Author's notes: I hope you've missed me as much as I've missed all of you... it's good to be back. :)
7. Cherchez la femme
Rick O'Connell may have been a fine hand when it came to finding seedy bars--but he had nothing on Jonathan Carnahan. Jonathan was a man who had caroused his way through a handful of countries across two continents, in a variety of languages, and always with the most interesting of companions. Jonathan's talent for sussing out debauchery of every description was matchless, and he, unlike his sister, did not confine himself to words he'd learned in school when parlaying with the locals. His was the French of the sidestreet, the pool hall, the dice game in the back room that nobody knew anything about. And when Jonathan, unshaven and in grotty travel clothes, inquired after un branleur américain, probablement bourré¹, no one gave his presence a second thought. They accepted this son of a privileged house and former Oxford fellow as a native of the gutter, one of their own.
He had been justified in preventing Evelyn from tagging along on this little errand; not only because of her gift for attracting trouble, or her propensity to lose her head when it came to a certain hot-blooded American of their mutual acquaintance, but because, in such settings as these, she would have been instantly and irrevocably identified as Other. Deliberately or no, Evelyn was most haughtily English when she was furthest away from home and hearth--as though she stood alone on behalf of her class and nationality, proud Britannia's solitary representative.
No self-respecting low-life would be seen associating with that.
Somewhere around the fifth bar, Jonathan had begun to get a bit irritated with his brother-in-law. True to his word, he'd taken his assigned duties seriously, and hadn't indulged himself even once--but Rick simply refused to surface. This latest bar was a dive, even by Jonathan's standards. Surly bartenders who spit-shined their glassware populated the pages of the lurid adventure novels he enjoyed, but it was rare to actually encounter such a character in the flabby, flea-bitten flesh.
And then, suddenly, the door to the men's room opened, and Rick spilled out--spilled being the most appropriate verb to describe someone whose motor functions were suffering serious liquid impairment.
Jonathan wormed his way through a gaggle of unwashed bodies and arrived just in time to stop Rick from falling flat on his face. "Hallo, Rick, old chap," he greeted. He managed to sound remarkably cheerful, considering the circumstances--particularly the large, drunken circumstance currently propped up against his shoulder.
Rick's head swivelled, and a bleary gaze was briefly directed at Jonathan. "What the hell?" he demanded irritably, slurring the sentence into one brief, nearly indecipherable interrogative. "Who're you?"
"Besides being the man who just now saved you from becoming intimately acquainted with a rather suspect tile floor?"
"'Sides that."
"Quite frankly, my dear fellow, you are far too drunk to understand any explanation near to hand. And I'm feeling rather short on explanations just now."
Rick seemed to mull this statement over, then nodded affably. Jonathan experienced no small stirrings of déjà vu; after all, this was almost exactly the situation that had allowed him to pilfer Rick's pocket for the little puzzle box that had turned out to be the key to a lost world. Rick had been blind drunk, and Jonathan had volubly offered to help him to the men's room. It wasn't that he'd intended to steal from the burly American--more that the opportunity had presented itself. Jonathan was a man who made it his business never to let opportunity pass him by.
"Have you a place to sleep tonight, my good son?" asked Jonathan, maintaining his pleasant tone of voice with some difficulty. What he really wanted to do was berate the man for making his sister cry, and then drag him back to the hotel by his ear. However, even Jonathan, who was not always the best judge of a situation, was able to see that this would not be a prudent course of action.
"No, I... hey, don't I know you?"
"Er... I dare say not. I don't often travel to this part of the world."
Rick nodded again. "Okay." His eyelids were starting to droop--along with the rest of him. Despite Jonathan's best efforts, he sagged to his knees, then leaned forward and retched ominously. Jonathan swore in English, the bartender swore in French, and Rick, unaccountably, swore in Arabic. Jonathan squatted down, and managed to haul the larger man halfway to his feet before pausing to catch his breath. His poor, abused muscles were crying out in agony. I'm getting too old for this sort of thing, he realized, somewhat amused at the thought.
