Duma Key (6 page)

She thinks
Daddy is my first word on this side of the bad thing.

The truth is in the details.

i

Kamen's geographical worked, but when it came to fixing what was wrong with my head, I think the Florida part was coincidental. It's true that I lived there, but I never really
lived
there. No, Kamen's geographical worked because of Duma Key, and Big Pink. For me, those places came to constitute their own world.

I left St. Paul on November tenth with hope in my heart but no real expectations. Kathi Green the Rehab Queen came to see me off. She kissed me on the mouth, hugged me hard, and whispered “May all your dreams come true, Eddie.”

“Thanks, Kathi,” I said. I was touched even though the dream I fixed on was of Reba the Anger-Management Doll, grown to the size of an actual child, sitting in the moonlit living room of the house I'd shared with Pam.
That
dream coming true I could live without.

“And send me a picture from Disney World. I long to see you in mouse ears.”

“I will,” I said, but I never got to Disney World. Sea World, Busch Gardens, or Daytona Speedway, either.

When I left St. Paul, flying in a Lear 55 (successful retirement has its privileges), it was twenty-four and
spitting the first snowflakes of another long northern winter. When I landed in Sarasota it was eighty-five and sunny. Even crossing the tarmac to the private air terminal, still clumping along on my trusty red crutch, I thought I could feel my hip saying thank you.

When I look back on that time, it's with the strangest stew of emotions: love, longing, terror, horror, regret, and the deep sweetness only those who've been near death can know. I think it's how Adam and Eve must have felt. Surely they looked back at Eden, don't you think, as they started barefoot down the path to where we are now, in our glum political world of bullets and bombs and satellite TV? Looked past the angel guarding the shut gate with his fiery sword? Sure. I think they must have wanted one more look at the green world they had lost, with its sweet water and kind-hearted animals. And its snake, of course.

ii

There's a charm-bracelet of keys lying off the west coast of Florida. If you had your seven-league boots on, you could step from Longboat to Lido, from Lido to Siesta, from Siesta to Casey. The next step takes you to Duma Key, nine miles long and half a mile wide at its widest, between Casey Key and Don Pedro Island. Most of it's uninhabited, a tangle of banyans, palms, and Australian pines with an uneven, dune-rumpled beach running along the Gulf edge. The beach is guarded by a waist-high band of sea oats. “The sea oats belong,” Wireman once told me, “but the rest of that shit has no business growing without irrigation.” For much of the time I spent on Duma
Key, no one lived there but Wireman, the Bride of the Godfather, and me.

Sandy Smith was my Realtor in St. Paul. I had asked her to find me a place that was quiet—I'm not sure I used the word
isolated,
but I may have—but still within reach of services. Thinking of Kamen's advice, I told Sandy I wanted to lease for a year, and price wasn't an object, as long as I wasn't getting skint too bad. Even depressed and in more or less constant pain, I was averse to being taken advantage of. Sandy fed my requirements into her computer, and Big Pink was what came out. It was just the luck of the draw.

Except I don't really believe that. Because even my earliest pictures seem to have, I don't know, something.

Something.

iii

On the day I arrived in my rental car (driven by Jack Cantori, the young man Sandy Smith had hired through a Sarasota employment agency), I knew nothing about the history of Duma Key. I only knew one reached it by crossing a WPA-era drawbridge from Casey Key. Once over this bridge, I observed that the northern tip of the island was free of the vegetation that tangled the rest. Instead there was actual landscaping (in Florida this means palms and grass undergoing nearly constant irrigation). I could see half a dozen houses strung along the narrow, patchy band of road leading south, the last one of them a huge and undeniably elegant hacienda.

And close by, less than a football field's length from the Duma Key end of the drawbridge, I could see a pink house hanging over the Gulf.

“Is that it?” I asked, thinking
Please let that be it. That's the one I want.
“It is, isn't it?”

“I don't know, Mr. Freemantle,” Jack said. “I know Sarasota, but this is the first time I've ever been on Duma. Never had any reason to come here.” He pulled up to the mailbox, which had a big red
13
on it. He glanced at the folder lying between us on the seat. “This is it, all right. Salmon Point, number thirteen. I hope you're not superstitious.”

