Stephen King - Duma Key

“I asked Myra to call me when he got back home — Myra Devorkian, who lives across the street from him. I told her I was worried about his state of mind. No reason to keep that much to myself, was there?”

“No.”

“And bango! Myra said she’d been worried, too — she and Ben both. Said he was drinking too much, for one thing, and sometimes going in to his office with a ten o’clock shadow. Although she said he looked spiffy enough when he went off on his trip. Amazing how much neighbors see, even when they’re not really close friends. Ben and Myra didn’t know about… us, of course, but they knew damn well that Tom had been depressed.”

You think they didn’t know, I didn’t say.

“Anyway, long story short, I invited him over. There was a look in his eyes when he came in… this look… as if he thought maybe I intended to… you know…”

“Pick up where you left off,” I said.

“Am I telling this or are you?”

“Sorry.”

“Well, you’re right. Of course you’re right. I wanted to ask him into the kitchen for coffee, but we never got any farther than the hall. He wanted to kiss me.” She said this with a kind of defiant pride. “I let him… once… but when it became obvious that he wanted more, I pushed him back and said I had something to say. He said he knew it was bad from the way I looked, but nothing could hurt the way I hurt him when I said we couldn’t see each other any more. That’s men for you — and they say we’re the ones who know how to lay on the guilt.

“I said that just because we couldn’t go on seeing each other romantically didn’t mean I didn’t still care about him. Then I said several people had told me he was acting strange — not like himself — and I put that together with him not taking his antidepressant pills and began to worry. I said I thought he was planning to kill himself.”

She stopped for a moment, then went on.

“Before he came, I never meant to say it right out like that. But it’s funny — the minute he walked through the door I was almost positive, and when he kissed me I knew for a fact. His lips were cold. And dry. It was like kissing a corpse.”

“I’ll bet,” I said, and tried to scratch my right arm.

“His face tightened up and I mean really. Every line smoothed out, and his mouth almost disappeared. He asked me who put an idea like that in my head. And then, before I could even answer, he said it was bullshit. That’s the word he used, and it’s not a Tom Riley word at all.”

She was right about that. The Tom I’d known in the old days wouldn’t have said bullshit if he’d had a mouthful.

“I didn’t want to give him any names — certainly not yours, because he would have thought I was crazy, and not Illy’s, because I didn’t know what he might say to her if—”

“I told you, Illy had nothing to do with—”

“Be quiet. I’m almost through. I just said these people who were talking about how funny he was acting didn’t even know about the pills he’s been taking since the second divorce, and how he quit taking them last May. He calls them stupid-pills. I said if he thought he was keeping everything that was wrong with him under wraps, he was mistaken. Then I said that if he did something to himself, I’d tell his mother and brother it was suicide, and it would break their hearts. That was your idea, Edgar, and it worked. I hope you’re proud. That was when he broke my vase and called me a meddlesome cunt, see? He was as white as a sheet. I bet…” She swallowed. I could hear the click in her throat across all the miles. “I bet he had the way he was going to do it all planned out.”

“I don’t doubt it,” I said. “What do you think he’ll do now?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t.”

“Maybe I better call him.”

“Maybe you better not. Maybe finding out we talked would push him right over the edge.” With a touch of malice she added, “Then you’ll be the one losing sleep.”

It was a possibility I hadn’t thought of, but she had a point. Tom and Wireman were alike in one way: both needed help and I couldn’t drag them to it. An old bon mot bounced into my head, maybe apropos, maybe not: you can lead a whore to culture, but you can’t make her think. Maybe Wireman could tell me who had said it. And when.

“So how did you know he meant to kill himself?” she asked. “I want to know, and by God you’re going to tell me before I hang up. I did my part and you’re going to tell me.”

There it was, the question she hadn’t asked before; she’d been too fixated on how I’d found out about her and Tom in the first place. Well, Wireman wasn’t the only one with sayings; my father had a few, as well. One was, when a lie won’t suffice, the truth will have to do.

“Since the accident, I’ve been painting,” I said. “You know that.”

“So?”

I told her about the sketch I’d drawn of her, Max from Palm Desert, and Tom Riley. About some of my Internet explorations into the world of phantom limb phenomena. And about seeing Tom Riley standing at the head of the stairs in what I supposed was now my studio, naked except for his pajama pants, one eye gone, replaced by a socket filled with congealed gore.

When I finished, there was a long silence. I didn’t break it. At last she said, in a new and cautious voice: “Do you really believe that, Edgar — any of it?”

“Wireman, the guy from down the beach…” I stopped, infuriated in spite of myself. And not because I didn’t have any words. Or not exactly. Was I going to tell her the guy from down the beach was an occasional telepath, so he believed me?

“What about the guy from down the beach, Edgar?” Her voice was calm and soft. I recognized it from the first month or so after my accident. It was her Edgar’s-Going-Section-Eight voice.

“Nothing,” I said. “It doesn’t matter.”

“You need to call Dr. Kamen and tell him about this new idea of yours,” she said. “This idea that you’re psychic. Don’t e-mail him, call him. Please .”

“All right, Pam.” I felt very tired. Not to mention frustrated and pissed off.

“All right what?”

“All right, I’m hearing you. You’re coming in loud and clear. No misunderstandings whatsoever. Perish the goddam thought. All I wanted was to save Tom Riley’s life.”

To that she had no answer. And no rational explanation for what I had known about Tom, either. So that was where we left it. My thought as I hung up the phone was No good deed goes unpunished.

Maybe it was hers, too.

I felt angry and lost. The dank, dreary weather didn’t help. I tried to paint and couldn’t. I went downstairs, took up one of my sketch-pads, and found myself reduced to the sort of doodles I’d done in my other life while taking phone calls: cartoon shmoos with big ears. I was about to toss the pad aside in disgust when the phone rang. It was Wireman.

“Are you coming this afternoon?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said.

“I thought maybe with the rain—”

“I planned on creeping down in the car. I’m certainly not doing squat here.”

“Good. Just don’t plan on Poetry Hour. She’s in the fog.”

“Bad?”

“As bad as I’ve seen her. Disconnected. Drifting. Confused.” He took a deep breath and let it out. It was like listening to a gust of wind blow through the telephone. “Listen, Edgar, I hate to ask this, but could I leave her with you for awhile? Forty-five minutes, tops. The Baumgartens have been having trouble with the sauna — it’s the damned heater — and the guy coming out to fix it needs to show me a cut-off switch or something. And to sign his work-order, of course.”