Via Dolorosa (31 page)

“Where is everyone going?” Emma asked. She, too, had turned to watch the people move down toward the beach. A busboy, determined to work a patch of dark fuzz from his upper lip into some classification of mustache, came to clear the table. Emma asked him where the people were going.

“Yes,” said the busboy.

“Yes what?” she said.

“Oh, yes,” said the busboy. “Yes.”

“Where are all the people going?” she asked again.

“Oh,” said the busboy. “Oh, yes. Yes.”

“Yes,” said Emma, and broke into a laugh.

“Yes,” caroled Isabella.

“Oh, yes,” said the busboy.

“Yes,” said Emma, still laughing.

Nick paid the bill. Then the three of them walked across the boulevard on the heels of the crowd. Isabella came in between them and took both Nick and Emma by one arm. Isabella laughed and sang while they crossed the boulevard, which made Emma laugh and sing, too:

What is the purpose of a
bastardful
man

Who beats all his women with a
bastardful
hand?

What is the purpose of a man without money

Who hounds after women for a taste of the honey?

What is the purpose of a son of a bitch

Who neither is handsome and neither is rich?

What is the purpose of a drunk, loudmouthed fellow

Whose heart is stone cold and whose belly is yellow?

“Oh, that’s terrific,” Nick said.

“
Tremendo
!”
bellowed Isabella, which set both her and Emma off again.

What is the purpose of a gentleman caller

Whose pockets are empty of even a dollar?

They crossed the boulevard and crested the grassy dunes that partitioned the roadway from the beach. The beach itself was a bone-colored strip of velvet against the bejeweled glitter of the sea. Many people had gathered down by the shore. Visible on the water was a lavish cabin cruiser with an exaggerated front deck. The cruiser was too far off to visually surrender its occupants, but perhaps the boat belonged to someone famous, because many of the people gathered at the foot of the sea were waving at the craft, swinging their arms high above their heads and shouting nonsense into the air.

“I could live on a boat like that,” Emma marveled.

“Could you?” Nick said.

“It would be the best way to have no home,” she said.

A blast of magnesium registered on the craft’s wide front deck and, an instant later, a bright pink streak of dazzling light soared vertical into the night sky. The sun had completely set now, and the fireworks were brilliant against the backdrop of night. As the display began, the crowd applauded. A few children ran ahead of their slow-roving parents and balanced themselves precipitously at the cusp of the sea, jumping and shouting and waving their thin, white arms with little fear of falling.

“I love fireworks!” Emma exclaimed.

Watching, Nick felt a weight lift from him and a gentle ease pervade his senses. The fireworks whistled and whizzed and popped. They reverberated in his chest. He felt Emma rest her head against him. Isabella did so, too, at one point. He betrayed no reaction. The cabin cruiser slowly drifted closer to the shore (either that or his eyes simply grew accustomed to the dark) and he could make out a few men onboard now. Occasionally, the men would wave back at the crowd. There were three men, from what he could tell. Purples, reds, oranges, greens, pinks—the bursts of colors brought into alternating relief the coast of Sea Pines and
Harbour
Town, as well as the blur of onlookers, the flashes of their shadows like the barely remembered fragments of dreams. He felt a hand gently at the small of his back. He did not know if it belonged to his wife or Isabella. He did not move to find out.

“You can lose yourself in them,” Emma said soothingly, meaning the fireworks.

“You certainly can,” he agreed.

“The colors remind me of a dream,” Emma said.

“We should leave now,” Isabella said.

“The display isn’t over yet,” he said.

Isabella pulled a playful frown. “My Nicholas, it is very bad luck to stay till the end of the fireworks. One must always leave before the display is finished. Haven’t you ever heard?”

He shook his head.

“It is customary.”

“I’ve never heard it.”

“Well,” she said, “it is the truth.”

No one questioned Isabella’s authority. Arm-in-arm-in-arm, the three of them walked back out across the dunes toward the lighted, glistening bulwark of bistros down along the boulevard. A startling white flash directly above them reconfirmed the existence of the
Harbour
Town lighthouse. On the curb, taunted by a demanding horde of preteens, a frayed and grizzled black man strummed a ukulele while sitting cross-legged before an empty Folgers can. Behind them, around them, more onlookers cheered at the fireworks display.

