Via Dolorosa(40)

From behind him, Isabella’s voice drifted out of the room: “Unfortunately there are only drinking glasses. They do not stock the rooms with proper wine glasses anymore, and I haven’t had a chance to steal any yet.” He heard something bump into something else, followed by a hiss of white noise through stereo speakers. A moment later and he recognized the music from Russell “Goat-Man” Claxton’s set at the Club Potemkin.

He went to the sink and gathered up the two drinking glasses, setting them both upright. They wore paper hats, which he peeled off.

“Bottle opener?” he called out.

“Look in the tub,” Isabella called back.

Half the shower curtain was already pulled back; he could see photographs clipped to the retractable clothesline over the tub. Gently, he pulled aside the remainder of the curtain (heedful not to disrupt the photographs that were pinned to it) and peered into the tub. What he saw: a portable telephone; two empty beer bottles without labels; a scattered assortment of ketchup packets from the hotel restaurant downstairs; a pink brassier; a lawn rake propped up against one tiled wall; the Holy Bible; a neatly folded pair of khaki slacks; twelve unwrapped bars of soap (he counted them); a plank of whitewashed wooden fencing with what appeared to be a face painted on it, causing Nick some reflection; a pillow case apparently filled with various footwear—sneakers, sandals, heels, boots, and the like; a silver football helmet with a green shamrock etched onto one side; a tattered paperback novel titled Sangria Espresso; a set of keys; a pair of Hammeroy sunglasses with one of the lenses missing; and the corkscrew.

“Did you find it?” she called from the room.

“Yes.”

With the corkscrew, he managed to wrangle the cork from the bottle of shiraz. He proceeded to fill both glasses. Looking up at the collage taped to the mirror in front of him, he noticed some of the photographs were of him—from the Club Potemkin…from the nighttime shoot on the hill with Claxton…from earlier that day while he worked on the mural. He scrutinized the photographs. He noticed he looked older in each subsequent photograph—and he looked downright elderly in the most recent one, the one taken of him as he’d finished working on the mural. It could have been the way the shadows fell across his face, he thought…but the thought did not comfort him. Also, he noticed the barely-lit profile of a young girl standing behind him and just off to the left, halfway down the corridor stretching out behind him and staring directly at the camera.

Still dressed only in her robe, propped up against the headboard of her bed, Isabella had her head back and her eyes closed, listening intently to Claxton’s CD as he reentered the room with the two glasses of wine.

“Interesting bathroom,” he said. “You decorate the place yourself?”

“It doubles as my darkroom.”

“What’s with the stuff in the tub?”

“Things I found on the beach.”

“You found all that stuff on the beach?”

“All of it.”

“A football helmet?”

“All of it,” she repeated, eyes still closed. As he walked around the side of the bed, though, her eyes came open. For a brief second, she looked blind.

He handed her a glass of wine. “You take interesting pictures.”

“Do you think so?”

“What’s the deal with the dead bodies? You shoot crime scenes or something?”

“Oh, those are my favorites,” she admitted. “The woman was a prostitute murdered in an alley a few blocks from my apartment. Some of the others were victims of automobile accidents. Now they are immortal.” Grinning, she said, “I have a life-size one over my bed at home of a man halfway through his windshield. It is a wonderful photograph. You can see the way the head opened up.”

“Lovely,” he mused.

“For some, it’s perhaps their most beautiful hour.” Isabella sipped her wine. “Do you think that prostitute ever looked more beautiful?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Then let me ask you—do you think she ever thought two people such as ourselves would be talking about her after she died?” She laughed. “Immortal, Nicholas,” she said.

There was a small desk at the opposite end of the room. Its surface was littered with clothing. He went to it and gathered some of the clothes into a ball and paused, uncertain where he should put the mess.

“On the floor,” Isabella said from the bed. “Just drop them.”

He dropped them. At the desk, he opened his nylon case and proceeded to assemble his tools—his fan brushes, his heavy-bristled brushes, his knives—on the desktop. There was a roll of canvas in the case, too, which he removed and unclipped, unrolled. The smell of the canvas was like rawhide.

“You set your implements out like artillery,” Isabella said from the bed. “Do you do that on purpose?”

“I’ve never noticed,” he admitted.

“Did you do it the same way before the war?”

“Let’s not talk about the war.”

He did not turn to look in her direction, but he could hear her giggling. He could tell she wanted him to hear her, too.

“Pin the canvas to the wall,” she told him.

“Hmmm?”

“The wall,” she said. “Pin the canvas to the wall. Look—over here.”