Via Dolorosa (24 page)

Smilingly, she answered, “In the dark.”

—Chapter XI—

“Please shower.”

“Stop it.”

“Please, Nick,” she begged. “Please. Don’t talk about it, and I won’t talk about it, but please, Nick, please shower.”

“Nothing happened. You’re being ridiculous.”

“Please.”

He could not listen to any more. In the dark, he rose from bed and went to the bathroom and showered. Keeping his aching arm under the spray of the showerhead, he let the water slide over his body. He showered for what felt like a century.

Later, back in bed, half-whispering, Emma said, “I don’t know if it’s the right thing. I’m sorry. It’s ruined, isn’t it?”

“We can talk about it in the morning.”

“I drank a little at the limbo tonight.”

“That’s okay.”

“I think I’m still drunk, too.”

“So am I.”

“I did something stupid, too. I took the car and went for a drive by myself, because the night was so beautiful. I needed to get away from the hotel for a while and be outside.”

“Nothing wrong with that.”

“I wrecked the car, Nick. Not bad, but I drove over a curb on my way back tonight and it scraped at the bottom and dented some of the chrome. So, well, no, it’s not wrecked. I didn’t wreck it. But I messed it up a little and now it’s not perfect. I’m so sorry.” She waited. “Are you angry?”

“You shouldn’t have driven so drunk, is all.”

“I’m sorry about the car.”

“I don’t care about the car.”

“Thank you for showering. I deserve it all, I know it, every last little bit, but thank you anyway for showering.”

“Let’s not talk about it now, Emma.”

“We’re in a dream here, for the time we’re here, Nick. Don’t you remember? And I love you so I want you to do whatever you need to do to make us right again. It’s my fault so you need to do what you need to do. But I can’t hear about it and I certainly can’t smell it. Do you understand?”

“Go to sleep,” he told her. Something in him was angered because she wasn’t crying.

“Please,” she said again. Again with that word. “Please.” She said, “Just say it, Nick. Promise it and say it. I need to hear you say it.”

“You’re talking nonsense.”

“I just need to hear you say it.”

“Fine,” he said. “Fine.”

“Promise it.”

“I promise,” he said. “No hearing and no smelling.”

“And you’ll shower?”

“I’ll shower.”

“All the time you’ll shower?”

“There is nothing happening here,” he insisted. “There isn’t an ‘all the time,’ Emma.”

“Just say it, please, Nick. I need to hear it.”

“All the time I’ll shower,” he said.

“All right, Nick.”

“Now go to sleep.”

“All right.”

“And stop all this,” he said.

“What?” she said. “Stop all what?”

“Christ,” he said, but he didn’t know how else to say it. He did not know how to say any of it. He suddenly wished himself far from here, somewhere black and bleak and empty and void of feeling. That place would be his Eden, blessed Eden. He could rest there, not thinking, stupid in his remoteness, for the remainder of his days. He thought,
I
could shut this off, all of it. I could never think about any of it again, and
such not thinking would be welcome, would be terrific. I could fade away
into myself, as if drug-induced, and keep fading and falling away so I would
never have to think about anything ever again. And wouldn’t that be perfect?
He could find it—it was possible: a small, shielded sanctuary inside his own head, where he could regroup and shelter himself and create his own world, and where, in that world, he could make himself come to believe and understand and accept or decline anything the outside world—the real world—provided. Anyone had that power. In your head, he knew, you had complete control over what was real and what was not. You had complete control over what you wanted to believe and what you wanted to designate as a dream and nothing more. In your head, you had the power to alter the reality of the world. If you wanted to fly, you simply told yourself that you could, and although the physical act of flying would never actually take place, it was enough to simply convince yourself—and no one else—that you could.

And that is hiding,
he admitted to himself.
That is the coward’s way
out.

And what are you?
intoned some obscure but vaguely familiar head-voice.
What are you, Lieutenant? Do you think you are the bravest man in
the world? Did you so easily forget what happened over in Iraq? Did you
forget about all the dead? Or are you already living inside your own head,
already living there right now, hidden like a goddamn coward, altering reality
to whichever way best suits your desires? I’m glad you think it is so easy,
Lieutenant. But you cannot do that with Emma and you cannot do that with
yourself, either.

It was Myles Granger’s voice, he realized.

No,
he thought.
Stop it.

But there was no stopping his mind—no stopping his thoughts…

He thought about the war and he thought about Myles Granger—dead Myles Granger—and thought that if he could just erase it all, he would be about the happiest man alive.

“Go to sleep,” he heard himself say to Emma. But she had already fallen asleep some time ago, leaving him awake and alone.

—Chapter XII—

With newfound drive, he worked for a long while on the hotel mural the following morning. He’d gotten up early, even before Emma, and upon vacating his room noticed Isabella had left his nylon supplies case just outside his hotel room door. There was a note attached to it, too, but it was written in Spanish and he couldn’t understand any of it. Stuffing the note in his pocket, he carried the supplies downstairs to the lobby and made exquisite love to the mural for the remainder of the morning.

Before meeting Emma for lunch, in a somewhat good mood, he went to the restaurant bar for a beer.

“Do I look different today?” he asked Roger.

“Do you?”

“I think I might feel differently today.”

“A good different or a bad different?”

“I’m hoping a good different. But whatever it is, I’ll take it for now. It just feels so good to get away from myself for a while. Know what I’m talking about?”

“Sure,” Roger said with little emotion.

Conspiratorially, partially grinning, Nick leaned over the bar. “Is something wrong, Roger?”

“No, sir.”

“Are you feeling all right?”

“I feel fine, sir.”

“Then what’s with this ‘sir’ business?”

“Please,” said Roger, nearly bowing away, “I’m busy this afternoon. I don’t mean to be rude…”

“Of course not.”

“Have a good lunch today, sir.” Then quickly: “Nick.”

“All right, Roger. Thanks.”

What the hell?
Nick thought.

For lunch, he met Emma outside by the pools. A waiter came only twice—once to take their order and once more to distribute the plates about the table—and they were mostly left to each other’s company.

“It’s such a beautiful day,” Emma said. “What do you think it will be like when the bugs come?”

“The cicadas?”

“Yes, cicadas.” Glancing upward, she said, “I picture swarms of them covering the sky, blotting out the sun, and dropping by the thousands into the sea.”

“Sounds like the Apocalypse.”

“That’s how I am picturing it, yes,” she said.

“I don’t think it will be nearly like that.”

“Don’t you?”

“You’re thinking of locusts, I believe.”

“Oh?”

“And even with locusts, I don’t think it is all truly that bad. Not like, say, how it is in the Bible. And even if it is that bad with locusts, I don’t think that happens in this country. Not like that, anyway.”

“And locusts are different than cicadas?”

“Yes,” he said. “I think they’re very different.”

“Well,” she said, “I’m sort of glad to see them come because I’m interested to see them. But then I’m sort of scared, too, because I think I might be a little afraid of them.”

“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” he told her.

They enjoyed a nice lunch of beef
carpaccio
with arugula and
mancheco
cheese, two light garden salads with peeled shrimp adorned with a sprinkled sneeze of sunflower seeds, and sipped mimosas from slender flutes. A pot of demitasse had been brought over as well which, between the two of them, was emptied prematurely.