I suspected a
coffee pot, a breakfast tray, or... I suspected a
coffee pot, a breakfast tray, or bothI further
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suspected they came from the huge hacienda with
the acre or so of orange tiled roofThat was the
last house visible on Duma Key before the road ran
into the enthusiastic overgrowth that covered most
of the island
iv
I couldn't quite get used to the emptiness of the
place"It's supposed to be very quiet," Sandy
Smith had told me, but I had still pictured the
beach filling up by midday: couples sunning on
blankets and slathering each other with tanning
lotion, college kids playing volleyball with iPods
strapped to their biceps, little kids in saggy
swimsuits paddling at the edge of the water while
Jet-Skis buzzed back and forth forty feet out
Jack reminded me that it was only December"When
it comes to Florida tourism," he said, "the month
between Thanksgiving and Christmas is Morgue City
Not as bad as August, but
vintage omega watches still pretty dead He gestured with his armWe were
standing out by the mailbox with the red 13 on it,
me leaning on my crutch, Jack looking sporty in a
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pair of denim cut-offs and a fashionably tattered
Tampa Devil Rays shirt"It's not exactly tourist
country hereSee any trained dolphins? What you
got is seven houses, counting that big 'un down
thereWhere there's another
house falling apart, by the wayThat's according
to some of the stories I've heard on Casey Key
"What's with Duma, Jack? Nine miles of prime
Florida real estate, a great beach, and it's never
been developed? What's up with that?"
He shrugged"Some kind of long-running legal
dispute is all I knowWant me to see if I can
find out?"
I thought about it, then shook my head
"Do you mind it?" Jack looked honestly curious
"All the quiet? Because it'd get on my nerves a
little, to tell you the God's honest And that
cartier pasha watch was the truth
Healing is a kind of revolt, and as I think I've
said, all successful revolts begin in secret
"What do you do? If you don't mind me asking?"
"Exercise in the morningsSleep in the
afternoonsI may eventually try
painting, but I'm not ready for that yet
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"Some of your stuff looks pretty good for an
amateur
"Thank you, Jack, that's very kind
I didn't know if kind was all he was being or if
he was telling me his version of the truthMaybe
it didn't matterWhen it comes to things like
pictures, it's always just someone's opinion,
isn't it? I only knew that something was going on
for meSometimes it felt a little
scaryMostly it felt pretty goddam wonderful
I did most of my drawing upstairs, in the room I'd
come to think of as Little PinkThe only view
from there was of the Gulf and that flat horizonline,
but I had a digital camera and I took
pictures of other things
chanel j12 sometimes, printed them
out, clipped them to my easel (which Jack and I
turned so the strong afternoon light would strike
across the paper), and drew that stuffThere was
no rhyme or reason to those snapshots, although
when I told Kamen this in an e-mail, he responded
that the unconscious mind writes poetry if it's
left alone
108
I drew my mailboxI drew the stuff growing around
Big Pink, then had Jack buy me a book - Common
Plants of the Florida Coast - so I could put names
to my picturesNaming seemed to help - to add
power, somehowBy then I was on my second box of
colored pencilsand I had a third waiting in
the wingsThere was aloe vera; sea lavender with
its bursts of tiny yellow flowers (each possessing
a tiny heart of deepest violet); inkberry with its
long spade-shaped leaves; and my favorite, sophora,
which Common Plants of the Florida Coast also
identified as
fendi spy bags necklace-bush, for the tiny podlike
necklaces that grow on its branchesThere were
shells everywhere, an eternity of shells just
within my limited walking distanceDuma Key was
made of shells, and soon I'd brought back dozens
And almost every night when the sun went down, I
drew the sunsetI knew sunsets were a cliché, and
that's why I did themIt seemed to me that if I
could break through that wall of been-there-donethat
even once, I might be getting somewhereSo I
piled up picture after picture, and none of them
looked like muchI tried overlaying Venus Yellow
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with Venus Orange again, but subsequent efforts
didn't workThe sullen furnace-glow was always
missingEach sunset was only a penciled piece of
shit where the colors said I'm trying to tell you
the horizon's on fireYou could undoubtedly have
bought forty better ones at any sidewalk art show
on a Saturday in Sarasota or Venice
coco chanel jewelry Bea