Stephen King - Duma Key

“What about you, Edgar? Are you getting on with it?”

“I don’t know. Didn’t Scott Fitzgerald say there are no second acts in American life?”

“Yep, but he was a washed-up drunk when he said it.” Wireman put the cylinder at his feet and leaned forward. “Listen to me, Edgar, and listen good. There are actually five acts, and not just in American lives — in every life that’s fully lived. Same as in every Shakespearian play, tragedy and comedy alike. Because that’s what our lives are made up of — comedy and tragedy.”

“For me, the yuks have been in short supply just lately,” I said.

“Yeah,” he agreed, “but Act Three has potential. I’m in Mexico now. Told you, right? Beautiful little mountain town called Tamazunchale.”

I gave it a try.

“You like the way it rolls off your tongue. Wireman can see that you do.”

I smiled. “It do have a certain ring to it.”

“There’s this rundown hotel for sale there, and I’m thinking about buying it. It’d take three years of losses to put that kind of operation on a paying basis, but I’ve got a fat money-belt these days. I could use a partner who knows something about building and maintenance, though. Of course, if you’re still concentrating on matters artistic…”

“I think you know better.”

“Then what do you say? Let us marry our fortunes together.”

“Simon and Garfunkel, 1969,” I said. “Or thereabouts. I don’t know, Wireman. I can’t decide now. I do have one more picture to paint.”

“Indeed you do. Just how big is this storm going to be?”

“Dunno. But Channel 6 is gonna love it.”

“Plenty of warning, though, right? Property damage is fine, but no one gets killed.”

“No one gets killed,” I agreed, hoping this would be true, but once that phantom limb was given free rein, all bets were off. That’s why my second career had to end. But there would be this one final picture, because I meant to be fully avenged. And not just for Illy; for Perse’s other victims, as well.

“Do you hear from Jack?” Wireman asked.

“Just about every week. He’s going to FSU in Tallahassee in the fall. My treat. In the meantime, he and his Mom are moving down the coast to Port Charlotte.”

“Was that also your treat?”

“Actually… yes.” Since Jack’s father died of Crohn’s Disease, he and his mother had had a bit of a tough skate.

“And your idea?”

“Right again.”

“So you think Port Charlotte’s going to be far enough south to be safe.”

“I think so.”

“And north? What about Tampa?”

“Rain-showers at most. It’s going to be a small storm. Small but powerful.”

“A tight little Alice. Like the one in 1927.”

“Yes.”

We sat looking at each other, and the girls cruised by again in their sportabout, laughing louder and waving more enthusiastically than before. Sweet bird of youth, flying on afternoon wine coolers. We saluted them.

When they were gone, Wireman said: “Miss Eastlake’s surviving relatives are never going to have to worry about getting building permits for their new property, are they?”

“I don’t think so, no.”

He thought it over, then nodded. “Good. Send the whole island to Davy Jones’s locker. Works for me.” He picked up the silver cylinder, turned his attention to the little orange flag over the fissure that splits the middle of Lake Phalen, then looked back at me. “Want to say any final words, muchacho ?”

“Yes,” I said, “but not many.”

“Get em ready, then.” Wireman turned on his knees and held the silver cylinder out. The sun sparkled on it for what I hoped would be the final time in at least a thousand years… but I had an idea Perse was good at finding her way to the surface. That she had done it before, and would again. Even from Minnesota, she would somehow find the caldo .

I said the words I’d been holding in my mind. “Sleep forever.”

Wireman’s fingers opened. There was a small splash. We leaned over the side of the boat and watched the silver cylinder slide smoothly out of sight with one final glimmer of sunlight to mark its descent.

Wireman stayed that night, and the next. We ate rare steaks, drank green tea in the afternoon, and talked about anything but old times. Then I took him to the airport, where he’d fly to Houston. There he planned to rent a car and drive south. See some of the country, he said.

I offered to go with him as far as security, and he shook his head. “You shouldn’t have to watch as Wireman removes his shoes for a business school graduate,” he said. “This is where we say adiós, Edgar.”

“Wireman—” I said, and could say no more. My throat was filled with tears.

He pulled me into his arms and kissed me firmly on both cheeks. “Listen, Edgar. It’s time for Act Three. Do you understand me?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Come down to Mexico when you’re ready. And if you want to.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“You do that. Con Dios, mi amigo; siempre con Dios. ”

“And you, Wireman. And you.”

I watched him walk away with his tote-bag slung over one shoulder. I had a sudden brilliant memory of his voice the night Emery had attacked me in Big Pink, of Wireman shouting cojudo de puta madre just before driving the candlestick into the dead thing’s face. He had been magnificent. I willed him to turn back one final time… and he did. Must have caught a thought, my mother would have said. Or had an intuition. That’s what Nan Melda would have said.

He saw me still standing there and his face lit in a grin. “Do the day, Edgar!” he cried. People turned to look, startled.

“And let the day do you!” I called back.

He saluted me, laughing, then walked into the jetway. And of course I did eventually come south to his little town, but although he’s always alive for me in his sayings — I never think of them in anything but the present tense — I never saw the man himself again. He died of a heart attack two months later, in Tamazunchale’s open-air market, while dickering for fresh tomatoes. I thought there would be time, but we always think stuff like that, don’t we? We fool ourselves so much we could do it for a living.

Back at the place on Aster Lane, my easel stood in the living room, where the light was good. The canvas on it was covered with a piece of toweling. Beside it, on the table with my oil paints, were several aerial photos of Duma Key, but I’d hardly glanced at them; I saw Duma in my dreams, and still do.

I tossed the towel on the couch. In the foreground of my painting — my last painting — stood Big Pink, rendered so realistically I could almost hear the shells grating beneath it with each incoming wave.

Propped against one of the pilings, the perfect surreal touch, were two red-headed dolls, sitting side by side. On the left was Reba. On the right was Fancy, the one Kamen had fetched from Minnesota. The one that had been Illy’s idea. The Gulf, usually so blue during my time on Duma Key, I had painted a dull and ominous green. Overhead, the sky was filled with black clouds; they massed to the top of the canvas and out of sight.

My right arm began to itch, and that remembered sensation of power began to flow first into me and then through me. I could see my picture almost with the eye of a god… or a goddess. I could give this up, but it would not be easy.

When I made pictures, I fell in love with the world.

When I made pictures, I felt whole.

I painted awhile, then put the brush aside. I mixed brown and yellow together with the ball of my thumb, then skimmed it over the painted beach… oh so lightly… and a haze of sand lifted, as if on the first hesitant puff of air.