Duma Key - Stephen King

Dario laughed without much humor. "Try not to let the place burn down, all right?"

"Yes - that would be bad. Assuming we make a deal, could I store some of my work at your gallery?"

"Of course," Nannuzzi said.

"That's great." Thinking I'd like to sign as soon as possible no matter what Wireman thought of the contract, just to get these pictures off the Key... and it wasn't fire I was worried about. Unbottling might be fairly common among artists who began later in life, but forty-one paintings on Duma Key were at least three dozen too many. I could feel their live presence in this room, like electricity in a bell jar.

Of course, Dario and Jimmy felt it, too. That was part of what made those fucking pictures so effective. They were catching.

xiii

I joined Wireman and Elizabeth for coffee at the end of El Palacio 's boardwalk the next morning. I was down to nothing but aspirin to get going, and my Great Beach Walks were now a pleasure instead of a challenge. Especially since the weather had warmed up.

Elizabeth was in her wheelchair with the remains of a breakfast pastry scattered across her tray. It looked to me as if he'd also managed to get some juice and half a cup of coffee into her. She was staring out at the Gulf with an expression of stern disapproval, looking this morning more like Captain Bligh of HMS Bounty than a Mafia don's daughter.

" Buenos d as, mi amigo, " Wireman said. And to Elizabeth: "It's Edgar, Miss Eastlake. He came for sevens. Want to say hello?"

"Piss shit head rat," she said. I think. In any case, she said it to the Gulf, which was still dark blue and mostly asleep.

"Still not so good, I take it," I said.

"No. She's gone down before and come back up, but she's never gone down so far."

"I still haven't brought her any of my pictures to look at."

"No point right now." He handed me a cup of black coffee. "Here. Get your bad self around this."

I passed him the envelope with the sample contract in it. As Wireman pulled it out, I turned to Elizabeth. "Would you like some poems later today?" I asked her.

Nothing. She only looked out at the Gulf with that stony frown: Captain Bligh about to order someone strapped to the foremast and flogged raw.

For no reason at all, I asked: "Was your father a skin diver, Elizabeth?"

She turned her head slightly and cut her ancient eyes in my direction. Her upper lip lifted in a dog's grin. There was a moment - it was brief, but seemed long - when I felt another person looking at me. Or not a person at all. An entity that was wearing Elizabeth Eastlake's old, doughy body like a sock. My right hand clenched briefly, and once more I felt nonexistent, too-long fingernails bite into a nonexistent palm. Then she looked back at the Gulf, simultaneously feeling across the tray until her fingers happened on a piece of the breakfast pastry, and I was calling myself an idiot who had to stop letting his nerves get the best of him. There were undoubtedly strange forces at work here, but not every shadow was a ghost.

"He was," Wireman said absently, unfolding the contract. "John Eastlake was a regular Ricou Browning - you know, the guy who played the Creature from the Black Lagoon back in the fifties."

"Wireman, you're an artesian well of useless information."

"Yeah, ain't I cool? Her old man didn't buy that harpoon pistol in a store, you know; Miss Eastlake says he had it commissioned. It probably ought to be in a museum."

But I didn't care about John Eastlake's harpoon gun, not just then. "Are you reading that contract?"

He dropped it on the tray and looked at me, bemused. "I was trying."

"And your left eye?"

"Nothing. But hey, no reason to be disappointed. The doctor said -"

"Do me a favor. Cover your left peeper."

He did.

"What do you see?"

"You, Edgar. One hombre muy feo. "

"Yeah, yeah. Cover the right one."

He did. "Now I just see black. Only..." He paused. "Maybe not as black." He dropped his hand again. "I can't tell for sure. These days I can't separate the truth from the wishful thinking." He shook his head hard enough to make his hair fly, then thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand.

"Take it easy."

"Easy for you to say." He sat silent for a few moments, then picked the piece of breakfast pastry out of Elizabeth's hand and fed it to her. When it was tucked safely away in her mouth, he turned to me. "Would you mind her while I go get something?"

"Happy to."

He jogged up the boardwalk and I was left with Elizabeth. I tried feeding her one of the remaining pieces of breakfast pastry and she nibbled it out of my hand, bringing back a fleeting recollection of a rabbit I'd had when I was seven or eight. Mr. Hitchens had been its name, although I no longer knew why - memory's a funny thing, isn't it? Her lips were toothless and soft, but not unpleasant. I stroked the side of her head, where her white hair - wiry, rather coarse - was pulled back toward a bun. It occurred to me that Wireman must comb that hair each morning, and make that bun. That Wireman must have dressed her this morning, including diapers, for surely she wasn't continent when she was like this. I wondered if he thought of Esmeralda when he pinned the pins or secured the ties. I wondered if he thought of Julia when he made the bun.

