The View from Duma

I

The next morning, early, Wireman and I stood in the Gulf — plenty cold enough to be an eye-popper — up to our shins. He had walked in, and I had followed without question. Without a single word. Both of us were holding coffee cups. He was wearing shorts; I had paused just long enough to roll my pants to my knees. Behind us, at the end of the boardwalk, Elizabeth slouched in her chair, looking grimly out at the horizon and grizzling down her chin. A large part of her breakfast still lay before her. She had eaten some, scattered the rest. Her hair was loose, blowing in a warm breeze from the south.

The water surged around us. Once I got used to it, I loved the silky feel of that surge: first the lift that made me feel as if I’d magically dieted off twelve pounds or so, then the backrun that pulled sand out from between my toes in small, tickling whirlpools. Seventy or eighty yards beyond us, two fat pelicans drew a line across the morning. Then they folded their wings and dropped like stones. One came up empty, but the other had breakfast in its bill. The small fish disappeared down the hatch even as the pelican rose. It was an ancient ballet, but no less pleasing for that. South and inland, where the green tangles rose, another bird cried “Oh-oh! Oh-oh! ” over and over.

Wireman turned toward me. He didn’t look twenty-five, but he looked younger than at any time since I’d met him. There was no redness at all in his left eye, and it had lost that disjointed, I’m-looking-my-own-way cast. I had no doubt that it was seeing me; that it was seeing me very well.

“Anything I can ever do for you, ” he said. “Ever. In my life. You call, I come. You ask, I do. It’s a blank check. Are you clear on that? ”

“Yes, ” I said. I was clear on something else, as well: when someone offers you a blank check, you must never, ever cash it. That wasn’t a thing I thought out. Sometimes understanding bypasses the brain and proceeds directly from the heart.

“All right, then, ” he said. “It’s all I’m going to say.”

I heard snoring. I looked around and saw that Elizabeth’s chin had sunk to her chest. One hand was fisted around a piece of toast. Her hair whirled around her head.

“She looks thinner, ” I said.

“She’s lost twenty pounds since New Year’s. I’m slipping her those maxi-shakes — Ensure, they’re called — once a day, but she won’t always take em. What about you? Is it just too much work that’s got you looking that way? ”

“What way? ”

“Like the Hound of the Baskervilles recently bit off your left asscheek. If it’s overwork, maybe you ought to knock off and stretch out a little.” He shrugged. “‘That’s our opinion, we welcome yours, ’ as they say on Channel 6.”

I stood where I was, feeling the lift and drop of the waves, and thinking about what I could tell Wireman. About how much I could tell Wireman. The answer seemed self-evident: all or nothing.

“I think I better fill you in on what happened last night. You just have to promise not to call for the men in the white coats.”

“All right.”

I told him about how I’d finished his portrait mostly in the dark. I told him about seeing my right arm and hand. Then seeing the two dead girls at the foot of the stairs and passing out. By the time I finished, we’d waded back out of the water and walked to where Elizabeth was snoring. Wireman began to clean her tray, sweeping the refuse into a bag he took from the pouch hanging on one arm of her chair.

“Nothing else? ” he asked.

“That isn’t enough? ”

“I’m just asking.”

“Nothing else. I slept like a baby until six o’clock. Then I put you — the painting of you — in the back of the car and drove down here. When you’re ready to see it, by the way—”

“All in good time. Think of a number between one and ten.”

“What? ”

“Just humor me, muchacho. ”

I thought of a number. “Okay.”

He was silent for a moment, looking out at the Gulf. Then he said, “Nine? ”

“Nope. Seven.”

He nodded. “Seven.” He drummed his fingers against his chest for a few moments, then dropped them into his lap. “Yesterday I could have told you. Today I can’t. My telepathy thing — that little twinkle — is gone. It’s more than a fair trade. Wireman is as Wireman was, and Wireman says muchas gracias. ”

“What’s your point? Or did you have one? ”

“I did. The point is you’re not going crazy, if that’s what you’re afraid of. On Duma Key, broken people seem to be special people. When they cease being broken, they cease being special. Me, I’m mended. You’re still broken, so you’re still special.”

“I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”

“Because you’re trying to make a simple thing hard. Look in front of you, muchacho, what do you see? ”

“The Gulf. What you call the caldo largo. ”

“And what do you spend most of your time painting? ”

“The Gulf. Sunsets on the Gulf.”

“And what is painting? ”

“Painting is seeing, I guess.”

“No guess about it. And what is seeing on Duma Key? ”

Feeling like a child reciting a lesson of which he’s not quite sure, I said: “ Special seeing? ”

“Yes. So what do you think, Edgar? Were those dead girls there last night or not? ”

I felt a chill up my back. “Probably they were.”

“I think so, too. I think you saw the ghosts of her sisters.”

“I’m frightened of them.” I said this in a low voice.

“Edgar… I don’t think ghosts can hurt people.”

“Maybe not ordinary people in an ordinary place, ” I said.

He nodded, rather reluctantly. “All right. So what do you want to do? ”

“What I don’t want to do is leave. I’m not done here yet.”

I wasn’t just thinking of the show — the bubble reputation. There was more. I just didn’t know what the more was. Not yet. If I’d attempted putting it into words, it would have come out sounding stupid, like something written on a fortune cookie. Something with the word fate in it.

“Do you want to come down here to the Palacio? Move in with us? ”

“No.” I thought that might make matters even worse, somehow. And besides, Big Pink was my place. I had fallen in love with it. “But Wireman, will you see how much you can find out about the Eastlake family in general and those two girls in particular? If you can read again, then maybe you could dig around on the Internet—”

He gripped my arm. “I’ll dig like a motherfucker. Maybe you could do some good in that direction, as well. You’re going to do an interview with Mary Ire, right? ”

“Yes. They’ve scheduled it for the week after my so-called lecture.”

“Ask her about the Eastlakes. Maybe you’ll hit the jackpot. Miss Eastlake was a big patron of the arts in her time.”

“Okay.”

He grasped the handles of the sleeping old woman’s wheelchair and turned it around so it faced the orange roofs of the estate house again. “Now let’s go look at my portrait. I want to see what I looked like back when I still thought Jerry Garcia could save the world.”

Ii

I’d parked my car in the courtyard, beside Elizabeth Eastlake’s silver Vietnam War–era Mercedes-Benz. I slid the portrait from my much humbler Chevrolet, set it on end, and held it up for Wireman to look at. As he stood there silently regarding it, a strange thought occurred to me: I was like a tailor standing beside a mirror in a men’s clothing store. Soon my customer would either tell me he liked the suit I’d made for him, or shake his head regretfully and say it wouldn’t do.

Far off to the south, in what I was coming to think of as the Duma Jungle, that bird took up its warning “Oh-oh! ” cry again.

