Duma Key - Stephen King

"Eleven- nineteen," he said. "There was never really a chance."

Wireman put his face in his hands.

xi

I got to the Ritz at quarter to one in the morning, limping with fatigue and not wanting to be there. I wanted to be in my bedroom at Big Pink. I wanted to lie in the middle of my bed, push the strange new doll to the floor as I had the ornamental pillows, and hug Reba to me. I wanted to lie there and look at the turning fan. Most of all, I wanted to listen to the whispered conversation of the shells under the house as I drifted off to sleep.

Instead I had this lobby to deal with: too ornate, too full of people and music (cocktail piano even at this hour), most of all, too bright. Still, my family was here. I had missed the celebratory dinner. I would not miss the celebratory breakfast.

I asked the clerk for my key. He gave it to me, along with a stack of messages. I opened them one after another. Most were congratulations. The one from Ilse was different. It read: Are you okay? If I don't see you by 8 AM, I'm coming to find you. Fair warning.

At the very bottom was one from Pam. The note itself was only four words long: I know she died. Everything else that needed saying was expressed by the enclosure. It was her room key.

xii

I stood outside 847 five minutes later with the key in my hand. I'd move it toward the slot, then move my finger toward the doorbell, then look back toward the elevators. I must have stood that way for five minutes or more, too exhausted to make up my mind, and might have stood there even longer if I hadn't heard the elevator doors open, followed by the sound of tipsy convivial laughter. I was afraid it would turn out to be someone I knew - Tom and Bozie, or Big Ainge and his wife. Maybe even Lin and Ric. In the end I hadn't booked the entire floor, but I'd taken most of it.

I pushed the key into the lock. It was the electronic kind you didn't even have to turn. A green light came on, and as the laughter from down the hall came closer, I slipped inside.

I had ordered her a suite, and the living room was big. There had apparently been a before-show party, because there were two room-service tables and lots of plates with the remains of canap s on them. I spotted two - no, three champagne buckets. Two of the bottles were sticking bottoms-up, dead soldiers. The third appeared to still be alive, although on life support.

That made me think of Elizabeth again. I saw her sitting beside her China Village, looking like Katharine Hepburn in Woman of the Year, saying See how I've put the children outside the schoolhouse! Do come see!

Pain is the biggest power of love. That's what Wireman says.

I threaded my way around chairs where my nearest and dearest had sat, talking and laughing and - I was sure of it - toasting my hard work and good fortune. I took the last champagne bottle from the pool in which it sat, held it up to the wall-length picture-window showcasing Sarasota Bay, and said: "Here's to you, Elizabeth. Hasta la vista, mi amada."

"What does amada mean?"

I turned. Pam was standing in the bedroom doorway. She was wearing a blue nightgown I didn't remember. Her hair was down. It hadn't been so long since Ilse was in junior high school. It touched her shoulders.

"It means darling," I said. "I learned it from Wireman. He was married to a Mexican woman."

"Was?"

"She died. Who told you about Elizabeth?"

"The young man who works for you. I asked him to call if there was news. I'm so sorry."

I smiled. I tried to put the champagne bottle back and missed the bucket. Hell, I missed the table. The bottle hit the carpet and rolled. Once the Daughter of the Godfather had been a child, holding out her picture of a smiling horse for a photographer's camera, the photographer probably some jazzy guy wearing a straw hat and arm garters. Then she had been an old woman jittering away the last of her life in a wheelchair while her snood came loose and flailed from one final hairpin under the fluorescent lights of an art gallery office. And the time between? It probably seemed like no more than a nod or the wave of a hand to the clear blue sky. In the end we all go smash to the floor.

Pam held out her arms. There was a full moon shining in through the big window, and by its light I could see the rose tattoo on the swell of her breast. Something else new and different... but the breast was familiar. I knew it well. "Come here," she said.

I came. I struck one of the room-service tables with my bad hip, gave a muttering cry, and stumbled the last two steps into her arms, thinking this was a nice reunion, we were both going to land on the carpet, me on top of her. Maybe I could even break a couple of her ribs. It was certainly possible; I'd put on twenty pounds since coming to Duma Key.

But she was strong. I forgot that. She held my weight, at first bracing against the side of the bedroom door, then standing up straight with me in her arms. I put my own arm around her and laid my cheek on her shoulder, just breathing in the scent of her.

Wireman! I woke up early and I've been having such a wonderful time with my chinas!

