Via Dolorosa(3)

The young waiter, who had been friendly the first few days of their stay, did not approach the table to refill Nick’s coffee; he hovered nearby, instead, like a lone hyena waiting for a pride of lions to depart a heap of fresh kill, his black eyes roving over Nick and over the now half-empty table, apparently lost in some sort of personal deliberation. It was obvious he wanted to clear the table and be done with it. Nick finished his coffee and set the cup on the edge of the table, baiting the young waiter. Finally, the beckoning cup became too tempting and obvious to ignore and, sporting some reluctance, the young waiter eventually made his way back to the table.

“You want a refill, Lieutenant D’Nofrio?”

“Please. Black.”

“Yes, Lieutenant. I remember how you like it.”

“I hope it’s not too late. Are you getting ready to close down?”

“It isn’t very late. The kitchen is closed,” said the young waiter, “but the bar will stay open for a few more hours. Were you still hungry? I think there’s some soup still on the stove, if you want it.”

“No. I just didn’t want to be a nuisance.”

“Of course not, Lieutenant.”

“What’s your name?” Nick asked the waiter.

“James Sanders.”

“How did you know I was a lieutenant, James?”

The young waiter suddenly looked embarrassed. “I’m sorry. The bell captain told me.”

“What did he tell you?”

“That you were in Iraq with his son, and that you tried to save his son’s life.”

“Is that all he said?”

“Yes. I didn’t ask anything more about it.”

“How old are you, James?”

“Nineteen, Lieutenant.” The kid treated him with respect.

“Your father was in the military?”

“My father was in the Navy, sir. We lived in Annapolis when I was younger.”

“Your father’s retired now?”

“He’s dead now, Lieutenant.”

“Hell,” Nick said. “I’ll just have that coffee, then, James.”

“Yes.”

The second cup of coffee came and Nick sipped at it, watching the rain sluice down hard against the wall of windows. It was an old and beautiful hotel, fitting for the island. He remembered the drive in and remembered how it was difficult to tell when you were leaving the coast and arriving on the island. The causeway that communicated with the mainland was wide and expansive, and there were always trees and small, shanty-like houses balanced precipitously at the edge of the island. Emma had been reading passages to him from one of her poetry books—Byron, if he was remembering correctly—and when they had hit the causeway, she had looked up, anxious to see the glistening span of water and the approaching island ahead. But it had been difficult to make out the island, as it all looked like flat, connected land, and there was really no long stretch of water separating the island from the mainland. Still, she had stopped reading, having tucked Byron (or whomever it had been) neatly in the rift between her seat and the Impala’s passenger door, and, with adolescent alacrity, had looked on through the windshield without speaking.

That was like a thousand years ago, he thought now, sipping the coffee and watching the rain. Two weeks or a thousand years ago. It’s all just about the same when you get right down to it.

Emma could not sleep that first night of the storm. She remained on her back beside him, warm, in the bed and in the dark, and he could see her from the corner of his eye as he remained on his own back until he finally turned over and away from her. Sleep would not find him, either, and he listened long and hard to the rain coming down against the patio doors. He said nothing while he listened to her breathing, very close beside him in the bed, once familiar but so suddenly alien and frighteningly removed to him, as if he did not know her—as if he had never known her. They had not talked since dinner and, even at dinner, they had not talked.

Put yourself back on the beach, he told himself. Rewind everything just one day and put yourself back on the beach, and in the daylight, and without the storm and the wind and the creaking of the hotel in the throes of the wind. Put yourself back on the beach, he thought.

“I don’t like it,” Emma whispered just as he was about to fall asleep. She caught him in that state of half-consciousness where he found it temporarily difficult to differentiate between dreams and reality.

“It’s just a storm,” he said after realizing he was awake and everything around him was real.

“Can you move closer to me?” she said.

“I’m right here,” he said.

“I don’t like it. It’s loud and so much, and it bothers me.”

“It’ll be fine,” he assured her.

“I can’t find sleep. The rain is too much and I can’t find sleep.”

She was silent for a while. Then, at one point, he heard the bed creak. In turning slightly and looking over at her from the corner of one eye, he could make out her slender, pale form slipping off the side of the bed and moving through the darkness of the bedroom toward the patio doors. She did not say a word. He watched her linger, unmoving, before the midnight glow of the storm, her figure silhouetted against the moonlight and framed in that rectangle of double-doors, and did not say anything. To him, her form was familiar, unlike her breathing had been only moments ago, and he found a confusing mix of emotions in such a familiarity. The urge to go to her was suddenly overpowering. Yet he did not move from his place in the large bed except to pull the sheets up tight around the base of his neck and against his collarbone. The girl hadn’t closed the drapes, and he watched the rain slam against the patio doors and watched her slight frame stand before the doors, her thin and pale arms hugging her body. It was a hard rain. He could smell the girl, could still smell her in the pillow and in the sheets, and the smell was warm, clean, domestic. It was a smell only the slightest bit salty from the sea.