Disclaimer: I do not own The Mummy or the plot of The Great Gatsby.
Author's Note: I've been working on this for a little while now, waiting for some of my other stories to finish up, and decided to go ahead and start posting it because this new story is pretty fun, and I'm actually kind of excited about it. I love The Mummy. I love F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. So why not write a Mummy version of one of my favorite novels? Anyway, I hope anyone out there who might be reading this enjoys it!
Beautiful Little Fool
I.
The bright girl of yesterday
A letter had been delivered to Rick on that dry summer morning. A letter from Lucy Hamilton, though she was Hamilton no longer, penned in a delicate feminine hand that reminded Rick of midnight parties from long ago. Come visit us, Lucy implored through the paper. We're dying to see you! And Rick couldn't refuse, though his eyes kept straying to those little words like "us" and "we" that appeared throughout the letter but were never elaborated upon. Lucy never mentioned her husband by name, but his presence was everywhere in that letter, lurking in the silence of unspoken words.
The dry morning had turned to an equally dry afternoon, with the monotonously hot, cloudless weather that only a country like Egypt could produce day after day. Rick still had that little paper with the delicate handwriting, for it was tucked into his pocket as he drove through Cairo's streets in his old, noisy car, and he briefly pulled out the letter to read the address Lucy had written down. The address where they resided, waiting for Rick to drop in for a much-belated visit. He still couldn't believe that bright, carefree Lucy Hamilton had gotten married. He found it even harder to believe that she had chosen the man she now called her husband.
Rick drove into a neighborhood that contained churches instead of mosques and shops instead of market stalls. The kind of neighborhood populated by the western elite, who had no problem hiring Arabs as servants but refused to mingle with them on a social level. The kind of neighborhood that tried to ignore the fact that its occupants lived in a foreign country whose civilization had existed long before their first kings and queens were born. Rick didn't care for the type of people who inhabited these neighborhoods, but Lucy had always been different. She had a certain compelling charm that drew people in, regardless of class.
She lived in a large white house with enormous front windows, though all of the curtains had been tightly shut, and Rick felt like an intruder as his old car rumbled up the drive, emitting smoke out the back end. The streets were quieter in this part of town, as if waiting for permission to speak, and Rick quickly parked his car in front of the house, reminding himself that he was paying this visit for Lucy's sake. He had never been able to refuse her anything.
He rang the doorbell and Lucy herself came bounding up to meet him only moments later, looking so much like the bright girl of yesterday that Rick immediately remembered why half the men in Cairo, himself included, had fancied themselves in love with her.
"Oh, Rick!" Lucy exclaimed, throwing the door open wide. "It's been too long. Where have you been keeping yourself all this time?"
Rick strode through the front door, remembering just in time to wipe his feet on the doormat. "You know," he said with a shrug. "Everywhere."
"Everywhere?" Lucy echoed. "How exciting! You'll have to tell us all about it."
Rick had only been back in Cairo for a week, but it felt like his two years of traveling the world had never taken place, for Lucy looked the same as ever with her rich, brown hair that framed a pale, slender face, her clear blue-green eyes, and the same red lipstick she always wore. He had been in Marrakesh in the fall of 1924, when her unexpected wedding took place, and as he looked into her face he tried to figure out what induced that free spirit to tie herself down to this nice white house in this nice white neighborhood.
"You look good, Lucy," he remarked, watching her eyes sparkle in spite of the curtains that blocked out the sun.
"Oh, don't flatter me," she said, giving him a playful swat on the arm. "I hope you like iced tea. It's really too hot for anything else. Darling!" she called out as she led Rick through the spacious front entryway, to an equally spacious room at the back of the house. "Rick is here. He's been everywhere, he says!"
She addressed the man who lounged on an expensive sofa with a bottle in his hand. He looked out of place in the clean, fresh white house, like he had stumbled into the room by mistake, and he took a greedy swig from his bottle before offering Rick a smirk and a half-hearted hello. He wore a suit of clothes much finer than the old rags he used to wear before Rick began his travels, but he looked uncomfortable, like a little boy forced to attend church in his Sunday best when he would rather be outdoors in his play clothes. His old scraggly haircut had disappeared, replaced with a neat trim that did little to improve his looks, though he had kept the tiny line above his upper lip that served as a mustache.
Beni Gabor should have been flourishing, given the circumstances, but he still looked shifty and underfed. He still looked like the pathetic street rat he had been the last time Rick saw him.
"O'Connell," he said in a tone of undeserved superiority. "How do you like my humble home?"
Rick knew the house wasn't actually his. The house belonged to Lucy, paid for with Lucy's money, but Beni was always in a better mood when people humored him. "It's... big," said Rick, struggling for words. "You're a lucky guy."
"Darling, what are you drinking?" Lucy cut in, staring at the bottle clutched in Beni's hand.
"Vodka," said Beni.
"At one in the afternoon? How silly! Put that away and have some iced tea with me and Rick."
Beni stubbornly held onto his bottle. "I don't like iced tea."
Lucy turned her radiant face upon Rick, a strained little smile on her lips. "Oh, isn't he funny? Imagine not liking iced tea!"
