Part Two
Rick just told me "something gorgeous," which doesn't narrow much down. As I stare at the array of elegant, stylish dresses hanging in my armoire, I wonder how, in slightly more than a month, I became the kind of woman who can't decide which expensive, new dress to wear. The Oxford/Cambridge educational system – or rather its generous alumnae – waved its magic wand and granted me everything I could have hoped for, both professionally and economically. But I've discovered that getting everything I've ever wished for is, to say the least, a tad overwhelming.
Jonathan has had no trouble easing himself into his new wealth. He was more than happy to leave Rick and me the chore of delivering the artifacts to England (and I was more than happy to be rid of his sticky fingers), and has spent the past month gallivanting all over the continent. His letters are postmarked from Spain one week; the next, Paris. His life has become one long party while the scenery of my life has remained largely unchanged.
Except that I'm going with a dashing American adventurer.
The girl who danced with her brother at parties, who went to co-ed study groups to study, who saw before her a content, predictable life spent splitting time between bookshelves and pottery shards. I never knew life could offer me such exhilaration! I never knew I had the constitution to escape a collapsing pyramid alive, or date a man from a world so utterly different than mine. He grew up on a farm, for pity's sake, and chose war over following a plow. He's an expatriate who spent years employing himself in any dirty, laborious job that could earn him a ticket to the next port of call.
Stories about him trickle back to me; the men he's killed, the card games he's won, the women he's – But the professors' wives who cluck around the punchbowl at Bembridge functions don't know Rick as I do. It's true he was arrested, but not for stealing. (Although they would cluck just the same over a white man caught in an anti-colonialism rally.) While he may have loved women from California to Cairo, right now he loves only me. And though I know he went to Hamunaptra planning to blast as many glyph-covered walls necessary to find the Pharaoh's gold, he listens with interest when I narrate the lost history I discover on the scepters and pendants at work.
Ours is a careful balance. But as Mother always said, anything worth doing takes effort.
Which is why I've twisted my hair up three times now, trying to get it to stop looking funny in the back. Jonathan tells me all the women on the continent are "bobbing" their hair, and it saves them "heaps" of time. But there are some roads I will not tread in the quest to be fashionable.
"Evelyn!" Rick booms from the other room.
"Just a minute!" My words are sweet as Ladies' Home Journal but my tone tells him I'll be out when I'm ready and not before.
Rick wolf-whistles when I appear. I bought the dress in Egypt, a black, slinky thing of silk crepe that is shorter and scoops more in front than anything I had the nerve to wear before Egypt. The beads around my neck dangle to my waist; Indian onyx dangles from my newly pierced ears and my shoes are so beautifully delicate that they won't last more than an hour on the dance floor. The Evelyn of Before Egypt wouldn't recognize me – but she would be jealous.
"Hey there, gorgeous," Rick says.
"Hey yourself," I say.
Rick dips and kisses me like in a silly romance picture. I love his attention, the way his eyes follow me even when my hair has suffered three straight days of desert wind. Let Hollywood darlings bedazzle in ropes of jewels; my fella's unwavering attention would make me feel elegant in sackcloth.
I gather my purse, wrap, and things off the table and ask, "Where are we going?"
Rick smiles wickedly. "Someplace you've never seen anything like before."
I open the door to let my cat – a refugee from Egypt – wriggle out to patrol his territory.
"Oh, really," I say, unimpressed. According to Rick and Jonathan, any place that isn't lined with bookshelves is new to me. Honestly, it isn't as if I've never been dancing before.
*
I am hit full-body by a wall of noise when we step inside the jazz hall.
"Hold your hats – the roof's about to crumble in! Me oh my, it's gonna be uproarious!" the singer onstage howls into the microphone while the band behind him seem to rather wrestle than play their instruments. "Hellzapoppin and you're invited to the party too!"
The music fills my head and blocks out all other thoughts. I can't see through the smoke from one end of the place to another. The smell of alcohol, tobacco, and sheer humanity fill my head. The assault on my senses makes me feel displaced. I grab Rick's arm so I don't get left behind as he leads us through the crushing crowd. We're soon surrounded in a sea of energy – people shouting over the music to one another, laughing, whooping with glee. I haven't experienced such chaos since Hamunaptra crumbled to rubble at our heels.
"I see what you meant," I say.
"What?" Rick hollers.
"I wasn't expecting this!" I don't like having to shout but I quickly see that it's necessary.
