Via Dolorosa(43)

“For some of it, yes.”

“What else?”

What else had he thought of? He knew it, sure, but he did not say it to Isabella. Instead, he said, “Mostly you.”

“Still lying,” she said. “It was not mostly me.”

True. He’d thought of dead Myles Granger and how the boy’s deadness had somehow attempted to resurrect and preserve itself in the hotel mural—would have, in fact, had Nick not stepped back and realized he had unconsciously painted the dead boy. Something like guilt had washed over him in painting out Myles’s face, but he could not leave the innocent, wide-eyed, accusing dead boy up there staring down at him like some judgmental deity. So yes, he had thought about Myles Granger. Emma, too, had worked her way into his brain, albeit for only what seemed like a brief flash—a nanosecond. It seemed corrupt to have his wife enter his mind when standing here, in the dark, painting a mural of naked (naked?) Isabella Rosales.

“Did you paint with your heart?” Isabella said, still from the bed.

“I did,” he told her. And it was the truth.

“And how did it feel?”

After a moment, he said, “Like a confession.”

“Then you have done the best work you could have done. I am proud of you, my Nicholas.” She added, “Now leave.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Leave,” she said. “Go away. Don’t turn on a light and don’t bother collecting your paints. I will bring your paints to you. After such a confession,” she said, “it is important to just leave.”

“In the dark,” he said.

Smilingly, she answered, “In the dark.”





—Chapter XI—





“Please shower.”

“Stop it.”

“Please, Nick,” she begged. “Please. Don’t talk about it, and I won’t talk about it, but please, Nick, please shower.”

“Nothing happened. You’re being ridiculous.”

“Please.”

He could not listen to any more. In the dark, he rose from bed and went to the bathroom and showered. Keeping his aching arm under the spray of the showerhead, he let the water slide over his body. He showered for what felt like a century.

Later, back in bed, half-whispering, Emma said, “I don’t know if it’s the right thing. I’m sorry. It’s ruined, isn’t it?”

“We can talk about it in the morning.”

“I drank a little at the limbo tonight.”

“That’s okay.”

“I think I’m still drunk, too.”

“So am I.”

“I did something stupid, too. I took the car and went for a drive by myself, because the night was so beautiful. I needed to get away from the hotel for a while and be outside.”

“Nothing wrong with that.”

“I wrecked the car, Nick. Not bad, but I drove over a curb on my way back tonight and it scraped at the bottom and dented some of the chrome. So, well, no, it’s not wrecked. I didn’t wreck it. But I messed it up a little and now it’s not perfect. I’m so sorry.” She waited. “Are you angry?”

“You shouldn’t have driven so drunk, is all.”

“I’m sorry about the car.”

“I don’t care about the car.”

“Thank you for showering. I deserve it all, I know it, every last little bit, but thank you anyway for showering.”

“Let’s not talk about it now, Emma.”

“We’re in a dream here, for the time we’re here, Nick. Don’t you remember? And I love you so I want you to do whatever you need to do to make us right again. It’s my fault so you need to do what you need to do. But I can’t hear about it and I certainly can’t smell it. Do you understand?”

“Go to sleep,” he told her. Something in him was angered because she wasn’t crying.

“Please,” she said again. Again with that word. “Please.” She said, “Just say it, Nick. Promise it and say it. I need to hear you say it.”

“You’re talking nonsense.”

“I just need to hear you say it.”

“Fine,” he said. “Fine.”

“Promise it.”

“I promise,” he said. “No hearing and no smelling.”

“And you’ll shower?”

“I’ll shower.”

“All the time you’ll shower?”

“There is nothing happening here,” he insisted. “There isn’t an ‘all the time,’ Emma.”

“Just say it, please, Nick. I need to hear it.”

“All the time I’ll shower,” he said.

“All right, Nick.”

“Now go to sleep.”

“All right.”

“And stop all this,” he said.

“What?” she said. “Stop all what?”

“Christ,” he said, but he didn’t know how else to say it. He did not know how to say any of it. He suddenly wished himself far from here, somewhere black and bleak and empty and void of feeling. That place would be his Eden, blessed Eden. He could rest there, not thinking, stupid in his remoteness, for the remainder of his days. He thought, I could shut this off, all of it. I could never think about any of it again, and such not thinking would be welcome, would be terrific. I could fade away into myself, as if drug-induced, and keep fading and falling away so I would never have to think about anything ever again. And wouldn’t that be perfect? He could find it—it was possible: a small, shielded sanctuary inside his own head, where he could regroup and shelter himself and create his own world, and where, in that world, he could make himself come to believe and understand and accept or decline anything the outside world—the real world—provided. Anyone had that power. In your head, he knew, you had complete control over what was real and what was not. You had complete control over what you wanted to believe and what you wanted to designate as a dream and nothing more. In your head, you had the power to alter the reality of the world. If you wanted to fly, you simply told yourself that you could, and although the physical act of flying would never actually take place, it was enough to simply convince yourself—and no one else—that you could.