Via Dolorosa

“No, sir,” Roger said. “The marriage, it didn’t take.”

  “You talk of it as though it were a goddamn organ transplant.”

  “I’m sorry.” Something potent and previously available had suddenly dried up inside Roger, Nick could tell.

  “Crap.” Nick paused, thinking, and looked at his drink. When he finally looked back up at the bartender, he said, “Forget it, man—Roger. It’s none of my goddamn business. None of it is any of my business. Don’t listen to anything I say tonight. I’m sorry.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with some conversation.”

  “Oh, sure,” Nick said. “Nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with that at all.” And he rolled his shoulders—forcefully casual. “It’s just easier to talk about the rain sometimes. Or the—the what?—those bugs.”

  “Cicadas,” Roger said.

  “Cicadas,” he repeated. “Right.”

  “How about another Dewar’s?” Roger, too, sounded just as eager to change topics.

  “That’s something good to talk about, too. Scotch is something good to talk about.”

  “Then I’ll fix you another one.”

  “Let me get it, Roger,” a man said, coming up behind Nick and placing a hand on Nick’s shoulder. It was the bell captain, looking tired and drained and with half-hearted, glassy eyes. He was still in his uniform, though the collar was now unbuttoned and a bloom of steel-colored hair puffed out from his reddened chest. His ample, squat body looked uncomfortable in the uniform—big-bellied, thickly forearmed, simian-knuckled.

  “Nicholas,” said the bell captain.

  “Hello, Mr. Granger,” Nick said, and squeezed the bell captain’s forearm with his left hand. “You don’t have to keep buying me drinks every time I see you.”

  “You will never pay for an alcoholic beverage whenever I’m around, Nicholas,” Granger said. “What you do when you’re on your own, however,” the bell captain continued, “well, that’s another story…”

  “I feel like a mooch.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “At least have a drink with me,” Nick said.

  “It’s been a long day, Nicholas. I think I can manage to actually get some sleep tonight. I’m going to try, anyway. With this storm, we’ve had no one arriving for the past several hours. A lot of cancellations. The hotel is very quiet and I’m going to use it. I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

  “Emma and I ate dinner down here a few hours ago,” he told the bell captain. “I guess everyone’s staying in their rooms. We were the only couple in the place.”

  “I’m glad for the two of you. It can be such a romantic place. The whole island can be romantic.”

  Nick, who did not wish to talk about romance, said, “Just one drink. It isn’t very late.” And before the bell captain could protest further, Nick requested a second scotch from the bartender.

  When the drinks came, the two men drank together and mostly in silence. It seemed the most appropriate way to drink scotch very late at night in a hotel during a thunderstorm. There you go again, he thought to himself. There you go, thinking like an old man. How old do you really think you are, you lousy son of a bitch? Just because you’ve seen some things and just because your good hand has become your bad hand, do you honestly think you’ve lived enough to act and think so old? He knew he was a fool, and knowing this brought a wet little smile to his face. It could have just been the scotch, though.

  “Tell me about Emma, Nicholas,” Granger said. They were both nearing the end of their drinks and it was the first real thing the man had said since he’d sat down. “Tell me about the two of you.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “I want to know what it would be like to be your father, Nicholas, and to sit here and hear about my son and his wife. I want to know what it would be like to be proud and happy for you. I truly am proud and happy for you, Nicholas, but just for one little moment in time I would like to know what it would be like to be proud and happy as your father.”

  Nick did not know what to say and Roger, the bartender, was watching Mr. Granger skeptically.

  “Oh, hell,” Granger said after a moment. Perhaps he, too, felt the awkwardness. It seemed the entire bar was filled with awkwardness tonight. “I’m sorry, Nicholas. That was a lousy thing to say. I’m sorry.”

  “Everyone seems sorry for something tonight,” Nick said from the corner of his mouth.

  “I am,” Granger said.

  “Not a big deal, Mr. Granger,” Nick said.

  Looking up at the bartender, Granger said, “You know the story, don’t you, Roger?”

  “What story is that, sir?”

