Via Dolorosa(17)

“I didn’t order anything for me,” she said. “I’m not hungry.”

“Did you have a big breakfast this morning?”

“Not really. A bagel with cream cheese and a cappuccino.”

“It’s a nice café,” he said, sipping the coffee. It was strong and good. He needed it to be strong and good.

“What did you think of Isabella?”

“The diagnostician?”

“Yes. You two seemed to hit it off.”

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing. I’m just saying. It’s nice to meet new people.”

“She was fine.”

“Isn’t it a small world,” Emma said, “her living in New York like that?”

“Lots of people live in New York. Eight million or so. I don’t know what makes that such a small world.” And he thought, There you go! You are certainly being a regular jerk now. Good for you, you bastard. Feel better?

“Nick,” she said, but did not say anything more.

“What?”

She still did not say anything more.

“What?” he repeated.

“Can we please talk?”

“I’m trying to eat.”

“Can we talk after you eat?”

“I have to get back to work after I eat.”

“The power is out in the hotel, Nick,” she said. “How are you going to work?”

“It’s paint-by-numbers,” he told her. “I could do the shitting thing with my eyes closed.”

“Don’t be like that.”

“Sure,” he said. “Okay. Sure. Fine.”

Her small lips had come tightly together, white and bloodless. Her eyes, tiny and round and like a bird’s, would not leave him.

“Picasso paints deaf, I paint blind…we’re like Helen Keller, put us together like that.”

“Will you at least listen to me while I talk then? You won’t have to say a damn thing if you don’t want to.”

He set his coffee down and did not think he could eat another bite of the sandwich. “I can’t do this now, Emma, okay?”

“What’s going to happen to us, Nick?” And she said this quickly, pushed it out of her mouth, as if this question would have been the objective of whatever speech she had maybe prepared, and, realizing there would be no speech because he would not let there be a speech, she had simply come right out with it. And even in his anger—even in the midst of his own personal anguish—he could not help but feel a slight sting.

“Emma,” he said, and let her name linger in the air, floating and dying between them in the gray, lightless atmosphere of the hotel room. It was her own name, fired back out at her in an attempt to buffer and halt anything further she might wish to strike him with. And, truly, anything she might say would now be a strike at him. He couldn’t, wouldn’t hear it.

“I’m frightened,” she said. “You asked that when you came in and I didn’t give you an answer. But yes, Nick, I’m frightened. I’m scared to death. And it has nothing to do with the goddamn lights being out.”

“Well,” he said. What else was there to say? He picked up his coffee again and carried it—somewhere, anywhere, he suddenly needed to not be in this room, but there was nowhere else left to go. So he carried the coffee across the room and sat on the far end of the bed, his back facing her. He set the coffee down on the nightstand and, in his apprehension, picked up the Holy Bible from the nightstand, which was the only thing within his reach. He thumped it twice against his left thigh and wondered just what the hell he was doing. Or was going to do.

“What, Nick? Tell me. Tell me what you need me to do,” Emma said from behind him. “Tell me, Nick. Tell me what it is you need me to do. I’m frightened and I feel helpless because you won’t let me do anything.”

“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t.”

“Nicky—”

“Don’t you blame this on me.”

“I’m not blaming you…”

“Don’t you do it.”

“It’s me,” she said. “It’s me, all of it. I’ll take it all, Nicky. Okay? I’ll take all of it.”

“I don’t need you to be the martyr here, either,” he said.

“Oh, Jesus Christ…”

“Stop it. And stop calling me Nicky.”

“What do you want from me?”

“What I want,” he said, “is for you to stop asking me that. Goddamn it, there is nothing I want from you except to be left alone, for God’s sake. Can you do that? Just for a little while, so I can pause and think? Okay? Do you think you could try? Please? Please?”

In practically a whisper, Emma said, “I don’t know if that’s the right thing to do anymore…”

“It is,” he insisted. “Trust me. It is the most right thing in the world at the moment.”

“I love you, Nicky.”

“Goddamn it, Emma.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I love you, Nick. I love you, Lieutenant D’Nofrio. I just want you to know that.”

He closed his eyes and set the hotel Bible down on the bed. Before leaving the room, he pulled his pants back on and went over to the writing desk and grabbed the bottle of Red Truck by the neck.