Via Dolorosa(86)

“Right on,” intoned the jazzman.

Nick remained in the doorway; on the floor ahead of him, his shadow stretched out long and distorted and like something from another world. And the silence was suffocating. Finally, Nick spoke again.

“I don’t know what to do.”

The jazzman merely looked at him with those cold, black eyes.

“What do I do?” he asked.

The jazzman simply shrugged, as if nothing in this world could possibly matter, and said, “Play it loud, rabbit.”





—Chapter XXV—





He entered his hotel room, feeling the tremors of fever threatening his system. He shut the door behind him and stared at the empty room for a long while. Then he disappeared into the bathroom where he showered under a steaming hot stream for as long as his tired skin could handle.

Back in the room, he toweled off and slipped into a fresh pair of slacks and one of his painting shirts. Sitting on the edge of the bed, alone, he began to massage his right hand, his right arm, trying desperately not to think of anything, anything at all.

He heard the patio doors open and looked up. Emma came into the room, through the sheer curtains like a vampire. She was dressed plainly in a white cotton blouse and nondescript pants, faint pink in color. She stopped, apparently surprised to see him sitting there. He, too, froze. He could not find any words.

Finally, stupidly, he managed, “Emma. I thought…”

“I was outside,” she said. “Watching the bugs.”

“Yes.” He stood and moved around the room, like someone suddenly confronted with a friend who may or may not be an enemy. “Yes…”

Emma crossed the room and pulled herself onto the bed, her back against the headboard. Her eyes never left him.

“I…” he began. “I don’t…I don’t…”

“What?”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “For all of it. All of it. I’m sorry.”

“So am I.”

“No,” he said. “No. Me—I’m sorry. Me. Me.”

“Okay.”

“Me,” he said.

“Okay.”

“I’m—”

“Shhh,” she told him. “Come here.”

He went to her, climbed up the bed and curled like a cat in her lap. And broke into tears. He felt her hand come up to his neck, touch him there, and slide down his back. He could feel every hitch of his own body in the press of her hand against him. He cried freely and did not open his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry for all of it.” He said, “All of it.”

“All right,” she said calmly, her hand still on his back.

“All of it.”

“Yes,” she said. “I know.”

Collecting himself, taking a breath, he said, “I’ve been thinking a horrible thought. For the past few days, Emma, I’ve been having this horrible, horrible thought…”

“Yes?”

“Yes,” he said. “Like you said—just like you said—we are in a dream. For the time we’re here, we are in a dream.”

“I remember,” she said.

“And I started to think that I was dead. That I never made it out of Iraq at all. The letter you got was real and I truly had died that day in the ambush.”

Emma began raking her fingers through his hair.

He said, “It’s a dream, all of it.”

Emma rubbed his cheek. He felt one of her teardrops fall on his forehead.

“Say something,” he told her. “Please. Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me I’m not dreaming and we have a chance. Tell me.”

She said nothing; rubbed his face.

“Tell me,” he begged, beginning to sob again. “Say something. Please…say something…”

“Nicholas,” she whispered. “My Nicholas.”

“Emma,” he sobbed. “Emma…”

And she held him in the ghostly glow of moonlight.





About the Author

Ronald Malfi is the award-winning author of the novels Snow, The Ascent, Floating Staircase, The Narrows, and several others. In 1999, he received a degree in English from Towson University, and has since spent much of his time traveling across the United States visiting the obscure yet notable cities which serve as the backdrop for much of his fiction. An excursion to Hilton Head Island in the fall of 2004 served as the impetus for Via Dolorosa, where the author spent several nights occupying a local jazz club while contemplating and discussing the country’s ongoing campaign overseas. The novel was written a few months later in a tiny Annapolis apartment overlooking the gray waters of the Chesapeake Bay. He currently lives in Maryland with his wife Debra and their daughter.