Rick wobbled forward again, and a slip of paper wafted out of his breast pocket and fluttered to the ground. One of the other barflies--a slender, rat-faced fellow--swooped in and grabbed it, on the off chance that it might be valuable. On realizing it was simply a photograph of some silly chit, he demanded, in an offensive drawl, "Who's the little slut, then?"
Somewhat wearily, Jonathan took the required umbrage at this remark: "I beg your pardon?" After all, it wasn't as though the fellow had insulted Evie in the flesh... still, brotherly duties and all that rot.
The barfly waved the photograph insolently. "This saucy little piece."
Just Jonathan's luck. Only one other Englishman in the whole filthy place, and he was a complete wank.
"Look, shut up. And give me that--" Jonathan moved to snatch it back, but the man held it easily out of arm's reach.
"She belong to you, then? Or is she for sale?"
Jonathan flushed bright red, right to his hairline and the tips of his ears. Now he was beginning to get just a tad aerated. "I say, man, you've got a lot of nerve! That's my sister!"
"Is she, now? Haven't I seen 'er dancing at the Camel Club, something in that line?" taunted Rat-Face, obviously feeling his beer muscles.
Jonathan had, by this time, reached the end of his rope. He was by no means a man given to brawling; his general strategy in a melee situation could best be described as "duck and cover". However, since arriving in this God-forsaken country, he'd put up with every indignity one could possibly imagine. He'd remained sober, chaste, and lawful, for what seemed to him to be a positively indecent interval. And he hadn't a single bloody thing to show for it. Now, here was this man, just begging for a sock in the teeth. Jonathan hesitated only a moment before obliging him with gusto.
What he hadn't counted on, however, was that Rat-face had friends. And the friends had muscles.
Rick, meanwhile, had slowly ambled back towards his seat at the bar. He ordered another drink, dimly aware of some kind of fracas ensuing behind him. Go figure. Some idiots just had to answer every question with their fists.
Jonathan was accustomed to waking up in unfamiliar places with a dry mouth and a sore head--so much so, in fact, that it wasn't until he managed to fully assimilate the sounds of several passers-by speaking French that it occurred to him to wonder where he was.
He sat up--then immediately wished he hadn't, as the steel drum band that seemed to have taken up residence in the back of his skull struck up a rousing rendition of the 1812 Overture. Bleary-eyed, he looked around at the stony beach, which, owing to the early hour and the inclement sky, was deserted apart from a few brave bathers. He groaned, feebly, and passed a hand over his face. His nose seemed to be considerably larger than he remembered it, and quite painful to the touch. If it didn't hurt quite so much to think, he might have a go at remembering how that happened... he ran his tongue--which had also swollen to twice its normal size--over his teeth, ensuring that they were all there. They were, and seemed to be in quite good condition, apart from giving the distinct impression that they were all wearing tiny fuzzy sweaters.
A trickle of blood made its merry way down to his upper lip, and he reached for his handkerchief, only to find it had disappeared. In tracing it back to where he'd seen it last--a process which caused considerable upset in the spongy mass that was once his head--he gradually remembered Evie's tears. And his thoroughly bolloxed errand of the previous evening. Not only had he not retrieved his sister's husband, but he'd let the trail go cold, and managed to get himself mashed to a pulp into the bargain. There wasn't a single bone in his body that didn't feel as though it had been given a thorough rattling, and a couple in his midsection protested rather adamantly whenever he tried to move.
He wobbled to his feet and made his way to the Promenade. It turned out that his instinct of the previous evening (which, in all likelihood, had been to dunk his head in the sea as a means of cooling the blaze of bruises) had not been far wrong; he was mere stumbling distance from the hotel. He stumbled accordingly, and was back in Evie's tidy little suite before too long.
It wasn't terribly surprising not to find her there at that hour of the morning; Evelyn was a creature of habit, and one of those habits involved being a disgustingly early riser. She was usually getting up just as Jonathan was falling into bed. What was surprising, however, was the state of the room. Evie usually kept her things in such good order that "neat as a pin" was heartily understating the case. "Ship-shape and Bristol fashion" would have been more in her line. Now, however, chaos reigned among the various cases and trunks that she'd insisted on carting along with her. Books, boots, and bottles were strewn haphazardly about the place, along with skirts, stockings, and assorted lacy knickery-things. Thrown into the fray were a couple of patently male items, including a motley collection of ties and the better part of a shaving tackle.