Finally I couldn’t take it anymore. “Say something, Wireman. Say anything.”

“I can’t. I’m speechless.”

“You? Not possible.”

But when he looked up from the portrait, I realized it was true. He looked like someone had walloped him on the head with a hammer. I understood by then that what I was doing affected people, but none of those reactions were quite like Wireman’s on that March morning.

What finally woke him up was a sharp knocking sound. It was Elizabeth. She was awake and rapping on her tray. “Smoke! ” she cried. “Smoke! Smoke! ” Some things survived even the fog of Alzheimer’s, it seemed. The part of her brain that craved nicotine never decayed. She’d smoke until the end.

Wireman took a pack of American Spirits from the pocket of his shorts, shook one out, put it in his mouth, and lit it. Then he held it out to her. “If I let you handle this yourself, are you going to light yourself on fire, Miss Eastlake? ”

“ Smoke! ”

“That’s not very encouraging, dear.”

But he gave it to her, and Alzheimer’s or no Alzheimer’s, she handled it like a pro, drawing in a deep drag and jetting it out through her nostrils. Then she settled back in her chair, looking for the moment not like Captain Bligh on the poop deck but FDR on the reviewing stand. All she needed was a cigarette-holder to clamp between her teeth. And, of course, some teeth.

Wireman returned his gaze to the portrait. “You don’t seriously mean to just give this away, do you? You can’t. It’s incredible work.”

“It’s yours, ” I said. “No arguments.”

“You have to put it in your show.”

“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea—”

“You yourself said once they’re done, any effect on the subject’s probably over—”

“Yeah, probably. ”

“Probably’s good enough for me, and the Scoto’s safer than this house. Edgar, this deserves to be seen. Hell, it needs to be seen.”

“Is it you, Wireman? ” I was honestly curious.

“Yes. No.” He stood looking at it a moment longer. Then he turned to me. “It’s how I wanted to be. Maybe it’s how I was, on the few best days of my best year.” He added, almost reluctantly: “My most idealistic year.”

For a little while we said nothing, only looked at the portrait while Elizabeth puffed like a choo-choo train. An old choo-choo train.

Then Wireman said: “There are many things I wonder about, Edgar. Since coming to Duma Key, I have more questions than a four-year-old at bedtime. But one thing I don’t wonder about is why you want to stay here. If I could do something like this, I’d want to stay here forever.”

“Last year at this time I was doodling on phone pads while I was on hold, ” I said.

“So you said. Tell me something, muchacho. Looking at this… and thinking of all the other ones you’ve done since you started… would you change the accident that took your arm? Would you change it, even if you could? ”

I thought of painting in Little Pink while The Bone pumped out hardcore rock and roll in thick chunks. I thought of the Great Beach Walks. I even thought of the older Baumgarten kid yelling Yo, Mr. Freemantle, nice chuck! when I spun the Frisbee back to him. Then I thought of waking up in that hospital bed, how dreadfully hot I had been, how scattered my thoughts had been, how sometimes I couldn’t even remember my own name. The anger. The dawning realization (it came during The Jerry Springer Show), that part of my body was AWOL. I had started crying and had been unable to stop.

“I would change it back, ” I said, “in a heartbeat.”

“Ah, ” he said. “Just wondering.” And turned to take away Elizabeth’s cigarette.

She immediately held out her hands like an infant who has been deprived of a toy. “Smoke! Smoke! SMOKE! ” Wireman butted the cigarette on the heel of his sandal and a moment later she quieted again, the cigarette forgotten now that her nicotine jones was satisfied.

“Stay with her while I put the painting in the front hall, would you? ” Wireman asked.

“Sure, ” I said. “Wireman, I only meant—”

“I know. Your arm. The pain. Your wife. It was a stupid question. Obviously. Just let me put this painting safe, okay? Then the next time Jack comes, send him down here. We’ll wrap it nice and he can take it to the Scoto. But I’m gonna scrawl NFS all over the packing before it goes to Sarasota. If you’re giving it to me, this baby is mine. No screw-ups.”

In the jungle to the south, the bird took up its worried cry again: “Oh-oh! Oh-oh! Oh-oh! ”

I wanted to say something else to him, explain to him, but he was hurrying away. Besides, it had been his question. His stupid question.

Iii

Jack Cantori took Wireman Looks West to the Scoto the following day, and Dario called me as soon as he had it out of the cardboard panels. He claimed to have never seen anything like it, and said he wanted to make it and the Girl and Ship paintings the centerpieces of the show. He and Jimmy believed the very fact that those works weren’t for sale would hype interest. I told him fine. He asked me if I was getting ready for my lecture, and I told him I was thinking about it. He told me that was good, because the event was already stirring “uncommon interest, ” and the circulars hadn’t even gone out yet.

“Plus of course we’ll be sending JPEG images to our e-listers, ” he said.

“That’s great, ” I said, but it didn’t feel great. During those first ten days of March, a curious lassitude stole over me. It didn’t extend to work; I painted another sunset and another Girl and Ship. Each morning I walked on the beach with my pouch slung over my shoulder, prospecting for shells and any other interesting litter that might have washed up. I found a great many beer and soda cans (most worn as smooth and white as amnesia), a few prophylactics, a child’s plastic raygun, and one bikini bottom. Zero tennis balls. I drank green tea with Wireman under the striped umbrella. I coaxed Elizabeth to eat tuna salad and macaroni salad, heavy on the mayo; I chivvied her into drinking Ensure “milkshakes” through a straw. One day I sat on the boardwalk beside her wheelchair and sanded the mystic rings of yellow callus on her big old feet.

What I did not do was make any notes for my supposed “art lecture, ” and when Dario called to say it had been switched to the Public Library lecture space, which seated two hundred, I flatter myself that my offhand reply gave no clue as to how cold my blood ran.

Two hundred people meant four hundred eyes, all trained on me.

What I also did not do was write any invitations, make any move to reserve rooms for the nights of April fifteenth and sixteenth at the Ritz-Carlton in Sarasota, or reserve a Gulfstream to fly down a gaggle of friends and relatives from Minnesota.

The idea that any of them might want to see my daubings began to seem nutty.

The idea that Edgar Freemantle, who one year previous had been fighting with the St. Paul Planning Committee about bedrock test drillings, might be giving an art lecture to a bunch of actual art patrons seemed absolutely insane.

The paintings seemed real enough, though, and the work was… God, the work was wonderful. When I stood before my easel in Little Pink at sunset, stripped to my gym shorts and listening to The Bone, watching Girl and Ship No. 7 emerge from the white with eerie speed (like something sliding out of a fogbank), I felt totally awake and alive, a man in exactly the right place at exactly the right time, a ball that was a perfect fit for its socket. The ghost-ship had turned a little more; its name appeared to be the Perse. On a whim, I Googled this word, and found exactly one hit — probably a world’s record. Perse was a private school in England, where the alumni were called Old Perseans. There was no mention of a School Ship, three-masted or otherwise.

