"Since We Came Home"
Part One
When I come by the museum to take Evelyn to dinner, she's still bent over some artifact. The Bembridge guys tapped a helluva nice bundle out of Oxbridge's funds for the loot we brought back, but not without making Evie their cataloguing wench. Given her intent study over some giant crown-thing right now, I gather she isn't complaining.
I wander around the museum for a while, mentally tallying up how much stuff would cost if sold to a carney barker in America, but eventually get bored and return to her office. I was going to bug her, make her huff and say "ooh" at me, which she does when she likes the attention. But she's surrounded by books and notebooks and stuff and muttering to herself, and she's adorable when she's like that. Her eyes get all wide like a kid who's just discovered sugar, and her bubble-gum lips dance around the syllables she's uttering to punctuate whatever's whirling around that head of hers.
Go figure, me falling for a brain. She drinks tea every afternoon, for God's sake, like it's a ritual. She wears glasses and reads on Saturday nights instead of drinking herself stupid like normal people do.
She's also a hell of a spitfire. I've seen her stand nose-to-nose with the kids from Oxford – boys in grownup suits who think she's some kind of secretary – and holler them off of their assumption of college boy privilege. I've obviously been a good influence on her.
It's almost half an hour past our reservation and I'm not going to waste the new collar I bought for this night (even though, with my new wealth, I could buy enough collars to dress up all the mummies in Egypt).
So on to my mission: Make Evelyn Shriek. I drop silently to my belly and crawl across the floor like we did in Germany. When I'm about three feet from her chair, she stops smacking the typewriter keys and cocks her head to one side. Jerry is listening, the memories from the trenches resurface. The mission depends on you, O'Connell. Her hands return to the typewriter.
I'm just close enough now, I can almost reach her shoe . . .
Something jabs me from above.
"Hey!" I yelp.
"Don't even think about it," Evie says. She's got the pointed end of one of those big protractors pegging down my shoulder, like a sword. "What do you think you're doing down there?"
"What're you trying to do, draw blood?" No way in hell I'm going to admit that I look like an ass on the floor of her office.
"Oh, sorry," Evie says and moves the protractor.
"I was gonna scare you." I mumble as I stand, rubbing my shoulder.
"Sacrificing me to a mummy wasn't scary enough?" She smiles while she says it.
"Oh, sure, lady, that was completely my fault. It's not like I wanted to bug out of the country when Living Dead decided to –"
She shuts me up by kissing me. I don't mind. I put my arms around her and hold on for a while. I love this unrestrained side of her.
"Rick," she protests against my lips, "someone will see." She pushes me away.
"And it's gone," I say.
"What's gone?"
"You never let me kiss you good and solid."
She rolls her eyes at me, not even acknowledging what we both know, that that's a wild lie. Confidentially, I'm enjoying the high color in her cheeks. She's got these freckles that make her look sixteen years old when she blushes.
"Not at the museum, when I've finally gotten the attention of the Bembridge Scholars." Evie says, busily collecting her coat and hat. "They'd just love me to give them the idea that I'm going to get married and abandon my career."
"So, ready to go?" I ask. She lets me take her by the elbow and lead her out.
"Oh, I'm sorry," she says sarcastically. "I know what that word does to you."
"What word?"
"The M-word. 'Married.' Honestly, you're cool as a cucumber in the face of carnivorous scarabs, but that word puts ice water down your veins."
"It's not my veins it dumps the ice water into," I grumble. She doesn't pretend to be shocked the way most girls would. I like that about her. I always thought the quiet ones were innocent, but it's like Evelyn stored up all the experiences and life a wallflower doesn't get to use, and she's spending all that energy on me.
We exit the cavernous British Museum into the typically misty English night. If I'd known a month ago, when I was crossing a desert, what English weather was like, I'd have stored up all the sunshine I could.
I hail a cab because I haven't decided yet if it's necessary or ridiculous to own a car. I find myself caught in dilemmas like that a lot since I rode out of Hamunaptra with a couple mil' in gold under my saddle. Do I buy the suit my tailor tells me is the newest fashion -- even though it looks stupid -- and wow Evie and her egghead friends at the cocktail parties? Or dress how I want and be ignored by the old money all night?
Evie snuggles in beside me and wraps her arm around mine. "Where are we going?"
"Dinner, dancing, maybe a picture about clichés," I rattle off.
She twists in the seat to face me. "What's wrong?" She asks, genuinely concerned.
"Nothin'."
"Yes, 'nothing'," she says, "I can see that it's nothing by that scowl." She traces my brow with her fingertip, following the lines that must be there. I catch her hand and kiss her palm.
"Nothing. It's just." I don't want to get her mad at me.
"Yes?"
"We always do you-stuff."
"Me-stuff?" she says as if I'm speaking in tongues. One of the ones she doesn't know.
"Y'know, stuff you like. Restaurants and . . . stuff."
"I wasn't aware that you dislike eating in public," she says. I don't know if she's annoyed or confused. That snippy thing she does with her accent is confusing sometimes.
"It's not the food," I say. "Well, okay, sometimes; that French squid stuff is weird. It's just . . . they're boring."
"Our dates are boring?" Now I recognize that she's needling the inarticulate American.
"No, not our dates," I say. "Our restaurants."
She smiles the way she does when she's deciphered a new glyph. "I see. Well, Mr. O'Connell, if you know of a more interesting venue in which to locate our evening, by all means, please speak up."
I grin and tell the driver to take us to her hotel.
"We're going to my room?" she says, suspicious because she has yet to show me any part of her suite other than the sitting room. (Not that you can't have a little fun in a sitting room. Just not a lot.)
"No, we're going somewhere fun," I tease her. I eye her tan skirt and white blouse. "But you need to change first."
*
Continued in part 2.