I picked up another piece of breakfast pastry. She opened her mouth obediently for it... but I hesitated. "What's in the red picnic basket, Elizabeth? The one in the attic?"

She seemed to think. And hard. Then: "Any old pipe-dip." She hesitated. Shrugged. "Any old pipe-dip Adie wants. Shoot!" And cackled. It was a startling, witchlike sound. I fed her the rest of her breakfast pastry, piece by piece, and asked no more questions.

xiv

When Wireman returned, he had a microcassette recorder. He handed it to me. "I hate to ask you to put that contract on tape, but I have to. At least the damn thing's only two pages long. I'd like it back this afternoon, if that's possible."

"It is. And if some of my pictures actually sell, you're on commission, my friend. Fifteen per cent. That should cover both legal and talent."

He sat back in his chair, laughing and groaning at the same time. " Por Dios! Just when I thought I couldn't sink any lower in life, I become a fucking talent agent! Excuse the language, Miss Eastlake."

She took no notice, only stared sternly out at the Gulf, where - at the farthest, bluest edge of vision - a tanker was dreaming north toward Tampa. It fascinated me at once. Boats on the Gulf had a way of doing that to me.

Then I forced my attention back to Wireman. "You're responsible for all of this, so-"

"Bull shit you say!"

" - so you have to be prepared to stand up and take your cut like a man."

"I'll take ten per cent, and that's probably too much. Take it, muchacho, or we start discussing eight."

"All right. Ten it is." I stuck out my hand and we shook over Elizabeth's crumb-littered tray. I put the little recorder in my pocket. "And you'll let me know if there's any change in your..." I pointed at his red eye. Which really wasn't as red as it had been.

"Of course." He picked up the contract. There were crumbs on it from Elizabeth's pastry. He brushed them off and handed it to me, then leaned forward, hands clasped between his knees, gazing at me over the imposing shelf of Elizabeth's bosom. "If I had another X-ray, what would it show? That the slug was smaller? That it was gone?"

"I don't know."

"Are you still working on my portrait?"

"Yes."

"Don't stop, muchacho. Please don't stop."

"I don't plan to. But don't get your hopes up too high, okay?"

"I won't." Then another thought struck him, one that was eerily similar to Dario's stated concern. "What do you think would happen if lightning struck Big Pink and it burned flat with that picture inside? What do you think would happen to me?"

I shook my head. I didn't want to think about it. I did think about asking Wireman if I could go up to El Palacio 's attic and look around for a certain picnic basket (it was RED ), then decided not to. I was sure it was there, less sure that I wanted to know what was in it. There were strange things kicking around Duma Key, and I had reason to believe they weren't all nice things, and what I wanted to do about most of them was nothing. If I left them alone, then maybe they'd leave me alone. I'd send most of my pictures off-island to keep everything nice and peaceful; sell them, too, if people wanted to buy them. I could watch them go without a pang. I was passionate about them while I was working on them, but when they were done, they meant no more to me than the hard semi circles of callus I'd sometimes sand off the sides of my great toes so my workboots wouldn't pinch at the end of a hot August day on some job site.

I'd hold back the Girl and Ship series, not out of any special affection, but because the series wasn't done; those paintings were still live flesh. I might show them and sell them later, but for now I meant to keep them right where they were, in Little Pink.

xv

There were no boats on the horizon by the time I got back to my place, and the urge to paint had passed for the time being. I used Wireman's micro-recorder instead, and put the sample contract on tape. I was no lawyer, but I'd seen and signed my share of legal paper in my other life, and this struck me as pretty simple.

That evening I took both the contract and the tape recorder back down to El Palacio. Wireman was making supper. Elizabeth was sitting in the China Parlor. The gimlet-eyed heron - which was a kind of unofficial housepet - stood on the walk outside, peering in with grim disapproval. The late-day sun filled the room with light. Yet it was not light. China Town was in disarray, the people and animals tumbled here and there, the buildings scattered to the four corners of the bamboo table. The pillared plantation-house was actually overturned. In her chair beside it, wearing her Captain Bligh expression, Elizabeth seemed to dare me to put things right.

Wireman spoke from behind me, making me jump. "If I try to set things back up in any kind of pattern, she sweeps it apart again. She's knocked a bunch to the floor and broken them."

"Are they valuable?"