"Yeah," said Rick. "Real funny."
"Tell us about yourself," Lucy begged Rick as she sat herself down on a chair and crossed one slender, stocking-clad leg over the other. "Did you see Paris at all? I've always wanted to see Paris."
"Paris is not so great," said Beni. "It is full of people who drink coffee all day and think they are artists."
"I'm sure that isn't true. Is it, Rick?" said Lucy.
"I wouldn't know," Rick admitted. "I never made it to Paris."
"What a pity! Did you see Rome, at least? You can't travel the world without seeing Rome."
Rick did manage to see Rome and answered Lucy's never-ending questions, while the housekeeper brought iced tea and Beni stared darkly into the depths of his bottle, making snide little remarks that Lucy dismissed with a laugh and a lighthearted excuse, as if Beni's bad manners were nothing more than a poorly planned comedy routine. At last Lucy changed the subject with the speed and delicacy of a hummingbird darting from flower to flower, gazing at Rick with the forced gaiety of a woman who was determined to be cheerful or die.
"Did anyone tell you we have a little boy?" she said eagerly. "You really ought to see the baby, Rick. He's a dear when he's asleep."
"Thank God, Allah, and Buddha he is asleep," Beni muttered.
Rick didn't get a chance to comment on the matter, for he was whisked away to the upstairs nursery where a dark-haired baby slumbered all alone. "What's his name?" Rick asked.
"Gabriel. Gabriel Gabor. Isn't that a fun sounding name?" said Lucy. "I do love alliteration. He had his first birthday in March."
March. Lucy had her wedding in October and Rick was no genius, but he could do the math.
"It's too bad he looks like his father," Lucy added with a high, rather shrill, little laugh. "But you can't have everything, I suppose."
"Are you happy with him?" Rick asked quietly.
"Who, the baby?"
"Beni. Are you happy with him?"
"Sometimes I like him and sometimes I don't. Isn't that how all married people feel?"
Rick didn't know, having never been married himself, but he didn't like Lucy's response. He didn't like the way she kept smiling and sparkling, pretending that everything was perfect. "Why Beni?" he dared to ask. What was such a lovely girl doing with a rat like him?
Lucy looked as if she might give him an answer, but Gabriel woke up and immediately began wailing. "Oh, dear," said Lucy. "I'll have to get the nursemaid. She'll know what to do."
The nursemaid quickly arrived and Lucy took Rick out into the hallway, where she leaned against the wall with a calmness that was startling after her endless bout of cheer. "Gabriel was born five months after the wedding," she said solemnly, the light gone from her blue-green gaze. "But you figured that out, didn't you?"
"Didn't want to mention it," said Rick.
"Well I don't mind telling you. I suppose I could have found some poor fool to give the baby his last name, but Beni is Gabriel's father, and well... I needed a ring and Beni wanted to be rich, so it worked out well for both of us."
"Sounds like a great deal," Rick muttered.
"But how did we end up talking about me?" Lucy said, as if Rick hadn't spoken. Her eyes brightened once more and she transformed from tired wife to glittering girl. "How do you like being back in Egypt?"
"It's... different," Rick said as she took his arm and led him back downstairs. "I'm renting this house from a friend of mine, and it's next to a mansion. I mean, the place must be ten times the size of my house."
"Ooh," Lucy gasped. "A mansion! Sounds delightful."
"It's kind of strange. I've never seen the guy who lives there, but everyone says he throws parties all the time. I think his name is Carnahan or something—"
"Carnahan?" Lucy interrupted. The bright eyes became brighter, almost feverishly so, and she clutched Rick's arm so tightly that it hurt. "Is he from England?"
"I don't know. I guess he could be."
"It's just, well... the name sounded familiar, is all. I think my family once knew a set of Carnahans, but that's all ancient history." They reached the bottom of the stairs and Lucy took a quick peek into the back room. "Beni must have slipped outside. He doesn't like to hear Gabriel cry. He doesn't like it when the sun shines into the house either, so we keep all the curtains closed."
"Doesn't like much, does he?" said Rick.
"Oh, well you know how he is. He's very particular."
Particular was not how Rick would describe Beni, but he couldn't argue with Lucy, since Beni himself came skulking back in with a lit cigarette dangling from his lips. He plucked the cigarette from his mouth and sent a little glare in Lucy's direction. "Shouldn't you be taking care of your baby?" he asked.
"Agnes is with him," said Lucy.
"Why did you bother to have him if you can't even get him to be quiet?"
"Darling, we're going to bore our guest with all this ridiculous talk," Lucy said with a laugh. "Why don't you show Rick around the house? You'd like that, wouldn't you, Rick? You two can catch up on old times!"
"Yes, let me show you the house," said Beni, smirking at Rick. "It is probably much nicer than what you are used to."
"Go on, dear." Lucy gave Rick a gentle shove in Beni's direction, laughing all the while, and Rick couldn't refuse her on that dry summer afternoon.
He could never refuse her anything, even when she was Lucy Gabor instead of Hamilton.