  “The whole story. The story about Nicholas, here, and my boy. You know that story, don’t you, Roger?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You know about my boy Myles?”

  “Yes, sir,” Roger said. “I’m sorry about that.”

  “Thank you. And I’m sorry for you, too, Roger,” Granger said. “We’re like brothers, you and me. And we need to remain like brothers.” He said, “We’re all sorry and we’re all like brothers.” And the bell captain thumped a small, plump, red fist to his chest. His voice had taken on a peculiar cadence; it sounded the smallest bit hopeful. “Like brothers,” he repeated.

  “Oh yes, sir,” Roger said, nodding without expression.

  “This boy,” Granger said, rising from his stool and referring again to Nick. That hand was back on Nick’s shoulder again, too. Nick could feel the bell captain’s weight against him, righting himself as he stood. Granger said, “This boy.” He said, “Some boy.”

  “It’s nothing,” Nick said, not looking directly at the bell captain.

  “He saved my son’s life,” Granger said to the bartender.

  “Is that true?” Roger said.

  “I didn’t,” Nick interrupted. “Honestly.”

  “He did,” Granger went on. “In Iraq, he did. He’s modest so he won’t tell it like it is, but I know the truth of it and I know what happened. I know because I have it in writing, in handwriting. A medic that worked on my son, he wrote it in a letter just before Myles died. I know that Nicholas tried to save my boy’s life.” Turning back to Nick, and lost in his own approbation, Granger said, “Some boy.”

  “It’s late,” Nick said. “You look tired, Mr. Granger. It’s been a long day, too.”

  “I apologize, Nicholas. I shouldn’t have made you uncomfortable.”

  “You didn’t make me uncomfortable, sir.”

  “You’re a good boy.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  To the bartender, Granger said, “He’s a good boy.”

  “So then the next drink will be on the house,” Roger said with very little enthusiasm.

  “Yes! Because,” Granger went on, “he does not pay for a drink in my company. Ever. For as long as I live.”

  “All right,” Roger said.

  “For as long as we both live,” Granger clarified.

  “All right,” Roger said again.

  “For as long as Nick and I both live, I mean,” Granger further clarified. “Not you and I, Roger.”

  “Yeah, I got that.”

  “Though we are still brothers. Yes?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Granger nodded, pleased. “Goodnight, then, Roger.” And in slow motion he turned. “Goodnight, Nicholas. And I’m sorry for spouting all that father stuff. It was uncalled for.”

  “Goodnight, Mr. Granger,” Nick said. Once the hand was off his shoulder, Nick turned to watch the bell captain leave the bar and disappear down the corridor that communicated with the hotel lobby. Granger walked like someone with a doomed destiny—heavy, dejected, resigned. Nick could see the old man’s shadow stretched long and out-of-shape along the gray-green linoleum floor tiles and move ghostlike along the wall.

  “They call him the poor son of a bitch,” Roger said, emptying the remainder of the bell captain’s drink into the sink pit beneath the bar. “Behind his back they call hi
m that. There he goes, the poor son of a bitch. Off to drink again, the poor son of a bitch. Lost in himself, the poor son of a bitch.” Roger was watching his own hands manipulate and twist a greasy dishrag into some sort of cudgel. “And,” Roger continued, “it’s one thing to be a poor son of a bitch out in the open and when you know you’re one, Lieutenant, but it’s quite another to be one behind your own back.”

  “It’s late, man. He’ll be all right.”

  “He was in here an hour ago when he got off duty.” And then, as testimony, he added, “The poor son of a bitch.”

  “I could tell he was a little drunk. But that’s okay. He’s entitled.”

  “Hell,” Roger said. “We’re all entitled.”

  —Chapter III—

  Nick woke early, but Emma was already up and gone. He touched her side of the bed and it was not warm. He wondered how early she had gotten up.