They claimed a cozy, nondescript bistro just off the main boulevard, and a table adorned with
tapa
, paper towels, and newspapers. The front of the bistro opened into a wide dining area and looked out upon the busy boulevard. Outside, a gathering of bystanders got into it following a few drunken words. Further down the promenade, on the heels of a quick side-to-side glance, a teenage hoodlum proceeded to empty his bladder into the open window of a 1957 Chevy. Several couples strolled with their arms around each other. The rear of the bistro—the taproom—spilled out onto the beach, and all the doors were propped open. A carpet of loose white sand unfurled across the taproom floor. By the bar, a three-piece
zydeco
band performed while a number of inebriated wayfarers, claiming the open floor as Germany had once claimed territory, danced until sweat burst from their skin and their shirts clung wetly to their backs. Despite the open doors facing the beach, the bistro’s odor was an overriding blend of bad cologne, bare feet, and burnt sawdust.

Pushing his way through the dancers, Nick went to the bar and ordered a bottle of pinot
gris
and three glasses. Seated beside him on a stool, an attractive older woman smiled in his direction.

Nick nodded. “Hello.”

On a waft of gin, the woman said, “Save the sea turtles.”

“All right.”

“No,” insisted the woman. “It’s important.”

“I’ll bet,” he said.

The wine came and he carried it back to the table. Emma and Isabella were already deep in conversation, laughing and giggling behind cupped hands. Tanned, handsome men had come sniffing around, and were now occupying all the previously open chairs around their table.

“I would have gotten more glasses,” Nick said, setting the bottle and three glasses on the table.

“We’re not drinking,” one of the handsome men said, holding up one hand. There were three of them, and they all could have been related, could have been brothers. They wore pressed oxford shirts and boating loafers, their skin bronze from countless days beneath the sun.

“We don’t drink when we’re on the water,” said the second man.

“You’re in a bar,” Nick informed him.

The first man laughed. It was a single, short burst of sound, and he did not open his mouth very wide to accommodate it. As if he did not want to stretch his face out of shape. “We’re heading back out tonight,” he said.

“Very nice,” Nick said.

“They were the ones shooting off the fireworks,” Emma said. One of the men had slid next to her. In Nick’s seat.

“Really?” Nick said. “Isn’t that something…”

“Get up, Joseph,” one of the men said to his friend, his brother. “Let the man sit back down.”

“We’re stealing his women,” Joseph said, but did not appear to mean anything by it. He looked a little shiftier than his comrades and, as if testament to this, boasted the threat of what, in a few hours’ time, would turn into a perfectly solid black eye. Unfettered, Joseph stood and disappeared without hesitation into a wedge of dancers.

Nick sat, uncorked the wine, and filled all three glasses.

“You’re Nicholas?” one of the men said. “Nick? Yes?” He extended a hand and Nick shook it. “Leslie Hansen.” He nodded toward the remaining doppelganger. “This is Ben.”

“Cheers,” said Ben. Uninterested, he was sucking the life out of a Pall Mall.

“We’ve met your wife and your girlfriend,” Leslie Hansen said, “and now we’ve met you. The circle is complete.”

“To the circle,” Emma said, holding up her glass.

“The circle,” Isabella said, and met Emma’s glass with her own. They drank.

“What is it you do, Nick?” Leslie Hansen asked. He was the one sitting next to Emma. The first three buttons of his oxford were undone, exposing the freshly shaved cascade of his brown chest.

“I’m a painter.”

“No joke? Wow. Hey, that’s something. What do you paint?”

“Paintings,” Nick said.

“Oh, yes,” said Hansen. Nick could tell the man was sitting there, deciding if he was being played with or not. “Too funny.”

“The hell happened to your arm?” Ben said.

“Nicholas was in the war,” Isabella said. “He was fighting the crazies and sand-monkeys over in Iraq.”

“Well,” Hansen said. “How about that? Did you just get back?”

“Yes.”

“How about that? What was it like over there?”

“Hot.”

“I’m sure of it. What were the people like?”

“Angry. With guns.”

Leslie Hansen got the hint. “Oh, sure. Sure.” He pointed his chin at Emma’s cleavage. “Do you like boats?”

“Oh,” Emma said, “I think they’re wonderful.”

“Ever been on a boat?”

Emma shook her head. “No.”

“We’ve got a great boat. We call her
Kerberos.”

“I thought you were supposed to name boats after women,” Emma said.

“This could be true,” Hansen agreed, “but you’d first have to find the right woman.”

“Oh,” said Emma. “All right.”

“How about you?” Hansen said, leering over at Isabella. “Do you like boats?”

“Boats are for children,” Isabella informed him. “Didn’t you know? Weren’t you told?”

Hansen laughed. Beside him, smoking casually, Ben raised a single eyebrow but remained disinterested for the most part.

Joseph returned gripping a liter bottle of twelve-year-old
Chivas
Regal in one mitt while balancing a stack of rocks glasses in his other. Somewhat clumsy, he set the glasses and the scotch on the table, thumping his knee against Nick’s chair as he did so. Despite the men’s declaration that they did not drink when going out to sea, Joseph seemed to be doing quite all right for himself.