by Stephen King
I said, “What I discovered, crossing the bridge between my two lives, is that sometimes beauty grows in spite of all expectations. But that’s not a very original idea, is it? It’s really just a platitude … sort of like a Florida sunset. Nevertheless, it happens to be the truth, and the truth deserves to be spoken … if you can say it in a new way. I tried to put it in a picture. Alice, could we have the first slide, please?”
It shone out on the large screen to my right, nine feet wide and seven feet high: a trio of gigantic lush roses growing from a bed of dark pink shells. They were dark because they were below the house, in the shadow of the house. The audience drew in its breath, a sound like a brief but loud gust of wind. I heard that and knew it wasn’t just Wireman and the folks at the Scoto who understood. Who saw. They gasped the way people do when they have been blindsided by something completely unexpected.
Then they began to applaud. It went on for almost a full minute. I stood there gripping the left side of the podium, listening, dazed.
The rest of the presentation took about twenty-five minutes, but I remember very little of it. I was like a man conducting a slide-show in a dream. I kept expecting to wake up in my hospital bed, hot and shot through with pain, roaring for morphine.
xii
That dreamlike feeling persisted through the post-lecture reception at the Scoto. I had no sooner finished my first glass of champagne (bigger than a thimble, but not much) before a second was thrust into my hand. I was toasted by people I didn’t know. There were shouts of “Hear, hear!” and one cry of “Maestro!” I looked around for my new friends and didn’t see them anywhere.
Not that there was much time to look. The congratulations seemed endless, both on my talk and on the slides. At least I didn’t have to deal with any extended critiques of my technique, because the actual paintings (plus a few sketches in colored pencil for good measure) were squirreled away in two of the large back rooms, safely under lock and key. And the secret of avoiding getting smashed at your reception if you’re a one-armed man, I was discovering, was to constantly keep a bacon-wrapped shrimp in your remaining paw.
Mary Ire came by and asked if we were still on for our interview.
“Sure,” I said. “Although I don’t know what else I can tell you. I think I said it all this evening.”
“Oh, we’ll think of a few things,” she said, and damned if she didn’t tip me a wink from behind her nineteen-fifties-style cat’s-eye glasses as she handed her champagne flute back to one of the circulating waiters. “Day after tomorrow. À bientôt, monsieur.”
“You bet,” I said, restraining an urge to tell her that if she was going to speak French, she’d have to wait until I was wearing my Manet beret. She wafted off, kissing Dario on one cheek before slipping out into the fragrant March night.
Jack came over, snagging a couple of champagne flutes on the way. Juanita, my housekeeper, looking trim and chic in a little pink suit, was with him. She took a skewered shrimp, but refused the champagne. He held out the glass to me instead, waiting until I swallowed the last of my hors d’oeuvre and took it. Then he clinked his own against it.
“Congrats, boss—you rocked the house.”
“Thanks, Jack. A critic I can actually understand.” I swallowed the champagne (a swallow per flute is all there was) and turned to Juanita. “You look absolutely beautiful.”
“Gracias, Mr. Edgar,” she said, and glanced around. “These pictures are nice, but yours are much better.”
“Thank you.”
Jack handed Juanita another shrimp. “Will you excuse us a couple of seconds?”
“Of course.”
Jack drew me to the side of a splashy Gerstein sculpture. “Mr. Kamen asked Wireman if they could stay behind a little at the libe after the joint cleared out.”
“He did?” I felt a tickle of concern. “Why?”
“Well, he spent most of the day getting down here, and he said that him and airplane heads really don’t get along.” Jack grinned. “He told Wireman he’d been sitting on something all day and sorta wanted to climb down off it in peace.”
I burst out laughing. Yet I was also touched. It couldn’t be easy for a man of Kamen’s size to travel on public transport … and now that I really considered the matter, I guessed it would be impossible for him to sit down in one of those paltry airplane bathrooms at all. To stand up and take a leak? Maybe. Barely. But not sit down. He simply wouldn’t fit.