  The sheer curtains had been pulled halfway across the glass patio doors, and the shades over the windows were still drawn. From where he lay, he could see only a cursory account of the outside world. There was scarce daylight; the rain was still coming hard, that second day of the storm, and the sky looked tired, yellow-gray, and worn out. The whole room looked exhausted and smelled strongly of sleep. The sun, shielded, burned silver the thin cirrus threads on the horizon. The coastline was a brute coastline, obstinate and heady, heavily foamed, bleached, alkaline. And despite the full onrush of the storm, the island sat eerily swaddled in quiet, like a great, beating throng suddenly paused, or like the cumulative pendulums of a massive network of clocks, all simultaneously frozen (and against all semblance of rationale) at forty-five degrees to the right, directing time to a standstill.

  Nick pulled himself from the bed and crept over to the patio doors. Peeling back the sheer curtain, he could see the world outside still dark and gray and monochromatic. The tallest of the courtyard palms were bowed over in the strong wind, their leaves whipping frantically, bullied, stripped and shiny and slick with rain. He managed to prop open the doors, just slightly, and finagled a cigarette and lighter from the pocket of his shirt, which was draped over the back of a desk chair. A flick of his lighter coaxed a blue flame. He smoked, shirtless, exhaling through the slight opening in the doors, and it felt good. The shock of the freezing cold air made his nostrils burn. His right hand shook when he held the cigarette, and it made him not want to look at it, not want to think about anything in particular, anything at all. He was glad, in some strange and melancholy way, that Emma had awakened early and was not in the room with him now. He could still smell her presence, though, like the cold tendrils of a passing ghost through his body, and he suddenly knew it did not matter if she were here or not because, on some level and in some way, she would always be here, and she would continue to pass through him like a ghost. There was no changing that, no escaping any of it.

  Some goddamn world we live in, he thought, when even the saddest ghosts are spitefully relentless.

  “You’re a dumb son of a bitch,” he told himself casually, tossed the cigarette out the crack in the door and into the storm, closed the patio doors, and made his way to the bathroom.

  He showered for a long time, the water hot and pleasant on his tired skin. He dressed in black corduroys freckled with paint and a threadbare pullover. Then he went to a large clapboard trunk that was pressed up against one wall and opened it. Inside were crusted tubs of paint, gouaches, gums, brushes, an old Richeson wood palette, oil bars, painting knives, solvents, and hard, crusted rags. There were stacks of sketchpads, too, and he did not need to open them and flip through their pages to know what was inside them. Nor did he open them now but, rather, knelt before the clapboard trunk and ran his hands over their covers and examined them with only his eyes and his fingers, but tried hard to ignore them with his deeper senses. Their covers were worn, faded, pitted, gored by forgotten dirt pellets and scratched by ancient sand. He had filled the pages of those sketchpads back during a different time in his life. In a way, it had been both a more complex time and a simpler time, although he was not quite sure how that could be or even how he came to understand such a thing. He had sketched them wholly and freely and undaunted, unlike how he had sketched the hotel mural for the past two weeks. The mural was different, requiring intense concentration and much deliberation. He was a different person now, it seemed. And he could only work a few hours before the lousy Raynaud’s set in, and he’d have to stop and wait and think and do nothing else but wait and think. It had never been that way before. It was a new process to him. Process, he thought again, turning the damnable word over and over in his head but too ashamed to speak it aloud. There it is again, that lousy word. And he could not look at the sketchpads without thinking of how he used to be and, sadly, how he was now. He knew that if he bent down and smelled the sketchpads they would smell like the desert. They would smell like Iraq. And thinking this made him think of the bell captain from last night, half drunk and nostalgic and full of self pity.

  Get off it, he thought. Everyone feels sorry for themselves. It’s the way of the world. Who would we be if we didn’t feel sorry for ourselves?

  Still, he did not like to think of the bell captain.

  Closing the trunk, he stood and stretched his back until it popped, and realized he was hungry.

