Duma Key - Stephen King

She was looking at me quizzically, and I managed to get myself in gear again. "Go right back to school-"

"I wanted to talk to you about that-"

I nodded, but squeezed her arm to show her I wasn't quite finished. "Finish your semester. Make your grades. Let Carson finish the tour. Get perspective, then get together... understand what I'm saying?"

"Yes..." She understood, but didn't sound convinced.

"When you do get together, do it on neutral ground. And I don't mean to embarrass you, but it's still just the two of us, so I'm going to say this. Bed is not neutral ground."

She looked down at her swimming feet. I reached out and turned her face to mine.

"When the issues aren't resolved, bed is a battleground. I wouldn't even have dinner with the guy until you know where you stand with him. Meet in... I don't know... Boston. Sit on a park bench and work it out. Get it clear in your mind and make sure it's clear in his. Then have dinner. Do a Red Sox game. Or go to bed, if you think it's the right thing. Just because I don't want to think about your sex-life doesn't mean I don't think you should have one."

She relieved me considerably by laughing. At the sound, a waiter who still looked half-asleep came out to ask us if we wanted coffee. We said we did. When he went to get it, Ilse said: "All right, Daddy. Point taken. I was going to tell you that I'm going back this afternoon, anyway. I have an Anthro prelim at the end of the week, and there are a bunch of us who've formed a little study group. We call ourselves the Survivors' Club." She regarded me anxiously. "Would that be okay? I know you were planning on a couple of days, but now there's this thing with your friend-"

"No, honey, that's fine." I kissed the tip of her nose, thinking that if I was close up, she wouldn't see how pleased I was - pleased that she'd come for the show, pleased that we'd had some time together this morning, pleased most of all that she would be a thousand miles north of Duma Key by the time the sun went down tonight. Assuming she could get a flight reservation, that was. "And as for Carson?"

She sat quiet for perhaps an entire minute, swinging her bare feet back and forth through the water. Then she stood up and took my arm, helping me to my feet. "I think you're right. I'll say that if he's serious about our relationship, he'll just have to put everything on hold until July 4th."

Now that her decision was made, her eyes were bright again.

"That'll get me to the end of the semester and a month of summer vacation besides. It'll get him through to his last show at the Cow Palace, plus plenty of time to figure out if he's as finished with Blondie as he thinks he is. Does it suit you, father dear?"

"Down to the ground."

"Here comes the coffee," she said. "Now the question is, how long until breakfast?"

ii

Wireman wasn't at the morning-after breakfast, but he had reserved the Bay Island Room from eight to ten. I presided over two dozen friends and family members, most from Minnesota. It was one of those events people remember and talk about for decades, partly because of encountering so many familiar faces in an exotic setting, partly because the emotional atmosphere was so volatile.

On the one hand, there was a very palpable sense of Home Town Boy Makes Good. They had sensed it at the show, and their judgment was confirmed in the morning papers. The reviews in the Sarasota Herald Tribune and the Venice Gondolier were great, but short. Mary Ire's piece in the Tampa Trib, on the other hand, took up nearly a whole page and was lyrical. She must have written most of it ahead of time. She called me "a major new American talent." My mother - always a bit of a sourpuss - would have said, Take that and a dime and you can wipe your ass in comfort. Of course that was her saying forty years ago, when a dime bought more than it does today.

Elizabeth, of course, was the other hand. There was no death-notice for her, but a boxed item had been added to the page of the Tampa paper carrying Mary's review: WELL-KNOWN ART PATRON STRICKEN AT FREEMANTLE SHOW. The story, just two paragraphs long, stated that Elizabeth Eastlake, a long-time fixture on the Sarasota art scene and resident of Duma Key, had suffered an apparent seizure not long after arriving at the Scoto Gallery and had been taken by ambulance to Sarasota Memorial Hospital. No word of her condition was available at press time.

My Minnesota people knew that on the night of my triumph, a good friend had died. There would be bursts of laughter and occasional raillery, then glances in my direction to see if I minded. By nine-thirty, the scrambled eggs I'd eaten were sitting like lead in my stomach, and I was getting one of my headaches - the first in almost a month.

I excused myself to go upstairs. I'd left a small bag in the room I hadn't slept in. The shaving kit contained several foil packets of Zomig, a migraine medication. It wouldn't stop a full-blown Force 5, but it usually worked if I took a dose early enough. I swallowed one with a Coke from the bar fridge, started to leave, and saw the light on the phone flashing. I almost left it, then realized the message might be from Wireman.