In this latest version, the girl in the rowboat was wearing a green dress with straps that crossed over her bare back, and all around her, floating on the sullen water, were roses. It was a disturbing picture.

Walking on the beach, eating my lunch and drinking a beer, with Wireman or on my own, I was happy. When I was painting pictures I was happy. More than happy. When I was painting I felt filled up and fully realized in some basic way I had never understood before coming to Duma Key. But when I thought about the show at the Scoto and all the stuff that went into making an exhibition of new work successful, my mind went into lockdown. It was more than stage fright; this felt like outright panic.

I forgot things — like opening any e-mails from Dario, Jimmy, or Alice Aucoin at the Scoto. If Jack asked me if I was excited about “doing my thing” at the Selby Library’s Geldbart Auditorium, I’d tell him ohyeah, then ask him to gas up the Chevy in Osprey, and forget what he’d asked me. When Wireman asked if I’d talked to Alice Aucoin yet about how the various groupings were to be hung, I’d suggest we volley some tennis balls, because Elizabeth seemed to enjoy watching.

Then, about a week before the scheduled lecture, Wireman said he wanted to show me something he’d made. A little craftwork. “Maybe you could give me your opinion as an artist, ” he said.

There was a black folder lying on the table in the shade of the striped umbrella (Jack had mended the rip with a piece of electrician’s tape). I opened it and took out what looked like a glossy brochure. On the front was one of my early efforts, Sunset with Sophora, and I was surprised at how professional it looked. Below the repro was this:

Dear Linnie: This is what I’ve been doing in Florida, and although I know you’re awfully busy…

Below awfully busy was an arrow. I looked up at Wireman, who was watching me expressionlessly. Behind him, Elizabeth was staring at the Gulf. I didn’t know if I was angry at his presumption or relieved by it. In truth, I felt both things. And I couldn’t remember telling him I sometimes called my older daughter Linnie.

“You can use any type-font you want, ” he said. “This one’s a little girly-girl for my taste, but my collaborator likes it. And the name in each salutation is interchangeable, of course. You can customize. That’s the beauty of doing things like this on a computer.”

I didn’t reply, just turned to the next page. Here was Sunset with Witchgrass on one side and Girl and Ship No. 1 on the other. Running below the pictures was this:

… I hope you’ll join me for an exhibition of my work, on the night of April 15th, at the Scoto Gallery, in Sarasota, Florida, 7 PM–10 PM. A First Class reservation in your name has been made on Air France Flight 22, departing Paris on the 15th at 8: 25 AM and arriving in New York at 10: 15 AM; you are also reserved on Delta Flight 496, leaving New York’s JFK on the 15th at 1: 20 PM and arriving in Sarasota at 4: 30 PM. A limousine will meet your flight and take you to the Ritz-Carlton, where your stay has been booked, with my compliments, for the nights of April 15th–April 17th.

There was another arrow below this. I looked up at Wireman, bewildered. He was still with the poker face, but I could see a pulse beating on the right side of his forehead. Later on he said, “I knew I was putting our friendship on the line, but somebody had to do something, and by then it had become clear to me that it wasn’t going to be you.”

I turned to the next page in the brochure. Two more of those amazing reproductions: Sunset with Conch on the left and an untitled sketch of my mailbox on the right. That was a very early one, done with Venus colored pencils, but I liked the flower growing up beside the wooden post — it was a brilliant yellow and black oxeye — and even the sketch looked good in reproduction, as if the man who’d done it knew his business. Or was getting to know it.

The copy here was brief.

If you can’t come, I’ll more than understand — Paris isn’t just around the corner! — but I’m hoping that you will.

I was angry, but I wasn’t stupid. Somebody had to take hold. Apparently Wireman had decided that was his job.

Ilse, I thought. It’s got to be Ilse who helped him with this.

I expected to find another painting over the printed matter on the last page, but I didn’t. What I saw there hurt my heart with surprise and love. Melinda was ever my hard girl, my project, but I had never loved her the less for that, and what I felt showed clearly in the black-and-white photo, which looked creased across the middle and dog-eared at two of its four corners. It had a right to look beat-up, because the Melinda standing next to me could have been no older than four. That made this snapshot at least eighteen years old. She was wearing jeans, cowboy boots, a Western-style shirt, and a straw hat. Had we just come back from Pleasant Hill Farms, where she sometimes rode a Shetland pony named Sugar? I thought so. In any case, we were standing on the sidewalk in front of the little starter home we’d had in Brooklyn Park, me in faded jeans and a white tee-shirt with the short sleeves rolled up a turn and my hair combed back like a greaser. I had a can of Grain Belt beer in one hand and a smile on my face. Linnie had one hand hooked into the pocket of my jeans and a look of love — such love — on her upturned face that it made my throat ache. I smiled the way you do when you’re about an inch away from bursting into tears. Below the picture it said:

If you want to keep current on who else is coming, you can call me at 941-555-6166, or Jerome Wireman at 941-555-8191, or your Mom. She’ll be coming down with the Minnesota contingent, by the way, and will meet you at the hotel.

Hope you can come — love you either way, Pony Girl —

Dad

I closed the letter that was also a brochure that was also an invitation and sat staring silently down at it for a few moments. I did not entirely trust myself to speak.

“That’s just a rough draft, of course.” Wireman sounded tentative. In other words, not like himself at all. “If you hate it, I’ll junk it and start again. No harm, no foul.”

“You didn’t get that picture from Ilse, ” I said.

“No, muchacho. Pam found it in one of her old photo albums.”

All at once everything made sense.

“How many times have you talked to her, Jerome? ”

He winced. “That hurts, but maybe you have a right. Probably half a dozen times. I started by telling her you were getting yourself in a jam down here, and that you were taking a lot of other people with you—”

“What the fuck! ” I cried, stung.

“People who’d invested a lot of hope and trust in you, not to mention money—”

“I’m perfectly capable of refunding any money the people at the Scoto may have laid out on—”

“Shut up, ” he said, and I had never heard such coldness in his voice. Or seen it in his eyes. “You ain’t an asshole, muchacho, so don’t act like one. Can you refund their trust? Can you refund their prestige, if the great new artist they’ve promised their customers doesn’t materialize for either the lecture or the show? ”

“Wireman, I can do the show, it’s just the goddam lecture —”

“ They don’t know that! ” he shouted. He had a hell of a shouting voice on him, a real courtroom bellow. Elizabeth took no notice, but peeps took off from the water’s edge in a brown sheet. “They have this funny idea that maybe on April fifteenth you’ll be a no -show, or that you’ll yank your stuff altogether and they’ll have a bunch of empty rooms during the tenderloin of the tourist season, when they’re used to doing a third of their yearly business.”