"Some, but that's really not the point. When she's herself, she knows every one of them. Knows and loves. If she comes around and asks where Bo Peep is... or the Coaling Man... and I have to tell her she broke them, she'll be sad all day."

"If she comes around."

"Yes. Well."

"Think I'll head on home, Wireman."

"Gonna paint?"

"That's the plan." I turned to the disarray on the table. "Wireman?"

"Right here, vato."

"Why does she mess them up when she's like this?"

"I think... because she can't stand looking at what she's not."

I started to turn around. He put a hand on my shoulder.

"I'd just as soon you didn't look at me just now," he said. His voice was barely under control. "I'm not myself just now. Go out the front door and then cut back through the courtyard, if you want to take the beach. Would you do that?"

I did that. And when I got back, I worked on his portrait. It was all right. By which I suppose I mean it was good. I could see his face in there, wanting to come out. Starting to rise. There was nothing special, but that was fine. It was always best when it was nothing special. I was happy, I remember that. I was at peace. The shells murmured. My right arm itched, but very low and deep. The window giving on the Gulf was a rectangle of blackness. Once I went downstairs and ate a sandwich. I turned on the radio and found The Bone: J. Geils doing "Hold Your Lovin." J. Geils was nothing special, only great - a gift from the gods of rock and roll. I painted and Wireman's face rose a little more. It was a ghost now. It was a ghost haunting the canvas. But it was a harmless ghost. If I turned around, Wireman wouldn't be standing at the head of the stairs where Tom Riley had been standing, and down the beach at El Palacio de Asesinos, the left side of Wireman's world was still dark; it was just a thing I knew. I painted. The radio played. Below the music, the shells whispered.

At some point I quit, showered, and went to bed. There were no dreams.

When I think back to my time on Duma Key, those days in February and March when I was working on Wireman's portrait seem like the best days.

xvi

Wireman called the next day at ten. I was already at my easel. "Am I interrupting?"

"It's okay," I said. "I can use a break." This was a lie.

"We missed you this morning." A pause. "Well, you know. I missed you. She..."

"Yeah," I said.

"The contract's a bunny-hug. Very little to fuck with. It says you and the gallery split right down the middle, but I'm gonna cap that. Fifty-fifty shall not live after gross sales reach a quarter-mil. Once you pass that point, the split goes to sixty-forty, your favor."

"Wireman, I'll never sell a quarter of a million dollars' worth of paintings!"

"I'm hoping they'll feel exactly the same way, muchacho, which is why I'm also going to propose that the split goes to seventy-thirty at half a million."

"Plus a handjob from Miss Florida," I said feebly. "Get that in there."

"Noted. The other thing is this one-hundred-and-eighty-day termination clause. It ought to be ninety. I don't foresee a problem there, but I think it's interesting. They're afraid some big New York gallery is going to swoop down and carry you off."

"Anything else about the contract I should know?"

"Nope, and I sense you want to get back to work. I'll get in touch with Mr. Yoshida about these changes."

"Any change in your vision?"

"No, amigo. Wish I could say there was. But you keep painting."

I was taking the phone away from my ear when he said, "Did you happen to see the news this morning?"

"No, never turned it on. Why?"

"County coroner says Candy Brown died of congestive heart failure. Just thought you'd like to know."

xvii

I painted. It was a slow go but far from a no go. Wireman swam into existence around the window where his brain swam on the Gulf. It was a younger Wireman than the one in the photos clipped to the sides of my easel, but that was okay; I consulted them less and less, and on the third day I took them down altogether. I didn't need them anymore. Still, I painted the way I supposed most other artists painted: as if it were a job instead of some speed-trip insanity that came and went in spasms. I did it with the radio on, now always tuned to The Bone.

On the fourth day, Wireman brought me a revised contract and told me I could sign. He said Nannuzzi wanted to photograph my paintings and make slides for a lecture at the Selby Library in Sarasota in mid-March, a month before my show opened. The lecture, Wireman said, would be attended by sixty or seventy art patrons from the Tampa-Sarasota area. I told him fine and signed the contract.

Dario came out that afternoon. I was impatient for him to click his pix and be gone so I could go back to work. Mostly to make conversation, I asked him who would be giving the lecture at the Selby Library.

Dario looked at me with one eyebrow cocked, as if I had made a joke. "The one person in the world who is now conversant with your work," he said. "You."

I gaped at him. "I can't give a lecture! I don't know anything about art!"

He swept his arm at the paintings, which Jack and two part-timers from the Scoto were going to crate and transport to Sarasota the following week. They would remain crated, I assumed, in the storage area at the back of the gallery, until just before the show opened. "These say different, my friend."