by Ronald Malfi
“Sorry.”
“Oh, no problem. Okay. It’s just, you know, you artsy guys, you sometimes smoke up, that’s all. It’s just what I heard, I mean. But no biggie. Didn’t mean to offend you or anything, man.”
“You didn’t offend me.”
“I mean, you won’t say anything to Mr. Granger, will you?”
“Say anything about what? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“About the dope, man.”
“Yes, I know,” Nick said. “I was being facetious.”
“Oh, okay. Yeah? Okay. Cool. I get it. Because,” the bellhop quickly added, “Granger would, like, have me canned if he knew I was, you know, saying that kind of thing to you. To the guests, I mean. In general.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m going to stop smoking, anyway. I mean, I just do it occasionally now. It’s not like a regular thing or anything. I don’t even have any shit on me. Stuff’s bad for you, know what I mean? Anyway, I got plans.”
“That’s good.”
“Maybe open up a restaurant here on the island some day.”
“That’s something,” Nick said.
“Yeah,” the bellhop said.
“So you like to cook?”
“Well,” the bellhop said, “I like to eat.”
The elevator stopped and the doors parted. The bellhop negotiated the dolly out of the elevator mostly on his own, then followed Nick down the hallway to the open area just beyond the lobby and the front desk to where Nick had begun his mural. There was a ladder already set up against the wall, and someone had come and cordoned off the area with velvet ropes so as not to have guests disturb him while he painted.
The bellhop, still conscious of Nick’s injured right hand, removed the trunk from the dolly without assistance. Nick stuffed his good hand into his pocket and fished around for a few bills.
“Oh, hey, forget it, man,” the bellhop said. “Let me go see if I can grab that key for you.”
“Thanks.”
Once the bellhop had left, Nick found himself quiet and alone with the sketch just above his head. This close it looked enormous. And empty. Again he was struck by how much he did not approve of it, but he also knew that he could spend the rest of the summer deliberating over it, changing it, working and reworking it, and nothing would ever get done. He would just have to do it and forget it and move the hell on. It was different than how he used to paint, and from the way he had, throughout his life, become accustomed to the art…but now, it was all he had left. He was a different person now, a different man, and so much had been thrust upon him in order to facilitate such a change. Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, he knew. But he also knew that whatever doesn’t kill you sometimes only maims you and weakens you and makes you angrier and colder than you ever thought possible. Not for the first time, he acknowledged that, sometimes, it was probably better just to have it kill you.
His youth had taught him that. His adolescence, too. Most of all, Iraq had taught him that. Somewhere along the way he had developed an obsession with his ancestry and, in joining the military, he felt less as though he were perpetuating the momentum of his familial honorarium and more like he was fulfilling some greater destiny that, in truth, had very little to do with him as an individual and a human being, but as the next bearer in a succession of fate. Whatever it was, it was greater than that, and greater than him. His great-grandfather had been in the Great War; his grandfather had raised facial hair and lied about his age to run as a point-man in the Second World War; his father, too, had, like many of his generation, been collected and stowed and shipped off, like camouflaged bric-à-brac, destined to shuffle mirthlessly through Vietnam. To Nick, and at the time, it seemed that to buck fate and avoid war would be trickier than an illusionist’s escape from Sodom. It was his destiny. More importantly, it was the only noble thing.
He opened the trunk and sifted through the paints, removing the plastic tubs one at a time and setting them on the floor atop a length of canvas. He removed his brushes next and set them like artillery on the floor in order of smallest to largest. He repeated this process with all his tools until there was nothing left to do except step back and look at the empty sketch on the wall above his head once again.
You cannot put this off forever, he thought. You cannot escape it. Then he forced himself to laugh, once, sharply: a whip-crack.
He arranged his tubs on a tray and administered colors to his palette. It was a left-handed palette for right-handed painters, which made carrying it easier, but he knew the painting would be the difficult part. Yet he warned himself not to think about that, and ascended the ladder and stood face-to-face with the sketched mural, ghostly and vacant and transparent, and took a deep breath. Then he began to paint.
It was something he had done his entire life. It was a talent he had been recruited to know, that had transferred to him from his own father, who had not made a living as a painter or an artist—he was too practical a man for that, as he had raised his son to be, as well—but who had enjoyed painting on canvases in the cellar of their Pittsburgh home after he’d retired from the police department. The love and respect of art, as well as the ability to create it, were the only things Nick and his father had truly shared. He recalled a painting his father had done of an old steam engine, bulky and black and sturdy-looking, chugging up a mountainous hillside high above the embrace of a tiny, nondescript village. Painting, creating—it seemed the only time his father was ever truly at peace. The same could be said for Nick, too. He had carried the ability with him throughout adolescence, never willing to let it go, and it was possibly the only thing in this world that granted him ultimate peace. His sketches in the old notebooks were therapeutic while in Iraq, as well, and both the fighting and the art had, at least for a brief period, become one in the same—had become intertwined and inseparable. The art made the fighting bearable and it seemed the art was too powerful to ever be corrupted by the fighting. So it was safe. But that was a long time ago and, anyway, what did it matter? Painting for him now was something completely different than it had ever been. He could no longer find that proper solace in it; it was no longer that vehicle for escape. Moreover, it could not function as a medium through which he could exorcise his own personal demons, as he so often thought his father capable of through the same act. He had become a changed man this past year and with that change he had, somehow and somewhere along the way, lost sight of the appreciation he had once had for the art. It bothered him to realize this on some level…yet, at the same time, there was a stronger, more prominent and forceful part of him now that did not seem to even care at all, and that was the part that bothered him the most. How do we discard the very thing we once cherished the most? Had the war taken it from him, raped him of art’s innocence? Had he left it there, lost and forgotten among a wasteland of desert and diesel and smoke and tanks? Lost—like a small child? He did not know. None of it made much sense to him, and being a practical and sensible person who preferred all things to remain practical and to make sense, he did not spend much time pondering such an enigma.
