Duma Key

I thought about the big room upstairs, but Little Pink seemed too far to go. I went into the living room and took an Artisan pad off a stack of them sitting on the coffee table. Most of my art supplies were upstairs, but there were a few boxes of colored pencils in one of the drawers of the living room desk, and I took one of those, as well.

Back in the Florida room (which I would always think of as a porch), I sat down and closed my eyes. I listened to the waves do their work beneath me, lifting the shells and turning them into new patterns, each one different from the one before. With my eyes shut, that grating was more than ever like talk: the water giving temporary tongue to the edge of the land. And the land itself was temporary, because if you took the geological view, Duma wouldn't last long. None of the Keys would; in the end the Gulf would take them all and new ones would rise in new locations. It was probably true of Florida itself. The land was low, and on loan.

Ah, but that sound was restful. Hypnotic.

Without opening my eyes, I felt for Ilse's e-mail and ran the tips of my fingers over it again. I did this with my right hand. Then I opened my eyes, brushed the e-mail printout aside with the hand that was there, and pulled the Artisan pad onto my lap. I flipped back the cover, shook all twelve of the pre-sharpened Venus pencils onto the table in front of me, and began to draw. I had an idea I meant to draw Ilse - who had I been thinking of, after all? - and thought I'd make a spectacularly bad job of it, because I hadn't attempted a single human figure since starting to draw again. But it wasn't Ilse, and it wasn't bad. Not great, maybe, not Rembrandt (not even Norman Rockwell), but not bad.

It was a young man in jeans and a Minnesota Twins tee-shirt. The number on the tee was 48, which meant nothing to me; in my old life I used to go to as many T-Wolves games as I could, but I've never been a baseball fan. The guy had blond hair which I knew wasn't quite right; I didn't have the colors to get the exact darkening-toward-brown shade. He was carrying a book in one hand. He was smiling. I knew who he was. He was Ilse's special news. That was what the shells were saying as the tide lifted them and turned them and dropped them again. Engaged, engaged. She had a ring, a diamond, he had bought it at -

I had been shading the young man's jeans with Venus Blue. Now I dropped it, picked up the black, and stroked the word

ZALES

at the bottom of the sheet. It was information; it was also the name of the picture. Naming lends power.

Then, without a pause, I dropped the black, picked up orange, and added workboots. The orange was too bright, it made the boots look new when they weren't, but the idea was right.

I scratched at my right arm, scratched through my right arm, and got my ribs instead. I muttered "Fuck" under my breath. Beneath me, the shells seemed to grate a name. Was it Connor? No. And something was wrong here. I didn't know where that sense of wrongness was coming from, but all at once the phantom itch in my right arm became a cold ache.

I tossed back the top sheet on the pad and sketched again, this time using just the red pencil. Red, red, it was RED! The pencil raced, spilling out a human figure like blood from a cut. It was back-to, dressed in a red robe with a kind of scalloped collar. I colored the hair red, too, because it looked like blood and this person felt like blood. Like danger. Not for me but -

"For Ilse," I muttered. "Danger for Ilse. Is it the guy? The special-news guy?"

There was something not right about the special-news guy, but I didn't think that was what was creeping me out. For one thing, the figure in the red robe didn't look like a guy. It was hard to tell for sure, but yes - I thought... female. So maybe not a robe at all. Maybe a dress? A long red dress?

I flipped back to the first figure and looked at the book the special-news guy was holding. I threw my red pencil on the floor and colored the book black. Then I looked at the guy again, and suddenly printed

HUMMINGBIRDS

in scripty-looking letters above him. Then I threw my black pencil on the floor. I raised my shaking hands and covered my face with them. I called out my daughter's name, the way you'd call out if you saw someone too close to a steep drop or busy street.

Maybe I was just crazy. Probably I was crazy.

Eventually I became aware that there was - of course - only one hand over my eyes. The phantom ache and itching had departed. The idea that I might be going crazy - hell, that I might have already gone - remained. One thing was beyond doubt: I was hungry. Ravenous.

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