Duma Key

He indicated the last four paintings - the ones I'd come to think of as my sunset-composites. To one I'd added a nautilus shell, to one a compact disc with the word Memorex printed across it (and the sun shining redly through the hole), to the third a dead seagull I'd found on the beach, only blown up to pterodactyl size. The last was of the shell-bed beneath Big Pink, done from a digital photograph. To this I had for some reason felt the urge to add roses. There were none growing around Big Pink, but there were plenty of photos available from my new pal Google.

"This last group of paintings," he said. "Has anyone seen these? Your daughter?"

"No. These four were done after she left."

"The guy who works for you?"

"Nope."

"And of course you never showed your daughter the sketch you made of her boyfr-"

"God, no! Are you kidding?"

"No, of course you didn't. That one has its own power, hasty as it obviously is. As for the rest of these things..." He laughed. I suddenly realized he was excited, and that was when I started to get excited. But cautious, too. Remember he used to be a lawyer, I told myself. He's not an art critic.

"The rest of these fucking things..." He gave that little yipping laugh again. He walked in a circle around the room, stepping onto the treadmill and over it with an unconscious ease that I envied bitterly. He put his hands in his graying hair and pulled it out and up, as if to stretch his brains.

At last he came back. Stood in front of me. Confronted me, almost. "Look. The world has knocked you around a lot in the last year or so, and I know that takes a lot of gas out of the old self-image airbag. But don't tell me you don't at least feel how good they are."

I remembered the two of us recovering from our wild laughing fit while the sun shone through the torn umbrella, putting little scars of light on the table. Wireman had said I know what you're going through and I had replied I seriously doubt that. I didn't doubt it now. He knew. This memory of the day before was followed by a dry desire - not a hunger but an itch - to get Wireman down on paper. A combination portrait and still life, Lawyer with Fruit and Gun.

He patted my cheek with one of his blunt-fingered hands. "Earth to Edgar. Come in, Edgar."

"Ah, roger, Houston," I heard myself say. "You have Edgar."

"So what do you say, muchacho? Am I lyin or am I dyin? Did you or did you not feel they were good when you were doing them?"

"Yeah," I said. "I felt like I was kicking ass and taking down names."

He nodded. "It's the simplest fact of art - good art almost always feels good to the artist. And the viewer, the committed viewer, the one who's really looking-"

"I guess that'd be you," I said. "You took long enough."

He didn't smile. "When it's good and the person who's looking opens up to it, there's an emotional bang. I felt the bang, Edgar."

"Good."

"You bet it is. And when that guy at the Scoto gets a load of these, I think he'll feel it, too. In fact, I'd bet on it."

"They're really not so much. Re-heated Dal , when you get right down to it."

He put an arm around my shoulders and led me toward the stairs. "I'm not going to dignify that. Nor are we going to discuss the fact that you apparently painted your daughter's boyfriend via some weird phantom-limb telepathy. I do wish I could see that tennis-ball picture, but what's gone is gone."

"Good riddance, too," I said.

"But you have to be very careful, Edgar. Duma Key is a powerful place for... certain kinds of people. It magnifies certain kinds of people. People like you."

"And you?" I asked. He didn't answer immediately, so I pointed at his face. "That eye of yours is watering again."

He took out the handkerchief and wiped it.

"Want to tell me what happened to you?" I asked. "Why you can't read? Why it weirds you out to even look at pictures too long?"

For a long time he said nothing. The shells under Big Pink had a lot to say. With one wave they said the fruit. With the next they said the gun. Back and forth like that. The fruit, the gun, the gun, the fruit.

"No," he said. "Not now. And if you want to draw me, sure. Knock yourself out."

"How much of my mind can you read, Wireman?"

"Not much," he said. "You caught a break there, muchacho. "

"Could you still read it if we were off Duma Key? If we were in a Tampa coffee shop, for instance?"

"Oh, I might get a tickle." He smiled. "Especially after spending over a year here, soaking up the... you know, the rays."

"Will you go to the gallery with me? The Scoto?"

" Amigo, I wouldn't miss it for all the tea in China."

iv

That night a squall blew in off the water and it rained hard for two hours. Lightning flashed and waves pounded the pilings under the house. Big Pink groaned but stood firm. I discovered an interesting thing: when the Gulf got a little crazy and those waves really poured in, the shells shut up. The waves lifted them too high for conversation.