"Come on, Eddie, you're tired. Come to bed."

She led me into the bedroom. The window in here was smaller, the moonlight thinner, but the window was open and I could hear the constant sigh of the water.

"Are you sure-"

"Hush."

I'm sure I've been told your name but it escapes me, so much does now.

"I never meant to hurt you. I'm so sorry-"

She put two fingers against my lips. "I don't want your sorry."

We sat side by side on the bed in the shadows. "What do you want?"

She showed me with a kiss. Her breath was warm and tasted of champagne. For a little while I forgot about Elizabeth and Wireman, picnic baskets, and Duma Key. For a little while there was just she and I, like the old days. The two-armed days. For a little while after that I slept - until the first light came creeping. The loss of memory isn't always the problem; sometimes - maybe even often - it's the solution.

How to Draw a Picture (VIII)

Be brave. Don't be afraid to draw the secret things. No one said art was always a zephyr; sometimes it's a hurricane. Even then you must not hesitate or change course. Because if you tell yourself the great lie of bad art - that you are in charge - your chance at the truth will be lost. The truth isn't always pretty. Sometimes the truth is the big boy.

The little ones say It's Libbit's frog. A frog with teef.

And sometimes it's something even worse. Something like Charley in his bright blue breeches.

Or HER.

Here is a picture of little Libbit with her finger to her lips. She says Shhhh. She says If you talk she'll hear, so shhhh. She says Bad things can happen, and upside-down talking birds are just the first and least, so shhhh. If you try to run, something awful may come out of the cypress and gumbo limbo and catch you on the road. There are even worse things in the water down at Shade Beach - worse than the big boy, worse than Charley who moves so quick. They're in the water, waiting to drown you. And not even drowning is the end, no, not even drowning. So shhhh.

But for the true artist, the truth will insist. Libbit Eastlake can hush her mouth, but not her paints and pencils.

There's only one person she dares talk to, and only one place she can do it - only one place at Heron's Roost where HER hold seems to fail. She makes Nan Melda go there with her. And tries to explain how this happened, how the talent demanded the truth and the truth slithered out of her grasp. She tries to explain how the drawings have taken over her life and how she has come to hate the little china doll Daddy found with the rest of the treasure - the little china woman who was Libbit's fair salvage. She tries to explain her deepest fear: if they don't do something, the twins may not be the only ones to die, only the first ones. And the deaths may not end on Duma Key.

She gathers all her courage (and for a child who is little more than a baby, she must have had a great lot of it) and tells the whole truth, mad as it is. First about how she made the hurricane, but that it wasn't her idea - it was HER idea.

I think Nan Melda believes it. Because she's seen the big boy? Because she's seen Charley?

I think she saw both.

The truth has to come out, that's the basis of art. But that's not to say the world must see it.

Nan Melda says Where yo new doll now? The china doll?

Libbit says In my special treasure-box. My heart-box.

Nan Melda says And what her name?

Libbit says Her name is Perse.

Nan Melda says Percy a boy's name.

And Libbit says I can't help it. Her name is Perse. That's the truth. And she says Perse has a ship. It looks nice but it's not nice. It's bad. What are we going to do, Nanny?

Nan Melda thinks about it as they stand there in the one safe place. And I believe she knew what needed to be done. She might not have been an art critic - no Mary Ire - but I think she knew. The bravery is in the doing, not in the showing. The truth can be hidden away again, if it's too terrible for the world to look at. And it happens. I'm sure it happens all the time.

I think every artist worth a damn has a red picnic basket.

14 - The Red Basket

i

"Share your pool, mister?"

It was Ilse, in green shorts and matching halter. Her feet were bare, her face without make-up and puffy with sleep. Her hair was yanked back in a ponytail, the way she'd worn it when she was eleven, and if not for the fullness of her breasts, she could have passed for that eleven-year-old.

"Any time," I said.

She sat beside me on the tiled lip of the pool. We were about halfway down, my butt on 5 and hers on FT.

"You're up early," I said, but this didn't surprise me. Illy had always been our restless one.

"I was worried about you. Especially when Mr. Wireman called Jack to say that nice old woman died. It was Jack who told us. We were still at dinner."

"I know."

"I'm so sorry." She put her head on my shoulder. "And on your special night, too."

I put my arm around her.

"Anyway, I only slept a couple of hours, and then got up because it was light. And when I looked out, who should I see sitting beside the pool but my father, all by himself?"

