Via Dolorosa (35 page)

“We been standing, G.I., discussing how many little Muslim kids you must’ve killed over there,” Pygmalion was saying. In full blossom, he sported one hell of a shiner now. The sodium streetlights did it no justice. “We been talking about all sorts of things about you, Mr. G.I., Mr. Private Slovak, sir.” Pygmalion executed an awkward salute. “Ahoy. Over and out.” Sputtering, laughing. “To the shores of Tripoli!”

Isabella started laughing. This made Pygmalion look. And, subsequently, this made him start laughing, too—stupidly, drunkenly, haughtily. The kind of angry, ignorant laughter that always ends poorly. Through Nick’s inebriated gaze, the colors of the man’s clothing and the reflected light on his face seemed to blur and bleed out from him and into the night. In that moment, nothing, it seemed, was confined to anything. It was akin to watching a dream dissipate just as wakefulness comes, and in that instant it was perhaps the saddest thing Nick had ever seen.

“Hit him,” Isabella said. “Hit him good and hard, Nicholas.”

“Out of my mouth,” Pygmalion was saying. Stork-like, he had his head hinged forward on his thin neck, his lower lip protruding to exaggeration. The cigarette, its ember slowly dying in the night, thrust up and out and right at him: a lighted beacon. “Out of my mouth,” Pygmalion continued through half-closed lips. “Come on, Private Slovak—knock it out of my mouth.”

“Go to hell,” he said back. Yet he could feel his fists clench.

“Where’s your wife, anyway, Private Slovak, sir? Hansen over there, he really took to her.” The slob chuckled. “In, you know, the spiritual sense. Grace…beauty…men taking the women of men. I think that if he happened to see—”

A blur—of white fist, white arm. It was a tight, close-to-the-body throw. It left trails of light behind it in the air. And when it struck the man’s face, Pygmalion’s face, there was a sense of
eruption,
of
expulsion,
and Nick could not tell if the sensation was purely in his arm or purely in the man’s face—or, perhaps, both at once. But it was a strong throw and there was nothing drunk about it. He felt his entire weight behind it and carried it through, followed it through. Strong. But there wasn’t any reason to follow anything through. None at all. The hit angled Pygmalion’s
head awkward on his shoulders. His neck seemed to stretch two feet. It happened in slow motion and Nick could see each individual bristle of
beard stubble sprouting from the man’s neck and chin: he could see the
non-uniform way it grew in wild, erratic directions, like scrub-grass, and
the way there seemed to be very little of it covering the smooth red knoll
of Pygmalion’s Adam’s apple.

The man spun halfway around before collapsing to the street. He
arched his back when he struck and gathered his hands up under his
head as he lay, face down. Insanely, the only thought rushing through
Nick’s mind at that moment was what had happened to the man’s cigarette—he hadn’t seen it come loose from his lips yet he hadn’t seen it
leave his mouth during that slow motion, fifteen-hour, double-feature,
end-of-the-world plummet to the cobblestone street. He hadn’t—

Had—

Something whizzed past his head. Instinct yanked him out of the
way. A second later he heard what sounded like someone dropping a
crate of eggs. And he remained, trying to assimilate that sound and piece
it into the reality of the world around him, even though he was watching
it all unfold right in front of him, and he could see it all with his own
eyes: Isabella directly above the Pygmalion crumble, swatting at the back
of the man’s head and the quivering hump of his spine with the old man’s
ukulele. The victimized instrument, after only a single blow, surrendered
into a gangling ensemble of clapboard and frets, held together by the sinews
of copper-plated strings that twanged with each strike administered
to the nearly unconscious drunkard between Isabella Rosales’s feet.

Time caught up. Nick jerked forward and grabbed her by the shoulders,
dragged her backward. Several feet away now, she was still swinging
the ukulele. And screaming profanity in Spanish. Kicking at him, too—although it did not appear that any kicks actually connected. Hysterical,
her swinging arm continued to work at nothing. Nick grabbed her
around the wrist (and pain exploded and raced up his own arm, although
he was drunk on enough adrenaline to hardly notice at the moment) and
guided her under control. He had to pry her fingers off the ukulele. As he
held her against his chest, afraid to release her, he could feel how fast her
heart was beating and how deep her breaths were. The ukulele crumbled
to the pavement like a skeleton. She would hyperventilate for sure if he
didn’t calm her, didn’t get her under control…

“Come on,” he said. His voice had no tone, no description: it
was neither a yell nor a whisper. “Come on, come on, come on, come
on…”

They staggered away from the scene, just as the other two men,
Leslie Hansen and Ben, overcame their initial shock and wandered over
to their fallen friend. A casual crowd of bar-hoppers was now gathering
around. It was a crime scene.

