Stephen King - Duma Key

“May I ask which deceased he represents?”

A nightmare image rose before me: a silent courtroom of the dead, and Wireman saying Your Honor, I object.

“Elizabeth Eastlake,” I said.

“Ah, of course.” The voice warmed, became provisionally human. “He and his young friend have stepped out — they were going to work on Ms. Eastlake’s obituary, I believe. I may have a message for you. Will you hold?”

I held. “Abide with Me” resumed. Digger the Undertaker eventually returned. “Mr. Wireman asks if you would join him and… uh… Mr. Candoori, if possible, at your place on Duma Key at two this afternoon. It says, ‘If you arrive first, please wait outside.’ Have you got that?”

“I do. You don’t know if he’ll be back?”

“No, he didn’t say.”

I thanked him and hung up. If Wireman had a cell phone, I’d never seen him carrying it, and I didn’t have the number in any case, but Jack had one. I dug the number out of my wallet and dialed it. It diverted to voicemail on the first ring, which told me it was either turned off or dead, either because Jack had forgotten to charge it or because he hadn’t paid the bill. Either one was possible.

Jack’s severely freaked, and you got to prepare for a shock.

I want to be with you when you look in that basket.

But I already had a pretty good idea about what was in the basket, and I doubted if Wireman had been surprised, either.

Not really.

The Minnesota Mafia was silent around the long table in the Bay Island Room, and even before Pam stood up, I realized they had been doing more than talking about me while I was gone. They had been holding a meeting.

“We’re going back,” Pam said. “That is, most of us are. The Slobotniks had plans to visit Disney World when they came down, the Jamiesons are going on to Miami—”

“And we’re going with them, Daddy,” Melinda said. She was holding Ric’s arm. “We can get a flight back to Orly from there that’s actually cheaper than the one you booked.”

“I think we could stand the expense,” I said, but I smiled. I felt the strangest mixture of relief, disappointment, and fear. At the same time I could feel the bands that had been tightening in my head come unlocked and start dropping away. The incipient headache was gone, just like that. It could have been the Zomig, but the stuff usually doesn’t work that fast, even with a caffeine-laced drink to give it a boost.

“Have you heard from your friend Wireman this morning?” Kamen rumbled.

“Yes,” I said. “He left a message on my machine.”

“And how is he doing?”

Well. That was a long story, wasn’t it? “He’s coping, doing the funeral parlor thing… and Jack’s helping… but he’s rocky.”

“Go help him,” Tom Riley said. “That’s your job for the day.”

“Yes, indeed,” Bozie added. “You’re grieving yourself, Edgar. You don’t need to be playing host right now.”

“I called the airport,” Pam said, as if I had protested — which I hadn’t. “The Gulfstream’s standing by. And the concierge is helping to make the other travel arrangements. In the meantime, we’ve still got this morning. The question is, what do we do with it?”

We ended up doing what I had planned: we visited the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art.

And I wore my beret.

Early that afternoon, I found myself standing in the boarding area at Dolphin Aviation, kissing my friends and relatives goodbye, or shaking their hands, or hugging them, or all three. Melinda, Ric, and the Jamiesons were already gone.

Kathi Green the Rehab Queen kissed me with her usual ferocity. “You take care of yourself, Edgar,” she said. “I love your paintings, but I’m much more proud of the way you’re walking. You’ve made amazing progress. I’d like to parade you in front of my latest generation of crybabies.”

“You’re tough, Kathi.”

“Not so tough,” she said, wiping her eyes. “Truth is, I’m a freakin marshmallow.”

Then Kamen was towering over me. “If you need help, get in touch ASAP.”

“Yep,” I said. “You be the KamenDoc.”

Kamen smiled. It was like having God smile on you. “I don’t think all’s right with you yet, Edgar. I can only hope it will be right. No one deserves more to land with the shiny side up and the rubber side down.”

I hugged him. A one-armed hug, but he made up for it.

I walked out to the plane beside Pam. We stood at the foot of the boarding stairs while the others got on. She was holding my hand in both of hers, looking up at me.

“I’m only going to kiss you on the cheek, Edgar. Illy’s watching and I don’t want her to get the wrong idea.”

She did so, then said, “I’m worried about you. There’s a white look around your eyes that I don’t like.”

“Elizabeth—”

She shook her head a tiny bit. “It was there last night, even before she came to the gallery. Even when you were at your happiest. A white look. I don’t know how to describe it any better than that. I only saw it once before, back in 1992, when it looked for a little while like you might miss that balloon payment and lose the business.”

The jet engines were whining and a hot breeze was blowing her hair around her face, tumbling her careful beauty-shop curls into something younger and more natural. “Can I ask you something, Eddie?”

“Of course.”

“Could you paint anywhere? Or does it have to be here?”

“Anywhere, I think. But it would be different somewhere else.”

She was looking at me fixedly. Almost pleadingly. “Just the same, a change might be good. You need to lose that white look. I’m not talking about coming back to Minnesota, necessarily, just going… somewhere else. Will you think about it?”

“Yes.” But not until I saw what was in the red picnic basket. And not until I’d made at least one trip to the south end of the Key. And I thought I could do that. Because Ilse was the one who’d gotten sick, not me. All I’d had was one of my red-tinged flashbacks to the accident. And that phantom itch.

“Be well, Edgar. I don’t know exactly what’s become of you, but there’s still enough of the old you to love.” She stood on tiptoe in her white sandals — bought specially for this trip, I had no doubt — and planted another soft kiss on my stubbly cheek.

“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you for last night.”

“No thanks required,” she said. “It was sweet.”

She squeezed my hand. Then she was up the stairs and gone.

Outside Delta departures again. This time without Jack.

“Just you and me, Miss Cookie,” I said. “Looks like we closed down the bar.”

Then I saw she was crying and wrapped my arm around her.

“Daddy, I wish I could stay here with you.”

“Go back, honey. Study for your test and knock the hell out of it. I’ll see you soon.”

She pulled back. Looked at me anxiously. “You’ll be okay?”

“Yes. And you be okay, too.”

“I will. I will.”

I hugged her again. “Go on. Check in. Buy magazines. Watch CNN. Fly well.”

“All right, Daddy. It was amazing.”

“ You’re amazing.”

She gave me a hearty smack on the mouth — to make up for the one her mother had held back on, perhaps — and went in through the sliding doors. She turned back once and waved to me, by then little more than a girl-shape behind the polarized glass. I wish with all my heart that I could have seen her better, because I never saw her again.

From the Ringling Art Museum I had left messages for Wireman — one at the funeral home and one on El Palacio ’s answering machine — saying I’d be back around three, and asking him to meet me there. I also asked him to tell Jack that if Jack was old enough to vote and party with FSU sorority girls, he was old enough to take care of his damned cell phone.