"Couldn't sleep anymore. I just hope I didn't wake your m-" I stopped, aware of Ilse's large, round eyes. "Don't go getting any ideas, Miss Cookie. It was strictly comfort."

It had not been strictly comfort, but what it had been was something I wasn't prepared to explore with my daughter. Or myself, for that matter.

She slumped a little, then straightened and looked at me, head tilted, the beginnings of a smile at the corners of her mouth.

"If you have hopes, that's your business," I said. "But I would advise you not to get them up. I'm always going to care for her, but sometimes people go too far to turn back. I think... I'm pretty sure that's the case with us."

She looked back at the still surface of the pool, the little smile at the corners of her mouth dying away. I hated seeing it go, but maybe it was for the best. "All right, then."

That left me free to move on to other matters. I didn't want to, but I was still her father and she was in many ways still a child. Which meant that, no matter how badly I felt about Elizabeth Eastlake this morning, or how confused I might be about my own situation, I still had certain duties to fulfill.

"Need to ask you something, Illy."

"Okay, sure."

"Are you not wearing the ring because you don't want your mother to see it and go nuclear... which I would fully understand... or because you and Carson-"

"I sent it back," she said in a flat and toneless voice. Then she giggled, and a stone rolled off my heart. "But I sent it UPS, and I insured it."

"So... it's over?"

"Well... never say never." Her feet were in the water and she kicked them slowly back and forth. "Carson doesn't want it to be, so he says. I'm not sure I do, either. At least not without seeing how we do face to face. The phone or e-mail really isn't the way to talk something like this out. Plus, I want to see if the attraction is still there, and if so, how much." She glanced sideways, a little anxiously. "That doesn't gross you out, does it?"

"No, honey."

"Can I ask you something?"

"Yes."

"How many second chances did you give Mom?"

I smiled. "Over the course of the marriage? I'd say two hundred or so."

"And how many did she give you?"

"About the same."

"Did you ever..." She stopped. "I can't ask you that."

I looked at the pool, aware of a very middle-class flush rising in my cheeks. "Since we're having this discussion at six in the morning and not even the pool boy's here yet, and since I think I know what your problem with Carson Jones is, you can ask. The answer is no. Not even once. But if I'm dead honest, I have to say that was more luck than stone-ass righteousness. There were times when I came close, and once when it was probably only luck or fate or providence that kept it from happening. I don't think the marriage would have ended if the... the accident had happened, I think there are worse offenses against a partner, but they don't call it cheating for nothing. One slip can be excused as human fallibility. Two can be excused as human frailty. After that-" I shrugged.

"He says it was just once." Her voice was little more than a whisper. Her feet had slowed to a dreamy underwater drift. "He said she started coming on to him. And finally... you know."

Sure. It happens that way all the time. In books and movies, anyway. Maybe sometimes in real life, too. Just because it sounded like a self-serving lie didn't mean it was.

"The girl he sings with?"

Ilse nodded. "Bridget Andreisson."

"She of the bad breath."

Faint smile.

"I seem to remember you telling me not too long ago that he'd have to make a choice."

A long silence. Then: "It's complicated."

It always is. Ask any drunk in a bar who's been thrown out by his wife. I kept quiet.

"He told her he doesn't want to see her anymore. And the duets are off. I know that for a fact, because I checked some of the latest reviews on the Internet." She colored faintly at this, although I didn't blame her for checking. I would have checked, too. "When Mr. Fredericks - he's the tour director - threatened to send him home, Carson told him he could if he wanted to, but he wasn't singing with that holy blond bitch anymore."

"Were those his exact words?"

She smiled brilliantly. "He's a Baptist, Daddy, I'm interpreting. Anyway, Carson stood his ground and Mr. Fredericks relented. For me, that's a mark in his favor."

Yes, I thought, but he's still a cheater who calls himself Smiley.

I took her hand. "What's your next move?"

She sighed. The ponytail made her look eleven; the sigh made her sound forty. "I don't know. I'm at a loss."

"Then let me help you. Will you do that?"

"All right."

"For the time being, stay away from him," I said, and I discovered I wanted that with all my heart. But there was more. When I thought of the Girl and Ship paintings - especially the girl in the rowboat - I wanted to tell her not to talk to strangers, keep her hairdryer away from the bathtub, and jog only at the college track. Never across Roger Williams Park at dusk.

She was looking at me quizzically, and I managed to get myself in gear again. "Go right back to school-"