Via Dolorosa(50)

“They shit them out,” he said.

Isabella’s smile widened, showing many teeth. She slid her sunglasses a half-inch down the bridge of her nose. Fawn-colored, dark eyes settled on him, held him. “Yes,” she said, still holding the smile, “they shit them out. Mierda. Shit.”

“Mierda,” he repeated.

“Going through the digestive tract of the civet, the coffee beans are purged of their proteins. The Indonesians then package the beans and sell them for over a thousand dollars a pound.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Oh, yes. Jesus Christ, Nicholas. Over a thousand dollars a pound for mierda—for shit. That,” she went on without pause, “is what happened to my handsome fair-skinned American writer.”

“What?” he asked.

“That somewhere, somehow, in so many ways, the man lost himself. He started as a great and very proud writer. Reading his words, I found myself very proud of him, too, and I am not proud of much. Do you see? But unfortunately there is little money set aside for the great and the proud and the talented, only the commercially successful, and so my handsome fair-skinned American writer came to a crossroads.” She frowned and drew her long, raven eyebrows together. “Crossroads, yes? That is correct?”

“Yes.”

“Yes,” she said. “So—the crossroads. And my handsome fair-skinned American writer, in his moment of weakness, decided to not be so great and so proud and so talented, and he began writing for a bigger publisher for bigger dollars and bigger success. Do you see? He had become like the civet.” She tapped her cigarette out on the bar. “So then, rich but unhappy, he lost himself. And in losing himself, he lost his love for me. And in losing his love for me,” she continued, “I lost my love for him. Tal es la manera del mundo—such is the way of the world.” She smoked, grimly frowning, but it still looked handsome on her beautiful face. “I do not drink coffee made of monkey shit,” she stated flatly.

“Yes,” Nick said.

“Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes.”

“That’s a very sad story.”

“For him it is more sad,” she said. “For me, it is not so sad. I am not one to worry about the past. But I still remember him and I know he is very much the man who worries about the past. That, too, I think, is a writer’s thing.”

“It’s a human thing,” he corrected.

“No,” she said coolly, “it is a man’s thing.”

“Mierda,” he said because he did not know what else to say.

Smiling, beaming, beautiful, Isabella said, “You have no idea.”

Changing the subject, he asked her how the portrait had turned out. Isabella made an expression that could have been a smile, could have been a frown. It was difficult to tell with her, he knew only that it was pretty on her. “Curious,” was all she said.

It wasn’t until after they shared a cup of coffee and she ran off to do whatever it was people like Isabella Rosales do, did Nick remember that her note—the one she had pinned to his nylon supplies case and left outside his hotel door—was still in his pocket. He took it out now, looked at it:



Tal es la manera del mundo.



Not sure whether he should smile or not, feeling only a bit confused, he thought, Such is the way of the world.

That evening, and well into the next morning, he resided on the stepladder before the hotel mural. He painted with a furious liberation he had not experienced since returning from the war. Changing views, changing angles, he painted in utter disregard of the sketch that lay beneath the paint. A different man was painting now. A different man had gone to Iraq and a different man had returned. Likewise, a different man had come to this island and here, now, right here and now, a different man was emerging. And he would paint. He paid no mind to the cramping in his right hand, the goddamn Raynaud’s. He refused to forfeit this newfound momentum over some pain and stiffness. He would not do it. Over grass-lined slopes he painted cresting flesh-toned hillocks, rising like the humps of odd-colored whale calves; through courtyards and densely-greened pools of trees he carved a winding dynasty of bone-hued footpaths, each minutely infected with the tinsel-glisten of red—pinpricks and daubs and freckles and blemishes, the way they were in reality, the way they were in his head; replacing the tumult of beach he brought to life the truth of the world, which is not beach by the sea but beach without water, a beach as arid and destitute as the splitting, cracking tongues of the thirsty: a shimmering landscape enigma.

He painted straight through the night and into the next morning. When he finished, exhausted, spent, wasted, he packed his equipment back into the lobby’s supply closet and headed back to his room for some sleep.

The sun was overly bright in the lobby. In silence, and amidst a wave of several other hotel guests, he and Emma passed each other by the elevators, but both pretended they had not seen the other.





—Chapter XV—





At one point, whether floating along in a dream or merely lost in a daydream’s semi-consciousness, Nick fancied himself moving along a sandy strip of beach out into the middle of the ocean. He could see no land either to his right or his left—just the everlasting tumult of the sea—and both behind and in front of him the narrow strip of white sand faded off into its respective horizon. While there seemed no prejudice in taking one direction over the other, he concluded with some sense of percipience that since he was facing forward, that must be the direction he had been chosen to walk. So he walked. The sand was incredibly soft. His feet sank deep into it with every step, several inches, sometimes burying his toes completely. The strip of sand itself was only about three feet wide, each side licked and flattened by the pull of the ocean waves. The water, further out, was black and desolate and cold-looking. He could see massive whitecaps rising up from the sea on either side of him. Walking, he kept his eyes straight ahead, trying not to look down and not to look out at the roiling, darkened sea.