“Anyway, Wireman thought Mr. Kamen deserved a T-O. Said you’d understand.”
“I do,” I said, and beckoned Juanita over. She looked too lonely standing there by herself in what was probably her best outfit while the culture vultures ebbed and flowed around her. I gave her a hug and she smiled up at me. And just as I was finally persuading her to take one of the glasses of champagne (my use of the word pequeño for small made her giggle, so I assumed it wasn’t quite right), Wireman and Kamen—the latter still holding the gift-box—came in. Kamen lit up at the sight of me, and that did me more good than several rounds of applause, even with a standing O thrown in.
I took a champagne flute from a passing tray, cut through the crowd, and handed it to him. Then I slipped my arm around as much of his bulk as I could and gave him a hug. He hugged back hard enough to make my still tender ribs squall.
“Edgar, you look terrific. I’m so glad. God is good, my friend. God is good.”
“So are you,” I said. “How’d you happen to turn up in Sarasota? Was it Wireman?” I turned to my compadre of the striped umbrella. “It was, wasn’t it? You called and asked Kamen if he’d be the Mystery Guest at my lecture.”
Wireman shook his head. “I called Pam. I was in a panic, muchacho, because I could see you were freaking out about the gig. She said that after your accident you listened to Dr. Kamen when you wouldn’t listen to anyone else. So I called him. I never thought he’d come on such short notice, but … here he is.”
“Not only am I here, I brought you a gift from your daughters,” he said, and handed me the box. “Although you’ll have to make do with what I had in stock, because I didn’t have time to shop. I fear you may be disappointed.”
I suddenly knew what the present was, and my mouth went dry. Nevertheless I lodged the box under my stump, pulled away the ribbon, and tore off the paper. I was barely aware of Juanita taking it. Inside was a narrow cardboard box that looked to me like a child’s coffin. Of course. What else would it look like? Stamped on the lid was MADE IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC.
“Classy, Doc,” Wireman said.
“I didn’t have time to do something nicer, I’m afraid,” Kamen replied.
Their voices seemed to come from far away. Juanita removed the box-top. I think Jack took that. And then Reba was looking up at me, this time in a red dress instead of a blue one, but the polka-dots were the same; so were the shiny black Mary Janes, the lifeless red hair and the blue eyes that said Oouuuu, you nasty man! I been in here all this time!
Still from a great distance, Kamen was saying: “Ilse was the one who called and suggested a doll as a present. This was after she and her sister talked on the phone.”
Of course it was Ilse, I thought. I was aware of the steady murmur of conversation in the gallery, like the sound of the shells under Big Pink. My Oh gosh, how nice smile was still nailed to my face, but if someone had poked me in the back just then, I might have screamed. Ilse is the one who’s been on Duma Key. Who’s been down the road that leads past El Palacio.
As shrewd as he was, I don’t think Kamen had any idea that anything was wrong—but of course he’d been traveling all day and was far from his best. Wireman, however, was looking at me with his head cocked slightly to one side and his brow furrowed. And by then, I think Wireman knew me better than Dr. Kamen ever had.
“She knew you already had one,” Kamen was saying. “She thought a pair would remind you of both daughters, and Melinda agreed. But of course, Lucys are all I have—”
“Lucys?” Wireman as
ked, taking the doll. Her pink rag-stuffed legs dangled. Her shallow eyes stared.
“They look like Lucille Ball, don’t you think? I give them to some of my patients, and of course they give them their own names. What did you name yours, Edgar?”
For a moment the old frost descended on my brain and I thought Rhonda Robin Rachel, sit in the buddy, sit in the chum, sit in the fucking CHAR. Then I thought, It was RED.
“Reba,” I said. “Just like the country singer.”
“And do you still have her?” Kamen asked. “Ilse said you did.”
“Oh, yes,” I said, and remembered Wireman talking about the Powerball, how you could close your eyes and hear the numbers falling into place: Click and click and click. I thought I could hear that now. The night I’d finished Wireman Looks West, I’d had visitors at Big Pink, little refugees seeking shelter from the storm. Elizabeth’s drowned sisters, Tessie and Laura Eastlake. Now I was meant to have twins in Big Pink again, and why?