Jonathan, whose poor, abused skull was palpitating in a most unpleasant manner, stared blankly at this scene for quite some time before it finally occurred to him that, just possibly, something might be terribly wrong.
Evelyn realized as soon as she woke that something was terribly wrong. Mind you, it wasn't the first time she'd awakened in a strange place, bound hand and foot; however, she'd rather hoped that the last time had also been the only time (outside, perhaps, of certain gestures of a playful nature between trusting married persons, which have no place whatsoever in this narrative). She tried to move, but she seemed to be tied quite securely to the hard wooden chair upon which she was seated. She tried to rise, but the chair was apparently bolted to the floor. As if further indignities were necessary, she was also gagged. Straining violently against her bonds, she tried to scream, but found herself muzzled most effectively by the wadded cloth that had been stuffed into her mouth. The best she could manage was a strange gurgling noise in the back of her throat.
"Careful, sweetheart," called someone--a male someone--outside of her range of vision. "Wouldn't want you to choke. Because then I don't get paid."
British, not French. A common sort, she surmised. What on earth could someone want with her? Unless... her eyes widened, then narrowed, as she thought this supposition through properly. She, Jonathan and Rick had sworn an oath of secrecy regarding their journey to the lost city of Hamunaptra. She had kept her word, and so had Rick. And surely even Jonathan couldn't possibly be so foolhardy... but of course he could. Especially if there were whiskey involved.
Evelyn struggled with renewed ardour, informing her captors--completely unintelligibly, of course--that she would not stand for this sort of treatment, that she demanded to be released immediately--
She never even saw the hand that struck her. Assuming that it actually was a hand, and not a lump of lead or a solid block of stone. In any case, it took her a moment to blink the stars from her field of vision.
"Now, then," the voice continued cordially, as though they had been discussing what to have for afternoon tea. "Don't fuss. It'll all be over before too long. We've got a certain doctor coming, just for you. A doctor what specializes in gettin' stubborn young ladies to tell the truth. You'll tell us what we want to know, one way or t'other."
Evelyn uttered a wordless cry of protest, to the effect that she had no idea what they were talking about.
"And, in case that don't work, we left a little message for your husband. He'll spill the whole lot, if he ever 'spects to see you alive again..."
Evelyn managed to snort derisively. Rick would never submit to such a demand. Rick would tear the city apart before he'd give up looking for her. Rick....
Rick could barely remember her name.
Surely, though, Jonathan would help. Provided he'd returned from his errand. Provided he was even able to intercept the message her captors had left for Rick. Provided he wasn't slumped over a bar somewhere, or emptying some unsuspecting Frenchman's pockets. He probably hadn't even noticed she was missing, she thought, flushing with anger. Damn him, anyhow! In all likelihood, it was his careless blathering that had gotten her into this.
As if reading her thoughts, the voice added, rather maliciously, "And don't trouble your pretty little head about brother dear. He's been well took care of by one of our associates. Smashed his pointy little head like a ripe melon, or so I'm told, and left him to drown on a nice quiet stretch of beach. He won't give us no more trouble."
Oh, no. No no no. I didn't mean it, I didn't mean it! Evelyn, once a firm disbeliever in curses, had since learned the hard way that you needed to be very careful about such things. She hadn't really meant to damn Jonathan, of course. She took comfort in the remarkable way her brother had of escaping whatever seemed most certain--be it death, dishonour, or simply a devil of a hangover.
Besides, she thought, logic dawning like the bright morning sun, why should she believe anything this man told her? After all, he had the very obvious goal of getting information out of her by any means necessary. Of course he would use lies and taunts as a way of breaking her resolve. Ever the rational one, Evelyn decided she simply wouldn't believe anything she hadn't seen with her own eyes.
As hot tears pricked behind those same eyes, Evelyn couldn't believe that a few short days ago, she had been crying over a confounded grammar mistake in a restaurant. Once she had gotten out of this mess, she promised herself, she would never bother over such a silly thing again.
Provided she ever did get out of this mess.
~~~~~~
an American wanker, probably pissed drunk