Stephen King - Duma Key

“Yes?” Her voice was impossible to read.

I drew in a breath and jumped. God hates a coward, Wireman says. Among other things. “I called to say thanks. I was being a horse’s ass. Your jumping in like that was what I needed.”

The silence was long enough for me to wonder if maybe she’d quietly hung up at some point. Then she said, “I’m still here, Eddie — I’m just picking myself up off the floor. I can’t remember the last time you apologized to me.”

Had I apologized? Well… never mind. Close enough, maybe. “Then I’m sorry about that, too,” I said.

“I owe you an apology myself,” she said, “so I guess this one’s a wash.”

“You? What do you have to apologize for?”

“Tom Riley called. Just two days ago. He’s back on his meds. He’s going to, I quote, ‘see someone’ again — by which I assume he means a shrink — and he called to thank me for saving his life. Have you ever had someone call and thank you for that?”

“No.” Although I’d recently had someone call and thank me for saving his sight, so I kind of knew what she was talking about.

“It’s quite an experience. ‘If not for you I’d be dead now.’ Those were his exact words. And I couldn’t tell him he had you to thank, because it would have sounded crazy.”

It was as if a tight belt cinching my middle had suddenly been cut away. Sometimes things work out for the best. Sometimes they actually do. “That’s good, Pam.”

“I’ve been on to Ilse about this show of yours.”

“Yes, I—”

“Well, Illy and Lin both, but when I talked to Ilse, I turned the conversation toward Tom and I could tell right away that she doesn’t know anything about what went on between the two of us. I was wrong about that, too. And showed a very unpleasant side of myself while I was at it.”

I realized, with alarm, that she was crying. “Pam, listen.”

“I’ve shown several unlovely sides of myself, to several people, since you left me.”

I didn’t leave you! I almost shouted. And it was close. Close enough to make sweat pop out on my forehead. I didn’t leave you, you asked for a divorce, you witting quench!

What I said was “Pam, that’s enough.”

“But it was so hard to believe, even after you called and told me those other things. You know, about my new TV. And Puffball.”

I started to ask who Puffball was, then remembered the cat.

“I’m doing better, though. I’ve started going to church again. Can you believe that? And a therapist. I see her once a week.” She paused, then rushed on. “She’s good. She says a person can’t close the door on the past, she can only make amends and go on. I understood that, but I didn’t know how to start making amends to you, Eddie.”

“Pam, you don’t owe me any—”

“My therapist says it isn’t about what you think, it’s about what I think.”

“I see.” That sounded a lot like the old Pam, so maybe she’d found the right therapist.

“And then your friend Wireman called and told me you needed help… and he sent me those pictures. I can’t wait to see the actual things. I mean, I knew you had some talent, because you used to draw those little books for Lin when she was so sick that year—”

“I did?” I remembered Melinda’s sick year; she’d had one infection after another, culminating in a massive bout of diarrhea, probably brought on by too many antibiotics, that had landed her in the hospital for a week. She lost ten pounds that spring. If not for summer vacation — and her own grade-A intelligence — she would have needed to repeat the second grade. But I couldn’t remember drawing any little books.

“Freddy the Fish? Carla the Crab? Donald the Timid Deer?”

Donald the Timid Deer rang a very faint bell, way down deep, but… “No,” I said.

“Angel thought you should try to get them published, don’t you remember? But these … my God. Did you know you could do it?”

“No. I started thinking something might be there when I was at the place on Lake Phalen, but it’s gone farther than I thought it would.” I thought of Wireman Looks West and the mouthless, noseless Candy Brown and thought I’d just uttered the understatement of the century.

“Eddie, will you let me do the rest of the invitations the way I did the sample? I can customize them, make them nice.”

“Pa—” Almost Panda again. “Pam, I can’t ask you to do that.”

“I want to.”

“Yeah? Then okay.”

“I’ll write them and e-mail them to Mr. Wireman. You can check them over before he prints them. He’s quite a jewel, your Mr. Wireman.”

“Yes,” I said. “He is. The two of you really ganged up on me.”

“We did, didn’t we?” She sounded delighted. “You needed it. Only you have to do something for me.”

“What?”

“You have to call the girls, because they’re going crazy, Ilse in particular. Okay?”

“Okay. And Pam?”

“What, hon?” I’m sure she said it without thinking, without knowing how it could cut. Ah, well — she probably felt the same when she heard my pet name for her coming up from Florida, growing colder with every mile it sped north.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Totally welcome.”

It was only quarter to eleven when we said goodbye and hung up. Time never went faster that winter than it did during my evenings in Little Pink — standing at my easel, I’d wonder how the colors in the west could possibly fade so fast — and it never went slower than it did that morning, when I made the phone calls I’d been putting off. I swallowed them one after the other, like medicine.

I looked at the cordless sitting in my lap. “Fuck you, phone,” I said, and started dialing again.

“Scoto Gallery, this is Alice.”

A cheery voice I’d come to know well over the last ten days.

“Hi, Alice, it’s Edgar Freemantle.”

“Yes, Edgar?” Cheery became cautious. Had that cautious note been there before? Had I just ignored it?

I said, “If you have a couple of minutes, I wonder if we could talk about ordering the slides at the lecture.”

“ Yes, Edgar, we certainly could.” The relief was palpable. It made me feel like a hero. Of course it also made me feel like a rat.

“Have you got a pad handy?”

“You bet your tailfeathers!”

“Okay. Basically, we’re going to want them in chronological order—”

“But I don’t know the chronology, I’ve been trying to tell you th—”

“I know, and I’m going to give it to you now, but listen, Alice: the first slide won’t be chronological. The first should be of Roses Grow from Shells . Have you got that?”

“ Roses Grow from Shells . I’ve got it.” For only the second time since meeting me, Alice sounded genuinely happy that we were talking.

“Now, the pencil sketches,” I said.

We talked for the next half an hour.

“ Oui, allô? ”

For a moment I said nothing. The French threw me a little. The fact that it was a young man’s voice threw me more.

“ Allô, allô? ” Impatient now. “Qui est à l’appareil?”

“Mmm, maybe I have the wrong number,” I said, feeling not just like an asshole but a monolingual American asshole. “I was trying to reach Melinda Freemantle.”

“ D’accord, you have the right number.” Then, off a little: “Melinda! C’est ton papa, je crois, chérie. ”

The phone went down with a clunk. I had a momentary image — very clear, very politically incorrect, and very likely brought on by Pam’s mention of the cartoon books I’d once drawn for a little sick girl — of a large talking skunk in a beret, Monsieur Pepé Le Pew, strutting around my daughter’s pension (if that was the word for a bedsitter-type apartment in Paris) with wavy aroma lines rising from his white-striped back.