BUSINESS
Summary: The wife of the curator of the British Museum meets Med-Jai warrior Ardeth Bay. Ardeth, OC.
Category: Angst, drama, romance.
Rating: M (eventually)
Author's note: All of my original characters bear no resemblance to anyone, living or dead. I'm just writing this for fun and pulling "facts" from my ass, so please excuse any departures from real life.
Chapter Two
That evening, she picked a fight with Alfred for the first time since their arrival in Egypt, over nothing.
"Talk to me, Alfred." The lamb that their cook Samira had roasted was cooling on the china, the grease hardening into opaque yellow clumps along the edges of her plate. She dragged the chunks of meat across her plate with her fork, rearranging the grease trails to form a star, a heart, a primitive smiling face with dots for eyes and an upturned gash for a mouth. "Talk to me."
They had gone to the pyramid of Khufu this time, Alfred said, and Charlie had climbed five entire sandstone blocks before letting vertigo get the better of him. That old fear of heights was just a childhood phase, and Alfred said that once they returned next week, he wouldn't be surprised in the least if Charlie boy could cover a good third of the distance up. The Egyptian air was making him strong, he said. Fearless.
She watched her son, who was stuffing mutton into his mouth with one hand, and absently scratching the sunburn on his nose with the other. "Charlie, dear, did you climb alone?"
"That I did, mum. Dad was talking to a group of strange men with drawings on their faces. He almost didn't see me reach the fifth block."
"Alfred."
"What?"
She loosed the silverware from her hands and let them clatter onto the table. "He's seven. What were you thinking?"
"I was right there, darling, watching over him. Nothing could have happened."
"Yes, because you're simply right about everything, aren't you?"
He was staring at her with his mouth halfway open, and a line of yellow grease was making its way down the side of his chin. "You wanted to come with. Is that it? Is that all?"
"To watch over my son like a real parent, Alfred. I wouldn't mind sitting in this miserable hotel room day after day if it weren't for my son, who you're sending traipsing unsupervised over pyramids and God knows where else—"
"Mum, may I be excused?" Charlie interrupted, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, and the argument was put on hold as she ushered him to the bathroom and helped him scrub his face and hands clean in the basin. She left him playing with plastic soldiers in his bedroom, and returned to her husband, who was now smoking a cigar in the den.
"You're treating me like a criminal again, Margie," he said behind a cloud of smoke. "You're treating me as though I'm going out of my way to make your life miserable, when I'm doing just the opposite."
She sank into the wicker chair across from him. "The next thing you're going to say is that it is my fault in the first place for coming."
"What else can I say, Margie? The purpose of a business trip is business. You knew perfectly well back in England, but you begged for me to bring you and Charlie just the same."
She couldn't stop herself from letting out a snort. "Business."
"I've been drowning myself in meetings with those two-faced officials from the Cairo Museum for an entire month. Why do you insist on staying here alone, anyway? Robert has been telling me that his wife and some other ladies have formed—"
"They've formed a stupid little gossip group, where they whine about tea and Arabic men and the virtues of jolly old England all day. Join them? I'd rather die."
"Your problem, not mine. I have too much to take care of as it is."
"I don't doubt it, my dear pumpkin, my hummingbird of love," she said, and leaned forward in the chair. "After all, you're dealing with the Med-Jai." And she sat back to gauge his reaction.
It was as she had expected. Alfred tensed as though he had touched a live wire, and began blinking rapidly behind his gold-wired spectacles. He sucked forcefully, almost mechanically, on the cigar, and coughed out the nauseous fumes through his nostrils. "How did you know?"
"For heaven's sake, I'm not a mute. The man with the tattoos was here at the hotel today. We had a lovely conversation that lasted the afternoon."
He narrowed his eyes and took another drag of the cigar. "No, you didn't."
"And how would you know?"
"Because, darling, Ardeth Bay does not do conversation. He'd slice you in half with his scimitar first."
She let out a laugh. "Fair enough. I lied. I did all the talking while he said nothing of substance."
"So, woman," Alfred said, running a pale knuckle across his mustache, "you managed to hold some sort of interaction, however one-sided, with the warrior chief of all seven tribes of the Med-Jai. My colleagues would say you're a brave woman. But I know you're just too damn ignorant to know how to shut up."
Ardeth Bay. Warrior chief.
She brushed aside Alfred's insult and considered what he had told her; she remembered the claws running along the backs of the stranger's calloused and scarred hands. "I suppose the same goes for you, darling," she said at length. "After all, you've been meeting with him in this hotel, haven't you? And today at the pyramids, Alfred. Men with drawings on their faces? More Med-Jai. Do you care to tell me what this is all about?"
"Ardeth and I are having a torrid love affair," he replied, driving the end of his cigar into the ashtray. The burning tip withered away in a crunch of bitter, oily smoke. "We've been meeting clandestinely for weeks."
"Alfred."
"What do you think, Margie? It's the bloody museum. Why else would I possibly want to interact with those rag-headed tribesmen? They're telling me that the three newest artifacts in the British Museum do not belong there, and they're threatening me for their return. A bracelet and two stone tablets. Bloody hell." He rubbed the bridge of his nose with his forefinger and thumb, and she couldn't help noticing how slim and nervous his fingers were, like trembling white vines, tinged on the edges with pink.
"Is that all? I don't understand how this could be so difficult—"
"Is that all? Do you want to run the museum, my darling? Do you want to talk to them? It's much more complicated—"
"And I wouldn't be able to grasp the complexities of this whole situation because I am just a simple woman," she finished, rising from the chair. The lingering cigar smoke was clouding her head and stinging the insides of her nose. "I understand. I'm going to bed, darling."
"Never did I say that this was because of the fact that you are a woman. I am not a bloody backward tribesman, Margie. Imagine what they would think if I brought you with me on a business meeting."
"Good night."
"Marjorie. Wait."
She wheeled around at the doorway and snapped at him with a force that surprised even herself: "I'm tired, Alfred. This conversation is done. I'm tired."
Later that night she dreamt of desert dunes and pyramids and landscapes shifting with sand, but at the peripheries of her mind was always the tattooed face of Ardeth Bay, and she did not know why he was there, and she did not wish him away.
TO BE CONTINUED…