He says I'm her
sole beneficiary
iii
I punched 0 for the hotel operatorAfter a short
wait, she gave me the number of the Abbot-Wexler
Funeral ParlorA robot answered,
offering me a truly amazing array of deathoriented
services ("For Casket Showroom, push 5")
I waited it out - the offer for an actual human
being always comes last these days, a booby-prize
for boobs who can't cope with the twenty-first
century - and while I waited I thought about
Wireman's messageThe house unlocked? Really? My
post-accident memory was unreliable, of course,
but habit wasn'tBig Pink did not belong to me,
and I had been taught since earliest childhood to
take especial care of what belonged to othersI
was pretty sure I had locked the houseSo if
someone had been inside, why hadn't the door quilted chanel purse been
forced?
I thought for just a moment of two little girls in
wet dresses - little girls with decayed faces who
spoke in the grating voice of the shells under the
776
house - and then pushed the image away with a
shudderThey had been only imagination, surely,
the vision of an overstrained mindAnd even if
they had been something moreghosts didn't have
to unlock doors, did they? They simply passed
right through, or drifted up through the
floorboards
By God, I had almost missed my cueI pushed 0,
and after a few bars of something that sounded
vaguely like "Abide with Me," a professionally
soothing voice asked if it could help meI
suppressed an irrational and very strong urge to
say: It's my arm! It's never had a decent burial!
and hang upInstead, cradling the phone chanel black handbags and
rubbing a spot over my right eyebrow, I asked if
Jerome Wireman was there
"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 The voice warmed, became
provisionally human"He and his young friend have
777
stepped out - they were going to work on Ms
Eastlake's obituary, I believeI may have a
message for youWill you hold?"
I held"Abide with Me" resumedDigger the
Undertaker eventually returnedWireman asks
if you would join him andCandoori,
if possible, at your place on Duma Key at two this
afternoonIt says, 'If you arrive first, please
wait outside' Have you got that?"
"I doYou don't know if he'll be back?"
"No, he didn't say
I thanked him and cartier pasha watch hung upIf 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
oneI dug the number out of my wallet and dialed
itIt 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 billEither 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
778
But I already had a pretty good idea about what
was in the basket, and I doubted if Wireman had
been surprised, either
iv
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 chanel jewellery I was goneThey had been
holding a meeting
"We're going back," Pam said"That is, most of us
areThe 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 smiledI felt the strangest mixture of relief,
disappointment, and fearAt the same time I could
feel the bands that had been tightening in my head
779
come unlocked and start dropping awayThe
incipient headache was gone, just like thatIt
could have been the Zomig, but the stuff usually
doesn't work that fast, even with a caffeine-laced
drink to give it a knock off chanel earrings boo

I cried
out in pain and rolled over on my back, listening
to the waves from outside and the soft grinding of
the shells under the houseThey told me where I
was but did not comfort me
My missing arm seemed to burnI had to put a stop
to it or go crazy, and there was only one way to
do thatI went upstairs and painted like a
lunatic for the next three hoursI had no model
on my table, no object in view out my windowIt was all in my headAnd as I
worked, I realized this was what all the pictures
had been struggling towardNot the girl in the
rowboat, necessarily; she was probably just an
added attraction, a toehold in realityIt was the
392
ship I had been after all alongThe ship and the
sunsetWhen I thought back, I realized the irony
of that: Hello, the pencil-sketch I'd made on the
day I came, had been the replica chanel earrings closest
iii
I tumbled into bed around three-thirty and slept
until nineI woke feeling refreshed, cleaned out,
brand-newThe weather was fine: cloudless and
warmer than it had been in a weekThe Baumgartens
were getting ready to return north, but I had a
spirited game of Frisbee with their boys on the
beach before they leftMy appetite was high, my
pain-level lowIt was nice to feel like one of
the guys again, even for an hour
Elizabeth's weather had also clearedI read her a
number of poems while she arranged her chinas
Wireman was there, caught up for once and in good
spiritsThe world felt fine that dayIt occurred
to me only later that George "Candy" Brown might
well have been abducting twelve-year-old Tina
Garibaldi at the same time I was reading Richard
Wilbur's poem about laundry, "Love Calls Us to black gucci bags the
393
Things of the World," to ElizabethI chose it
because I happened to see an item in that day's
paper saying it had become something of a