Rick elbows a path through the crowd towards the back of the hall and up a short staircase. Abruptly, the dense forest of people opens to a clearing of tables and chairs. A bar stretches down the side wall. The cacophony is reduced to a mere ambient howl.
I suggest an empty table with a view of the dance floor below. We sit and Rick turns out the little electric table light.
I scoot close to him so he can hear me ask, "Why did you turn it off?"
"On means 'looking for action,'" Rick explains.
"But there's two of us," I laugh. He raises an eyebrow at me. "Oh." Part of me wants to ask for clarification. Instead, I ask, "Why is there a phone on the table?" I notice that, curiously, all the tables have phones.
"So people can call from one table to another. Allows for anonymous rejection." He's gauging my reaction, possibly to determine if this was a bad idea.
"Oh how clever!" I look around a bit, taking in the music and the people. Now that the music isn't overpowering, I realize that, thought different from anything I'm used to, it is mostly inoffensive. From the populous but less active bar area, the hall seems lively and – I have to search for the word – fun. 'Fun' wasn't something I did very often before Egypt.
"So what do you think of jazz halls?" Rick says. I can feel his warm breath on my ear.
"It's a bit much," I say, "but it's interesting."
"It's not supposed to be 'interesting,' it's supposed to be fun," he says with a twist of a smile. He's enjoying my culture shock, of course.
"I like being 'interested.'" I nudge him and don't move away. Our legs are touching and my arm is draped across his; he's tracing the dips and rises of my knuckles, sending an electric charge up my arm. I'm starting to see the benefits of all this noise making close quarters necessary for conversation.
"I know," he smiles, "You're always studying stuff."
"Of course," I say. "People are interesting. For instance, did you notice that even though this is a mixed club, the crowd has self-segregated? See?" I indicate a white group that has congregated near the left side of the bar; at the right side, the opposite has happened. "I'm interested to see if the dance floor is the same way."
"I never thought about it that way before," Rick says. "That's a little . . . unsettling."
"It's human nature," I say neutrally. "I recently read a paper on –"
"Uh-uh," Rick says. He playfully touches a shushing finger to my lips and then replaces it with his lips. "No 'papers' or 'studies' or 'scientific findings.' That stuff may be fun for you, but the only thing I want to discover tonight is the bottom of a bottle of beer."
"Sorry, darling," I say teasingly. I kiss him again. "Get me a cosmopolitan while you're up?"
He feigns feeling put-upon and heads for the bar. I wait until he's gone to turn on the light. Ever since he turned it off, I have been morbidly curious about what would happen if it were on. What sort of seedy characters would be drawn like moths to the thrall of a simple lightbulb and a woman alone in a dance hall?
Minutes pass and the phone is still as a grave. I start to wonder if I am transmitting 'librarian' signals, even though my dress is as showy as any other woman's here – and anyway, I'm not a librarian anymore, I'm a professional Egyptologist associated with the best university system in the world, so I certainly don't care if some drugstore cowboy doesn't want to bother me.
The table phone rings.
"Oh, thank God," I say. I pick up the receiver. "Hello?"
"Looking for a good time, old mum?" a familiar voice on the line says.
"Jonathan!" I exclaim.
"Hallo, love," he says.
"Where are you?"
"Next to the bar, talking to something the cat dragged in."
I see him now; Rick is standing next to him, eyeing me with amusement. I shrug impishly and turn off the table light. He chuckles and turns back to the bar.
"I thought you were still touring," I say.
"Do you think I'd leave you two to divvy up my part of the treasure?"
"I think I've just been insulted."
"Don't be silly -- it's not as if I don't trust you." He indicates Rick's turned back; my brother's opinions of Rick apparently haven't changed since we parted in Egypt. "Did you miss me?" he asks.
"For all of two seconds," I tease. "Come over here so I can get off this silly thing – the mouthpiece reeks of alcohol."
"All right, keep your stockings fastened," he says and hangs up
I'm surprised how glad I am to see someone who knows me as well as Jonathan does. Since the fortune, career opportunity, changing homes, and Rick, I suddenly realize that the suddenly hectic pace of my life has been a tad isolating.
Jonathan lopes across the room, makes eyes at a tall blonde, and reaches my table. I stand and hug him soundly.
"Hey there," he says, "What's this? You saw me a few weeks ago."
I kiss his cheek and give him another squeeze. "I know. How was Berlin?"
Jonathan spins me a yarn about drunken carousal and German society's lack of inhibition, about a third of which I believe. "It's completely different since the war," he says. "Apparently, since the kaiser got the kibosh, anything goes."
