Via Dolorosa(5)
Process, he thought. See that? It has become a process, some process. There is no art left here. It is mechanical; it is processed.
He stepped back around to the front of the lobby, suddenly wanting to smoke but knowing for certain it would be unwise to risk stepping outside to do so. Even the sprawling arcade that covered the gravel driveway would afford no protection against the biting wind and strong, driving rain. Still, he wanted a smoke. He’d seen people smoking in the bar, hadn’t he? Yet he couldn’t recall. For a brief moment, he entertained the notion of disabling one of the smoke alarms in the ground-floor bathroom off the lobby, but just the thought of it—and the sense of deviousness and, moreover, self-pity associated with the act—caused him to quickly brush the idea aside. Was he really going to become some lunatic disabling smoke alarms in hotel bathrooms just for a few quick drags?
He saw that the bell captain’s podium was left unattended. There was no clerk behind the front desk, either. The lobby was a mausoleum.
The hotel bar, on the other hand, was still somewhat awake, its limited patrons like defeated athletes who, following the onset of age and unavoidable physical deterioration, had grown bitter and nostalgic in their despondency. Nick straddled the stool nearest the wall of windows so he could listen to the rain at his back. Glancing around, he saw an elderly man with a rough-looking face and a comically bulbous nose seated at the opposite end of the bar, absently peeling the label from a bottle of domestic beer. Across the room at one of the tables sat another man, heavyset, intense and deeply Hispanic-looking, alone except for half a bottle of Chianti served traditionally in its woven basket. It was a good hotel that respected tradition and still served their Chiantis in woven baskets, Nick thought. Then, on the heels of that: Listen to me, sitting here and thinking to myself like some goddamn old man, or like some bitter old war veteran. It must be my old face making me think like this. What a lousy old bastard of a face. Looking up, he saw only the conga-line of bottles above the counter. There was no wall-length mirror behind the bar, and for that he was grateful.
Even at this hour, he could not stop his mind from thinking. It was difficult, he found, to summon the memory of the people they both had been—both together and individually—just a single day ago. Difficult…but not impossible: a few glittering shards managed to survive deep within him, valued and sparkling like treasure at a moment when it seemed everything else had been demolished by the holocaust…but in uncovering these truths he felt himself torn between the reality of the world he now lived and the utter fakeness of all he wished the world could be. It was a child’s foolish daydream, and he was suddenly very much that child. Yet knowing this did not help anything. There was no getting beyond it. God, he wished he could get beyond it.
Don’t think, he told himself. Stop thinking. It was good advice.
He couldn’t stop.
The bartender eventually made his way down to the end of the bar and Nick ordered a Dewar’s and water.
“I can smoke in here, can’t I?”
“All you want,” the bartender said. “I’ll even get you an ashtray.”
Nick crooked around on his stool and watched the rain pelt the wall of windows. The trees in the courtyard, black and panicked, shook in the tempest: sinners at the foot of an angry god.
“I know how you feel. I’ve been here two years now,” the bartender said, “and I still can’t sleep when it pours like this. They say it takes some time getting used to. I wonder if I have that kind of time.”
“So this is normal?”
“Last summer, we had such a storm blow in that the winds uprooted some of the trees from the front quad and pushed one through those big plate-glass windows in the lobby. The original windows were stained glass and there were jagged little bits of colored glass all over the place. We were finding pieces of colored glass for the next few months. Not to mention all the stuff from outside the wind brought in. You’d be surprised how well bits of glass can hide.”
“I can believe it.”
“Well, at least you had a few good days before the storm came,” the bartender said, setting the drink on the bar. “At least you had a chance to enjoy the beach some, too.”
“Oh, yeah,” Nick said. “The beach.” He sipped his drink then took a deep, healthy swallow. The scotch tasted calm and smoky and the alcohol was quite liberally distributed. “I’d forgotten what it felt like to be out on the water. It’s been such a long time since I’ve seen the ocean.”
“You can’t beat the ocean, man,” the bartender said. “I take my boat out on the water every single night. It’s especially impressive at night. Really puts into perspective how small we all are.”
“Yeah, we’re specks.”
“Lost little specks. Like broken bits of glass.”
“I just got real tired of sand without water,” Nick said. “I’m tired of hot and I’m tired of yellow and I’m tired of dry.”
“That’s why the ocean’s good. You’ll see it again. The storm will pass,” the bartender said. “Beginning of summer, it’s always like this. Sometimes it’s worse, too, like I said, when the tree was thrown through the windows. But it’s normal. It’s like some introduction. Wouldn’t be summer without the first big summer storm to set things in motion.”