Via Dolorosa

by Ronald Malfi

  Emma slipped into the booth and slid beside Isabella, put her head on the darker woman’s shoulder. A drunken smile threatened her lips.

  “Go to the bathroom, Nick,” Emma said. “Just go. Give me thirty seconds to not see you right now. Please.”

  To hell with all of this, he thought and went to the bathroom, washed his face and hands. There was a hot, smoldering coal in the pit of his gut. He’d wanted to hit that Ben. Even more, he’d wanted to hit that bastard Hansen. Ben had been shooting his mouth off all right and deserved to get clocked, but he was just speaking his mind. Hansen, on the other hand, had been a smug son of a bitch. There was nothing noble about Hansen.

  When Nick returned to the table, he found the pinot gris almost gone. Isabella and Emma were laughing again, as if nothing had ever happened. Maybe nothing had. Was this all a dream? In unison, both women looked up at him and followed him with their eyes as he entered and sat across from them. In the brief time he’d been in the bathroom, he could see that the alcohol had lifted Emma to a different place; she looked flushed and only half there, while trying at the same time to be overtly alert to her surroundings. Her eyes continued to alternate between too wide to squinty.

  “You don’t want to sit on this side of the table with us, Nicholas?” Isabella asked. “Do you not like us anymore? Or are you just sitting there to protect us in case those horrible beasts come back?”

  “Man is a horrible beast,” Emma said.

  Isabella cheered the comment. “Your wife is such a smart woman, Nicholas. Do you love her?”

  He felt his eyes alternate between the two.

  “Yes,” Isabella said. “Don’t answer that. I have a gun in my car outside, Nicholas. It’s in the compartment under the dashboard.”

  “That’s nice,” he said.

  “I don’t know what kind it is, as I’m not too familiar with guns, but I know that it shoots, and I would think that would be enough to know about a gun.”

  “Jesus…”

  “Would you like me to get it for you? Then you can go out into the street and shoot those three men. Boom-boom-boom. We can even swim to their boat and wait for them to come aboard, if you’d like. We can shoot them right on their boat then dump their bodies into the sound. No one will be the wiser.”

  “We ordered another bottle,” Emma said. It was as though she hadn’t heard a word Isabella had just said.

  “Of course, after time,” Isabella went on, “we’d probably begin to distrust each other, too. Murder, inherently, is not a group effort. And that can be very dangerous. I wouldn’t want to keep looking over my shoulder at you, Nicholas.”

  “You’re crazy,” he told her.

  The absinthe came. It was in a dark, narrow, suspicious bottle without labels. The proprietor brought it over to the table personally. From a tray he removed a slotted spoon, a small carafe of water, three rocks glasses, and a porcelain bowl filled with sugar cubes, and set these items down on the table beside the bottle of absinthe. The proprietor was an abbreviated, tar-faced black man with a bad complexion and eyelids swollen with chalazia. When he spoke to Isabella, he referred to her by her first name.

  “Gracias, hombre dulce,” Isabella said.

  “De nada, mi Isabella,” said the proprietor—and vanished.

  Isabella poured the shots. The drink came out cloudy and tinted green beneath the dim lights of the bistro.

  Nick looked at Emma from across the table. There was a tumult in his gut. She looked youthful and eager sitting across from him, her face refreshed and open. Again, he was reminded of the way she’d spun the Impala on the Pennsylvania dirt road, kicking up dust while veiled in the stink of exhaust. How she had laughed.

  “What?” she said to him now, catching his stare.

  “Nothing. Just looking.”

  “I can see that, yes.”

  “That’s all,” he said. He could tell she was already very drunk.

  The slightest lift of her small shoulders. “It’s a free country, last I heard,” she said. “Look all you want.”

  By the bar, the zydeco band concluded one number then struck up another on its heels.

  “It is traditional to drink absinthe with water and sugar. It is traditional that way,” Isabella explained. “The water dilutes the alcohol. It is strong alcohol. It will hit you like a wave, and it will drag you under and not let go. It never lets go. The water makes the alcohol muy estúpido—makes it very stupid. And the sugar makes the oils less bitter. We can drink it short—it is called short, drinking it short—with the water and the sugar, if you like, or we can be las personas valientes and drink it neat, without water or sugar.”