I shook my head, not taking my eyes off it. I didn't worry about broken mirrors or crossing black cats' paths, but I'm very much a believer in . . . well, maybe not love at first sight, that's a little too Rhett-and-Scarlett for me, but instant attraction? Sure. It's the way I felt about Pam the first time I met her, on a double date (she was with the other guy). And it's the way I felt about Big Pink from the very first.

She stood on pilings with her chin jutting over the high-tide line. There was a NO TRESPASSING sign slanting askew on an old gray stick beside the driveway, but I guessed that didn't apply to me. “Once you sign the lease, you have it for a year,” Sandy told me. “Even if it's sold, the owner can't kick you out until your time is up.”

Jack drove slowly up to the back door . . . only with its face hanging over the Gulf of Mexico, that was the only door. “I'm surprised they were ever allowed to build this far out,” he said. “I suppose they did things different in the old days.” To him the old days probably meant the nineteen-eighties. “There's your car. Hope it's okay.”

The car drawn up on the square of cracked pavement to the right of the house was the sort of anonymous American mid-size the rental companies specialize in. I hadn't driven since the day Mrs. Fevereau hit Gandalf, and barely gave it a glance. I was more interested in the boxy pink elephant I'd rented. “Aren't there ordinances about building too close to the Gulf of Mexico?”

“Now, sure, but not when this place went up. From a practical standpoint, it's all about beach erosion. I doubt if this place hung out that way when it was built.”

He was undoubtedly right. I thought I could see at least six feet of the pilings supporting the screened porch—the so-called Florida room. Unless those pilings were sunk sixty feet into the underlying bedrock, eventually the place was going into the Gulf of Mexico. It was only a matter of time.

As I was thinking it, Jack Cantori was saying it. Then he grinned. “Don't worry, though; I'm sure you'll get plenty of warning. You'll hear it groaning.”

“Like the House of Usher,” I said.

His grin widened. “But it's probably good for another five years or so. Otherwise it'd be condemned.”

“Don't be so sure,” I said. Jack had reversed to the driveway door, so the trunk would be easy to unload. Not a lot in there; three suitcases, one garment bag, a steel hardcase with my laptop inside, and a knapsack containing some primitive art supplies—mostly pads and colored pencils. I traveled light when I left my other life. I figured what I'd need most in my new one was my checkbook and my American Express card.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Someone who could afford to build here in the first place could probably talk a couple of B-and-C inspectors around.”

“B-and-C? What's that?”

For a moment I couldn't tell him. I could
see
what I meant: men in white shirts and ties, wearing yellow hi-impact plastic hardhats on their heads and carrying clipboards in their hands. I could even see the pens in their shirt pockets, and the plastic pocket-protectors to which they were clipped. The devil's in the details, right? But I couldn't think of what B-and-C stood for, although I knew it as well as my own name. And instantly I was furious. Instantly it seemed that making my left hand into a fist and driving it sideways into the unprotected Adam's apple of the young man sitting beside me was the most reasonable thing in the world. Almost imperative. Because it was his question that had hung me up.

“Mr. Freemantle?”

“Just a sec,” I said, and thought:
I can do this.

I thought of Don Field, the guy who had inspected at least half of my buildings in the nineties (or so it seemed), and my mind did its crosspatch thing. I realized I'd been sitting bolt upright, my hand clenched in my lap. I could see why the kid had sounded concerned. I looked like a man having a gastric episode. Or a heart attack.

“Sorry,” I said. “I had an accident. Banged my head. Sometimes my mind stutters.”

“Don't worry about it,” Jack said. “No biggie.”

“B-and-C is Building and Code. Basically they're the guys who decide if your building is going to fall down or not.”

“You talking about bribes?” My new young employee looked glum. “Well, I'm sure it happens, especially down here. Money talks.”

“Don't be so cynical. Sometimes it's just a matter of friendship. Your builders, your contractors, your building-code inspectors, even your OSHA guys . . . they usually drink in the same bars, and they all went to the same schools.” I laughed. “Reform schools, in some cases.”

Jack said, “They condemned a couple beach houses at the north end of Casey Key when the erosion there sped up. One of em actually
did
fall into the drink.”

