Via Dolorosa(52)
“The painting can wait.”
“It is work; it does not wait.” Continuing to punctuate…
She vanished into the bathroom. Nick listened. After a moment, he heard the shower turn on. Women turn on the shower differently than men, he thought. Men pull the handle or the lever or turn the knobs forcefully, and there is always that solid clank as it is turned or pulled all the way and is stopped by whatever stops such things. Women, on the other hand, they begin a shower gently, tenderly, and there is never any clanking. Unless they are angry. He urged himself off the bed and stood just outside the bathroom door. The door was not closed all the way: he could make out Emma’s naked form, blurred by the curtain’s distortion, in the shower. His right hand hurt. He tried not to think about his right hand. Instead, he summoned the voice of his wife, ghostly despite its recentness: We can’t survive in this limbo for the rest of our lives, Nick.
For whatever reason, he thought of Isabella at that moment, and of the story she had told him at the Club Potemkin about being raped and left in a Catholic Church near the outskirts of Pamplona. He could not imagine someone like Isabella being raped. She had said something about bulls, too, running with the bulls…
Thinking odd things at odd times…
Entering the bathroom, he silently climbed out of his clothes, meeting his own eyes in the bathroom mirror as he did so. Then he stood, white and naked, vulnerable and unrighteous, just inches from the plastic shower curtain. On the other side, he could see Emma pause, too. He watched her not move. They faced each other, unable to make out any detail or feature for the distortion of the shower curtain, and neither of them moved. Their breathing alternated: following his exhale, he could see the curtain buckle slightly toward him as she breathed on his heels.
We have been disenfranchised from each other, he thought, still not moving. Our marriage has become a misalliance.
His hand hurt.
He could not stop thinking of his hand.
Her tiny form smeary behind the shower curtain…motionless, waiting, bated—and he could vaguely make out the hints of her body as he knew her body to be: the subtle swelling of white hips, of pink-capped breasts, a darkened, blurry V-patch at the intersection of her legs. He knew her body like a soldier knows his weapon or an artist knows his paints. He knew everything about her back, and was familiar with how it felt to be touching it and pushed up against it. How it hinted at what was around its corner, and down below and beneath and within. That wet-season-specific scent of her hair draped across her neck and shoulder (when it had been long enough to drape), and how the scents of both their bodies had commingled into one solid reality, one single human pheromone. The way she often looked so happy that she looked so sad. The way, too, that his tongue no longer tasted just as his tongue but, instead, as a mixture of his and hers, all together now, inseparable. These things. Great, amazing things. These things were his to know and to own, solely his to know and—
But no.
As if reading his mind, Emma said, “It’s all right, Nick. We will start fresh once we’re down by the water. The festival will make us fresh. I have faith. We don’t need to start fresh here, now, right now. We don’t need to start fresh like this.”
Because he couldn’t. He couldn’t bring himself to do it.
He said, “I’m going to get dressed and wait downstairs in the lobby.”
At the sink, he washed his face and matted down his cowlick as best he could. He slipped back into the room and dressed hastily in whatever articles of clothing seemed to jump out at him from the armoire. Back downstairs, his hands working over each other in frantic unease, he paced the hotel lobby. Soon, he found himself staring at the mural. It bled color along the wall. Had he drawn this, painted this? He thought and found he did not know what day it was. The days were slipping together. Slippage. Like the Claxton number from Isabella’s disc…
He saw Granger standing at the bell captain podium. Granger hadn’t seen him. Granger, Nick could tell, was not seeing much: he appeared to be staring out the bank of windows and at the hotel’s circular drive. The sun was setting behind a black web of trees. With the weather’s cooperation, the handsome Palauan had once again established his trinkets dais outside.
“Hello, Mr. Granger.”
“Nicholas!” Granger said, quickly turning to face him. Eyes bloodshot, his shirt incorrectly buttoned and the folds of his chin and neck unshaven, the old man looked as if he’d been living in some back alley for the past couple days, perhaps accompanied by a bottle of bourbon.
“How are you, son?”
“Well.”
“Your wonderful bride?”
“She’ll be down in a minute.”
“Wonderful.”
“Today is—what day is it?”
“Saturday,” said Granger. “It’s Saturday night. The two of you are heading out for the evening?”
“Emma wanted to go to some festival on the water,” Nick said, “down in Harbour Town.”
“Terrific.”
“I was wondering if—”
“Ah,” intoned Granger, looking past Nick, “there she is. A beauty!”
Nick turned and saw Emma come through the lobby. She looked amazing and fresh and clean and like nothing he had ever seen. It was a special thing, Nick suddenly understood (though with some melancholy), to see one’s wife again for the first time.