Via Dolorosa (22 page)

“Water’s a bit rough,” he called to the stranger.

It was a small boat. Who would take out such a small boat?

“It’s rough,” said the stranger. “Every night, it’s rough.”

“Night fishing?” Though he could see that, clearly, the man carried with him no equipment.

“No, sir, Lieutenant.”

“Roger?”

“Yes, sir?”

“What are you doing out here?”

“I’m out here every night, Lieutenant.” Not looking in Nick’s direction, the bartender added, “What are
you
doing out here?”

“Attempting to smoke myself to death.”

“There’s quicker ways to death, if that’s where you’re looking to go.”

“True.” He sucked at the cigarette. “I haven’t decided yet.”

“Well,” Roger said, “have a good night.”

“Be careful, will you?”

“Sure,” said Roger.

He watched as the bartender pushed the johnboat out into the surf, coming up behind it and wading through the tide in his bare feet. He had rolled his cargo pants up past the knees. In the sand behind him he left two deep tracks parallel to each other and spaced roughly three feet apart, like the ties on a railroad. Between the tracks, Nick could see Roger’s footprints. The footprints, like the tracks, disappeared as they entered the water. Smoking, Nick watched the waves overcome the boat, Roger’s feet. Roger climbed in the boat and situated himself with the oars. He began rowing due south, right along the cusp of the beach. Amidst the silent and rocking sailboats and cruisers, Nick had never seen a human being look so hopelessly unimportant.

Back inside the hotel, he stood by himself for some time, listening to the faint, phantom croon of calypso music coming from somewhere, somewhere.

Sometime later, outside Isabella’s hotel room door, he found himself still smoking a cigarette and holding a bottle of shiraz. Slung over one shoulder was his portable nylon case containing what painting supplies he’d anticipated needing. Standing before the door, he may have knocked…though he could not recall; regardless, the door opened and he was suddenly aware that Isabella was completely naked beneath the terrycloth robe she wore. It was a white, full robe, loosely tied, and most evident was the shadowed cascade of cleavage bending into the V-shaped part in her robe. Her upper chest was fully exposed: as he had studied that day on the beach, her collarbone was smooth and dark like obsidian, yet prominent and perfectly symmetrical. A light smattering of brown freckles claimed the territory just beneath her neck. She wore no makeup and had done nothing with her hair. Still, she looked dangerous and alluring. For a second, standing helpless in the hallway, a half-smoked cigarette limp between his lips, the bottle of shiraz nearly sliding out of his grasp, he could only look at her and not move. Blessedly, after a moment, she spoke.

“There is no smoking in the hotel,” she said.

“You’re the smoking police?”

“Since when do you break the rules, Nicholas? You are certainly not the type.”

“Yeah?”

“You know you are not the type. It does not agree with you.”

“All right.”

“Come in.”

She shut the door behind him as he crossed the floor and set the shiraz on a small wooden desk. He looked around the room—unmade bed, clothes strewn haphazardly about, a careless stain of something dark and fresh and nearly like blood on the carpet.

“Did I come too soon?” he asked.

Isabella laughed. “I love a man who asks the poignant questions.”

“I meant I could come back if you’re not ready for company…”

“Pour your wine,” she said. “There are glasses in the bathroom.”

Obediently, he carried the wine into the bathroom, flicked on the light. Froze. Everywhere—every available space (and where space was not previously available, she had made it so)—hung glossy photographs: from the retractable clothesline above the tub;
clothespinned
to the shower curtain; tacked or taped to the walls; pasted to the mirror above the bathroom sink. The toilet seat, he saw, was up, and there was even a single photograph taped to the underside of the lid. Numerous, countless photographs mostly of the island—the trees, the abundant spread of golf courses, the beaches, the date palms and wooded hillocks—loomed everywhere. On the counter he could see a spread of eight-by-ten glossies, black and white, of the swans from the hotel fountains. On the floor, strewn about like a spilled deck of cards, lay photographs of the island cottages that had been recently destroyed by the storm. Standing in the doorway, still smoking, he could only stare and not move. Some of the pictures taped along the frame of the door were of dead bodies. He peered curiously at these, and at one in particular: what appeared to be the long, scissor-like nylon legs of a woman bent at impossible angles as she lay, lifeless and dirty, in a darkened, rain-swept alley. The woman wore what appeared to be a tight-fitting halter beneath a suede vest studded with rhinestones and fringe. Her face was not visible, but Nick could make out a tributary of black blood seeping away from where her face must have been, trickling down the alleyway and filling the fissures in the cement.

From behind him, Isabella’s voice drifted out of the room: “Unfortunately there are only drinking glasses. They do not stock the rooms with proper wine glasses anymore, and I haven’t had a chance to steal any yet.” He heard something bump into something else, followed by a hiss of white noise through stereo speakers. A moment later and he recognized the music from Russell “Goat-Man” Claxton’s set at the Club Potemkin.

He went to the sink and gathered up the two drinking glasses, setting them both upright. They wore paper hats, which he peeled off.