Because something had reached out, that was why. Something had reached out and put the idea in my daughter’s head. This was the next click of the wheel, the next Ping-Pong ball to pop out of the basket.
“Edgar?” Wireman asked. “Are you all right, muchacho?”
“Yes,” I said, and smiled. The world came swimming back, in all its light and color. I made myself take the doll from Juanita, who was looking at it with puzzlement. It was a hard thing to do, but I managed. “Thank you, Dr. Kamen. Xander.”
He shrugged and spread his hands. “Thank your girls, Ilse in particular.”
“I will. Who’s ready for another glass of champagne?”
They all were. I replaced my new doll in her box, promising myself two things. One was that neither of my daughters would ever know how badly seeing the damned thing had frightened me. The other promise was that I knew two sisters—two living sisters—who were never, ever, going to set foot on Duma Key at the same time. Or ever, if I could help it.
That was one promise that I kept.
12—Another Florida
i
“All right, Edgar, I think we’re almost finished.”
Maybe she saw something on my face, because Mary laughed. “Has it been that awful?”
“No,” I said, and it hadn’t been, really, although her questions about my technique had made me feel uncomfortable. What it came down to was I looked at things, then slopped on the paint. That was my technique. And influences? What could I say? The light. It always came down to the light, both in the pictures I liked to look at and the ones I liked to paint. What it did to the surface of things, and what it seemed to suggest about what was inside, hunting a way out. But that didn’t sound scholarly; to my ears it sounded goofy.
“Okay,” she said, “last subject: how many more paintings are there?”
We were sitting in Mary Ire’s penthouse apartment on Davis Islands, a tony Tampa enclave which looked to me like the art deco capital of the world. The living room was a vast, nearly empty space with a couch at one end and two slingback chairs at the other. There were no books, but then, there was no TV, either. On the east wall, where it would catch the early light, was a large David Hockney. Mary and I were at opposite ends of the couch. She had her shorthand pad in her lap. There was an ashtray perched beside her on the arm of the sofa. Between us was a big silver Wollensak tape-recorder. It had to be fifty years old, but the reels turned soundlessly. German engineering, baby.
Mary wore no make-up, but her lips were coated with clear goo that made them shine. Her hair was tied up in a careless, coming-apart twist that looked simultaneously elegant and slatternly. She smoked English Ovals and sipped what looked like straight Scotch from a Waterford tumbler (she offered me a drink and seemed disappointed when I opted for bottled water). She wore tailored cotton slacks. Her face looked old, used, and sexy. Its best days might have been around the time Bonnie and Clyde was playing in theaters, but her eyes were still breathtaking, even with lines at the corners, cracks in the eyelids, and no make-up to enhance them. They were Sophia Loren eyes.
“You showed twenty-two slides at the Selby. Nine were of pencil-sketches. Very interesting, but small. And eleven paintings, because there were actually three slides of Wireman Looks West, two close-ups and the wide-angle. So how many other paintings are there? How many will you be showing at the Scoto next month?”
“Well,” I said, “I can’t say for sure, because I’m painting all the time, but I think right now there are about … twenty more.”
“Twenty,” she said, softly and tonelessly. “Twenty more.”
Something about the way she was looking at me made me uncomfortable and I shifted around. The sofa creaked. “I think the actual number might be twenty-one.” Of course there were a few pictures I wasn’t counting. Friends with Benefits, for instance. The one I sometimes thought of as Candy Brown Loses His Breath. And the red-robe sketch.
“So. Over thirty in all.”
I did the addition in my head and shifted around some more. “I guess so.”
“And you have no idea how amazing that is. I can see by your face that you don’t.” She got up, dumped her ashtray in a wastebasket behind the couch, then stood looking at the Hockney with her hands in the pockets of her expensive slacks. The painting showed a cube of a house and a blue swimming pool. Beside the pool was a ripe teenager in a black tank suit. She was all breasts and long tanned legs and dark hair. She wore dark glasses, and a tiny sun blazed in each lens.
