“There you are,” he said. “We can take it back to America and tell everyone it’s the Sand of the Pharaohs. Auction it off to some other poor dunce waiting to be sold a fantasy.”
Van Jorgen sifted the sand back and forth between his cupped hands, nodded toward the hole he had dug and mustered a breath. “I thought. There was. Something. Here.”
Freyn looked behind them at the pit in the sand. “Here? Why here?”
Van Jorgen gestured vaguely to the fulgurite and shrugged. He wasn’t sure whether he would have been able to explain himself even without his handicap, but he could see that Freyn was intrigued, already poking his hand into the hole as though it would exude some palpable marker of success. Van Jorgen crawled over and knelt beside him. He drew a long, slow breath and spoke in a whisper so quiet it was almost inaudible. “Maybe fortune smiles on us for once.”
* * *
—
It would take another two weeks to move the camp to the spot the fulgurite had indicated, cajole the workers into one last attempt, follow Van Jorgen’s inexorable instructions to go down, farther down, until at last one shovel struck against the stone shell of a tomb, and the workers fell silent. Another three months would be spent in careful excavation—boxes of sand carted away, reinforcements built, armed mercenaries hired to protect the site—before the entrance to the burial chamber was opened, the richly hieroglyphed walls exposed to the light of the torch, the false burial chamber discovered, and then the true one. Inside was a tomb the like of which was not to be found in any museum anywhere: an entire room studded with beads and cabochons of pale green glass, purer than the windows of any church on the Continent, that glowed in the unaccustomed light like fireflies. In the center of the room was a sarcophagus likewise adorned, the smiling pharaoh clasping against his chest a scarab the size of a human heart, carved out of that same flawless green.
In a month, the mercenaries would have their hands full fighting off grave robbers; in two, Freyn would be engaged in disputes with the Egyptian government; in five months, Carter’s discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb, with its ostentatious gilding and hoards of jewelry, would nudge their elegant, green treasure chamber into comparative obscurity. But as Freyn and Effie and Van Jorgen cracked open the entrance to the crypt, all they could imagine was the glory that had so long eluded them. Freyn stepped back and nodded to Van Jorgen, but Van Jorgen grasped his hand, and Effie’s, and walked with them into the shining glass vault, amid treasure that had slept through the birth and death of a hundred generations.
Robert checked his watch for what had to have been the dozenth time. It was only two o’clock in the afternoon, and already it felt like one of the longest days of his life. He and Terri had left Seattle on a predawn flight and arrived at Glacier National Park several hours later, where they spent some time buying last-minute supplies at the only store open this early in the season. Terri had enticed Robert on this trip with tales of her hiking prowess and the glory of unspoiled nature, but now that they were here he was beginning to wonder if she had ever done more than jog through Discovery Park. Lots of things seemed to surprise her: the snow on the ground in May; the fact that you needed a permit to camp; the signs that advised against drinking from the rivers, though the glacier meltwater was icy blue and so clear you could count the rocks at the bottom of the riverbed. But, he reminded himself, those were the kinds of things Old Bob would worry about. He was New Bob, or rather New Robert, and New Robert’s motto was Say Yes to Everything.
He went to stand beside Terri, who was bent over a park map, nodding her head seriously as a ranger drew his finger along various possible routes.
“What sort of difficulty level are you looking for?” the ranger asked.
“Difficult,” said Terri.
“Or medium. Or easy, maybe,” Robert said, though it hurt his pride to do it. He had forgotten what a drag dating was, the constant posturing and wondering how the other person would judge your every action. Still, it would only be worse if he ended up in over his head, struggling red-faced up some craggy incline while Terri bounded ahead of him like a mountain goat.
The ranger looked out the window. “This late in the day, I think your best bet is the trail to Grace Lake,” he said. He tapped a dotted line that snaked up a long road and into a dense green patch on the map.
“Great,” said Terri. “Can we take this map?”
“This?” the ranger said. “I mean, this won’t really do you any good. You need a topo map. Number 18, I think.”
“Yeah, I love the topos,” Terri said, giving Robert a wink that was perhaps meant to be reassuring but came across as lascivious, and he smiled back uneasily. The more time he spent with Terri the more he was convinced she was constantly sending him signals he didn’t know how to interpret. Or maybe it was just women in general that he couldn’t read.
* * *
—
Bob had spent most of his adult life dating a woman named Linda, eight years that stretched from the end of graduate school until the previous summer. He had initially been attracted to her because of the effortless sensibleness with which she ordered and commanded her life. That is, until the day she came home and suggested they move to Paris.
“But why would we do that?” he said.
“Why not?”
“Well, we don’t speak French. And I don’t think we can even work there, legally. Plus, I like my job here.”
“You like industrial chemistry?”
Bob eyed her warily. Linda knew he enjoyed his work, but this was not his frank, dependable Linda. This was some wild-eyed stranger. He suspected her friend Preeta was to blame. Preeta shared a desk with Linda at work, and she was single and a bit flighty. She occasionally got large cash gifts from her childless aunts and uncles, which she spent on everything from spa trips to Iceland to having long, wavy Arabian horse mane extensions woven into her hair. Usually Linda would come home and tell Bob about these exploits with arch glee, and the two of them would laugh together. But, once in a while, Preeta managed to convince Linda that one of her affectations was an unmissable opportunity.