“They have no reason to think that, ” I said, but my face was throbbing like a hot brick.

“No? How did you think about this kind of behavior in your other life, amigo? What conclusions did you draw about a supplier who contracted for cement and then didn’t show up on the dime? Or a plumbing sub who got the job on a new bank and wasn’t there on the day he was supposed to start? Did you feel real, I dunno, confident about guys like that? Did you believe their excuses? ”

I said nothing.

“Dario sends you e-mails asking for decisions, he gets no answer. He and the others call on the phone and get vague replies like ‘I’ll think about it.’ This would make them nervous if you were Jamie Wyeth or Dale Chihuly, and you’re not. Basically you’re just some guy who walked in off the street. So they call me, and I do the best I can — I’m your fuckin agent, after all — but I’m no artist, and neither are they, not really. We’re like a bunch of cab-drivers trying to deliver a baby.”

“I get it, ” I said.

“I wonder if you do.” He sighed. Big sigh. “You say it’s just stage fright about the lecture and you’re going to go through with the show. I’m sure part of you believes that, but amigo, I gotta say that I think part of you has no intention of showing up at the Scoto Gallery on April fifteenth.”

“Wireman, that’s just—”

“Bullshit? Is it? I call the Ritz-Carlton and ask if a Mr. Freemantle has reserved any rooms for mid-April and get the big non, non, Nannette. So I take a deep breath and get in touch with your ex. She’s no longer in the phone book, but your Realtor gives me the number when I tell her it’s sort of an emergency. And right away I discover Pam still cares about you. She actually wants to call and tell you that, but she’s scared you’ll blow her off.”

I gaped at him.

“The first thing we establish once we get past the introductions is Pam Freemantle knows zip and zoop about a big art exhibition five weeks hence by her ex-husband. The second thing — she makes a phone call while Wireman dangles on hold and does a crossword puzzle with his newly restored vision — is that her ex has done bupkes about chartering a plane, at least with the company she knows. Which leads us to discuss if, deep down, Edgar Freemantle has decided that when the time comes, he’s just going to — in the words of my misspent youth — cry fuck it and crawl in the bucket.”

“No, you’ve got it all wrong, ” I said, but these words came out in a listless drone that did not sound especially convincing. “It’s just that all the organizational stuff drives me crazy, and I kept… you know, putting it off.”

Wireman was relentless. If I’d been on the witness stand, I think I’d have been a little puddle of grease and tears by then; the judge would have called a recess to allow the bailiff time to either mop me up or buff me to a shine. “Pam says if you subtracted The Freemantle Company buildings from the St. Paul skyline, it would look like Des Moines in nineteen seventy-two.”

“Pam exaggerates.”

He took no notice. “Am I supposed to believe that a guy who organized that much work couldn’t organize some plane tickets and two dozen hotel rooms? Especially when he could reach out to an office staff that would absolutely love to hear from him? ”

“They don’t… I don’t… they can’t just…”

“Are you getting pissed? ”

“No.” But I was. The old anger was back, wanting to raise its voice until it was shouting as loud as Axl Rose on The Bone. I raised my fingers to a spot just over my right eye, where a headache was starting up. There would be no painting for me today, and it was Wireman’s fault. Wireman was to blame. For one moment I wished him blind. Not just half-blind but blind blind, and realized I could paint him that way. At that the anger collapsed.

Wireman saw my hand go to my head and let up a little. “Look, most of the people she’s contacted unofficially have already said hell yes, of course, they’d love to. Your old line foreman Angel Slobotnik told Pam he’d bring you a jar of pickles. She said he sounded thrilled.”

“Not pickles, pickled eggs, ” I said, and Big Ainge’s broad, flat, smiling face was for a moment almost close enough to touch. Angel, who had been right there beside me for twenty years, until a major heart attack sidelined him. Angel, whose most common response to any request, no matter how seemingly outrageous, was Can do, boss.

“Pam and I made the flight arrangements, ” Wireman said. “Not just for the people from Minneapolis–St. Paul, but from other places, as well.” He tapped the brochure. “The Air France and Delta flights in here are real, and your daughter Melinda is really booked on em. She knows what’s going on. So does Ilse. They’re only waiting to be officially invited. Ilse wanted to call you, and Pam told her to wait. She says you have to pull the trigger on this, and whatever she may have been wrong about in the course of your marriage, muchacho, she’s right about that.”

“All right, ” I said. “I’m hearing you.”

“Good. Now I want to talk to you about the lecture.”

I groaned.

“If you do a bunk on the lecture, you’ll find it twice as hard to go to the opening-night party—”

I looked at him incredulously.

“What? ” he asked. “You disagree? ”

“Do a bunk? ” I asked. “Do a bunk? What the fuck is that? ”

“To cut and run, ” he said, sounding slightly defensive. “British slang. See for instance Evelyn Waugh, Officers and Gentlemen, 1952.”

“See my ass and your face, ” I said. “Edgar Freemantle, present day.”

He flipped me the bird, and just like that we were mostly okay again.

“You sent Pam the pictures, didn’t you? You sent her the JPEG file.”

“I did.”

“How did she react? ”

“She was blown away, muchacho. ”

I sat silently, trying to imagine Pam blown away. I could do it, but the face I saw lighting up in surprise and wonder was a younger face. It had been quite a few years since I’d been able to generate that sort of wind.

Elizabeth was dozing off, but her hair was flying against her cheeks and she pawed at them like a woman troubled by insects. I got up, took an elastic from the pouch on the arm of her wheelchair — there was always a good supply of them, in many bright colors — and pulled her hair back into a horsetail. The memories of doing this for Melinda and Ilse were sweet and terrible.

“Thank you, Edgar. Thank you, mi amigo. ”

“So how do I do it? ” I asked. I was holding my palm on the side of Elizabeth’s head, feeling the smoothness of her hair as I had often felt the smoothness of my daughters’ after it had been shampooed; when memory takes its strongest hold, our own bodies become ghosts, haunting us with the gestures of our younger selves. “How do I talk about a process that’s at least partially supernatural? ”

There. It was out. The root of the matter.

Yet Wireman looked calm. “Edgar! ” he exclaimed.

“Edgar what? ”

The sonofabitch actually laughed. “If you tell them that… they will believe you. ”

I opened my mouth to refute this. Thought of Dalí ’s work. Thought of that wonderful Van Gogh picture, Starry Night. Thought of certain Andrew Wyeth paintings — not Christina’s World but his interiors: spare rooms where the light is both sane and strange, as if coming from two directions at the same time. I closed my mouth again.

“I can’t tell you just what to say, ” Wireman said, “but I can give you something like this.” He held up the brochure/invitation. “I can give you a template.”

