Duma Key

" S , se or, I know you do. I was waiting to do good, hoping to balance the books again. Because I felt they needed balancing. And one day I saw an ad in the Tampa Tribune. 'Wanted, Companion for elderly lady and Caretaker for several premium island rental properties. Applicant must supply resume and recommendations to match excellent salary and benefits. This is a challenging position which the right person will find rewarding. Must be bonded.' Well, I was bonded and I liked the sound of it. I interviewed with Miss Eastlake's lawyer. He told me the couple who'd previously filled the position had been called back to New England when the parent of one or the other had suffered a catastrophic accident."

"And you got the job. What about -?" I pointed in the general direction of his temple.

"Never told him. He was dubious enough already - wondered, I think, why a legal beagle from Omaha would want to spend a year putting an old lady to bed and rattling the locks on houses that are empty most of the time - but Miss Eastlake..." He reached out and stroked her gnarled hand. "We saw eye-to-eye from the first, didn't we dear?"

She only snored, but I saw the look on Wireman's face and felt that cold finger touch the back of my neck again, a little more firmly this time. I felt it and knew: the three of us were here because something wanted us here. My knowing wasn't based on the kind of logic I'd grown up with and built my business on, but that was all right. Here on Duma I was a different person, and the only logic I needed was in my nerve-endings.

"I think the world of her, you know," Wireman said. He picked up his napkin with a sigh, as though it were something heavy, and wiped his eyes. "By the time I got here, all that crazy, febrile shit I told you about was gone. I was husked out, a gray man in a blue and sunny clime who could only read the newspaper in short bursts without getting a blinder of a headache. I was holding onto one basic idea: I had a debt to pay. Work to do. I'd find it and do it. After that I didn't care. Miss Eastlake didn't hire me, not really; she took me in. When I came here she wasn't like this, Edgar. She was bright, she was funny, she was haughty, flirty, capricious, demanding - she could hector me or humor me out of a blue mood if she chose to, and she often chose to."

"She sounds smokin."

"She was smokin. Another woman would have given in completely to the wheelchair by now. Not her. She hauls her hundred and eighty up on that walker and plods around this air-conditioned museum, the courtyard outside... she even used to enjoy target-shooting, sometimes with one of her father's old handguns, more often with that harpoon pistol, because it's got less kick. And because she says she likes the sound. You see her with that thing, and she really does look like the Bride of the Godfather."

"That's how I first saw her," I said.

"I took to her right away, and I've come to love her. Julia used to call me mi compa ero. I think of that often when I'm with Miss Eastlake. She's mi compa era, mi amiga. She helped me find my heart when I thought my heart was gone."

"I'd say you struck lucky."

"Maybe s , maybe no. Tell you this, it's going to be hard to leave her. What's she gonna do when a new person shows up? A new person won't know about how she likes to have her coffee at the end of the boardwalk in the morning... or about pretending to throw that fucking cookie-tin in the goldfish pond... and she won't be able to explain, because she's headed into the fog for good now."

He turned to me, looking haggard and more than a little frantic.

"I'll write everything down, that's what I'll do - our whole routine. Morning to night. And you'll see that the new caretaker keeps to it. Won't you, Edgar? I mean, you like her, too, don't you? You wouldn't want to see her hurt. And Jack! Maybe he could pitch in a little. I know it's wrong to ask, but-"

A new thought struck him. He got to his feet and stared out at the water. He'd lost weight. The skin was so tight on his cheekbones that it shone. His hair hung over his ears in clumps, badly needing a wash.

"If I die - and I could, I could go out in a wink just like Se or Brown - you'll have to take over here until the estate can find a new live-in. It won't be much of a hardship, you can paint right out here. The light's great, isn't it? The light's terrific!"

He was starting to scare me. "Wireman-"

He whirled around and now his eyes were blazing, the left one seemingly through a net of blood. "Promise, Edgar! We need a plan! If we don't have one, they'll cart her away and put her in a home and she'll be dead in a month! In a week! I know it! So promise!"

I thought he might be right. And I thought that if I wasn't able to take some of the pressure off his boiler, he was apt to have another seizure right in front of me. So I promised. Then I said, "You may end up living a lot longer than you think, Wireman."

"Sure. But I'll write everything down anyway. Just in case."

iii