Duma Key

I pushed the LINE 1 button again and dialed 411. The automated operator welcomed me to Verizon Directory Assistance and asked me for city and state. I said "Providence, Rhode Island," enunciating as though on stage. So far, so good, but the robot choked on Ilse no matter how carefully I enunciated. It rolled me over to a human operator, who checked and told me what I had already suspected: Ilse's number was unpublished. I told the operator I was calling my daughter, and the call was important. The operator said I could talk to a supervisor, who would probably be willing to make an enquiry call on my behalf, but not until eight AM eastern time. I looked at the clock on the microwave. It was 2:04.

I hung up and closed my eyes. I could wake up Wireman, see if he had Ilse in his little red address book, but I had a gnawing intuition even that might take too long.

"I can do this," I said, but with no real hope.

Of course you can, Kamen said. What is your weight?

It was a hundred and seventy-four, up from an all-time adult low of one-fifty. I saw these numbers in my mind: 174150. The numbers were red. Then five of them turned green, one after the other. Without opening my eyes, I seized the stub of the pencil and wrote them on the pad: 40175.

And what is your Social Security number? Kamen enquired further.

It appeared in darkness, bright red numbers. Four of them turned green, and I added them to what I had already scrawled. When I opened my eyes I had printed 401759082 in a drunken, downward-tending sprawl on the pad.

It was right, I recognized it, but I was still missing a number.

It doesn't matter, the Kamen inside my head told me. Keypad phones are an amazing gift to the memory-challenged. If you clear your mind and punch what you already have, you'll hit the last number with no problem. It's muscle memory.

Hoping he was right, I opened LINE 1 again and punched in the area code for Rhode Island and then 759-082. My finger never hesitated. It punched the last number, and somewhere in Providence, a phone began to ring.

vi

"Hel- lo?... Who... zit?"

For a moment I was sure I'd blown the number after all. The voice was female, but sounded older than my daughter. Much. And medicated. But I resisted my initial impulse to say "Wrong number" and hang up. She sounded tired, Pam had said, but if this was Ilse, she sounded more than tired; she sounded weary unto death.

"Ilse?"

No answer for a long time. I began to think the disembodied someone in Providence had hung up. I realized I was sweating, and heavily enough so I could smell myself, like a monkey on a branch. Then the same little refrain:

"Hel- lo?... Who... zit?"

"Ilse!"

Nothing. I sensed her getting ready to hang up. Outside the wind was roaring and the surf was pounding.

"Miss Cookie!" I shouted. "Miss Cookie, don't you dare hang up this phone!"

That got through. "Dad... dee?" There was a world of wonder in that broken word.

"Yeah, honey - Dad."

"If you're really Daddy..." A long pause. I could see her in her own kitchen, barefoot (as she had been that day in Little Pink, looking at the picture of the doll and the floating tennis balls), head down, hair hanging around her face. Distracted, maybe almost to the point of madness. And for the first time I began to hate Perse as well as fear her.

"Ilse... Miss Cookie... I want you to listen to me-"

"Tell me my screen name." There was a certain shocked cunning in the voice now. "If you're really my Daddy, tell me my screen name."

And if I didn't, I realized, she'd hang up. Because something had been at her. Something had been fooling her, pawing her over, drawing its webs around her. Only not an it. She.

Illy's screen name.

For a moment I couldn't remember that, either.

You can do this, Kamen said, but Kamen was dead.

"You're not... my Daddy," said the distracted girl on the other end of the line, and again she was on the verge of hanging up.

Think sideways, Kamen advised calmly.

Even then, I thought, without knowing why I was thinking it. Even then, even later, even now, even so -

"You're not my Daddy, you're her, " Ilse said. That drugged and dragging voice, so unlike her. "My Daddy's dead. I saw it in a dream. Goodb-"

" If so! " I shouted, not caring if I woke Wireman or not. Not even thinking about Wireman. " You're If-So-Girl! "

A long pause from the other end. Then: "What's the rest of it?"

I had another moment of horrible blankness, and then I thought: Alicia Keyes, keys on a piano -

"88," I said. "You're If-So-Girl88."

There was a long, long pause. It seemed forever. Then she began to cry.

vii

"Daddy, she said you were dead. That was the one thing I believed. Not just because I dreamed it but because Mom called and said Tom died. I dreamed you were sad and walked into the Gulf. I dreamed the undertow took you and you drowned."

"I didn't drown, Ilse. I'm okay, I promise you."