“Calm down,” he said to her, and pulled her back down a dark,
narrow alleyway. There was hardly any room to stand and face her, the
buildings on either side were so close. But it was the only place of refuge.
He looked at her and realized how much taller he was. “Are you crying?”
he said. “Don’t cry.”

She drummed a hand on his chest. She wasn’t crying—she was
laughing.

“I think…I knocked it out…of his mouth, all right,” she managed
between great, whooping breaths. “I think I knocked it out…like a goddamn…a goddamn…” But she couldn’t stop laughing.

“Jesus Christ,” he said. He could feel laughter building in him, too,
although admittedly he could find nothing funny about what had just
happened. There was no source to the laughter, nothing he could familiarize
himself with; yet it hastened to come. “Yes, you knocked it out all
right.”

“Yes,” she said, and kissed him.

“I think he swallowed the damn thing,” he said, kissing her back.

“You sized him up pretty good, too.” Kissing.

“Thank you.”

“You can certainly size people up, my Nicholas,” she nearly cajoled.

“You can certainly size them up and you can certainly bring them
down.”

“You brought him down,” he said.

Still kissing.

This is drunken adrenaline talk with Isabella Rosales from Spain,
his
stupid, wasted mind spoke up.
Hearts beating, racing.

He kissed down her neck. She pushed herself harder against him.
Her hair smelled strongly of sweat and it was wet and matted to the nape of her neck, the sides of her face. There was sweat everywhere: it sprung from the both of them and bled into their clothes. Spanish words, whispered, filtered into his ear. Drunk. He understood none of it and it was spectacular. The words seemed to flow. They did not collide like English words. Spanish was different—more enigmatic. He could not tell where one word ended and another began. It was the beauty of the mystery. Then she said something else—something in English, definite English and he felt something cold explode within him. He pulled away from her with such force that he slammed his back against the brick alley wall.

Her face, still very close to his, with sudden eyes, asked, “What is it?”

“What you said,” he stammered.

“What did I say, darling?”

He was aware of her hand still at the base of his neck. He shook
her off him.

“What did I say?” she repeated.

“You know,” he said. “You know what you said.”

“Tell me,” she pleaded. “I said nothing. What did I say?” Those eyes
would not leave him. “What did I say?”

“You said…you said, ‘Have baby. In stomach.’ You said it.”

She just stared at him.

“You said it,” he repeated. “I heard you. You said it in my ear. Clear
as day.”

“Nicholas,” she said, and her dark head began to shake very subtly
from side to side, “I said no such thing.”

“I heard you.”

“You are mistaken.”

“‘Have baby. In stomach.’”

“You—”

“Where did you hear that?” he demanded.

“I don’t—”

“How do you know about that?”

And now she laughed a little bit. There were many teeth involved.
“No, no, no. There is no
baby
here, my Nicholas. What is the matter
with you? There is no
baby
here. I would never say such a thing.”

He could only look at her.

“You are raving,” she said, smiling sweetly. “Raving and paranoid.”
Placed a hand to his sweaty cheek. “And drunk.”

“I…don’t…”

“Nicholas,” she whispered, drawing him close again. “My poor
Nicholas.”

Again, he pushed her away. “No,” he said. “No. I—no, no.”

“All right.”

“No.”

“All
right.”

“My car,” he said. Then he shook his head. Again, he felt obscene
laughter boiling up from the very bottom of his throat. “I’m drunk,” he
managed.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “That, at least, is quite obvious.”

Owing everything to luck, they found the spot where he had parked
the Impala earlier that evening, but the Impala was no longer there.

“It’s stolen,” he said.

“Maybe your wife took it.”

“It’s gone.”

“Maybe Emma had the keys,” Isabella suggested.

Furiously, he beat down his pockets with the palms of his hands.
“No keys,” he said. “I lost them.”

“Emma must have had them and taken the car.”

“I lost them,” he said, “and my car’s stolen.”

“All right,” she said, and felt for his hand. “Come with.”

Then they were in Isabella’s car—a sleek, topless thing that reflected
the moon as they took the turns up through Sea Pines toward the north
shore of the island—and they drove fast. A light drizzle bullied the night,
but it felt good as they drove. The wind helped sober him up a bit.