  “Las personas valientes,” Emma volunteered. “Whatever that means.”

  “It means ‘the brave persons,’ which is who we will be if we take it neat.”

  “Take it neat,” said Emma.

  “Here and here and here,” Isabella said. She lifted her drink. “Vivas!”

  “Sí, mi amante,” Emma said in her poor Spanish.

  The two women drank the shots while Nick looked on. Emma grimaced, pulled a face, and her eyes immediately clouded as she set the rocks glass back down on the table. An abrupt flush of blood blossomed beneath the surface of her cheeks.

  “Bebe, Nicholas,” Isabella told Nick. “Drink, drink.”

  “Nick won’t drink it,” Emma said. “It’s illegal.”

  “It is bought and paid for from the bar,” Isabella said.

  “I mean he won’t drink it because it’s absinthe.”

  “It is good, strong absinthe,” Isabella said.

  “He won’t drink it,” Emma went on. Her eyes were locked on him now. Something inside her had turned over. There was a predacious air about her. “We can sit here for an eternity but he won’t drink it. Will you, Nick?”

  “My Nicholas,” Isabella sang.

  “He is a very noble man, didn’t you know?” Emma said. “Did you see how he stood up to those men? Very noble. Aren’t you, Nick? Isn’t that right? You are quite the noble gentleman.”

  “Cut it out,” he said.

  “No. Listen—it isn’t a bad thing, to be so noble. I wouldn’t think so, anyway. But I wouldn’t know.” She shook her head and, thankfully, turned her gaze on Isabella. “I wouldn’t know,” she said again. “How could I know? I couldn’t be so noble. Such a thing is beyond me.”

  “You are noble, Nicholas?” Isabella asked him innocently enough. “I never knew it…”

  “I’m not going to play any games,” he said.

  “No games,” Emma said. “What games?”

  “What games?” echoed Isabella.

  “You see,” Emma went on, her eyes back on her husband, “once Nick and I were married, after he’d come back from the war, I was keeping a secret from him. I didn’t want to keep it, and it hurt me to keep it, but I didn’t know what to do with it. I could feel it building and building inside me like a volcano, and I knew I wasn’t strong enough, wasn’t noble enough, to keep it inside. So then a few days ago, I told him my secret. Finally. I told him all about my lousy, dirty secret. It hurt me even more to tell him because I knew I was hurting him by telling it, but I couldn’t keep it a secret any longer. Is that selfish? It was killing me on the inside, burning up through me like a fire in the center of a house, and I had to tell it. A volcano. I had to tell it. Maybe I am weak that way and maybe I am selfish. Maybe it should have been my cross to carry for the rest of my life. But whatever the case, I am certainly not noble. Not for the telling of the secret, and certainly not for the secret itself.”

  “Stop it, Emma.”

  “Stop what? This is just talk, Nicky, just talk.” She laughed. “Stupid drunken talk.”

  “Well I don’t like it.”

  “Yes,” she said, “I know. You don’t like it and you never want to talk about it. You prefer the pregnant, ugly silence, don’t you? We’ll just stay as we are, right here and right now and for all eternity, while everything falls apart aro
und us both. Isn’t that the plan, the new plan?”

  “All that poetry has made you too goddamn dramatic.”

  “What is the secret?” Isabella asked.

  “That I’d loved someone else,” Emma said. “Not in my heart, though, but in my bed. That while my Nicky was fighting in Iraq, I’d received a letter telling me his entire squad had been killed. I was told he had been killed, too.”

  “Emma,” he said.

  “I had been shattered and he, a friend, had been there, in that moment of weakness. He was just someone there and nothing more. How I cried and cried over that letter! Have you ever smelled a letter wet with tears? It has its own smell.” A vague smile threatened her lips, the corner of her lips, but she did not give in. Her eyes were daggers on him now. “I loved him and he was dead. He would not be coming home. I would never see him again.”

  “You died, Nicholas?” Isabella said. “That is so sad. Poor sad dead noble Nicholas.”

  “I died that night, too, Nick,” Emma said.

