Scavenger Reef(30)

"Will he die?"

Rucker folded his hands and skidded his huge chair a little closer to the desk. "Eventually," he said. "But he hasn't died yet, and I'm not going to bet against him now. I think he'll recover, I think he's got a good shot at a normal life span. But he needs a very long and very total rest. He's got to get the weight back. If he can't do it at home, he's got to go to the hospital—"

"He doesn't want to do that."

"He's made that clear," said Rucker. "That's why I'm making it a threat. He has to eat. He has to drink. And he has to be totally shielded from stress."

Nina Silver straightened up, willed her mind to clear, and looked at Manny Rucker with a kind of defiance. She loved her husband. She would protect him, care for him, heal him. For this she didn't need diplomas, certificates, prescription pads. "He'll be best off at home," she said. Then her expression softened and she almost smiled. "Besides, this is Key West. What kind of stress could there possibly be?"





16


What kind of stress?

For starters, the subtle subliminal stress of finding oneself the subject of rumors, whispers, the sort of breathless gossip that attends such odd occurrences as a slightly famous neighbor's return from the dead.

Nothing could be clearer than that Augie Silver was not yet ready for company, much less a full-scale reemergence into society. When Nina bundled her husband into their seldom-used old Saab and drove him to Manny Rucker's Fleming Street office, it was with the intention of getting him there and back again unseen.

But Key West is a small place, a sparse place, and little that belongs to it goes unnoticed. Politics, economics, world events go largely unnoticed, being the province of the chill, drear world north of mile marker five. Tourists go unnoticed, because they are not of the town and no one cares what happens to them or what they do; they pass through as undifferentiated parcels of sunburn and noise.

It is a very different thing among the few thousand people who are truly of the place, who are the place. Unconsciously and unfailingly, they recognize each other against the backdrop of faceless transients, they pick each other out as though by some invisible genetic marking. And the Silvers, husband and wife, were very much of the place, distinctive and familiar by dozens of small details: her square-cut jet-black hair; his archaic penchant for corduroy. His meandering Socratic walk; the French net shopping bag she used for groceries. Her gallery; his death. They were known.

So it was inevitable they'd be seen as they passed, even briefly, on such a busy sidewalk as that of Fleming one block up from Duval.

The first person to see them was Lindy Barnes, a checker at Fausto's market. She did a quick and bashful double take, and later told her colleagues across the cashiers' aisles that it had to be the husband, the painter you know, I mean he looked like an old dirtbag, stooped and sick, but really who else could it be?

The second person to see them was Claire Davidson, the head teller at the downtown branch of Keys Marine. She was not a chatterbox, but it was part of her job to recognize faces and remember names, and the real or apparent return of Augie Silver was not something she could quite keep to herself.

By the end of the business day, perhaps a hundred people had heard the rumor, and one of them was Freddy McClintock, an eager young reporter for the Key West Sentinel. With a newsman's fine and fitting lack of decency, he decided to call the Silver home.

When the phone rang, Nina was sitting on the edge of the bed urging Augie to drink some broth. He'd managed two sips. Fred the parrot was on his perch, nuzzling his wing pit with his beak and adding a new sound to his idiot vocabulary. "Eat," squawked the bird. "Jack Daniel's. Eat, eat."

Nina went to the living room and picked up the receiver. "Hello?"

"Mrs. Silvers?"

"Silver."

"Yes. This is Freddy McClintock, Key West Sentinel—"

"Thank you, we don't want a subscription."

"We? Did you say we?"

Nina pulled the phone a few inches from her ear. Caution was not a habit with her, not since she'd left New York, nor was the feeling that she had anything to hide. "What is it you want?" she asked.

The reporter cleared his throat. "I've heard from a couple of sources that your husband has been seen. Alive."

Nina said nothing.

"And I thought it'd make a terrific story," McClintock went on. " 'Key West's Own Lazarus.' Or Jonah. Maybe Jonah would be better. He was lost at sea, wasn't he?"

"What if your rumor's wrong, Mr. McClintock? What if you're talking to a widow?"

"Am I?" the reporter countered. "Is your husband alive, Mrs. Silver?"