Via Dolorosa (7 page)

“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, please. 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.

The café was situated in a well-lit parlor with skylights, black and pounded by rain at the moment, and had a counter against one wall and small, circular iron tables arranged functionally about the parlor floor. Typically speared through the center with parasols surrounded by chairs cushioned in intricate floral patterns, they were the type of tables one might find gathered around the patio of some midtown metropolitan bistro. Many of these tables were occupied this morning. Nick stood briefly, surveyed the room. Emma stood from one of the tables and waved at him. He raised a hand in return to acknowledge he saw her but did not go directly to the table. Instead, he went to the counter and ordered a Jamaican espresso. While waiting, he turned and could see Emma facing him as she sat at one of the iron tables. She was with another woman—young, bright, tannin-hued, brunette—and they seemed to be involved deeply in conversation. The espresso came and he paid for it then went to the table.

“Hello,” he said, standing.

“Sweetheart,” Emma said…and their eyes lingered on each other too long; there had been something cold and dry in her voice when she’d spoken. But it passed and neither of them decided to make an issue of it.

“Sit with us,” Emma said.

Nick pulled out a chair and sat.

“Please…before any introductions, I want to congratulate you on your recent marriage,” the brunette said, smiling. She was attractive in a smart, serious, severe way, and looked just slightly older than Emma. Handsome for a woman. Darkly Spanish. Her skin was molten like oil, her eyebrows two thin, raven-colored half-moons above deeply-set eyes. “We have been talking about you behind your back like rascals. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Like rascals,” said Emma.

“Not at all,” Nick said. “I just hope I’m not interrupting…”

“Of course not,” said the woman. She spoke, too, with an accent that made it sound as if she were concentrating very hard on her English. She was European, Nick could tell. He had never been to Europe, but he could tell.

“This is Isabella Rosales,” Emma said. “She’s a…a what? What did you call yourself, Isabella?”

“A diagnostician of the human condition.” She said the word slowly—diagnostician. The whole phrase rhymed like a lyric.

“Yes,” Emma said, “a diagnostician. Isn’t that smart?”

“Smart,” Nick said.

“I am a photographer,” Isabella clarified.

“She takes pictures,” said Emma. “She’s been taking pictures all over the world.”

“It’s good to meet you,” he said.

“Are you hungry, dear?” Emma said. “Isabella and I already ate.”

“I’m okay for now.”

“You should eat something,” Emma continued.

“Maybe later. I just woke up.”

“Just don’t let the morning go by without eating something, Nick.”

Now you’re overreaching for sure, darling,
Nick thought, and he found that, unlike moments previous, he could not settle his eyes on her for any extended length of time.

“Is this your first time visiting the island?” Isabella Rosales said.

“It is,” he said.

“It is a wonderful place for a honeymoon. It’s fun and there are a lot of things to do, but it’s also very quaint and romantic, too.”

“Yes,” he agreed.

“Also,” Isabella said, “there is the beach.”

“Nick loves the beach,” Emma said.

“Oh, it is such a beautiful beach,” Isabella said excitedly.

“It’s a great beach,” he agreed without expression.

“Your wife confessed that you are the genius behind that wonderful drawing off the main lobby.”

“I’m working while we’re here, yes,” he said.

“It is a very brilliant drawing. When will you start to paint it?”

“Today,” he said. “After breakfast.”

“It is such an amazing drawing,” Isabella Rosales seemed to say to no one in particular. It was in the way she spoke and looked at no one that made her comments universal. She appeared as someone chronically uninterested in specifications, finding simple pleasure in the statement of her own opinions as fact. She had a nice figure but her clothes seemed too plain, too simple, and almost forcefully so. She wore no makeup on her face. Her fingers, long and brown, looked somehow strategic, too, and were adorned with clusters of tarnished silver rings, each studded with turquoise stones. Despite her obvious Spanish heritage, there prevailed an almost Native American air about her. Nick, for just a moment, considered what it might be like to love Isabella, or someone like her. Loving her (it occurred to him as he sipped his Jamaican espresso and sat casually beside his new wife) would be easy and free and would not come with anything that came, he knew, with loving his wife. Loving Isabella would be like loving rain, loving summer, loving sky.

“Amazing drawing,” Isabella said again. She sounded very genuine and her eyes finally settled on him, weighing her words with sudden importance and sincerity.

“So you’re a photographer,” Nick said, not wanting to discuss the mural. “Are you here working, too?”

“I am doing a shoot, yes. You’ve heard of the Goat-Man?”

“The what?”

“Sounds scary,” Emma commented.

Isabella fashioned her head back slightly on her neck, leaving her neck unlined and creaseless, smooth and vulnerable, and laughed just once—sharp, simply. Her eyes never left Nick’s own, however, as if she distrusted leaving him, even for a split second, out of her line of sight.

“Right,” she said. “Russell ‘Goat-Man’ Claxton.”

“Uh…” Nick managed.

“He’s a virtuoso,” Isabella said. “A veritable genius. The man, he is some American legend, and he is so young and handsome. You do not know him? He is a jazz saxophonist. I saw him blow once in New York City, at Mandy’s. It was after he released his first album,
Gingerbread
Man.
You do not know? He sustained a single note for three whole minutes on stage, and this is no exaggeration. It was the most goddamn impressive thing I think I have ever seen anyone do.”

“Sounds impressive.”

“Also, he plays polytonally.”

“I’m not sure I know what that means…”

“Do you follow jazz at all, Nicholas?”

It sounded strange to hear her say his name fully like that. “You mean the music? Uh—ha.”

Isabella Rosales offered up an archipelago of white, even teeth. “I’m compiling some images of Goat-Man for a book.”

“So is he called the Goat-Man because he has a horn?”

“But the saxophone is only one horn,” Isabella said. “By that logic, that would make him the Narwhal-Man.”

“Or the Unicorn-Man,” Nick suggested.

“Ah, yes. The Unicorn-Man. Yes, Nicholas, I like that. But no—it has nothing to do with his saxophone.”

“Well,” he said, “it was just a guess. Anyway, it was only a matter of time before the conversation turned to sax.”

“You,” Isabella said, “you, you, you are funny.” She turned to Emma.
 
“Your husband is funny. I adore him.” Turning back to Nick, she said, “I do mostly freelance work. I have been working on a few different projects for some time now, and this is where it has brought me. I have been getting some wonderful shots of the beach, too. Until the storm came, anyway.”

“Isn’t it terrible?” Emma said, no doubt seeing her moment to interject. She was sitting forward in her chair and she suddenly looked very young—too young, Nick thought—and nothing at all like a wife.

“It is terrible,” Isabella said, “but it is beautiful, too. I guess I will just have to keep myself busy here in the hotel until the storm passes.”