  “You’re both goddamn drunk.”

  “Be drunk, too,” said Isabella, and slid the remaining shot in front of him.

  “Nick has a secret, too,” Emma said. “Don’t you, Nick? You didn’t know it, but I can tell, even if you don’t say it. Just like me, he’s had a secret since he’s returned from the war. I guess the war is good for making secrets. But he hasn’t told his secret yet. Maybe he is nobler than me. You see? Maybe I had to tell my secret because I am weak and I couldn’t keep it in. But Nick has kept his. Good boy, that Nick. He is of high moral fiber and he has kept his secret.” Her eyes stayed on him the whole time. “You’ve kept your secret, Nick. You’re incredibly noble. You are not a weak coward like me.”

  “I want to stop talking about this right now,” he said.

  “You aren’t talking about any of it,” she said back. “I’m doing all the talking, all the talking, all the talking.”

  “Then I want you to stop.”

  “I’m drunk. You can’t make me and I’m drunk.”

  “That’s for damn sure…”

  Isabella leaned over the table. “What is your secret, Nicholas?”

  “I have no secrets.”

  “So noble,” Emma whispered. Her tone suggested she spoke to herself now and no one else. “How can I live with such a noble man? How can I live with such a noble man after I screwed someone else when I thought he was dead?”

  “Stop it!” he demanded. The table jumped as he threw a fist upon it.

  Emma pushed her head back on her neck, laughed. “You don’t like my language?” she taunted. “You don’t like it?”

  “You know I don’t.”

  “Yes, right—because you are so noble,” she lamented. “You are the noblest man in the world, Nicholas D’Nofrio, and I am the slut who is your wife.”

  “Enough,” he said, and stood from his chair.

  “Noble. And I’ll say whatever the hell I want. ‘Fuck’ and ‘shit’ and ‘piss’ and ‘goddamn’ and ‘hell’ and ‘bastard’ and ‘balls-balls-balls.’ You like that, Nicky? Does it make you sorry you married such a foul-mouthed whore?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes. I am sorry.”

  “It was a mistake. I felt so lost and needed someone else there. I thought you were dead. And I died with you that night. When I did, Nick, I died with you.”

  There was nothing he could say; he could not look at her.

  “Would it have been better for me to have loved him in my heart instead of just in my bed? Would it have been better for you that way?”

  He said, “You can’t control how you feel. You only control what you do.”

  “It must be such hard work,” Emma said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Being so goddamn righteous.”

  “Go to hell.”

  Still laughing, suddenly pointing at him, Emma stood and pivoted away from the table. “Remember this,” she threatened him. “Remember all of this, and everything that has happened here.” She moved with the grace of a drunken prizefighter. Nick could not stomach the situation, and he could not stomach watching her leave. He did not want her here but he did not want her to leave, either. Weakened by the sight of her, he felt himself drop back in his seat.

  “Secret-secret-secret,” Isabella chanted.

  Nick pinched the rocks glass between two fingers and pounded it down. It was smooth and just vaguely chilled.

  “My Nicholas. Poor, poor Nicholas.”

  “Another,” he said.

  “Yes?”

  “Another.”

  She poured the drink. He downed it.

  “You own it now. One more?” she said. “I will do it and own it with you.”

  “One more.”

  Bottle lifted, shots poured. Uncertain if it was her hand or his vision that shook, he watched the rocks glasses fill up.

  “To the top this time?” she asked.

  “Top,” he said.

  “You are brave.”

  “Please,” he begged.

  “You hate her because she shared herself with another man when she thought you were dead?”

  “Yes…”

  “And…?”

  “And I hate her more for telling me.”

  “Silly girl,” Isabella said. “She is a silly girl.” She said, “It is the silly girl who tells her secrets.” She said, “Chica tonta.”

  “Yes,” Nick said. “Chica very tonta.”

  “Dance with me.”

  Her hand came out across the table and grabbed his. When he was hoisted from his seat, it was in slow motion. The bistro tilted to one side. He was on a boat. No—underwater, underwater, underwater. Everything was suddenly an illusion. Or was he the illusion? Was he the ghost in this reality? How many people could see him here, now, right now? Or would they all walk right through him?

