Duma Key

"She was still alive when they got her to the hospital. The woman from the daycare called both Julia's office and mine. She was babbling-crazy, insane. Julia went tearing out of Work Fair, got into her car, drove like hell. Three blocks from the hospital she had a head-on collision with an Omaha Public Works truck. She was killed instantly. By then our daughter had probably already been dead for twenty minutes. That Mary medallion you held for me... that was Julia's."

He fell silent, and the silence spun out. I didn't fill it; there's nothing to say to a story like that. Eventually he resumed.

"Just another version of the Powerball. Five numbers, plus that all-important Bonus Number. Click, click, click, click, click. And then clack for good measure. Did I think such a thing could happen to me? No, muchacho, never in my wildest, and God punishes us for what we can't imagine. My mother and dad begged me to go see a psychiatrist, and for a little while - eight months after the funerals - I did indeed go. I was tired of floating through the world like a balloon tethered three feet over my own head."

"I know the feeling," I said.

"I know you do. We checked into hell on different shifts, you and me. And out again, I suppose, although my heels are still smoking. How about yours?"

"Yeah."

"The psychiatrist... nice man, but I couldn't talk to him. With him I was inarticulate. With him I found myself grinning a lot. I kept expecting a cute chick in a bathing suit to trot out my big cardboard check. The audience would see it and applaud. And eventually a check did come. When we married, I'd taken out a joint life insurance policy. When Ez came, I added to it. So I really did win la loter a. Especially when you add in the compensation Julia received from the accident in the supermarket parking lot. Which brings us to this."

He held up the slim gray folder.

"The thought of suicide had been out there, circling closer and closer. The primary attraction was the idea that Julia and Esmeralda might also still be out there, waiting for me to catch up... but they might not wait forever. I'm not a conventionally religious man, but I think there's at least a chance that there is life after death, and that we survive as... you know, ourselves. But of course..." A wintry smile touched the sides of his mouth. "Mostly I was just depressed. I had a gun in my safe. A.22. I bought it for home protection after Esmeralda was born. One night I sat down with it at the dining room table, and... I believe you might know this part of the story, muchacho."

I raised one hand and seesawed it in a maybe s , maybe no gesture.

"I sat down at the dining room table in my empty house. There was a bowl of fruit there, courtesy of the home shopper I employed. I put the gun on the table, and then I closed my eyes. I spun the bowl of fruit around two or three times. I told myself if I picked an apple out of the bowl, I'd put the gun to my temple and end my life. If it was an orange, however... then I'd take my lottery winnings and go to Disney World."

"You could hear the refrigerator," I said.

"That's right," he said without surprise. "I could hear the fridge - both the hum of the motor and the clunk of the ice-maker. I reached out and I picked an apple."

"Did you cheat?"

Wireman smiled. "A fair question. If you mean did I peek, the answer is no. If you mean did I memorize the geography of the fruit in the bowl..." He shrugged. " Qui n sabe? In any case, I picked an apple: in Adam's fall, sinned we all. I didn't have to bite it or smell it; I could tell what it was by the skin. So without opening my eyes - or giving myself any chance to think - I picked up the gun and put it to my temple." He mimed this with the hand I no longer had, cocking the thumb and placing the first finger against the small circular scar that his long, graying hair usually hid. "My last thought was, 'At least I won't have to listen to that refrigerator anymore, or eat one more gourmet shepherd's pie out of it.' I don't remember any bang. Nevertheless, the whole world went white, and that was the end of Wireman's other life. Now... would you like the hallucinogenic shit?"

"Yes, please."

"You want to see if it matches yours, don't you?"

"Yes." And a question occurred to me. One of some import, maybe. "Wireman, did you have any of these telepathic bursts... weird receptions... whatever you want to call them... before you came to Duma Key?" I was thinking of Monica Goldstein's dog, Gandalf, and how I seemed to have choked him with an arm I no longer had.

"Yes, two or three," he said. "I may tell you about them in time, Edgar, but I don't want to stick Jack with Miss Eastlake for too long. All other considerations aside, she's apt to be worried about me. She's a dear thing."

I could have said that Jack - also sort of a dear thing - would probably be worried, too, but instead I only told him to go on.