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So they went downbeach by Hag's Rock - Daddy in
the swimsuit that no longer fit him, and Elizabeth,
and the twins, and Nan MeldaHannah and Maria
were back in school, and Adiebut best not talk
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about herNan Melda was carrying
the red picnic basketInside was the lunch,
sunhats for the girls, Elizabeth's drawing things,
Daddy's spear-pistol, and a few harpoons for it
Daddy puts on his flippers and wades into the
caldo up to his knees and says This is cold! It
better not take long, LibbitTell me where this
fabulous treasure lies
Libbit says I will, but do you promise I can have
the china dolly?
Daddy says Any doll is yours - fair salvage
The muse saw it and the girl painted itSo their
future is set
9 - Candy Brown
i
Two nights later I balenciaga bag painted the ship for the first
time
I called it Girl and Ship to begin with, then Girl
and Ship No1, although neither was its real name;
its real name was Ilse and Ship NoIt was the
Ship series even more than what happened to Candy
Brown that decided me on whether or not to show my
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workIf Nannuzzi wanted to do it, I'd go along
Not because I was seeking what Shakespeare called
"the bubble reputation" (I owe Wireman for that
one), but because I came to understand that
Elizabeth was right: it was better not to let work
pile up on Duma Key
The Ship paintings were goodThey
certainly felt that way when I finished themThey
were also bad, powerful medicineI think I knew
that from the first one, executed during the small
hours of Valentine's cheap rolex watches DayDuring the last night of
Tina Garibaldi's life
ii
The dream wasn't exactly a nightmare, but it was
vivid beyond my power to describe in words,
although I captured some of the feeling on canvas
In that dream and all the ones which followed, it
was always sunsetVast red light filled the west,
reaching high to heaven, where it faded first to
orange, then to a weird greenThe Gulf was nearly
dead calm, with only the smallest and glassiest of
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rollers crossing its surface like respirationIn
the reflected sunset glare, it looked like a huge
socket filled with blood
Silhouetted against that furnace light was a
three-masted derelictThe ship's rotted sails
hung limp with red fire glaring through the holes
and ripsThere was no one alive on vintage cartier watch boardYou
only had to look to know thatThere was a feeling
of hollow menace about the thing, as though it had
housed some plague that had burned through the
crew, leaving only this rotting corpse of wood,
hemp, and sailclothI remember feeling that if a
gull or pelican flew over it, the bird would drop
dead on the deck with its feathers smoking
Floating about forty yards away was a small
rowboatSitting in it was a girl, her back to me
Her hair was red, but the hair was false - no live
girl had tangled yarn hair like thatWhat gave
away her identity was the dress she woreIt was
covered with tic-tac-toe grids and the printed
words I WIN, YOU WIN, over and overIlse had that
dress when she was four or fiveabout the age
of the twin girls in the family portrait cheap mulberry handbags I'd seen
391
on the second floor landing of El Palacio de
Asesinos
I tried to shout, to warn her not to go near the
derelictIn any case
it didn't seem to matterShe only sat there in
her sweet little rowboat on the mild red rollers,
watching and wearing Illy's tic-tac-toe dress
I fell out of my bed, and on my bad sideI 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 fendi spy bag replica h |
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