It turned out there were half a dozen messages. The first four were more congratulations, which fell on my aching head like pellets of hail on a tin roof. By the time I got to Jimmy's - he was the fourth - I had begun punching the 6-button on the keypad, which hurried me on to the next message. I was in no mood to be stroked.

The fifth message was indeed from Jerome Wireman. He sounded tired and stunned. "Edgar, I know you've got a couple of days earmarked for family and friends, and I hate like hell to ask you this, but can we get together at your place this afternoon? We need to talk, and I mean really. Jack spent the night here with me at El Palacio - he didn't want me to be alone, that's one helluva good kid - and we were up early, hunting for that red basket she was on about, and... well, we found it. Better late than never, right? She wanted you to have it, so Jack took it over to Big Pink. The house was unlocked, and listen, Edgar... someone's been inside."

Silence on the line, but I could hear him breathing. Then:

"Jack's severely freaked, and you got to prepare for a shock, muchacho. Though you may already have an idea-"

There was a beep, and then the sixth message started. It was still Wireman, now rather pissed off, which made him sound more like himself.

"Fucking short-ass message tape! Chinche pedorra! Ay! Edgar, Jack and I are going over to Abbot-Wexler. They're..." A brief pause as he worked to keep it together. "... the funeral home she wanted. I'll be back by one. You really ought to wait for us before you go in your house. It isn't trashed or anything, but I want to be with you when you look in that basket and when you see what got left in your studio upstairs. I don't like to be mysterious, but Wireman ain't putting this shit on a message-tape anybody might listen to. And there's one more thing. One of her lawyers called. Left a message on the machine - Jack and I were still up in the fucking attic. He says I'm her sole beneficiary." A pause. "La loter a." A pause. "I get everything." A pause. "Fuck me. "

That was all.

iii

I punched 0 for the hotel operator. After a short wait, she gave me the number of the Abbot-Wexler Funeral Parlor. I dialed it. A robot answered, offering me a truly amazing array of death-oriented services ("For Casket Showroom, push 5"). I waited it out - the offer for an actual human being always comes last these days, a booby-prize for boobs who can't cope with the twenty-first century - and while I waited I thought about Wireman's message. The house unlocked? Really? My post-accident memory was unreliable, of course, but habit wasn't. Big Pink did not belong to me, and I had been taught since earliest childhood to take especial care of what belonged to others. I was pretty sure I had locked the house. So if someone had been inside, why hadn't the door been forced?

I thought for just a moment of two little girls in wet dresses - little girls with decayed faces who spoke in the grating voice of the shells under the house - and then pushed the image away with a shudder. They had been only imagination, surely, the vision of an overstrained mind. And even if they had been something more... ghosts didn't have to unlock doors, did they? They simply passed right through, or drifted up through the floorboards.

"...0 if you need help."

By God, I had almost missed my cue. I pushed 0, and after a few bars of something that sounded vaguely like "Abide with Me," a professionally soothing voice asked if it could help me. I suppressed an irrational and very strong urge to say: It's my arm! It's never had a decent burial! and hang up. Instead, cradling the phone and rubbing a spot over my right eyebrow, I asked if Jerome Wireman was there.

"May I ask which deceased he represents?"

A nightmare image rose before me: a silent courtroom of the dead, and Wireman saying Your Honor, I object.

"Elizabeth Eastlake," I said.

"Ah, of course." The voice warmed, became provisionally human. "He and his young friend have stepped out - they were going to work on Ms. Eastlake's obituary, I believe. I may have a message for you. Will you hold?"

I held. "Abide with Me" resumed. Digger the Undertaker eventually returned. "Mr. Wireman asks if you would join him and... uh... Mr. Candoori, if possible, at your place on Duma Key at two this afternoon. It says, 'If you arrive first, please wait outside.' Have you got that?"

"I do. You don't know if he'll be back?"

"No, he didn't say."

I thanked him and hung up. If Wireman had a cell phone, I'd never seen him carrying it, and I didn't have the number in any case, but Jack had one. I dug the number out of my wallet and dialed it. It diverted to voicemail on the first ring, which told me it was either turned off or dead, either because Jack had forgotten to charge it or because he hadn't paid the bill. Either one was possible.

Jack's severely freaked, and you got to prepare for a shock.

I want to be with you when you look in that basket.

But I already had a pretty good idea about what was in the basket, and I doubted if Wireman had been surprised, either.