“That would help.”

“Yeah? Then listen.”

I listened.

Iv

“Hello? ”

I was sitting on the couch in the Florida room. My heart was beating heavily. This was one of those calls — everyone’s made a few — where you simultaneously hope it will go through the first time, so you can get it over with, and hope it won’t, so you can put off some hard and probably painful conversation a little while longer.

I got Option One; Pam answered on the first ring. All I could hope was this conversation would go better than the last one. Than the last couple, in fact.

“Pam, it’s Edgar.”

“Hello, Edgar, ” she said cautiously. “How are you? ”

“I’m… all right. Good. I’ve been talking with my friend Wireman. He showed me the invitation the two of you worked up.” The two of you worked up. That sounded unfriendly. Conspiratorial, even. But what other way was there to put it?

“Yes? ” Her voice was impossible to read.

I drew in a breath and jumped. God hates a coward, Wireman says. Among other things. “I called to say thanks. I was being a horse’s ass. Your jumping in like that was what I needed.”

The silence was long enough for me to wonder if maybe she’d quietly hung up at some point. Then she said, “I’m still here, Eddie — I’m just picking myself up off the floor. I can’t remember the last time you apologized to me.”

Had I apologized? Well… never mind. Close enough, maybe. “Then I’m sorry about that, too, ” I said.

“I owe you an apology myself, ” she said, “so I guess this one’s a wash.”

“You? What do you have to apologize for? ”

“Tom Riley called. Just two days ago. He’s back on his meds. He’s going to, I quote, ‘see someone’ again — by which I assume he means a shrink — and he called to thank me for saving his life. Have you ever had someone call and thank you for that? ”

“No.” Although I’d recently had someone call and thank me for saving his sight, so I kind of knew what she was talking about.

“It’s quite an experience. ‘If not for you I’d be dead now.’ Those were his exact words. And I couldn’t tell him he had you to thank, because it would have sounded crazy.”

It was as if a tight belt cinching my middle had suddenly been cut away. Sometimes things work out for the best. Sometimes they actually do. “That’s good, Pam.”

“I’ve been on to Ilse about this show of yours.”

“Yes, I—”

“Well, Illy and Lin both, but when I talked to Ilse, I turned the conversation toward Tom and I could tell right away that she doesn’t know anything about what went on between the two of us. I was wrong about that, too. And showed a very unpleasant side of myself while I was at it.”

I realized, with alarm, that she was crying. “Pam, listen.”

“I’ve shown several unlovely sides of myself, to several people, since you left me.”

I didn’t leave you! I almost shouted. And it was close. Close enough to make sweat pop out on my forehead. I didn’t leave you, you asked for a divorce, you witting quench!

What I said was “Pam, that’s enough.”

“But it was so hard to believe, even after you called and told me those other things. You know, about my new TV. And Puffball.”

I started to ask who Puffball was, then remembered the cat.

“I’m doing better, though. I’ve started going to church again. Can you believe that? And a therapist. I see her once a week.” She paused, then rushed on. “She’s good. She says a person can’t close the door on the past, she can only make amends and go on. I understood that, but I didn’t know how to start making amends to you, Eddie.”

“Pam, you don’t owe me any—”

“My therapist says it isn’t about what you think, it’s about what I think.”

“I see.” That sounded a lot like the old Pam, so maybe she’d found the right therapist.

“And then your friend Wireman called and told me you needed help… and he sent me those pictures. I can’t wait to see the actual things. I mean, I knew you had some talent, because you used to draw those little books for Lin when she was so sick that year—”

“I did? ” I remembered Melinda’s sick year; she’d had one infection after another, culminating in a massive bout of diarrhea, probably brought on by too many antibiotics, that had landed her in the hospital for a week. She lost ten pounds that spring. If not for summer vacation — and her own grade-A intelligence — she would have needed to repeat the second grade. But I couldn’t remember drawing any little books.

“Freddy the Fish? Carla the Crab? Donald the Timid Deer? ”

Donald the Timid Deer rang a very faint bell, way down deep, but… “No, ” I said.

“Angel thought you should try to get them published, don’t you remember? But these … my God. Did you know you could do it? ”

“No. I started thinking something might be there when I was at the place on Lake Phalen, but it’s gone farther than I thought it would.” I thought of Wireman Looks West and the mouthless, noseless Candy Brown and thought I’d just uttered the understatement of the century.

“Eddie, will you let me do the rest of the invitations the way I did the sample? I can customize them, make them nice.”

“Pa—” Almost Panda again. “Pam, I can’t ask you to do that.”

“I want to.”

“Yeah? Then okay.”

“I’ll write them and e-mail them to Mr. Wireman. You can check them over before he prints them. He’s quite a jewel, your Mr. Wireman.”

“Yes, ” I said. “He is. The two of you really ganged up on me.”

“We did, didn’t we? ” She sounded delighted. “You needed it. Only you have to do something for me.”

“What? ”

“You have to call the girls, because they’re going crazy, Ilse in particular. Okay? ”

“Okay. And Pam? ”

“What, hon? ” I’m sure she said it without thinking, without knowing how it could cut. Ah, well — she probably felt the same when she heard my pet name for her coming up from Florida, growing colder with every mile it sped north.

“Thanks, ” I said.

“Totally welcome.”

It was only quarter to eleven when we said goodbye and hung up. Time never went faster that winter than it did during my evenings in Little Pink — standing at my easel, I’d wonder how the colors in the west could possibly fade so fast — and it never went slower than it did that morning, when I made the phone calls I’d been putting off. I swallowed them one after the other, like medicine.

I looked at the cordless sitting in my lap. “Fuck you, phone, ” I said, and started dialing again.

V

“Scoto Gallery, this is Alice.”

A cheery voice I’d come to know well over the last ten days.

“Hi, Alice, it’s Edgar Freemantle.”

“Yes, Edgar? ” Cheery became cautious. Had that cautious note been there before? Had I just ignored it?

I said, “If you have a couple of minutes, I wonder if we could talk about ordering the slides at the lecture.”

“ Yes, Edgar, we certainly could.” The relief was palpable. It made me feel like a hero. Of course it also made me feel like a rat.

“Have you got a pad handy? ”

“You bet your tailfeathers! ”

“Okay. Basically, we’re going to want them in chronological order—”

“But I don’t know the chronology, I’ve been trying to tell you th—”

“I know, and I’m going to give it to you now, but listen, Alice: the first slide won’t be chronological. The first should be of Roses Grow from Shells. Have you got that? ”

“ Roses Grow from Shells. I’ve got it.” For only the second time since meeting me, Alice sounded genuinely happy that we were talking.

“Now, the pencil sketches, ” I said.

We talked for the next half an hour.

