted, as promised. The sidewalks were dead empty.

“She and Jake Rosenblatt were a thing for awhile. It was pretty serious.”

“What happened? ”

Mary shrugged. “Can’t say for sure. If you forced me to guess, I’d say that in the end she was just too used to being her own mistress to be anyone else’s. Other than on a part-time basis, that is. But Jake never got over her.”

I remembered him saying Fuck the rules, Miss Eastlake! and wondered what he had called her in bed. Surely not Miss Eastlake. It was a sad and useless bit of speculation.

“Maybe this is for the best, ” Mary said. “She was guttering. If you’d known her in her prime, Edgar, you’d know she wasn’t the sort of woman who’d want to go out that way.”

“I wish I had known her in her prime.”

“Can I do anything for your family? ”

“No, ” I said. “They’re having dinner with Dario and Jimmy and the whole state of Minnesota. I’ll join them later if I can — maybe for dessert — and I’m booked into the Ritz, where they’re all staying. If nothing else, I’ll see them in the morning.”

“That’s nice. They seemed nice. And understanding.”

Pam actually seemed more understanding now than before the divorce. Of course now I was down here painting and not up there yelling at her. Or trying to staff her with a butter-fife.

“I’m going to praise your show to the skies, Edgar. I doubt if that means much to you tonight, but perhaps it will later on. The paintings are just extraordinary.”

“Thank you.”

Ahead, the lights of the hospital were twinkling in the dark. There was a Waffle House right next door. It was probably good business for the cardiac unit.

“Will you give Libby my love, if she’s in any condition to take note of such things? ”

“Sure.”

“And I have something for you. It’s in the glove compartment. Manila envelope. I was going to use it to bait the hook for a follow-up interview, but fuck it.”

I had some problems with the old car’s glove compartment button, but finally the little door fell open like a corpse’s mouth. There was a lot more than a manila envelope in there — a geologist could have taken core-samples probably going back to 1965 — but the envelope was in front, and it had my name printed on it.

As she pulled up in front of the hospital, in a spot marked 5 MINUTES PICK-UP AND DROP-OFF, Mary said: “Prepare to be amazed. I was. An old copy-editor friend of mine chased that down for me — she’s older than Libby, but still sharp.”

I bent back the clasps and slid out two Xeroxed sheets of an ancient newspaper story. “That, ” Mary said, “is from the Port Charlotte Weekly Echo. June of 1925. It’s got to be the story my friend Aggie saw, and the reason I could never find it is because I never looked as far south as Port Charlotte. Also, the Weekly Echo gave up the ghost in 1931.”

The streetlight beneath which she’d parked wasn’t good enough for the fine print, but I could read the headline and see the picture. I looked for a long time.

“It means something to you, doesn’t it? ” she asked.

“Yes. I just don’t know what.”

“If you figure it out, will you tell me? ”

“All right, ” I said. “You might even believe it. But Mary… this is one story you’ll never print. Thanks for the ride. And thanks for coming to my show.”

“Both my pleasure. Remember to give Libby my love.”

“I will.”

But I never did. I had seen Elizabeth Eastlake for the last time.

 

Ix

 

The ICU nurse on duty told me that Elizabeth was in surgery. When I asked for what, she told me she wasn’t sure. I looked around the waiting room.

“If you’re looking for Mr. Wireman, I believe he went to the cafeteria for coffee, ” the nurse said. “That’s on the fourth floor.”

“Thanks.” I started away, then turned back. “Is Dr. Hadlock part of the surgical team? ”

“I don’t think so, ” she said, “but he’s observing.”

I thanked her again and went in search of Wireman. I found him in a far corner of the caff, sitting in front of a paper cup about the size of a World War II mortar shell. Except for a scattering of nurses and orderlies and one tense-looking family group in another corner of the room, we had the place to ourselves. Most of the chairs were upended on the tables, and a tired-looking lady in red rayon was working out with a mop. An iPod hung in a sling between her breasts.

“Hola, mi vato, ” Wireman said, and gave me a wan smile. His hair, neatly combed back when he made his entrance with Elizabeth and Jack, had fallen down around his ears, and there were dark circles around his eyes. “Why don’t you grab yourself a cup of coffee? It tastes like factory-made shit, but it do prop up a person’s eyelids.”

“No, thanks. Just let me borrow a sip of yours.” I had three aspirin in my pants pocket. I fished them out and swallowed them with some of Wireman’s coffee.

He wrinkled his nose. “In with all your germy change. That’s nasty.”

“I have a strong immune system. How is she? ”

“Not good.” He looked at me bleakly.

“Did she come around at all in the ambulance? Say anything else? ”

“She did.”

“What? ”

From the pocket of his linen shirt, Wireman took an invitation to my show, with THE VIEW FROM DUMA printed on one side. On the other he’d scrawled three notes. They jagged up and down — from the motion of the ambulance, I assumed — but I could read them:

“The table is leaking.”

“You will want to but you mustn’t.”

“Drown her back to sleep.”

They were all spooky, but that last one made the flesh on my arms prickle.

“Nothing else? ” I asked, handing the invitation back.

“She said my name a couple of times. She knew me. And she said yours, Edgar.”

“Have a look at this, ” I said, and slid the manila envelope across the table.

He asked where I’d gotten it and I told him. He said it all seemed a little convenient, and I shrugged. I was remembering something Elizabeth had said to me — The water runs faster now. Soon come the rapids. Well, the rapids were here. I had a feeling this was only the start of the white water.

My hip was starting to feel a little better, its late-night sobbing down to mere sniffles. According to popular wisdom, a dog is a man’s best friend, but I would vote for aspirin. I pulled my chair around the table and sat next to Wireman, where I could read the headline: DUMA KEY TOT BLOSSOMS FOLLOWING SPILL — IS SHE A CHILD PRODIGY? Beneath was a photograph. In it was a man I knew well in a bathing suit I knew well: John Eastlake in his slimmer, trimmer incarnation. He was smiling, and holding up a smiling little girl. It was Elizabeth, looking the same age as in the family portrait of Daddy and His Girls, only now she was holding out a drawing to the camera in both hands and wearing a gauze bandage wrapped around her head. There was another, much older girl in the picture — big sister Adriana, and yes, she could have been a carrot-top — but to begin with, Wireman and I paid little attention to her. Or to John Eastlake. Or even to the toddler with






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