Not really.

iv

The Minnesota Mafia was silent around the long table in the Bay Island Room, and even before Pam stood up, I realized they had been doing more than talking about me while I was gone. They had been holding a meeting.

"We're going back," Pam said. "That is, most of us are. The Slobotniks had plans to visit Disney World when they came down, the Jamiesons are going on to Miami-"

"And we're going with them, Daddy," Melinda said. She was holding Ric's arm. "We can get a flight back to Orly from there that's actually cheaper than the one you booked."

"I think we could stand the expense," I said, but I smiled. I felt the strangest mixture of relief, disappointment, and fear. At the same time I could feel the bands that had been tightening in my head come unlocked and start dropping away. The incipient headache was gone, just like that. It could have been the Zomig, but the stuff usually doesn't work that fast, even with a caffeine-laced drink to give it a boost.

"Have you heard from your friend Wireman this morning?" Kamen rumbled.

"Yes," I said. "He left a message on my machine."

"And how is he doing?"

Well. That was a long story, wasn't it? "He's coping, doing the funeral parlor thing... and Jack's helping... but he's rocky."

"Go help him," Tom Riley said. "That's your job for the day."

"Yes, indeed," Bozie added. "You're grieving yourself, Edgar. You don't need to be playing host right now."

"I called the airport," Pam said, as if I had protested - which I hadn't. "The Gulfstream's standing by. And the concierge is helping to make the other travel arrangements. In the meantime, we've still got this morning. The question is, what do we do with it?"

We ended up doing what I had planned: we visited the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art.

And I wore my beret.

v

Early that afternoon, I found myself standing in the boarding area at Dolphin Aviation, kissing my friends and relatives goodbye, or shaking their hands, or hugging them, or all three. Melinda, Ric, and the Jamiesons were already gone.

Kathi Green the Rehab Queen kissed me with her usual ferocity. "You take care of yourself, Edgar," she said. "I love your paintings, but I'm much more proud of the way you're walking. You've made amazing progress. I'd like to parade you in front of my latest generation of crybabies."

"You're tough, Kathi."

"Not so tough," she said, wiping her eyes. "Truth is, I'm a freakin marshmallow."

Then Kamen was towering over me. "If you need help, get in touch ASAP."

"Yep," I said. "You be the KamenDoc."

Kamen smiled. It was like having God smile on you. "I don't think all's right with you yet, Edgar. I can only hope it will be right. No one deserves more to land with the shiny side up and the rubber side down."

I hugged him. A one-armed hug, but he made up for it.

I walked out to the plane beside Pam. We stood at the foot of the boarding stairs while the others got on. She was holding my hand in both of hers, looking up at me.

"I'm only going to kiss you on the cheek, Edgar. Illy's watching and I don't want her to get the wrong idea."

She did so, then said, "I'm worried about you. There's a white look around your eyes that I don't like."

"Elizabeth-"

She shook her head a tiny bit. "It was there last night, even before she came to the gallery. Even when you were at your happiest. A white look. I don't know how to describe it any better than that. I only saw it once before, back in 1992, when it looked for a little while like you might miss that balloon payment and lose the business."

The jet engines were whining and a hot breeze was blowing her hair around her face, tumbling her careful beauty-shop curls into something younger and more natural. "Can I ask you something, Eddie?"

"Of course."

"Could you paint anywhere? Or does it have to be here?"

"Anywhere, I think. But it would be different somewhere else."

She was looking at me fixedly. Almost pleadingly. "Just the same, a change might be good. You need to lose that white look. I'm not talking about coming back to Minnesota, necessarily, just going... somewhere else. Will you think about it?"

"Yes." But not until I saw what was in the red picnic basket. And not until I'd made at least one trip to the south end of the Key. And I thought I could do that. Because Ilse was the one who'd gotten sick, not me. All I'd had was one of my red-tinged flashbacks to the accident. And that phantom itch.

"Be well, Edgar. I don't know exactly what's become of you, but there's still enough of the old you to love." She stood on tiptoe in her white sandals - bought specially for this trip, I had no doubt - and planted another soft kiss on my stubbly cheek.

"Thank you," I said. "Thank you for last night."

"No thanks required," she said. "It was sweet."

She squeezed my hand. Then she was up the stairs and gone.

vi

Outside Delta departures again. This time without Jack.

"Just you and me, Miss Cookie," I said. "Looks like we closed down the bar."

Then I saw she was crying and wrapped my arm around her.

"Daddy, I wish I could stay here with you."