Linda laid a brochure on the table: MASSAGE THERAPY IN PARIS! The photograph showed a sunny room and a woman kneading the back of a blissful, towel-wrapped man.
“You want to massage people?”
“Do you have to be so literal about everything?” she said, throwing her purse on the couch. “It doesn’t have to be that. It doesn’t even have to be Paris. But don’t you get tired of everything being the same all the time? Preeta says—”
“Ha!” said Bob, little more than an exhalation of excitement, but he knew immediately that it was a mistake.
“What does that mean?” Linda asked.
“It means it’s another one of Preeta’s crazy ideas that she’s managed to pass along to you.”
“Is it so crazy to think we might do something fun and romantic for once? Are we going to stay holed up here like scared animals for the rest of our lives, eating Fig Newtons and watching the Discovery Channel every night?”
Bob flinched. He loved Fig Newtons. And the Discovery Channel. He’d thought Linda did, too; they had good conversations about the shows.
“The problem with you is you can’t even imagine it,” Linda said, brushing away angry tears. “You can’t even get your head around the idea of something different, so you’re just going to say no.”
The next morning, with her eyes still pink and a strong cup of coffee in hand, she delivered a speech he could tell she’d been practicing in her head all night, if not all year: She still loved him, but they’d been together too long. They were stagnating each other, holding each other back; it would be better for them both if they just stopped pretending.
“I’m not pretending anything,” Bob said. “What do you want me to do? You want me to move to Paris to prove a point?”
Linda said nothing, just shook her head. She packed up all her belongings from their apartment and was gone within a week.
* * *
—
In the wake of her departure, Bob spent months in a black funk. He volunteered to work sixty-hour weeks, ignored his friends’ phone calls, and fell asleep on the couch every night watching TV and eating cereal from the box. Fig Newtons were ruined for him; he could not even bear to look at the package in the grocery store. By the time midwinter hit, he knew he had to do something or risk spending the rest of his thirties lost in a swoon of self-pity. He bought a case of beer and called up a few of his buddies. They spent the night crafting an online dating profile that would usher in his new life. His friend César chose a photo where Bob was staring straight at the camera, smiling and inexplicably gripping a gymnastics trophy, the thinning patch in the back of his hair entirely hidden. César cropped Linda out and applied some filter that made Bob’s pasty skin look tanned, and voilà: Bob Lambros was dead, and here was Robert L., the kind of man who didn’t take no for an answer.
Except that he had to, repeatedly. His initial night of euphoria gave way to a months-long string of messages to women who never responded, unless it was to tell him to go away. Until Terri reached out to him. Her pictures were sexy but not trashy, and her profile didn’t contain any obvious red flags. He could only hope that things were finally turning around.
* * *
—
Terri suggested a new Korean restaurant and Bob arrived early for their date, but she was already there, sitting at a table with an empty water glass. She stood up and said, “Robert!,” ignoring the hand he offered in favor of hugging him warmly. He sat down across from her while she flagged down a waiter and said, “Two bottles of soju, please.”
“Oh, no thanks.”
“You have to try it,” she said. “If you hate it, just get something else.”
He forced himself to smile, to sip the drink when it was handed to him and nod appreciatively. He hated it. He hated any kind of alcohol other than beer. But that was not the point. The point was to relax and go with the flow.
Within an hour he decided he might be in love with Terri or he might never want to see her again. She was full of brazen energy and was every bit as attractive as her photos made her out to be—lusciously curvy, with a face that flushed with pleasure every time she laughed. She made a point of touching him as she talked, casually resting her hand on his wrist or fingers to emphasize a point. But Terri also had a habit of lapsing into silence and staring at him, and repeatedly quoted from Robert’s dating profile, which he now saw he had crafted to sound interesting without thinking much about accuracy. For instance, he had written that he loved nature. As soon as Terri mentioned it, Robert realized he had not clarified how he loved nature, which was in a gentle, distant way: He liked flipping through big, glossy coffee-table books with National Geographic photos, or stopping to admire a particularly fiery leaf on the sidewalk in fall; he would even sit out on the stoop on occasion just to listen to the birds in the early morning, but he never ventured farther from civilization than that.
When the check arrived Robert handed the waiter his credit card, and while he waited for the receipt, Terri stood up and began putting on her coat.
“You drove, right?” she said. “I’m at Sixty-eighth and Highland. It’s a yellow brick high-rise. The lock on the lobby door’s broken, so just come up. Number 422.”
“Oh. Sure,” said Robert. Wasn’t he supposed to have to talk her into going back to her place? Or at least ask? She seemed so sure of herself, as if everything had been agreed on ahead of time. But why not? The three sojus he’d drunk had tasted terrible but had gone right to his head; he felt like he could crush a brick with his bare hands. He probably shouldn’t be driving, but fuck it.