"Sounds like your playground," I tease.
"The devil himself couldn't throw a better party," he revels. "How're things with you and the outlaw," Jonathan asks, chucking his thumb in Rick's direction.
I purse my lips. "Rick and I are just fine, thank you."
"Oh? Haven't blown up anything, then?" he says casually. "No raising of the dead and other mistreatments of my baby sister?"
I roll my eyes. "You don't seriously dislike him," I say. "You couldn't not like someone who is mostly responsible for your scandalous wealth."
"As well as yours, my dear," he says. He takes a sip of his amber drink. "All right, I admit, I don't quite hate him."
"Thank you."
"Doesn't mean I want him sniffing around this family."
"Jonathan, for goodness sake, you sound almost jealous that someone else is taking up my time."
"Don't be daft! Why—"
"Whew, what a line," Rick interrupts. He hands me an enormous glass.
"Dear lord, what is this?" I say.
"You asked for a cosmopolitan, right?" Rick says.
"Yes, but . . ." I realize I don't have a leg to stand on, considering my stunning behavior that night at Hamunaptra. But dear lord – "It's gigantic!"
"Not quite like sherry with Grandmother, hm, Evie?" Jonathan says.
"You told me you never drink," Rick says to me.
Laughter rattles in Jonathan's chest so badly he chokes on his drink. My eyes grow wide in horror; embarrassment has got my tongue. When he can breathe, he says, "Giving him the innocent act, eh, Evie?"
Rick is trying hard not to laugh and using his own glass to hide it. My cheeks are burning. I mentally review a few Egyptian hexes that I have full ability to inflict upon my brother.
"Anyway," Rick comes to my rescue, "how about a toast?"
"Let's," Jonathan says, swallowing his laughter.
Rick raises his glass. "To making it out of Egypt alive and better than ever."
"Here, here," Jonathan says. We clink and drink. "And to Europe being completely uninfluenced by that American prohibition nonsense." The men happily lift glasses to that.
"How'd Germany treat ya?" Rick asks Jonathan.
Jonathan spins the same tale he told me, though Rick seems more credulous.
"And I saw Nathan," Jonathan says to me.
"Who's that?" Rick asks casually.
I stir the skewered piece of lime around my glass. "Our father," I answer evenly.
Rick looks back and forth between we Carnahans, questions in his eyes. He doesn't know what to say because I haven't quite gotten around to finishing the story that I started telling him in the desert.
"How is he?" I ask.
"Oh, you know," Jonathan says with his customary annoyance. I realize that the glass he's holding isn't his first that night. "Busy. He's always . . . busy."
"Where is he living now?" I ask.
"France," Jonathan says with a pout. He can be so childish sometimes.
"Did you talk to him?" I ask pointedly.
"He didn't ask about you, if that's what you mean."
"I only meant --"
"Evie, you were too young to remember –"
"Jonathan, this really isn't the time." My goodness, of all people to bring this up in front of, he picks my boy-friend of one month.
"Remember what?" Rick asks cheerily. I send him a look of annoyance for exacerbating the topic. He smiles a little, as if all this is a great game. The men in my life are trying to drive me mad.
I sip my drink to avoid Jonathan's gaze. "Well. From your letters, it sounded like you had a lovely tour," I say.
Rick looks from me to Jonathan and back again, like he's watching a tennis tournament. "Yeah, more fun than we had," he jokes, apparently deciding to help me curb my brother's loose tongue.
"I'm making the most wonderful progress with the artifacts we've studied," I say. "I'm going to knock the Bembridge Scholars on their backsides next week when I deliver my presentation on Hamunaptra. I'll show them who's lacking the experience!"
My guys are less than impressed.
"Been keeping herself locked up in that museum, then?" Jonathan asks.
"I pry her out to see the sun once in a while," Rick says.
"Ooh, you two," I say, annoyed. "You two may only be impressed with victories accomplished with guns and fists, but I'll have you know that my work is of great importance to the understanding of –"
"Dead people," Jonathan interrupts.
"Well. Yes," I admit.
"To dead people!" Rick toasts diplomatically.
"And their many benefactions!" Jonathan crows.
They toss back their drinks again; I smile. They really do care about me.
"Would you like to dance?" Rick asks. Thankfully, he ignores my brother's subtle waving of the hands.
"I'd love to," I grin.
As Rick and I leave the table, Jonathan whispers to me, "Try not to kill him." I send him a scathing look.
*