Duma Key

The story came out in fragments and bursts, interrupted by tears and digressions. It was clear to me that hearing my voice had steadied her but not cured her. She was wandering, strangely unfixed in time; she referred to the show at the Scoto as if it had occurred at least a week ago, and interrupted herself once to tell me that a friend of hers had been arrested for "cropping." This made her laugh wildly, as if she were drunk or stoned. When I asked her what cropping was, she told me it didn't matter. She said it might even have been part of her dream. Now she sounded sober again. Sober... but not right. She said the she was a voice in her head, but it also came from the drains and the toilet.

Wireman came in at some point during our conversation, turned on the kitchen fluorescents, and sat down at the table with his harpoon in front of him. He said nothing, only listened to my end.

Ilse said she had begun to feel strange - "eerie-feary" was what she actually said - from the first moment she came back into her apartment. At first it was just a spaced-out feeling, but soon she was experiencing nausea, as well - the kind she'd felt the day we had tried to prospect south along Duma Key's only road. It had gotten worse and worse. A woman spoke to her from the sink, told her that her father was dead. Ilse said she'd gone out for a walk to clear her head after that, but decided to come right back.

"It must be those Lovecraft stories I read for my Senior English Project," she said. "I kept thinking someone was following me. That woman."

Back in the apartment, she'd started to cook some oatmeal, thinking it might settle her stomach, but the very sight of it when it started to thicken nauseated her - every time she stirred it, she seemed to see things in it. Skulls. The faces of screaming children. Then a woman's face. The woman had too many eyes, Ilse said. The woman in the oatmeal said her father was dead and her mother didn't know yet, but when she did, she would have a party.

"So I went and lied down," she said, unconsciously reverting to the diction of childhood, "and that's when I dreamed the woman was right and you were dead, Daddy."

I thought of asking her when her mother had called, but I doubted if she'd remember, and it didn't matter, anyway. But, my God, hadn't Pam sensed anything wrong besides tiredness, especially in light of my phone call? Was she deaf? Surely I wasn't the only one who could hear this confusion in Ilse's voice, this weariness. But maybe she hadn't been so bad when Pam called. Perse was powerful, but that didn't mean it still didn't take her time to work. Especially at a distance.

"Ilse, do you still have the picture I gave you? The one of the little girl and the tennis balls? The End of the Game, I called it."

"That's another funny thing," she said. I had a sense of her trying to be coherent, the way a drunk pulled over by a traffic cop will try to sound sober. "I meant to get it framed, but I didn't get around to it, so I tacked it on the wall of the big room with a Pushpin. You know, the living room/kitchen. I gave you tea there."

"Yes." I'd never been in her Providence apartment.

"Where I could look... look at it... but then when I camed back... hnn..."

"Are you going to sleep? Don't go to sleep on me, Miss Cookie."

"Not sleeping..." But her voice was fading.

"Ilse! Wake up! Wake the fuck up! "

"Daddy!" Sounding shocked. But also fully awake again.

"What happened to the picture? What was different about it when you came back?"

"It was in the bed'oom. I guess I must have moved it myself - it's even stuck on the same red Pushpin - but I don't remember doing it. I guess I wanted it closer to me. Isn't that funny?"

No, I didn't think it was funny.

"I wouldn't want to live if you were dead, Daddy," she said. "I'd want to be dead, too. As dead as... as... as dead as a marble!" And she laughed. I thought of Wireman's daughter and did not.

"Listen to me carefully, Ilse. It's important that you do as I say. Will you do that?"

"Yes, Daddy. As long as it doesn't take too long. I'm..." The sound of a yawn. "... tired. I might be able to sleep, now that I know you're all right."

Yes, she'd be able to sleep. Right under The End of the Game, hanging from its red Pushpin. And she'd wake up thinking that the dream had been this conversation, the reality her father's suicide on Duma Key.

Perse had done this. That hag. That bitch.

The rage was back, just like that. As if it had never been away. But I couldn't let it fuck up my thinking; couldn't even let it show in my voice, or Ilse might think it was aimed at her. I clamped the phone between my ear and shoulder. Then I reached out and grasped the slim chrome neck of the sink faucet. I closed my fist around it.

"This won't take long, hon. But you have to do it. Then you can go to sleep."

Wireman sat perfectly still at the table, watching me. Outside, the surf hammered.

"What kind of stove do you have, Miss Cookie?"

"Gas. Gas stove." She laughed again.