He painted now and lost track of time. He tried to lose himself in the painting itself—in the actual physical action of painting, as he had always done in the past—but it was different now. And then, just when it seemed like he would actually be able to lose himself again, just barely teetering on the precipice of horrible reality and blessed, sanguine fantasy, his right hand stiffened up on him and went stupid.
“Oh, you bastard,” he muttered.
There was no pain—just a dull throb and the sensation of complete and utter uselessness. He set his brush down and attempted to flex his fingers. They flexed but he could not feel himself doing it. As the doctor had taught him, he systematically touched each fingertip to his thumb, but he could not feel that, either.
“You lousy goddamn son of a bitching hand.”
He set the palette down on the step of the ladder just below
the crescent of his jaw and, with his left hand, gingerly rolled up the sleeve of his right arm all the way back past the elbow. He had seen his arm a thousand times before—a thousand times in a single day, at least—and, even when he kept it covered, he knew what it looked like. The images of both his hand and his arm were forever burned into his brain. Looking at his arm now and following it with his eyes to his hand, he felt nothing for it, and certainly felt no self pity. It was just an arm and it was just a hand, a lousy arm and a lousy hand, and the only thing he felt was anger, was frustration. Uselessness. Why couldn’t it have been the left? Why the goddamn right hand, the goddamn right arm? Why not an ankle or an ear? He would have gladly given piece of an ear for the use of his hand, his right hand, his goddamn ugly useless ruined right hand…
He continued to flex his fingers, working the feeling back into them. They were tingling now, pins and needles. Aggravated, he slowly climbed back down the ladder and stepped back to see what he had painted. He had worked a good portion of the morning—it was nearly lunchtime now—but he had covered little ground.
A shadow fell across the floor and Nick turned to see the bell captain standing admiringly behind him.
“It’s good to finally see some color in it,” the bell captain said.
“Yes,” Nick said, quickly dropping his right hand down to his side.
“This is the perfect place for it, too. Right here. This way,” the bell captain said, “when people come into the hotel and go to the front desk, they will have to pass this corridor on their way to their rooms, and this is what they will see. It’s brilliant. I’m happy we were able to get you to do it.”
“I appreciate the opportunity.”
“How do you like the island?”
“Oh, it’s great. The hotel is great, too. Everything’s been wonderful. Thank you.”
“It’s a crappy thing to have to work on your honeymoon. Even if your work is painting, something you love, it’s a crappy thing—”
“No, not at all. Really, I appreciate everything you’ve done.”
“Likewise,” said the bell captain. Then he extended his hand and held out a small, silver key. “It’s for the storage closet. Erich said you wanted to keep your supplies in the closet at the end of the hall.”
“If it’s not a problem…”
“No problem.”
“Thank you,” Nick said, taking the key from the bell captain.
“Listen,” the bell captain continued. “Now that it’s a new day and we are, at least in the scheme of days, both new people, I want to apologize again for my behavior last night at the bar. I don’t know what I was thinking, going on like that. And I certainly didn’t mean to embarrass you, Nicholas.”
“I’ve already forgotten about it. Anyway, you didn’t embarrass me.”
“Well, you’re just trying to make an old fool feel less like a fool, but we were both there last night. I’m sorry. I can be reflective and sentimental sometimes. It gets out of control on occasion, I’m afraid. Don’t let it spoil your stay.”
“We’re all prone to reflection. Nothing wrong with that. Not a damn thing in this world.”
“All right,” the bell captain said. He smiled and it was a weary, old man smile. For the first time, Nick wondered just how old Myles Granger’s father was.
The lights flickered and went out.
“It’s the storm,” Granger said. His head was tilted up, his eyes scanning the light fixtures in the ceiling, as if to identify the problem would be to rectify it.
The hallway was dark; the only brilliance came from the windows of the front lobby, twisting in a glowing, winding river of ephemeral light down the narrow corridor to the bank of elevators and to the spot where they both stood.
“There’s a generator that’s supposed to kick on,” Granger continued, but he did not sound hopeful.
“I take it the generator doesn’t always work,” Nick said.
“Observant.”
“This is a pretty big place to not have power.”
“Oh,” said Granger, “it’s a nightmare.” A pager at Granger’s hip suddenly went off. The bell captain snatched it up, scrutinized it, then said, “I’m sorry, I have to go. Will you excuse me?”
