Via Dolorosa(38)

“Morals,” Isabella said, “are highly overrated. Sometimes,” she said, “it’s just better to not be alone.”

He proceeded to pack up his equipment.

“Do you disagree?” she said over his shoulder.

“That sometimes it’s better to not be alone? I suppose. But I don’t think one should have to compromise his or her morals.”

“Morals,” she said again. “Boo. What are morals? We have created them out of nothing to keep us in chains.”

“Christ,” he said, “where did you get all this from?”

“You do not feel the same way?”

“We are born with them, with morals. They are ingrained in us.”

“Even more ingrained than the desire to be with another human being?” she said. “Even more ingrained than the struggle to keep one’s self alive?”

“Do you have a point to this?” he said finally.

Simply, she said, “No. Do you?”

With his good hand, he grabbed the supplies trunk by one handle and slid it across the floor to the storage closet. As he worked, he could feel Isabella’s eyes on him, and he was conscious—too conscious—of the difficulty evident in his attempt to move the trunk on his own. Goddamn ruined hand, he thought—and, strangest of all, and for the first time since his crippling, he nearly laughed at himself. He didn’t, but he could feel the threat of laughter…could feel it bubbling up someplace deep within him. While he did not let it go, as it was unlike him to let it go, he realized at the same time that it might have done him good to let it go and be free of it. For that moment, anyway.

“Where will you be later tonight?” Isabella said once he had stowed the trunk in the supplies closet.

“Nowhere,” he said.

“Your wife?”

“She is doing her limbo,” he said.

“Will you paint me?”

“You want me to paint you?”

“Will you do it?”

He thought for just a second. Then: “Yes, all right.”

“Wonderful.”

“Tonight?” he said.

“Come to my room,” she told him, then told him the room number.

“Come tonight. Bring your paints. I will supply the canvas.”

“I haven’t painted a portrait,” he said, “in a very, very long time.”

“And I can tell you are scared about it.”

“No,” he said, “I’m not.”

“Why do you lie to me?”

“I’m not lying.”

“For so noble a man, you certainly find comfort in lying.”





—Chapter X—





He went to the hotel bar but Roger was not there. A robust, pink-skinned, heavily-browed woman tended the bar.

“Where’s Roger?”

“Shift’s over.”

“It’s that late?” He looked up, searching for a clock, found none. While the female bartender wore a watch, she did not bother informing him of the time.

“What can I get you?”

He ordered a glass of scotch on the rocks, clean cubes, and waited without sitting for the drink to come.

He had no intention of loving Isabella, of falling in love with Isabella. There were complications involved in such an exercise for which he was surely unprepared. He had been to war and had watched his friends die, and he was confident of his ability to resist falling in love, or even falling into mild admiration and longing. It was mathematical, really. He’d chosen Emma. But that went awry. So math had set him on a course for Isabella. It was truly that simple. There was nothing of love involved. She was available and he felt it was something that was here for him, and it was all that simple. He, Nick, was not afraid of falling in love with anyone.

So stop thinking about her.

Finishing his drink, Nick stood, stretched his back and popped tendons, then ambled out into the hotel lobby. He needed a cigarette. He could see Mr. Granger standing behind the bell captain podium. Stout, red-faced, bleary-eyed. Too happy to avoid the older man, he hurried down the far corridor toward the back of the hotel. Here, in the half-gloom (there were very few lights), he tripped the lock on the rear doors and pushed them open and stepped out onto the beach. Producing a brown-papered cigarette, he lit it and inhaled with vigor. He was aware of the strong, sea-smelling breeze rushing against his body, coming down from the northern part of the island. And faintly, through the walls of the hotel, somewhere hidden in one of the massive, gaudily carpeted rooms, he could hear pre-recorded calypso music playing. Limbo, he thought. How low can you go?

There were few lights out on the water. He smelled the near-mournful scent of the salt sea. In the distance, he could make out a few boats, all rocking on the waves, the name of one—Kerberos—clearly visible beneath the glow of moonlight. Having no ports on this side of the island at which to dock, the few ships simply drifted with lethargic contentment just beyond the breakers, silent and deeply contemplative out on the sea.

I could do that, he thought. I could get a boat and sail the hell away from this place and never look back. Then, on the heels of that, he thought, Coward.

“Yes.”

Hot against his lips, the cigarette tasted good in his mouth.