Then I asked if Elizabeth had told him all of...
Then I asked if
Elizabeth had told him all of thisAnd she's mixed up about what she
does rememberI found a passing mention of an
incident that had to be the right one on a Web
site dedicated to Gulf coast historyHad a little
e-mail correspondence with a guy who's a librarian
in Tampa Wireman raised his hands and waggled
his fingers in a typing mime"Tessie and Laura
EastlakeThe librarian sent me a copy of the
Tampa paper from April 19th, 1927The headline on
the front page is very stark, very bleak, very
chillingElizabeth would have been four,
old enough to understand what had happenedMaybe
old enough to read a newspaper headline as simple
as THEY ARE chanel white j12 watch GONEThe twins dead and Adriana, the
oldest, eloped off to Atlanta with one of his
plant managersno wonder John had had enough of
Duma for awhileHe and the remaining three moved
to MiamiMany years later, he moved back here to
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die, and Miss Eastlake cared for him"Pretty much as I'm caring for her
do you see why an old lady with onset-Alzheimer's
might consider Duma a bad place for daughters?"
"I guess so, but how does an old lady with onset-
Alzheimer's find the phone number of her new
tenant?"
Wireman gave me a sly look"New tenant, old
number, autodial function on all the phones back
there He jerked his thumb over his shoulder
"Any other questions?"
I gaped wholesale tiffany at him"She has me on autodial?"
"Don't blame me; I came in late on this movie-show
My guess is that the Realtor who handles things
for her programmed the rental properties into the
phonesOr maybe Miss Eastlake's business manager
He pops down from StPetersburg every six weeks
or so to make sure she's not dead and I'm not
stealing the SpodeI'll ask him the next time he
shows up
"So she can call any house on the north end of the
Key at the touch of a buttonI mean, they are all hers"But you know what, muchacho? I
250
think your button is going to have a little
nervous breakdown this evening
"No," I said, not even thinking about it
"Ah," Wireman said, exactly as gucci paolo watch if he understood
And who knows, maybe he did"Anyway, that
explains your mystery caller - although I have to
tell you, explanations have a way of thinning out
on Duma KeyAs your story demonstrates
"What do you mean? Have you hadexperiences?"
He looked at me squarely, his large tanned face
inscrutableThe chilly late January wind gusted,
blowing sand around our anklesIt also lifted his
hair, once again revealing the coin-shaped scar
above his right templeI wondered if someone had
poked him with the neck of a bottle, maybe in a
bar fight, and tried to imagine someone getting
mad at this manexperiences," he said, and
hooked the first two fingers of each hand chanel necklace into
little quotation marks"It's what makes children
intoAlso what gives English teachers
something to bullshit about in first year Each time with the air-quotes
251
Okay, he didn't want to talk about it, at least
not thenSo I asked him how much of my story he
believed
He rolled his eyes and sat back in his chair
"Don't try my patience, vatoYou might be
mistaken about a few things, but you ain't nutsI
got a lady up theresweetest lady in the world
and I love her, but sometimes she thinks I'm her
Dad and it's Miami circa nineteen thirty-four
Sometimes she pops one of her china people into a
Sweet Owen cookie-tin and tosses it into the koi
pond behind the tennis bolsas prada c