Duma Key

My stomach cramped and I could have sworn my bowels dropped three inches. Nor was that the worst. That half-itch, half-pain swarmed up my right side and down the arm that was no longer there. I told myself such feelings - which amounted to three-days-in-advance flop-sweat - were stupid. I had once made a ten-million-dollar pitch to the St. Paul City Council, which at that time had included a man who'd gone on to become the Governor of Minnesota. I'd seen two girls through first dance recitals, cheerleading tryouts, driving lessons, and the hell of adolescence. What was showing some of my paintings to an art gallery guy compared to that?

Nevertheless, I made my way up the stairs to Little Pink with leaden heels.

The sun was going down, flooding the big room with gorgeous and improbable tangerine light, but I felt no urge to try and capture it - not this evening. The light called to me, just the same. As the photograph of some long-gone love, happened on by accident while going through an old box of souvenirs, may call to you. And the tide was in. Even upstairs I could hear the grinding voice of the shells. I sat down and began poking at the clutter of items on my junk-table - a feather, a water-smoothed stone, a disposable lighter rinsed to an anonymous gray. Now it wasn't Emily Dickinson I thought of, but some old folksong: Don't the sun look good, Mama, shinin through the trees. No trees out there, of course, but I could put one on the horizon if I wanted to. I could put one out there for the red sunset to shine through. Hello, Dal .

I wasn't afraid of being told I had no talent. I was afraid of Signor Nannuzzi telling me I had a leetle talent. Of having him hold his thumb and forefinger maybe a quarter of an inch apart and advising me to reserve a space at the Venice Sidewalk Art Festival, that I would certainly find success there, many tourists would surely be taken by my charming Dal imitations.

And if he did that, held his thumb and forefinger a quarter of an inch apart and said leetle, what did I do then? Could some stranger's verdict take away my new confidence in myself, steal my peculiar new joy?

"Maybe," I said.

Yes. Because painting pictures wasn't like putting up shopping malls.

The easiest thing would be just to cancel the appointment... except I'd sort of promised Ilse, and I wasn't in the habit of breaking the promises I made to my children.

My right arm was still itching, itching almost hard enough to hurt, but I barely noticed. There were eight or nine canvases lined up against the wall to my left. I turned toward them, thinking I'd try to decide which ones were best, but I never so much as looked at them.

Tom Riley was standing at the head of the stairs. He was naked except for a pair of light blue pajama pants, darker at the crotch and down the inside of one leg, where he had wet them. His right eye was gone. There was a matted socket full of red and black gore where it had been. Dried blood streaked back along his right temple like war paint, disappearing into graying hair above his ear. His other eye stared out at the Gulf of Mexico. Carnival sunset swam over his narrow, pallid face.

I shrieked in surprise and terror, recoiled, and fell off my chair. I landed on my bad hip and yelled out again, this time from pain. I jerked and my foot struck the chair I'd been sitting in, knocking it over. When I looked toward the stairs again, Tom was gone.

vi

Ten minutes later I was downstairs, dialing his home number. I had descended the stairs from Little Pink in the sitting position, thumping down one riser at a time on my ass. Not because I'd hurt my hip falling off the chair, but because my legs were trembling so badly I didn't trust myself on my feet. I was afraid I might take a header, even going down backward so I could clutch the banister with my left hand. Hell, I was afraid I might faint.

I kept remembering the day at Lake Phalen I'd turned to see Tom with that unnatural shine in his eyes, Tom trying not to embarrass me by actual bawling. Boss, I can't get used to seeing you this way... I'm so sorry.

The telephone began to ring in Tom's nice Apple Valley home. Tom, who'd been married and divorced twice, Tom who had advised me against moving out of the house in Mendota Heights - It's like giving up home field advantage in a playoff game, he'd said. Tom who'd gone on to enjoy my home field quite a little bit himself, if Friends with Benefits were to be believed... and I did believe it.

I believed what I'd seen upstairs, too.

One ring... two... three.

"Come on," I muttered. "Pick the motherfucker up." I didn't know what I'd say if he did, and didn't care. All I wanted right then was to hear his voice.

I did, but on a recording. "Hi, you've reached Tom Riley," he said. "My brother George and I are off with our mother, on our annual cruise - it's Nassau this year. What do you say, Mother?"

"That I'm a Bahama Mama!" said a cigarette-cracked but undeniably cheerful voice.