Vi

“ Oui, allô? ”

For a moment I said nothing. The French threw me a little. The fact that it was a young man’s voice threw me more.

“ Allô, allô? ” Impatient now. “Qui est à l’appareil? ”

“Mmm, maybe I have the wrong number, ” I said, feeling not just like an asshole but a monolingual American asshole. “I was trying to reach Melinda Freemantle.”

“ D’accord, you have the right number.” Then, off a little: “Melinda! C’est ton papa, je crois, ché rie. ”

The phone went down with a clunk. I had a momentary image — very clear, very politically incorrect, and very likely brought on by Pam’s mention of the cartoon books I’d once drawn for a little sick girl — of a large talking skunk in a beret, Monsieur Pepé Le Pew, strutting around my daughter’s pension (if that was the word for a bedsitter-type apartment in Paris) with wavy aroma lines rising from his white-striped back.

Then Melinda was there, sounding uncharacteristically flustered. “Dad? Daddy? Is everything all right? ”

“Everything’s fine, ” I said. “Is that your roommate? ” It was a joke, but I realized from her uncharacteristic silence that I had unwittingly hit the nail on the head. “It’s not a big deal, Linnie. I was just—”

“ — goofin wit me, right.” It was impossible to tell if she was amused or exasperated. The connection was good but not that good. “He is, actually.” The subtext of that one to come through loud and clear: Want to make something of it?

I most assuredly did not want to make something of it. “Well, I’m glad you made a friend. Does he wear a beret? ”

To my immense relief, she laughed. With Lin, it was impossible to tell which way a joke was going to go, because her sense of humor was as unreliable as an April afternoon. She called: “Ric! Mon papa … ” Something I didn’t catch, then: “ … si tu portes un bé ret! ”

There was faint male laughter. Ah, Edgar, I thought. Even overseas you lay them in the aisles, you pè re fou.

“Daddy, are you all right? ”

“Fine. How’s your strep? ”

“All better, thanks.”

“I just got off the phone with your mother. You’re going to get an official invitation to this show I’m having, but she says you’ll come and I’m thrilled.”

“ You’re thrilled? Mom sent me some of the pictures and I can’t wait. When did you learn to do that? ”

This seemed to be the question of the hour. “Down here.”

“They’re amazing. Are the others as good? ”

“You’ll have to come and see for yourself.”

“Could Ric come? ”

“Does he have a passport? ”

“Yes…”

“Will he promise not to poke ze fun at your old man? ”

“He’s very respectful of his elders.”

“Then assuming the flights aren’t sold out and you don’t mind sleeping two to a room — I assume that’s not a problem — then of course he can come.”

She squealed so loudly it hurt my ear, but I didn’t take the telephone away. It had been a long time since I’d said or done anything to make Linnie Freemantle squeal like that. “Thank you, Daddy — that’s great! ”

“It’ll be nice to meet Ric. Maybe I’ll steal his beret. I’m an artist now, after all.”

“I’ll tell him you said that.” Her voice changed. “Have you talked to Ilse yet? ”

“No, why? ”

“When you do, don’t say anything about Ric coming, okay? Let me do that.”

“I hadn’t planned to.”

“Because she and Carson… she said she told you about him…”

“She did.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure there’s a problem there. Illy says she’s ‘thinking things over.’ That’s a direct quote. Ric’s not surprised. He says you should never trust a person who prays in public. All I know is she sounds a lot more grown up than my baby sister used to.”

Same goes for you, Lin, I thought. I had a momentary image of how she’d looked at seven, when she’d been so sick Pam and I both thought she might die on us, although we’d never said so aloud. Back then Melinda had been all big dark eyes, pale cheeks, and lank hair. Once I remember thinking Skull on a stick and hating myself for the thought. And hating myself more for knowing, in the deep reaches of my heart, that if one of them had to sicken that way, I was glad it had been her. I always tried to believe that I loved both my daughters with the same weight and intensity, but it wasn’t true. Maybe it is for some parents — I think it was for Pam — but it never was for me. And did Melinda know?

Of course she did.

“Are you taking care of yourself? ” I asked her.

“Yes, Daddy.” I could almost see her rolling her eyes.

“Continue to do so. And get here safe.”

“Daddy? ” A pause. “I love you.”

I smiled. “How many bunches? ”

“A million and one for under your pillow, ” she said, as if humoring a child. That was all right. I sat there for a little while, looking out at the water, rubbing absently at my eyes, then made what I hoped would be the day’s last call.

Vii

It was noon by then, and I didn’t really expect to get her; I thought she’d be out eating lunch with friends. Only like Pam, she answered on the first ring. Her hello was oddly cautious, and I had a sudden clear intuition: she thought I was Carson Jones, calling either to beg for another chance or to explain. To explain yet again. That was a hunch I never verified, but then, I never had to. Some things you simply know are true.

“Hey, If-So-Girl, whatcha doon? ”

Her voice brightened immediately. “Daddy! ”

“How are you, hon? ”

“I’m fine, Daddy, but not as fine as you — did I tell you they were good? I mean, did I tell you, or what? ”

“You told me, ” I said, grinning in spite of myself. She might have sounded older to Lin, but after that first tentative hello, she sounded to me like the same old Illy, bubbling over like a Coke float.

“Mom said you were dragging your feet, but she was going to team up with this friend you made down there and get you cranking. I loved it! She sounded just like the old days! ” She paused to draw breath, and when she spoke again, she didn’t sound so giddy. “Well… not quite, but it’ll do.”

“Know what you mean, jellybean.”

“Daddy, you’re so amazing. This is a comeback and a half. ”

“How much is all this sugar going to cost me? ”

“ Millions, ” she said, and laughed.

“Still planning to drop in on The Hummingbirds tour? ” I tried to sound just interested. Not particularly concerned with my almost-twenty-year-old daughter’s love life.

“No, ” she said, “I think that’s off.” Only five words, and little ones at that, but in those five words I heard the different, older Illy, one who might in the not-so-distant future be at home in a business suit and pantyhose and pumps with practical three-quarter heels, who might wear her hair tied back at the nape of her neck during the day and perhaps carry a briefcase down airport concourses instead of wearing a Gap-sack on her back. Not an If-So-Girl any longer; you could strike any if from this vision. The girl as well.

“The whole thing, or—”

“That remains to be seen.”

“I don’t mean to pry, honey. It’s just that enquiring Dads—”

“ — want to know, of course they do, but I can’t help you this time. All I know right now is that I still love him — or at least I think I do — and I miss him, but he’s got to make a choice.”

At this point, Pam would have asked Between you and the girl he’s been singing with? What I asked was, “Are you eating? ”

She burst into peals of merry laughter.

“Answer the question, Illy.”