When Robert arrived at Terri’s building there was no elevator that he could see, so he climbed the stairs, winded and sweaty by the time he reached the fourth floor. He knocked at her apartment, got no answer, and, finding the door unlocked, he hesitantly pushed it open. Inside it was so dark that he couldn’t make out anything but the hulking shapes of the furniture. There was a strong smell of smoke. For a moment he stood frozen in the doorway. “Terri?” he said.
“In here.”
He stepped gingerly across the carpet, groping ahead of him in the darkness, and managed to find the door to her bedroom, fumbling his way inside.
The room was as bright as the rest of the apartment was dark, lit by lamps in every corner and filled with a haze of incense. Terri was sitting cross-legged on her bed, naked, reading a book. Robert inhaled sharply. The lamps made Terri’s skin look golden, or maybe it was the alcohol, but she seemed almost too perfect to touch. Terri put the book down and looked at him with that same disconcerting stare she had focused on him in the restaurant. Robert stood gripped by a mixture of lust and intense self-consciousness, painfully aware of his sweaty back and sour breath.
“Well, come on,” she said, and that was that. It had been so long since he’d had sex with anyone other than Linda that he was nervous in spite of being drunk, but it didn’t matter because Terri made love as though she had something to prove: loud and energetic and dramatic, like they were simultaneously filming a sex scene for the Oscars and engaged in some high-concept contest to see who could have the most fun. And it was fun, and cathartic at the same time, and to hell with Linda, there was nothing wrong with him.
* * *
—
Afterward, they showered together. Robert stood behind Terri with his arms around her, watching the water pouring over her shoulders and between her breasts, breathing in the warm steam and thinking that for the first time in nearly a year he could actually say he was happy, when she turned to face him and said, “I’m going hiking in Montana in two weeks. Want to come along?”
Robert stuttered. Thanks to all the overtime he’d worked in the past year, he had money and vacation days to spare. But he hated traveling and knew next to nothing about Terri. Still, he knew what New Robert would say. New Robert would take the bull by the horns and seize the day and live for the moment and sign up immediately for a wilderness sexcapade. New Robert would have suggested it himself.
“Hell yes, I do,” he said.
They went to bed soon after, but at six o’clock the next morning Robert found himself wide awake and restless. He crawled out of bed and put on his stale clothes from the night before. Terri half woke and looked at him.
“Heading out?” she said.
“I would love to stay longer, it’s just—”
“Door locks from the inside,” she said, and snuggled deeper into her pillow.
Robert closed the bedroom door behind him and turned to leave. The rest of the apartment, in the gray light of day, looked like it had been ransacked. One wall bore dark splatter stains with dents at their centers and a scattering of shattered glass at its base. Everywhere were drawers torn out and dumped; a small side table held an armless teddy bear and a cluster of candles burned down into a massive pool of wax. The smoky smell from the night before was even stronger.
Suddenly it all made sense. Terri was gorgeous, funny, a great lay, and completely fucking nuts. No wonder she had messaged him. He thanked God she didn’t have his phone number and made a beeline for the door. Bullet dodged.
Then he got home and his apartment looked like the depressing hellhole it was—all the gaps in the bookshelves where Linda had taken her books, the empty fridge, and neat rows of cereal boxes in the cupboard. After two days he couldn’t stand it anymore. So Terri was a shitty housekeeper, and possibly deranged. So what. Anything was better than this.
* * *
—
But now, now that they were trudging toward some godforsaken campsite in the middle of nowhere Montana, he was beginning to have doubts. Especially given that an hour after leaving the ranger st
ation they had made it only two miles up the road. Robert’s pack was listing heavily to one side and his back hurt, but he didn’t want to complain. If Linda were here he could imagine the two of them agreeing to go back down the hill and rent a cabin at the main campground, a decision that sounded much more appealing than continuing the hike. But maybe he was wrong. Maybe that kind of attitude was exactly what Linda had loathed about him—or rather, the old him.
He stopped and looked around at the seemingly endless stands of pine trees, their scent so stark he could taste it on the back of his tongue, and tried to force himself for a moment to just appreciate it all. He couldn’t deny it was magnificent, but there was something unnerving about it, too, the weight of all that silence.
After another half-hour Terri stopped abruptly, unbuckled her pack, and swung it to the ground. “Screw this,” she said. “This isn’t really nature anyway. Let’s cut to the chase. Someone will give us a lift.”
There were not many cars, and the first few passed them without even slowing down. Robert had been sweating when they were walking uphill, but now that he was sitting in clammy clothes he found it was chilly despite the sunshine. At last an older woman in a pickup truck pulled over for them. Terri whooped with excitement, and they threw their packs in the bed of the truck and squeezed into the cab. As they drove up the hill, Robert realized he was relaxed for the first time all day. Having all those miles being eaten up by good old gasoline and tire rubber was an unexpected blessing. They soon reached the trailhead and retrieved their packs.
“Stay safe. Watch out for bears,” the woman said.
“Okay, thanks!” Terri said. She wrestled her pack on and started down the path without hesitation. When Robert caught up with her, she smiled at him. “Only twelve miles left—easy-peasy,” she said.
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