  Isabella spun him around. Her strength was nearly preternatural.

  “Do you like this music?” he heard her say from far off.

  “I don’t know.” It was all washboards and accordions. “I don’t know anything.” In fact, the music raked on him. “I don’t think so.”

  “You have a difficult time liking things, my Nicholas.”

  He thought he saw Emma, fleetingly, at the far corner of the bistro, dancing among a group of men. But when he focused his eyes, she became a coat-rack, a novelty totem pole, Pygmalion’s dead Indian girlfriend. Emma was gone.

  Isabella brought her right cheek up to his left. Suddenly engulfed in her hair, she became everything: all his senses aroused by her mystery. For the first time, he truly wanted to kiss her. Truly, truly.

  In his ear, she whispered, “Is it that you killed innocent people? Is that your secret?”

  He did not answer.

  “Did you storm the villages and slaughter all the innocent children? Did you cut them up and shoot them with your mighty gun? Did you make all the dirty mothers weep?”

  “No,” he managed.

  “Tell me your secret.”

  “There is no secret.”

  “You are a haunted man,” she told him. “All haunted men have secrets.”

  “I am a drunk man,” he said, “thanks to you.”

  “I’ve been dreaming of a man wandering through the desert, haunted and alone, scared and dirty and ravaged by disease. I have been dreaming of this man for a long time. Last night I finally saw his face. Tonight, too, I can see his face. I’m looking at him.”

  “He’s me,” Nick said.

  “He’s everyone,” Isabella told him.

  Grimacing, he said, “You’re crazy, you know that?”

  Isabella’s laughter thundered in his ears. She turned, faced him, kissed him. Hard. On the mouth. The kiss lasted forever. Even as it happened, he forced himself to concentrate on it, to make sure he remembered everything about it—every taste, every texture, the way her teeth and tongue felt, and the way she felt him back—but the moment she pulled away he had already forgotten everything.r />
  Over her shoulder, through the crowd and slouched up against the wall, was young Myles Granger.

  Isabella continued to laugh. He managed a strangled, “Oh…” It was Granger, Myles Granger, and he was leaning against the wall watching them dance—watching him kiss Isabella with his dead eyes, his hair still perfectly parted, the neck of a Budweiser bottle in his right hand. Accusatory, for the reason that he’d never kiss anyone ever again. Because he was dead. Then the dead boy casually nodded in his direction—

  “Nicholas,” Isabella sang into his ear. He pushed her away, holding her at arms’ length.

  “I don’t feel well,” he told her. “I drank too much and my head is spinning.”

  “It was the absinthe?”

  “I can’t—”

  “You are such a baby.” She smiled with her lips just slightly parted. The magnolia blossom was still in her hair. She looked so beautiful she looked surreal. “Such a silly, silly baby.”

  “Can we just please leave?”

  “Because you want to shoot those three men?”

  “I think I just need some fresh air.”

  “Does your broken hand hurt?”

  “Just a bit.”

  “I feel so bad for your broken little hand, Nicholas.”

  “I just need some fresh air. I’m—I’m—I need—I’m tired. That’s all.”

  “Poor little hand. I feel so bad for it.”

  “Yes, thank you,” he said quickly. The room was spinning faster, faster, faster—still, he could not look away from Myles Granger. And Granger would not look away from him. They had locked. Bulls in Pamplona, he thought erratically. “But it’s not the hand. I’m just tired.”

  “Yes,” she said. “And married.”

  “Please,” he begged. “Can we just leave?”

  “Silly baby boy.” Again, Isabella laughed and for a moment he could not breathe. “We’re never going to leave, Nicholas.”

  He closed his eyes.

  She said, “Haven’t you figured that out yet?”

  Around him, the music swelled. Pulsed. Grew tentacles and probed him.

  We’re never going to leave.

  Lieuten—

  He opened his eyes. The sound of the band was now the sound of water rushing down a drain. Across the room, Myles Granger still stared at him…but it was no longer Myles Granger. It had never been. It was just a young man holding a beer, waiting for his chance to dance with all the pretty girls. All the pretty girls. Just a man, a strange man…