“Go ahead. I’m breaking for lunch now, anyway. Besides,” he added, “not much I can do in the dark.”
“Not much,” Granger said, and quickly departed, padding furiously down the corridor with his short, stocky legs. Nick watched him go.
Upstairs, back in the room, Emma had opened the sweep of curtains that covered the patio doors and had pulled open the shades over the windows, too, but the room was still dark. There was no sunlight and, because of the storm, there was no electrical light down the sloping beachfront that could be seen through the windows of their hotel room. The gloom made his stomach feel funny—the way it felt sometimes when he would have to wake up too early in his youth, before the sun had had time to rise. Emma stood against the patio doors, her body pale and ghostly in the lightlessness, the shadow of the heavy rain projected onto her skin.
“Did you get scared?” he said, coming in.
“What happened?”
“Storm knocked out the power.” He sat on the edge of the bed and peeled off his shoes.
“How long will it be out?”
“I don’t know.”
Room service had already come, and there was a tray on the writing desk. Nick could smell freshly brewed coffee. Emma stepped away from the patio doors and, in the half-gloom, moved to the tray. Nick did not go toward her; he stood and went directly into the bathroom, turned on the sink, washed his face for what felt like an hour. The conchs and clam shells had disappeared from the basin. Emma had most likely just showered, too: the bathroom was still dense with moisture and warmth, and the mirror above the sink was still slightly fogged and dripping with condensation. He wiped away an arc of moisture from the mirror and looked at his face in the glass. Some face, he thought. Then he continued to wash his hands, careful of his injured right hand (attempting to massage it beneath the numbing stream of hot water), and scrubbed the paint off, which had not had time to dry. For a moment, he sensed Emma’s presence at his back, but he did not turn and he did not look up to meet her reflection in the mirror. He felt completely aloof and unbalanced. Mindful of his bad hand, he shucked off his pullover and carried it back into the room. Emma had returned to the patio doors, looking out but not really seeing anything. She turned and Nick felt her eyes on him as he pulled on a fresh tee-shirt and, sitting on the edge of the bed, climbed out of his corduroys. He could smell his own sweat in his clothes.
“I got you a club sandwich without bacon and some tomato soup. I also got baked apples in sauce for dessert.”
“Thanks.”
“I had them send up a pot of coffee and some wine, too. I didn’t know what you’d be in the mood for.”
“What wine?”
“Wha—?” She hadn’t understood.
“What is the wine?”
“Red Truck.”
“I don’t like red wine.” He said this on purpose.
“Yes, I know,” Emma said quickly, “but it’s the wine the bell captain suggested the other night. Do you remember? He said it was really smooth and not as bitter as regular red wine. You said you wanted to try it. That’s why I ordered it. But,” she added, her voice dropping, “I can pour you a cup of coffee instead.”
“I’ll get it myself,” he said, standing up in his underwear and going to the writing desk. He picked up a wedge of club sandwich and extracted a bite, then filled one of the two coffee mugs with coffee. The smell was instantaneous. He noticed the baked apples and the wine in its sleek, dark bottle, and the bowl of tomato soup, and nothing else. “Did you eat already?”
“I didn’t order anything for me,” she said. “I’m not hungry.”
“Did you have a big breakfast this morning?”
“Not really. A bagel with cream cheese and a cappuccino.”
“
It’s a nice café,” he said, sipping the coffee. It was strong and good. He needed it to be strong and good.
“What did you think of Isabella?”
“The diagnostician?”
“Yes. You two seemed to hit it off.”
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing. I’m just saying. It’s nice to meet new people.”
“She was fine.”
“Isn’t it a small world,” Emma said, “her living in New York like that?”
“Lots of people live in New York. Eight million or so. I don’t know what makes that such a small world.” And he thought, There you go! You are certainly being a regular jerk now. Good for you, you bastard. Feel better?
“Nick,” she said, but did not say anything more.
“What?”
She still did not say anything more.
“What?” he repeated.
“Can we please talk?”
“I’m trying to eat.”
“Can we talk after you eat?”
“I have to get back to work after I eat.”
“The power is out in the hotel, Nick,” she said. “How are you going to work?”
“It’s paint-by-numbers,” he told her. “I could do the shitting thing with my eyes closed.”
“Don’t be like that.”
“Sure,” he said. “Okay. Sure. Fine.”
Her small lips had come tightly together, white and bloodless. Her eyes, tiny and round and like a bird’s, would not leave him.
“Picasso paints deaf, I paint blind…we’re like Helen Keller, put us together like that.”
“Will you at least listen to me while I talk then? You won’t have to say a damn thing if you don’t want to.”
He set his coffee down and did not think he could eat another bite of the sandwich. “I can’t do this now, Emma, okay?”
“What’s going to happen to us, Nick?” And she said this quickly, pushed it out of her mouth, as if this question would have been the objective of whatever speech she had maybe prepared, and, realizing there would be no speech because he would not let there be a speech, she had simply come right out with it. And even in his anger—even in the midst of his own personal anguish—he could not help but feel a slight sting.