Valentine's Day favoriteThe Garibaldi kidnapping
happened to be recordedIt occurred at exactly
3:16 PM, according to the time-stamp on the tape,
and that would have been just about the time I
paused to sip from my glass of Wireman's green tea
and unfold the Wilbur poem, which I had printed
off the Internet
There were closed-circuit cameras installed to
watch the loading-dock areas behind the Crossroads
MallTo guard against pilferage, I supposeWhat
they caught in this case was the pilferage of a
child's lifeShe comes into view crossing right
to left, a slim kid dressed in jeans with a pack
on her backShe was probably planning to duck
into the mall before going the rest of cartier tank must the way
homeOn the tape, which the TV stations replayed
obsessively, you see him emerge from a rampway and
take her by the wristShe turns her face up to
his and appears to ask him a questionBrown nods
in reply and leads her awayAt first she's not
struggling, but then - just before they disappear
394
behind a Dumpster - she attempts to pull freeBut
he's still holding her firmly by the wrist when
they disappear from the camera's viewHe killed
her less than six hours later, according to the
county medical examiner, but judging by the
terrible evidence of her body, those hours must
have seemed very long to that little girl, who
never harmed anyoneThey must have seemed endless
Outside the open window, The morning air is all
awash with angels, Richard Wilbur writes in "Love
Calls Us to the Things of the new chanel bags World
Those were only sheets
iv
The Baumgartens departedThe Godfreys' dogs
barked them goodbyeA Merry Maids crew went into
the house where the Baumgartens had been staying
and gave it a good cleaningThe Godfreys' dogs
barked them hello (and goodbye)Tina Garibaldi's
body was found in a ditch behind the Wilk Park
Little League field, naked from the waist down and
discarded like a bag of garbageHer mother was
395
shown on Channel 6 screaming and harrowing at her
cheeksThe Kintners replaced the BaumgartensThe
folks from Toledo vacated #39 and three pleasant
old ladies from Michigan moved inThe old ladies
laughed a lot and actually said Yoo-hoo when they
saw me or Wireman comingI have no idea if they
put the newly installed Wi-Fi at #39 to use or not,
but the first time I played Scrabble with them,
they fed me my cartier watches lun

What seemed like a thousand
wrinkles creased her face, turning her into a
benign witchI never even glimpsed the house
behind her; I was still trying to cope with her
sudden appearance, her cool blue sneakers, her
delta of wrinkles, and her -
"Daddy, was that a gun?" Ilse was looking into the
rear-view mirror, wide-eyed"Did that old lady
have a gun?"
153
The car was drifting, and I saw a real possibility
of clipping the hacienda's far cornerI touched
the wheel and made a course correctionMind your driving, honeyThere
ain't much road in this road
She faced front againWe'd been driving in bright
sunshine, but that ended with the black chanel quilted bag hacienda's wall
"What do you mean, of a kind?"
"It looked likeI don't know, a crossbow-pistolMaybe she shoots snakes with it
"Thank God she smiled," Ilse said"And it was a
great smile, wasn't it?"
I nodded
The hacienda was the last house on Duma Key's open
north endBeyond it, the road swung inland and
the foliage crowded up in a way I found first
interesting, then awesome, then claustrophobic
The masses of greenery towered to a height of
twelve feet at least, the round leaves streaked a
dark vermillion that looked like dried blood
"What is that stuff, Daddy?"
"SeagrapeThe green stuff with the yellow flowers
is called cartier tank watch wedeliaThere's
154
also rhododendronThe trees are mostly just slash
pine, I think, although-"
She slowed to a crawl and pointed to the left,
craning to look up through the corner of the
windshield to do so"Those are palms of some kind
The road bent still farther inland, and here the
trunks flanking the road looked like knotted
masses of gray ropeTheir roots had buckled the
tarWe'd be able to get over now, I judged, but
cars passing this way a few years hence? No way
"Strangler fig," I said
"Nice name, right out of Alfred HitchcockAnd
they just grow wild?"
"I don't know," I said
She bumped the Chevy carefully over the tunneling
roots and chanel sac drove onWe were down to no more than
five miles an hourThere was more strangler fig
growing out of the masses of seagrape and
rhododendronThe high growth cast the road into
deep shadowIt was impossible to see any distance
at all on either sideExcept for an occasional
wedge of blue or errant sunray, even the sky was
goneAnd now we began to see sprays of sawgrass
155
and tough, waxy fiddlewood growing right up
through cracks in the tar
My arm began to itchThe one that wasn't thereI
reached to scratch it without thinking and only
scratched my still-sore ribs, as I always didAt
the same time the left side of my head started costume chanel jewelry to
itchThat I could scratch, and did
"Daddy?"