“Like a damn pig! ”

“Then why aren’t you out to lunch now? ”

“A bunch of us are going to have a picnic in the park, that’s why. Complete with anthro study notes and Frisbee. I’m bringing the cheese and French bread. And I’m late.”

“Okay. As long as you’re eating and not brooding in your tent.”

“Eating well, brooding moderately.” Her voice changed again, became the adult one. The abrupt switches back and forth were disconcerting. “Sometimes I lie awake a little, and then I think of you down there. Do you lie awake? ”

“Sometimes. Not as much now.”

“Daddy, was marrying Mom a mistake you made? That she made? Or was it just an accident? ”

“It wasn’t an accident and it wasn’t a mistake. Twenty-four good years, two fine daughters, and we’re still talking. It wasn’t a mistake, Illy.”

“You wouldn’t change it? ”

People kept asking me that question. “No.”

“If you could go back… would you? ”

I paused, but not long. Sometimes there’s no time to decide what’s the best answer. Sometimes you can only give the true answer. “No, honey.”

“Okay. But I miss you, Dad.”

“I miss you, too.”

“Sometimes I miss the old times, too. When things were less complicated.” She paused. I could have spoken — wanted to — but kept silent. Sometimes silence is best. “Dad, do people ever deserve second chances? ”

I thought of my own second chance. How I had survived an accident that should have killed me. And I was doing more than just hanging out, it seemed. I felt a rush of gratitude. “All the time.”

“Thanks, Daddy. I can’t wait to see you.”

“Back atcha. You’ll get an official invitation soon.”

“Okay. I really have to go. Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

I sat for a moment with the phone at my ear after she hung up, listening to the nothing. “Do the day and let the day do you, ” I said. Then the dial tone kicked in, and I decided I had one more call to make, after all.

Viii

This time when Alice Aucoin came to the phone, she sounded a lot more lively and a lot less cautious. I thought that was a nice change.

“Alice, we never talked about a name for the show, ” I said.

“I was sort of assuming you meant to call it ‘Roses Grow from Shells, ’” she said. “That’s good. Very evocative.”

“It is, ” I said, looking out to the Florida room and the Gulf beyond. The water was a brilliant blue-white plate; I had to squint against the glare. “But it’s not quite right.”

“You have one you like better, I take it? ”

“Yes, I think so. I want to call it ‘The View from Duma.’ What do you think? ”

Her response was immediate. “I think it sings.” So did I.

Ix

I had sweat through my LOSE IT IN THE VIRGIN ISLANDS tee-shirt in spite of Big Pink’s efficient air conditioning, and I was more exhausted than a brisk walk to El Palacio and back left me these days. My ear felt hot and throbby from the telephone. I felt uneasy about Ilse — the way parents are always uneasy about the problems of their children, I suppose, once they’re too old to be called home when it starts to get dark and the baths are being drawn — but I also felt satisfied with the work I’d put in, the way I used to feel after a good day on a hard construction job.

I didn’t feel particularly hungry, but I made myself slop a few tablespoons of tuna salad onto a lettuce leaf and washed it down with a glass of milk. Whole milk — bad for the heart, good for the bones. I guess that one’s a wash, Pam would have said. I turned on the kitchen TV and learned that Candy Brown’s wife was suing the City of Sarasota over her husband’s death, claiming negligence. Good luck on that one, sweetheart, I thought. The local meteorologist said the hurricane season might start earlier than ever. And the Devil Rays had gotten their low-rent asses kicked by the Red Sox in an exhibition game — welcome to baseball reality, boys.

I considered dessert (I had Jell-O Pudding, sometimes known as The Last Resort of the Single Man), then just put my plate in the sink and limped off to the bedroom for a nap. I considered setting the alarm, then didn’t bother; I’d probably only doze. Even if I actually slept, the light would wake me up in an hour or so, when it got over to the western side of the house and came angling in the bedroom window.

So thinking, I lay down and slept until six o’clock that evening.

X

There was no question of supper; I didn’t even consider it. Below me the shells were whispering paint, paint.

I went upstairs to Little Pink like a man in a dream, wearing only my undershorts. I turned on The Bone, set Girl and Ship No. 7 against the wall, and put a fresh canvas — not as big as the one I’d used for Wireman Looks West, but big — on my easel. My missing arm was itching, but this no longer bothered me the way it had at first; the truth was, I’d almost come to look forward to it.

Shark Puppy was on the radio: “Dig.” Excellent song. Excellent lyrics. Life is more than love and pleasure.

I remember clearly how the whole world seemed to be waiting for me to begin — that was how much power I felt running through me while the guitars screamed and the shells murmured.

I came here to dig for treasure.

Treasure, yes. Loot.

I painted until the sun was gone and the moon cast its bitter rind of white light over the water and after that was gone, too.

And the next night.

And the next.

And the next.

Girl and Ship No. 8.

If you want to play you gotta pay.

I unbottled.

Xi

The sight of Dario in a suit and a tie, with his lush hair tamed and combed straight back from his forehead, scared me even more than the murmuring audience that filled Geldbart Auditorium, where the lights had just been turned down to half… except for the spotlight shining down on the lectern standing at center stage, that was. The fact that Dario himself was nervous — going to the podium he had nearly dropped his note-cards — scared me even worse.

“Good evening, my name is Dario Nannuzzi, ” he said. “I am cocurator, and chief buyer at the Scoto Gallery on Palm Avenue. More importantly, I have been a part of the Sarasota art community for thirty years, and I hope you will excuse my brief descent into what some might call Bobbittry when I say there is no finer art community in America.”

This brought enthusiastic applause from an audience which — as Wireman said later — might know the difference between Monet and Manet, but apparently didn’t have a clue that there was a difference between George Babbitt and John Bobbitt. Standing in the wings, suffering through that purgatory only frightened main speakers experience as their introducers wind their slow and peristaltic courses, I hardly noticed.

Dario shifted his top file-card to the bottom, once again nearly dropped the whole stack, recovered, and looked out at his audience again. “I hardly know where to begin, but to my relief I need say very little, for true talent seems to blaze up from nowhere, and serves as its own introduction.”

That said, he proceeded to introduce me for the next ten minutes as I stood in the wings with my one lousy page of notes clutched in my remaining hand. Names went past like floats in a parade. A few, like Edward Hopper and Salvador Dalí, I knew. Others, like Yves Tanguy and Kay Sage, I didn’t. Each unknown name made me feel more of an impostor. The fear I felt was no longer mental; it clamped a deep and stinking hold in my bowels. I felt like I needed to pass gas, but I was afraid I might load my pants instead. And that wasn’t the worst. Every word I had prepared had gone out of my mind except for the very first line, which was hideously appropriate: My name is Edgar Freemantle, and I have no idea how I wound up here. It was supposed to elicit a chuckle. It wouldn’t, I knew that now, but at least it was true.