“Bottle opener?” he called out.

“Look in the tub,” Isabella called back.

Half the shower curtain was already pulled back; he could see photographs clipped to the retractable clothesline over the tub. Gently, he pulled aside the remainder of the curtain (heedful not to disrupt the photographs that were pinned to it) and peered into the tub. What he saw: a portable telephone; two empty beer bottles without labels; a scattered assortment of ketchup packets from the hotel restaurant downstairs; a pink brassier; a lawn rake propped up against one tiled wall; the Holy Bible; a neatly folded pair of khaki slacks; twelve unwrapped bars of soap (he counted them); a plank of whitewashed wooden fencing with what appeared to be a face painted on it, causing Nick some reflection; a pillow case apparently filled with various footwear—sneakers, sandals, heels, boots, and the like; a silver football helmet with a green shamrock etched onto one side; a tattered paperback novel titled
Sangria Espresso;
a set of keys; a pair of
Hammeroy
sunglasses with one of the lenses missing; and the corkscrew.

“Did you find it?” she called from the room.

“Yes.”

With the corkscrew, he managed to wrangle the cork from the bottle of shiraz. He proceeded to fill both glasses. Looking up at the collage taped to the mirror in front of him, he noticed some of the photographs were of him—from the Club Potemkin…from the nighttime shoot on the hill with Claxton…from earlier that day while he worked on the mural. He scrutinized the photographs. He noticed he looked older in each subsequent photograph—and he looked downright
elderly
in the most recent one, the one taken of him as he’d finished working on the mural. It could have been the way the shadows fell across his face, he thought…but the thought did not comfort him. Also, he noticed the barely-lit profile of a young girl standing behind him and just off to the left, halfway down the corridor stretching out behind him and staring directly at the camera.

Still dressed only in her robe, propped up against the headboard of her bed, Isabella had her head back and her eyes closed, listening intently to Claxton’s CD as he reentered the room with the two glasses of wine.

“Interesting bathroom,” he said. “You decorate the place yourself?”

“It doubles as my darkroom.”

“What’s with the stuff in the tub?”

“Things I found on the beach.”

“You found all that stuff on the beach?”

“All of it.”

“A football helmet?”

“All of it,” she repeated, eyes still closed. As he walked around the side of the bed, though, her eyes came open. For a brief second, she looked blind.

He handed her a glass of wine. “You take interesting pictures.”

“Do you think so?”

“What’s the deal with the dead bodies? You shoot crime scenes or something?”

“Oh, those are my favorites,” she admitted. “The woman was a prostitute murdered in an alley a few blocks from my apartment. Some of the others were victims of automobile accidents. Now they are immortal.” Grinning, she said, “I have a life-size one over my bed at home of a man halfway through his windshield. It is a wonderful photograph. You can see the way the head opened up.”

“Lovely,” he mused.

“For some, it’s perhaps their most beautiful hour.” Isabella sipped her wine. “Do you think that prostitute ever looked more beautiful?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Then let me ask you—do you think she ever thought two people such as ourselves would be talking about her after she died?” She laughed. “Immortal, Nicholas,” she said.

There was a small desk at the opposite end of the room. Its surface was littered with clothing. He went to it and gathered some of the clothes into a ball and paused, uncertain where he should put the mess.

“On the floor,” Isabella said from the bed. “Just drop them.”

He dropped them. At the desk, he opened his nylon case and proceeded to assemble his tools—his fan brushes, his heavy-bristled brushes, his knives—on the desktop. There was a roll of canvas in the case, too, which he removed and unclipped, unrolled. The smell of the canvas was like rawhide.

“You set your implements out like artillery,” Isabella said from the bed. “Do you do that on purpose?”

“I’ve never noticed,” he admitted.

“Did you do it the same way before the war?”

“Let’s not talk about the war.”

He did not turn to look in her direction, but he could hear her giggling. He could tell she wanted him to hear her, too.

“Pin the canvas to the wall,” she told him.

“Hmmm?”

“The wall,” she said. “Pin the canvas to the wall. Look—over here.”

Turning, he looked around. She was pointing. A few photographs were tacked to the walls here, as well, but there was a clean sweep of wall on the right side of the bed. He saw, too, that there were already four large pins pushed into the drywall.

“You certainly make yourself at home,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Sure,” he said, carrying the canvas over to the bed and pinning it against the wall. Returning back to the desk, he retrieved his tubs of paint from the nylon case, setting them upright like shells on the desktop. Yes, he’d noticed he’d done this before—he noticed much about the war having crept into his everyday life. The worst part of it, he’d come to learn, was the way he never saw any of it coming, that it was like a conspiracy against him, an ambush, and there was nothing he could do about any of it.

Assembling his paints, collecting them and bringing them over to the nightstand beside where he’d hung the canvas, he was too conscious of Isabella watching his every move from the bed. “What?” he said to her at one point, as her gaze was so heavy on him it practically demanded he respond.