"Did you ever see that experiment they do with the Ping-Pong balls and mousetraps?" Arty Magnus asked his eager but ungifted protege, Freddy McClintock. "They set about a zillion traps, load 'em with Ping Pong balls instead of cheese. Then they drop in one tiny, almost weightless Ping-Pong ball. It lands on a trap and sets it off. Now you've got two balls clattering around. Then four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two, infinity. It takes about one deep breath to happen, and with all the snapping springs and flying balls and mayhem it very soon becomes impossible to figure out how the whole goddamn thing got started."
The young reporter used the eraser end of his pencil to coax his red hair back from his sweaty forehead. "And you're saying that's how news spreads?"
"Very good, Freddy," said Arty Magnus. He swiveled in his editor's chair, put his feet on the air conditioner that dribbled water more than it pushed air, and wished that he was somewhere else. "You're catching on."
McClintock beamed. He was proud of himself for finding confirmation of the Augie Silver story, though all he'd done was put himself, quite by chance, on a collision course with the bouncing bit of news.
Ray Yates and Robert Natchez, having heard last night's messages from Clay Phipps, had convened for breakfast at Raul's. Their waitress was a lush who finished her workday at 3 p.m. and promptly repaired to the Clove Hitch bar. Making chitchat with Hogfish Mike, she told him of the miracle return she'd heard the two discussing. Curran, amazed that anyone could survive being sucked into a waterspout, told the tale to several customers, Jimmy Gibbs among them. McClintock, nosing around the charter-boat docks somewhat aimlessly, picked up the yarn from a group of skippers who had no customers that day.
"So I'll do a follow-up?" McClintock asked.
"What do you have to add?" said Arty Magnus.
"That the rumor was true," said the young reporter. "That I was right."
"You think anyone gives a flying crap you were right?"
McClintock's hips moved but he found he had no answer. There were in fact some new parts to the story, but the local newshound, moving in his small domain, hadn't collided with them. He didn't know who Claire Steiger was, or that she had spent that morning strategizing with the small group of allies she despised and badly needed. He didn't know that Jimmy Gibbs, now jobless and having torched his bridges, had, in his provincial purity, called Sotheby's to ask if the auction could still be held if the painter was alive.
"Let it rest a day or two," said Arty Magnus. He looked up and saw how crestfallen young McClintock was. That was the bitch of playing mentor: seeing people become disillusioned without getting any smarter. "Look," he said more gently, "if you're right, you'll still be right in forty-eight hours. If he's alive, he'll be alive. What's the hurry?"
During those forty-eight hours, Augie Silver seemed quietly to break through some mysterious barrier that had been retarding his recovery. His ravaged body grew cleverer at relearning things, battered organs remembered their functions, and he felt a mute animal joy at the wonder of recuperation. That a broken thing could fix itself-this was as marvelous a fact as anything under heaven.
He began to sit outside in the mornings, before the days had grown too beastly hot. Reuben brought him coffee and fruit in the shade of the poinciana tree. Augie watched the shadows move across the yard, looked at cloud reflections in the swimming pool when the wind was very still. Sometimes he sketched-pencil drawings of flowers and shrubs, quick life studies of Reuben which he would sign with a flourish then give the young man to take home. When the sun got high, Augie would go inside to nap, and the naps now seemed like earned rest from some activity rather than a mere slipping backward into helpless exhaustion.
On the fourth of June, the convalescent had his best day yet. He ate. He drew. He strolled around his yard on legs that did not tremble. Midday, he took siesta and was ecstatically awakened by the tropical music of a fierce brief downpour clattering on the roof.
That evening, when Nina came home, there were high spirits in the house. Augie's health was a shared crusade, a common mission; everyone partook of his invigoration, as though he were a racehorse. Reuben allowed himself a flush of knightly pride in his care and vigilance. Nina's face softened, the tension in her jaw diminished as she stroked her husband's forehead and found it neither cold nor feverish.
For a little while they sat out by the pool, the three of them. Nina had a glass of wine. Reuben accepted a bit of rum. Augie asked for Scotch and was allowed a few drops in a lot of water. "Cutty Sark," said Fred the parrot as he perched on the back of a lawn chair.
"Bullshit," said Augie. "H-two-O."
The sky dimmed and deepened to a jewel-box blue, and Reuben the Cuban got up to leave.
Augie Silver, the green parrot perched upon his shoulder, began the long slow stroll to bed.
Outside the front door, just on his right as he exited, Reuben found a small bakery box with a card taped on top. He picked it up and brought it in to Nina. "Look what someone left," he said.
Nina opened the card. Small neat handwriting she didn't recognize said, "A Speedy Recovery." Inside the little box was a single Key lime tart, the authentic kind that's yellow, not the tourist kind that's green.
"How nice," said Nina. "I wonder who brought it."
Reuben shrugged and smiled. He didn't know, but it made him happy that there were others who agreed that Augie Silver was a great man and who wished him well. He said good night again and slipped away.
Nina took the tart out of the box and put it on a plate. Augie loved Key lime, anything Key lime. She was happy to get more food into him, coax another few ounces back onto his frame. She carried the treat toward the bedroom, and before she'd even reached the doorway, she sang out, "Dessert, Augie. Someone brought dessert."
Augie was already in bed, he had the sheet pulled hallway up his sunken white-haired chest. He'd lit the hurricane lamp on the bedside table; it cast a weird light on the parrot's belly as the bird sidestepped on its perch.
"I want to make love with you, Nina," the painter said. "I want to try."
His wife swallowed, couldn't breathe, couldn't move. The last light made soft blue boxes of the windows. A barely visible wisp of smoke came through the chimney of the lamp. Nina tried to say something but Augie put a finger across his own lips and she didn't get as far as making words. They held each other's eyes a long moment, then Nina absently put the plate down on the bedside table and began to undress. She'd almost forgotten this part of nakedness: being seen, becoming ready. Lamplight played on her flanks, gleamed on her breasts and cast shadows in her hollows, and for the first time in a long time she felt beautiful.
She got into bed next to her husband. His skin was hot and taut, as if pinched and tucked against his bones, but it was still his skin, she recognized it, she nestled close against his chest. They kissed, and through his lean lips, parched and cracked, she remembered the way of his kissing, the taste of his mouth was as it had always been. He touched her and their bodies remembered things together, struggled back from loss, pain, grief, disease, redeemed each other from deadness and laughed at incapacity from the high vantage of long love.
Afterwards they cried a little in each other's arms, and after that they slept, slept so soundly that they didn't hear a scuffling as Fred the parrot came down off his perch and ate the Key lime tart, and didn't hear the feathered thump as the bird dropped stone dead on the floor.