  Downstairs, he crossed the lobby. The Palauan conch peddler who, for the duration of the good weather, had manned a small wicker hut out on the beach and had contented himself with vending drift jewelry to small children with fistfuls of coin, had, on the persistence of the storm, moved his wares indoors; he stood now in the hallway, swaddled in the cool summer gray of a lightless morning, the shadows of the raindrops falling out beyond the foyer windows dimpling his dark skin, his face, the wide, tented expanse of his shoulders. He was a good-looking, tall, red-skinned man, vaguely European in some respects, whose hair was a black mat of tight curls cropped close to the scalp, but slightly longish at the back. He stood now behind his improvised dais, fronted with layered latticework and rosary ivy hung in looped smiles. A display of hemp-strung seashells and statuary conchs, each glossy and shellacked, was spread out like the honed tackle of a skilled surgeon on a felt coverlet atop the dais. There, too, were necklaces of sharks’ teeth and pale green twists of palm for sale; were the ruddy, barren shells of oysters adorned with faux jewels; were the fossilized indications of starfish and horseshoe crabs impressed upon the stone; were wreaths of magnolia blossoms strung together on lengths of wire.

  “Sir,” the Palauan said.

  “Good morning.”

  “Where is the lovely young woman today, sir?”

  “Still asleep,” Nick lied.

  “Would she like another conch? I have new, beautiful conch shells. She would fall in love with these new ones.”

  “I’ll let her know.”

  “You should surprise her, sir,” the Palauan said. “For you, and because of her, I will make the special deal. Pick two that you most like.”

  “Not right now,” Nick said.

  “It will be the good, special deal.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “A woman, she likes to feel she is always in the mind.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Perhaps after you’ve eaten,” the Palauan said.

  “Perhaps.”

  Nick walked quickly by, powerless to keep his eyes from the handsome man’s, and their gaze seemed to lock and remain for an uncomfortable length of time. Turning away, Nick slipped down the narrow corridor and paused momentarily to glance at the sketched mural on the blank wall before going into the hotel restaurant. The past two weeks there had been a panel of sun from the lobby working its way down the narrow corridor, which would fall on his back, warming him as he stood in this very position, sketching. But there was no sun today; like everything else, it had been eradicated by the storm.

  Nothing to see here, he thought, his eyes still stuck on the incomplete mural while he walked away. Move along, p
lease. Move along.

  The restaurant was very busy, as many of the hotel’s patrons did not feel safe leaving the hotel grounds in the middle of such a storm. Nick did not see an available table. The bar, too, was full, and he did not feel like standing around waiting for a seat to open up. Nearest him, seated at the bar, a middle-aged, dark-skinned, muscular man with tight, wiry-pressed hair and wearing a black satin patch over his left eye, sat sipping a dark liquor in a tall, narrow glass. The man turned his head just slightly, and Nick watched the deep, thick creases form in the back and side of the man’s neck. It was a thick, reddened neck, heavily-pored and sprouting sparse black hairs. Nick looked at the man’s single glittering eye. It was an eye, Nick saw, that had spent much of the early morning (and, doubtless, much of the night before) befriending various liquors. The sloppy, drunk eye lingered on him. Again, Nick could not look away.

  “What do you know?” the man said. Sedated with alcohol and corrupt with some heavy South Pacific dialect, the man’s question was almost too difficult for Nick to comprehend; indeed, he thought he’d misheard the man.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “What do you know?” the man said again, his tone and tempo unchanged. But there was no mistaking him this time.

  “Nothing,” Nick said. “I’m sorry. I know nothing.”

  “There is something you have to say?”

  “No,” Nick said.

  The man’s single drunk eye refused to look away.

  Nick knew there was a smaller bistro at the opposite end of the lobby, and a nice café that made exquisite pastries on the second floor, too, so he departed the restaurant and wandered back the way he had come.

  The second-floor café was less crowded. Unlike the restaurant and bistro, which were prominently advertised on placards in the hotel’s lobby and in framed pamphlets housed in the walls of each of the hotel’s six elevators, the café remained a well-kept hotel secret, the number of patrons enlisted to know of its existence limited to personal acquaintances or family members of the hotel staff. It had been the bell captain who had told Nick and Emma about the place. They did a fine business, though, and they were always busy. This morning was no exception.