Duma Key

Their voices seemed to come from far away. Juanita removed the box-top. I think Jack took that. And then Reba was looking up at me, this time in a red dress instead of a blue one, but the polka-dots were the same; so were the shiny black Mary Janes, the lifeless red hair and the blue eyes that said Oouuuu, you nasty man! I been in here all this time!

Still from a great distance, Kamen was saying: "Ilse was the one who called and suggested a doll as a present. This was after she and her sister talked on the phone."

Of course it was Ilse, I thought. I was aware of the steady murmur of conversation in the gallery, like the sound of the shells under Big Pink. My Oh gosh, how nice smile was still nailed to my face, but if someone had poked me in the back just then, I might have screamed. Ilse is the one who's been on Duma Key. Who's been down the road that leads past El Palacio.

As shrewd as he was, I don't think Kamen had any idea that anything was wrong - but of course he'd been traveling all day and was far from his best. Wireman, however, was looking at me with his head cocked slightly to one side and his brow furrowed. And by then, I think Wireman knew me better than Dr. Kamen ever had.

"She knew you already had one," Kamen was saying. "She thought a pair would remind you of both daughters, and Melinda agreed. But of course, Lucys are all I have-"

"Lucys?" Wireman asked, taking the doll. Her pink rag-stuffed legs dangled. Her shallow eyes stared.

"They look like Lucille Ball, don't you think? I give them to some of my patients, and of course they give them their own names. What did you name yours, Edgar?"

For a moment the old frost descended on my brain and I thought Rhonda Robin Rachel, sit in the buddy, sit in the chum, sit in the fucking CHAR. Then I thought, It was RED.

"Reba," I said. "Just like the country singer."

"And do you still have her?" Kamen asked. "Ilse said you did."

"Oh, yes," I said, and remembered Wireman talking about the Powerball, how you could close your eyes and hear the numbers falling into place: Click and click and click. I thought I could hear that now. The night I'd finished Wireman Looks West, I'd had visitors at Big Pink, little refugees seeking shelter from the storm. Elizabeth's drowned sisters, Tessie and Laura Eastlake. Now I was meant to have twins in Big Pink again, and why?

Because something had reached out, that was why. Something had reached out and put the idea in my daughter's head. This was the next click of the wheel, the next Ping-Pong ball to pop out of the basket.

"Edgar?" Wireman asked. "Are you all right, muchacho?"

"Yes," I said, and smiled. The world came swimming back, in all its light and color. I made myself take the doll from Juanita, who was looking at it with puzzlement. It was a hard thing to do, but I managed. "Thank you, Dr. Kamen. Xander."

He shrugged and spread his hands. "Thank your girls, Ilse in particular."

"I will. Who's ready for another glass of champagne?"

They all were. I replaced my new doll in her box, promising myself two things. One was that neither of my daughters would ever know how badly seeing the damned thing had frightened me. The other promise was that I knew two sisters - two living sisters - who were never, ever, going to set foot on Duma Key at the same time. Or ever, if I could help it.

That was one promise that I kept.

12 - Another Florida

i

"All right, Edgar, I think we're almost finished."

Maybe she saw something on my face, because Mary laughed. "Has it been that awful?"

"No," I said, and it hadn't been, really, although her questions about my technique had made me feel uncomfortable. What it came down to was I looked at things, then slopped on the paint. That was my technique. And influences? What could I say? The light. It always came down to the light, both in the pictures I liked to look at and the ones I liked to paint. What it did to the surface of things, and what it seemed to suggest about what was inside, hunting a way out. But that didn't sound scholarly; to my ears it sounded goofy.

"Okay," she said, "last subject: how many more paintings are there?"

We were sitting in Mary Ire's penthouse apartment on Davis Islands, a tony Tampa enclave which looked to me like the art deco capital of the world. The living room was a vast, nearly empty space with a couch at one end and two slingback chairs at the other. There were no books, but then, there was no TV, either. On the east wall, where it would catch the early light, was a large David Hockney. Mary and I were at opposite ends of the couch. She had her shorthand pad in her lap. There was an ashtray perched beside her on the arm of the sofa. Between us was a big silver Wollensak tape-recorder. It had to be fifty years old, but the reels turned soundlessly. German engineering, baby.