“Well, as you say, I'll probably hear it groaning, and it looks safe enough for the time being. Let's get my stuff inside.”

I opened my door, got out, then staggered as my bad hip locked up. If I hadn't gotten my crutch planted in time, I would have said hello to Big Pink by sprawling on her stone doorstep.

“
I'll
get the stuff in,” Jack said. “You better go in and sit down, Mr. Freemantle. A cold drink wouldn't hurt, either. You look really tired.”

iv

The traveling had caught up with me, and I was more than tired. By the time I eased into a living room armchair (listing to the left, as usual, and trying to keep my right leg as straight as possible), I was willing to admit to myself that I was exhausted.

Yet not homesick, at least not yet. As Jack went back and forth, stowing my bags in the bigger of the two bedrooms and putting the laptop on the desk
in the smaller one, my eye kept being drawn to the living room's western wall, which was all glass, and the Florida room beyond it, and the Gulf of Mexico beyond that. It was a vast blue expanse, flat as a plate on that hot November afternoon, and even with the sliding glass window-wall shut, I could hear its mild and steady sighing. I thought,
It has no memory
. It was an odd thought, and strangely optimistic. When it came to memory—and anger—I still had my issues.

Jack came back from the guest room and sat on the arm of the couch—the perch, I thought, of a young man who wants to be gone. “You've got all your basic staples,” he said, “plus salad-in-a-bag, hamburger, and one of those cooked chickens in a plastic capsule—we call em Astronaut Chickens at my house. I hope that's okay with you.”

“Fine.”

“Two per cent milk—”

“Also fine.”

“—and Half-n-Half. I can get you real cream next time, if you want it.”

“You want to clog my one remaining artery?”

He laughed. “There's a little pantry with all kinds of canned shi . . . stuff. The cable's hooked up, the computer's Internet-ready—I got you Wi-Fi, costs a little extra, but it's way cool—and I can get satellite installed if you want it.”

I shook my head. He was a good kid, but I wanted to listen to the Gulf, sweet-talking me with words it wouldn't remember a minute later. And I wanted to listen to the house, see if it had anything to say. I had an idea maybe it did.

“The keys're in an envelope on the kitchen table—car keys, too—and a list of numbers you might need
are on the fridge. I've got classes at FSU in Sarasota every day except Monday, but I'll be carrying my cell, and I'll be coming by Tuesdays and Thursdays at five unless we make a different arrangement. Is that okay?”

“Yes.” I reached in my pocket and brought out my money-clip. “I want to give you a little extra. You've been great.”

He waved it away. “Nah. This is a sweet gig, Mr. Freemantle. Good pay and good hours. I'd feel like a hound taking any extra.”

That made me laugh, and I put my dough back in my pocket. “Okay.”

“Maybe you ought to take a nap,” he said, getting up.

“Maybe I will.” It was odd to be treated like Grandpa Walton, but I supposed I'd better get used to it. “What happened to the other house at the north end of Casey Key?”

“Huh?”

“You said one went into the drink. What happened to the other one?”

“Far as I know, it's still there. Although if a big storm like Charley ever hits this part of the coast dead-on, it's gonna be like a going-out-of-business sale: everything must go.” He walked over to me, and stuck out his hand. “Anyway, Mr. Freemantle, welcome to Florida. I hope it treats you real well.”

I shook with him. “Thank you . . .” I hesitated, probably not long enough for him to notice, and I didn't get angry. Not at him, anyway. “Thanks for everything.”

“Sure.” He gave me the smallest of puzzled looks as he went out, so maybe he did notice. Maybe he
did notice, at that. I didn't care. I was on my own at last. I listened to shells and gravel popping under his tires as his car started to roll. I listened to the motor fade. Less, least, gone. Now there was only the mild steady sighing of the Gulf. And the beat of my own heart, soft and low. No clocks. Not ringing, not bonging, not even ticking. I breathed deep and smelled the musty, slightly damp aroma of a place that's been shut up for a fairly long time except for the weekly (or bi-weekly) ritual airing. I thought I could also smell salt and subtropical grasses for which I as yet had no names.