Via Dolorosa(48)

“I think some men can do that,” Nick said.

“Yeah, well, maybe. But not most men. Not real men.”

“Maybe not real men,” Nick agreed.

“It ain’t their fault, though, and that’s the other thing I been thinking. I mean, I think women ultimately want to be content in their lives. I think they know this from the beginning and they know that sometimes they will have to do repulsive things to get to that contentment. They are okay with that. Men, though—we get caught up in the particulars. That’s why suicide is primarily a man’s sport. We never make it okay for ourselves.”

“Maybe women are just smarter that way. They get what they want and they have the ability to not reflect on their past.”

“Maybe,” said Bowerman. “She’s two months pregnant, Lieutenant.”

“That sometimes happens.”

“We were going to get married.”

“What was it you wanted to ask me?”

“Huh?”

“You said you wanted to ask me something, Bowerman. What was it you wanted to ask me?”

After a moment of silence, Joseph Bowerman said, “I guess nothing.” Another pause; more silence. “I guess I just wanted someone to listen.”

Nick closed his eyes, shutting out the stars.

“Repulsed,” Bowerman muttered beneath his breath. “That’s some good word, I’ll tell you what, boy.”

“Sure.”

“Hey,” Bowerman went on, “what do you think that woman said to Granger this morning? That Iraqi woman?”

“I don’t know.”

“Seemed to shake him up, all right.”

“It did,” he agreed. In fact, now, he could easily summon the frightened and confused look on Myles Granger’s face as the woman grabbed him and cried something to him.

“I wonder what it was,” Bowerman continued, not letting it go. “Granger, he’s good with the language. I know he understood her. I asked him later what she’d said and he said he didn’t know, but I think that’s bunk. He’s a smart kid and knows the language well, and I know he was lying to me, saying he didn’t know.” Reflectively, he said, “I wonder what it was.”

“I don’t know,” Nick said.

“Lieutenant, you smell that?”

“It’s white phosphorous.”

“Stinks when it burns. I hate when it burns like that.”

“Close your eyes and get some sleep, Bowser.”

“My eyes have been closed the whole time, Lieutenant.”

“Then take advantage of it and go to sleep.”

“Goodnight, Lieutenant.”

He did not answer.





—Chapter XIV—





Fever-stricken, he spent the next two days in bed. After opening the patio doors and ordering him a light lunch for noon via room service, Emma would leave him alone for most of the day. When she returned close to dusk, her skin was slick and oiled and tan and she looked very young and healthy. The first night she stayed with him in the room. She ordered herbal teas, which she would set out for him on the nightstand in a cup and saucer. Though he never touched it, she would periodically check the tea’s temperature and, if she found it had chilled, would dump it into the bathroom sink and refill his cup. This occurred as ritual, and Nick could almost count down on the alarm clock to the next dump-and-refill session. For that first evening, she had taken up residence in one of the wing-backed chairs across the room, her feet tucked up under her bottom as a child would do while she read her poetry books to herself. At one point, she asked if he would like her to read aloud to him.

“No.”

“It isn’t trouble,” she said back. “You used to love me reading the poems to you.”

“Not now, please,” he said groggily.

When he felt sleep beginning to overtake him that first night, he prayed silently for a dreamless slumber. He knew he had been dreaming recently of Iraq, although he could not remember anything specific about these dreams. It was just the empty, wasted, disemboweled feeling such dreams left behind as their calling card that made him aware they had been capering around inside his head while he slept.

“You talk in your sleep,” Emma told him as she dressed that second morning.

“What did I say?”

“It was funny,” she said. “Maybe I didn’t hear you right.”

“What did I say?”

“Something about a baby,” she said. Standing before the curtained patio doors, she adjusted her blouse while looking at herself in the armoire mirror. “Something about a baby in someone’s belly.” When he did not answer, she said, “Are you still feeling bad?”

“A little.”

“Is there something I can get you?”

“Just open those doors a little more, get some of that air in.”

“It’s lovely out there today,” she said, widening the doors. “It’s too bad you’re sick.”

“I’ll be up soon enough.”

“Would you like me to stay and have lunch with you today?”

“No,” he said. “Go out, enjoy the beach. I’m not hungry, anyway.”