While Dario droned on — Joan Miró this, Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto that — a terrified ex-contractor stood with his pathetic page of notes clutched in his cold fist. My tongue was a dead slug that might croak but would speak no coherent word, not to two hundred art mavens, many of whom held advanced degrees, some of whom were motherfucking professors. Worst of all was my brain. It was a dry socket waiting to be filled with pointless, flailing anger: the words might not come, but the rage was always on tap.

“Enough! ” Dario cried cheerily, striking fresh terror into my pounding heart and sending a cramp rolling through my miserable basement regions — terror above, barely held-in shit below. What a lovely combination. “It has been fifteen years since the Scoto added a new artist to its crowded spring calendar, and we have never introduced one in whom there has been greater interest. I think the slides you are about to see and the talk you are about to hear will explain our interest and excitement.”

He paused dramatically. I felt a poison dew of sweat spring out on my brow and wiped it off. The arm that I lifted seemed to weigh fifty pounds.

“Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Edgar Freemantle, lately of Minneapolis–St. Paul, now of Duma Key.”

They applauded. It sounded like an artillery barrage going off. I commanded myself to run away. I commanded myself to faint. I did neither. Like a man in a dream — but not a good one — I walked onstage. Everything seemed to be happening slowly. I saw that every seat was taken but no seat was taken because they were on their feet, they were giving me a standing O. High above me, on the domed ceiling, angels flew in airy disregard of the earthly matters below, and how I wished I was one of them. Dario stood beside the podium, hand outstretched. It was the wrong one; in his own nervousness he had extended his right, and so my return handshake was awkward and bass-ackwards. My notes were crumpled briefly between our palms, then tore. Look what you did, you asshole, I thought — and for one terrible moment I was afraid I’d said it aloud for the mike to pick up and broadcast all over the room. I was aware of how bright the spotlight was as Dario left me there on my lonely perch. I was aware of the microphone on its flexible chrome rod, and thinking it looked like a cobra rising out of a snake-charmer’s basket. I was aware of bright points of light shining on that chrome, and on the rim of the water glass, and on the neck of the Evian bottle next to the water glass. I was aware that the applause was starting to taper off; some of the people were resuming their seats. Soon an expectant silence would replace the applause. They would wait for me to begin. Only I had nothing to say. Even my opening line had left my head. They would wait and the silence would stretch out. There would be a few nervous coughs, and then the murmuring would start. Because they were assholes. Just a bunch of lookie-loo assholes with rubber necks. And if I managed anything, it would be an angry torrent of words that would sound like the outburst of a man suffering from Tourette’s.

I’d just call for the first slide. Maybe I could do that much and the pictures would carry me. I’d have to hope they would. Only when I looked at my page of notes, I saw that not only was it torn straight down the middle, my sweat had blurred the jottings so badly I could no longer make them out. Either that or stress had created a short circuit between my eyes and my brain. And what was the first slide, anyway? A mailbox painting? Sunset with Sophora? I was almost positive neither of those was right.

Now everyone was sitting. The applause was finished. It was time for the American Primitive to open his mouth and ululate. Three rows back, sitting on the aisle, was that nozzy birch Mary Ire, with what looked like a porthand shad open on her lap. I looked for Wireman. He’d gotten me into this, but I bore him no anus. I only wanted to apologize with my eyes for what was coming.

I’ll be in the front row, he’d said. Dead center.

And he was. Jack, my housekeeper Juanita, Jimmy Yoshida, and Alice Aucoin were sitting on Wireman’s left. And on his right, on the aisle —

The man on the aisle had to be a hallucination. I blinked, but he was still there. A vast face, dark and calm. A figure crammed so tightly into the plush auditorium seat it seemed it might take a crowbar to get him out again: Xander Kamen, peering up at me through his enormous horn-rimmed glasses and looking more like a minor god than ever. Obesity had canceled his lap, but balanced on the bulge of his belly was a ribbon-garnished gift box about three feet long. He saw my surprise — my shock — and made a gesture: not a wave but an odd, beneficent salute, putting the tips of his fingers first to his massive brow, then to his lips, then holding his hand out to me with the fingers spread. I could see the pallor of his palm. He smiled up at me, as if his presence here in the first row of the Geldbart Auditorium next to my friend Wireman were the most natural thing in the world. His large lips formed four words, one after the other: You can do this.

And maybe I could. If I thought away from this moment. If I thought sideways.

I thought of Wireman — Wireman looking west, to be exact — and my opening line came back to me.

I nodded to Kamen. Kamen nodded back. Then I looked at the audience and saw they were just people. All the angels were over our heads, and they were now flying in the dark. As for demons, most were probably in my mind.

“Hello—” I began, then recoiled at the way my voice boomed out from the microphone. The audience laughed, but the sound didn’t make me angry, as it would have a minute before. It was only laughter, and goodnatured.

I can do this.

“Hello, ” I said again. “My name is Edgar Freemantle, and I’m probably not going to be very good at this. In my other life I was in the building trade. I knew I was good at that, because I landed jobs. In my current life I paint pictures. But nobody said anything about public speaking.”

This time the laughter was a little freer and a little more general.

“I was going to start by saying I have no idea how I wound up here, but actually I do. And that’s good, because it’s all I have to tell. You see, I don’t know anything about art history, art theory, or even art appreciation. Some of you probably know Mary Ire.”

This brought a chuckle, as if I’d said Some of you may have heard of Andy Warhol. The lady herself looked around, preening a little, her back ramrod straight.

“When I first brought some of my paintings into the Scoto Gallery, Ms. Ire saw them and called me an American primitive. I sort of resented that, because I change my underwear every morning and brush my teeth every night before I go to bed—”

Another burst of laughter. My legs were just legs again, not cement, and now that I felt capable of running away, I no longer wanted or needed to. It was possible they’d hate my pictures, but that was all right because I didn’t hate them. Let them have their little laugh, their little boo-and-hiss, their little gasp of distaste (or their little yawn), if that was what they wanted to do; when it was over, I could go back and paint more.

And if they loved them? Same deal.

“But if she meant I’m someone who’s doing something he doesn’t understand, that he can’t express in words because no one ever taught him the right terms, then she’s right.”

Kamen was nodding and looking pleased. And so, by God, was Mary Ire.

“So all that leaves is the story of how I got here — the bridge I walked over to get from my other life to the one I’m living these days.”

Kamen was patting his meaty hands together soundlessly. That made me feel good. Having him there made me feel good. I don’t know exactly what would have happened if he hadn’t’ve been, but I think it would have been what Wireman calls mucho feo — very ugly.

“But I have to keep it simple, because my friend Wireman says that when it comes to the past, we all stack the deck, and I believe that’s true. Tell too much and you find yourself… mmm… I don’t know… telling the past you