“Is that an original?” I asked.
“Yes indeed,” she said, without turning. “The girl in the swimsuit is an original, too. Mary Ire, circa 1962. Gidget in Tampa.” She turned to me, her face fierce. “Turn that tape-recorder off. The interview is over.”
I turned it off.
“I want you to listen to me. Will you?”
“Of course.”
“There are artists who labor for months over a single painting of half the quality your work shows. Of course many spend their mornings getting over the excesses of the night before. But you … you’re producing these things like a man working on an assembly line. Like a magazine illustrator or a … I don’t know … a comic-book artist!”
“I grew up believing folks were supposed to work hard at what they do—I think that’s all it is. When I had my own company, I worked much longer hours, because the hardest boss a man can ever have is himself.”
She nodded. “Not true for everyone, but when it is true, it’s really true. I know.”
“I just carried that … you know, that ethic … over to what I do now. And it’s all right. Hell, it’s better than all right. I turn on the radio … it’s like I go into a daze … and I paint …” I was blushing. “I’m not trying to set the world’s land-speed record, or anything—”
“I know that,” she said. “Tell me, do you block?”
“Block?” I knew what the word meant in a football context; otherwise, I was drawing a blank. “What’s that?”
“Never mind. In Wireman Looks West—which is staggering, by the way, that brain—how did you set the features?”
“I took some pictures,” I said.
“I’m sure you did, darling, but when you got ready to paint the portrait, how did you set the features?”
“I … well, I—”
“Did you use the third-eye rule?”
“Third-eye rule? I never heard of any third-eye rule.”
She smiled at me kindly. “In order to get the right spacing between a subject’s eyes, painters will often imagine or even block a third eye between the two actual ones. What about the mouth? Did you center it using the ears?”
“No … that is, I didn’t know you were supposed to do that.” Now it felt as if I were blushing all over my body.
“Relax,” she said. “I’m not suggesting y’all start following a bunch of bullshit art school rules after breaking them so spectacularly. It’s just …” She shook her head. “Thirty paintings since last November? No, it’s ev
en less time than that, because you didn’t start painting right away.”
“Of course not, I had to get some art supplies first,” I said, and Mary laughed herself into a coughing fit that she washed away with a sip of Scotch.
“If thirty paintings in three months is what almost getting crushed to death does,” she said when she could talk again, “maybe I ought to find me a crane.”
“You wouldn’t want to,” I said. “Believe me.” I got up, went to the window, and looked down on Adalia Street. “This is some place you’ve got here.”
She joined me, and we looked out together. The sidewalk café directly across and seven stories below might have been airlifted in from New Orleans. Or Paris. A woman strolled up the sidewalk eating what looked like a baguette, the hem of her red skirt swirling. Somewhere someone was playing a twelve-bar guitar blues, every note ringing clear. “Tell me something, Edgar—when you look out there, does what you see interest you as an artist or as the builder you used to be?”
“Both,” I said.
She laughed. “Fair enough. Davis Islands is entirely artificial—the brainchild of a man named Dave Davis. He was Jay Gatsby, Florida-style. Have you heard of him?”
I shook my head.
“That just proves that fame’s a fleeting thing. During the Roaring Twenties, Davis was a god down here on the Suncoast.”
She waved an arm at the tangled streets below; the bangles on her scrawny wrist jangled; somewhere not too distant, a church-bell marked the hour of two.
“He dredged the whole thing from swampland at the mouth of the Hillsborough River. Talked the Tampa city fathers into moving both the hospital and the radio station here, back when radio was a bigger deal than health care. He built strange and beautiful apartment complexes in a time when the concept of an apartment complex was unknown. He put up hotels and swank nightclubs. He threw the dough around, married a beauty contest winner, divorced her, married her again. He was worth millions when a million dollars was worth what twelve million is today. And one of his best friends lived just down the coast on Duma Key. John Eastlake. Familiar with that name?”