"I'm okayWhy are you stopping?"
"BecauseI don't feel so great myself
Nor, I realized, did she look itHer complexion
had gone almost as white as the dab of zinc oxide
on her nose"Ilse? What is it?"
"My stomachI'm starting to have serious
questions about that tuna salad I made for lunch
She gave me a sickly coming-down-with-the-flu
smile"I'm also wondering how I'm going to get us
out of hereAll at once the seagrape
seemed to be pushing in and the interweaving palms
overhead seemed thickerI realized I could smell
the growth around us, a ropy aroma that seemed to
come to life halfway down my balenciaga twiggy thr

"As long as he is
still addressing one by one's surname, one
knows But now she seemed lost, and her smile
began to falter
"That it's time to watch Oprah," Wireman said, and
took her armTogether they turned her walker away
from the play-table, and she began to clump with
surprising speed toward a door in the far end of
the roomHe walked watchfully beside her
Her "television room" was dominated by a big flatscreen
SamsungAt the other end of the room was a
stack of expensive sound componentsI hardly
noticed either oneI was looking at the framed
sketch on the wall above the shelves of CDs, and
for a few seconds I forgot to breathe
The sketch was just pencil, augmented by two
scarlet threads, probably added with nothing more
than a plain red ballpoint pen - the kind teachers
267
use to grade papersThese not-quite-offhand
scribbles had been laid chanel bags to buy along the horizon-line of
the Gulf to indicate sunset
They were genius writ smallIt was my horizon,
the one I saw from Little PinkI knew that just
as I knew the artist had been listening to the
shells grind steadily beneath him as he turned
blank white paper into what his eye saw and his
mind translatedOn the horizon was a ship,
probably a tankerIt could have been the very one
I'd drawn my first evening at Number 13 Duma Key
RoadThe style was nothing at all like mine, but
the choice of subject-matter was damn near
identical
Scribbled almost carelessly at the bottom: Salv
Dal?
iv
Miss Eastlake - Elizabeth - had her cigarette
while Oprah questioned Kirstie Alley on the always
fascinating subject of weight-lossWireman
produced egg salad sandwiches, which were
deliciousMy eyes kept straying to the framed
268
Dal? sketch, and I kept thinking - of d

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, MrA cold drink
wouldn't hurt, eitherYou look really tired
iv
The traveling had caught up with me, and I was
more than tiredBy 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 yetAs Jack went
back and forth, stowing my bags in the bigger of
the two bedrooms and putting the laptop on the
75
desk in the smaller one, my eye kept being drawn
to the living vintage omega watches room's western wall, which was all
glass, and the Florida room beyond it, and the
Gulf of Mexico beyond thatIt was a vast blue
expanse, flat as a plate on that hot November
afternoon, and even with the sliding glass windowwall
shut, I could hear its mild and steady
sighingI thought, It has no memoryIt was an
odd thought, and strangely optimisticWhen 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 houseI hope top chanel bags that's okay with you
"Two per cent milk-"
"Also fine
" - and Half-n-HalfI can get you real cream next
time, if you want it
"You want to clog my one remaining artery?"
76
He laughed"There's a little pantry with all
kinds of canned shiThe 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 itHe was a good kid, but I wanted
to listen to the Gulf, sweet-talking me with words
it wouldn't remember a minute laterAnd I wanted
to listen to the house, see if it had anything to
sayI 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 buy chanel bag the fridgeI'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 I reached in my pocket and brought out my
money-clip"I want to give you a little extraThis is a sweet gig, MrGood pay and good hoursI'd feel like
a hound taking any extra
77
That made me laugh, and I put my dough back in my
pocket
"Maybe you ought to take a nap," he said, getting
up 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 drinkWhat happened
to the other one?"
"Far as chanel logo necklace I know, it's still thereAlthough if a
big storm like Charley ever hits this part of the
coast dead-on, it's gonna be like a going-out-ofbusiness
sale: everything must go He walked over
to me, and stuck out his hand
Freemantle, welcome to FloridaI hope it treats
you real well I hesitated,
probably not long enough for him to notice, and I
didn't get angry"Thanks for
everything He gave me the smallest of puzzled looks
as he went out, so maybe he did noticeMaybe he
78
did notice, at thatI was on my
own at lastI listened to shells and gravel
popping under his tires as his car started to roll
I listened to the motor fade
Now there was only the mild steady sighing of the
GulfAnd the beat of my own heart, soft and fendi b bag