Via Dolorosa(33)

A cool breeze brought him back to reality.

Carrying a fresh carafe of demitasse, Emma returned. Isabella Rosales walked beside her, wrapped in a floral sarong and a flesh-toned bikini top, her skin coffee-colored under the bright sunlight of midday. Her stomach was tight, muscled, and freckled—the color of new copper. Faint blond hairs traced down her abdomen, straight down into the folded dip of her floral sarong. Her belly button was a winking eye. She carried with her a small camera with a detachable lens. Emma set the carafe on the table but did not sit. Nick watched steam curl from the spout of the carafe. There were only the two chairs, his currently occupied, and it looked as though Emma might offer her chair to Isabella. It seemed to remain unoccupied for an eternity.

“Nicholas,” Isabella said, smiling. “How’ve you been?”

“Fine. Good to see you.”

“You two are always so handsome together,” she said, and motioned for Emma to sit. “It is so refreshing to always run into you both,” she went on, and Nick felt that she was being deliberately vague in her speech. Even her eyes refused to light on him and remain for any significant length of time. Had she mentioned to Emma that he had been out with her last night? He didn’t think so…

“We can get another chair, if you’d like to sit,” Emma said. “We’ve got fresh coffee, too.”

“Thank you, but no. I’ve planned to be out and about the island this afternoon. I’m going to take pictures of the storm’s aftermath. I’ve been told that just south of here, many of the small houses were destroyed by the storm.”

“That’s horrible,” Emma said.

“The camera finds it beautiful,” Isabella said. “The camera also finds you both beautiful.” Without hesitation, she brought the camera to her face, the detachable lens now pointing at him, at Emma. “May I? For a souvenir.” And she laughed. “A souvenir for me, I mean.”

“Oh, yes, please,” Emma said, already sliding her chair closer to Nick. “I just wish my hair was in better shape—”

“I have never seen a more beautiful woman sitting out in the sun,” Isabella retorted, watching them through the lens of the camera. “So beautiful and young. And without sin. Like a woman, but like a child, too.”

“And what about Nick? Is he handsome and like a child without sin, too?”

“Nicholas,” Isabella said.

“Is he?” Emma pressed.

Isabella lowered her camera. She looked at Nick with her own eyes. Black ice. Said, “Nicholas, too, is a child. A very handsome child. But there is a part of him that has been forced to grow up too soon. I wonder, Nicholas, is that the soldier part of you? Or is it something deeper?”

“I have no idea,” he said.

“Don’t you?”

“No. I’ve never seen that part of me before. The part you’re talking about.”

“Yes,” Isabella said, bringing the camera back up to her face. “The part you have never seen is that very part that makes you blind to such a thing. Interesting, yes?”

“Take the picture,” he told her. “I’m sure the picture will tell all.”

Isabella snapped the photograph.

“I love the way she talks,” Emma marveled. To Isabella, she said, “There is such poetry in your speech.”

“I find speaking English very pleasing.”

“And you have a wonderful accent, too,” Emma went on.

“Gracias.”

“I know a little Spanish,” Emma said. “I wouldn’t say it in front of you, though, but I know some. I would have to be really drunk to try and speak my crippled Spanish in front of you, though. I would be embarrassed, it’s so poor.”

“There is no embarrassment here,” Isabella assured her.

“Really,” Emma said, shaking her head. “I won’t do it. It would be like an insult to you.”

“So then one more picture?”

“Oh, yes.”

“And we will make it a fine picture. Nicholas, kiss your wife.”

“Then you won’t see our faces,” he said.

“Don’t be so sour,” Isabella warned. “Are you always so sour? Kiss your beautiful, childish, sinless wife. Kiss her and I will take the picture.”

He turned and kissed Emma. It seemed a long time before the flash went off.

“So beautiful,” Isabella said after the picture was taken.

“Good luck with your houses,” Emma said.

“I hope they’re not totally destroyed,” Nick interrupted.

“At least this time,” added Isabella, “no one was killed.”

After lunch, they went down to the beach and sprawled out on the sand. A few couples, roughly their own age, frolicked in the water. Occasionally, children took to their feet, pumping up and down the beach, leaving five-toed divots in the sand. The day had brightened yet there was still a charcoal thread of threatening clouds sweeping across the horizon, and the sea was still slate-gray and rough. Where an outcrop of auburn stone snaked tongue-like into the water, great heaving whitecaps burst upon it and foamed in a thick flow toward the shore. Quite visible, too, was the dark strip of space at the crest of the horizon as the Earth rotated and turned the sea to face the emptiness of infinity. When Emma went into the water, Nick remained on the beach. He watched her swim for some time, sleek and white, and there were a few times when he could not see her head rising from the waves. He sat up straighter to search for her. Just when his concern began to mount, she always reappeared, her cropped dark hair, darker when wet, slicked back from her face. Once, she waved to him. He nodded in response. When she came from the water and walked up the beach, he watched her until something panged within him, forcing him to turn away. Did she notice? He didn’t think so. Toweling off, her shadow peeled away from her and stretched out toward the sea.