The doorbell buzzed and the voice on the intercom bellowed. “Vic! I know you’re up there, let me in.”
After Simone and Rachael, I should be used to opening up a door and greeting my past. But I knew, Chris’s relentless updates aside, that I would never be prepared for Nic.
“Vic!”
It was bad enough growing up as part of Vince, Vance, and Vic. But Vic and Nic? We could never marry.
Nic did look the same, although not as looming. As he stepped across the threshold, I was surprised that he did not fill up the whole world, he did not even suck all the oxygen from the room. Probably diminished lung capacity.
Despite his permanent tan, he looked a little pale.
“Nic.” I stepped back to let him into the apartment, but I did not get far.
He grabbed me in a bear hug so strong that my back cracked in three places, which felt pretty good.
“Good to see you too.” My voice was muffled against his chest. “Let me go.”
He released me and shoved his hands in two of the seven pockets attached to his travel pants. “Sorry. I miss you. You look fantastic!”
“You look like you should have used more sunscreen over the last twenty years.”
His eyes crinkled into a smile. “See, you would have been good for me.”
We would have been terrible. I worshiped him and he took advantage. I cried; he was stoic. He was a generous lover; I would give him that. But like many people of genius, everyone and anything else took a back seat to his main passion. I accepted that, because everyone I loved fell somewhere on the Spectrum.
Nic was over the sixty- year hump and must be closing in on the end of his career. How was he doing really? He still lean, but as we age, that’s not such a great look. His handsome face fell into long creases, white laugh lines fanned into his temples. He was still lively, still charismatic.
With a flourish of my Max Peters original I led him into the newly cleaned living room. When I say living room, what I mean is the area left over when the kitchen and dining area are through. When we entertained, Miranda and I pulled out a huge folding table that replaced the coffee and end tables that were in turn stashed in the windowless extra bedroom. The party always took over the whole apartment. Didn’t matter where we put people, the public space overlooked the canal through floor to ceiling windows so there wasn’t a bad seat in the house. The windows, however, needed professional help.
Nic obediently sat on the couch.
“You cleaned,” he observed.
I raised one eyebrow and stepped over to pick up a bottle of red wine.
“You saw Miranda?”
“Oh, no.” He raised his hands. “Just the hippo over Skype. But I could see the apartment behind her of course, she was never very tidy.”
“I can’t remember if you’re tidy.”
“I’m a disaster, especially after you left, couldn’t find my notes for days.” He said it with a smile, but I suddenly knew it was true. Nic was more Belzoni than Petrie. Belzoni was a circus strongman who searched for treasure using the expedient technique of blowing impediments up. His best stunt was to ship an intact obelisk to England to grace the private estate of William John Bankes. Petrie on the other hand, was an eccentric scholar devoted to exacting process, cataloging pot shards under the relentless Egyptian sun. Like Petrie, Nic was a scholar and a careful, academic excavator, but like Belzoni, Nic loved treasure, he relished the big finds, the press, the attention. Nic was able to bundle up all his hubris and deliver spectacular, well-attended lectures at UC Santa Barbara where, when he did show up, he was treated as minor royalty.
I didn’t even mind trailing behind him on campus. I loved that campus, I loved the beauty of Santa Barbara, the opportunities offered by one of the largest university systems in the world. I even forgave myself for not taking some of those opportunities, my choice, my consequences. And look, here was another consequence.
I handed him a wine glass. He seemed smaller and I was quite aware that in contrast, I was much, much larger. Maybe over the years we had exchanged mass.
I sat next to him with my glass in hand.
“To old times.”
“To old times.”
He drank and looked at me over the rim of the glass. “Did you see it?”
My mind shot back to the secret drawer filled with toys and games. Those were the Oreo years: Miranda was dark chocolate, hard, crumbly. Nic was the creamy stuffing in the middle. Yes, really go ahead and extrapolate that creamy middle metaphor to its logical end. But like delicious cookies, neither was sustainable, nor nourishing.
I took a shuddering breath and tried to keep my hand steady. I gave up and set the glass on the coffee table.
Max had insisted on hearing all my Nic stories. The finds, the fights, the gritty sand. Heady intense experiences rendered more and more harmless in the telling.
Nic covered my hand with his. “It’s been a long time. Sorry, I didn’t mean to make it all about the hippo.”
“But it is all about the hippo, isn’t it?”
He shook his head. “You’ve been away.”
He made it sound like I had been in prison and just got sprung for good behavior.
“Not so long.” Five years.
“Long enough.”
He glanced at his watch. “Come, the tourists have all retreated to their ships by now. We have a fighting chance.”
“It’s a little early for dinner.”
“Drinks then, out in the world.”
Damn, he was still handsome, rugged, worn and decidedly beat up. But the blue eyes were the same, the sardonic expression that only soften in that five minutes window of post-coital sentimentality. That was the look I fell for. And the look I worked my damnedest to inspire over and over again.
Have you made love in the desert during a sandstorm protected only by flimsy nylon? Very romantic. Sand everywhere. Took me a week and seventeen showers before I could walk without pain.
I stood and took his empty glass. “Of course, we can go out.” Miranda’s room was tidy; the object of his desire, that hippo, was safe and far away. Okay, safe in a hotel across the plaza. On a crowded Friday night, that was far enough away.
My phone buzzed. It was Tina. I didn’t answer.
“Will you take a photo with me?” I gestured for him to come close and held up the phone for the most flattering angle of me, I wasn’t worried about Nic. He obligingly smiled and I quickly sent the image to Chris, texting that I had met up with the great man again.
“My nephew thinks you are the bomb. He follows your career slavishly.”
“A rabid fan?”
“Not unlike the undergrads at UCSB.” I punched his shoulder. “Come on, I lost my purse, so you’re treating.”
The cruise ships had gathered their unruly guests and had all just disembarked. The plaza was lively with locals clearly happy to reclaim their city. Few people were ready for dinner, so we had our choice of tables to relax and order over-priced wine while we basked in the reflections from St. Marks. I figured I may as well have one final grand outing. Nic didn’t protest and obediently followed in my wake as I snaked through the tables on the square and chose one with an unobstructed view of the Basilica.
I talked the waiter into allowing us to remain for dinner even though we occupied a table clearly marked reserved.
“I promise we will be finished by 9:00 for the next group.” Either the maître d’ was enchanted by my new look or that I could speak a little his language. He put on a good show, he frowned, calculated and finally nodded. “Not a minute longer.”
I nodded and smiled. “Not a minute longer.”
We sat at our lovely table until ten, mostly because it took half an hour for our waiter to produce the bill and another twenty minutes before he popped back to run Nic’s charge card.
We worked through a second bottle of wine, taking our time. Nic fiddled with his fork and knife. He glanced around. He was restless and not because he was ap
preciating the young women parading around the square, laughing and taking selfies. He caught me up on his digs; he was still located in Egypt. I caught him up on my parents. We both discussed Miranda.
I ate and fended off questions about Miranda and her estate. He was using me, of course, but that wasn’t such an unusual thing; it was, in fact, comfortingly familiar. I basked in his direct attention, his blue eyes, the expensive wine I kept ordering. We drank and talked of the old times: when he was young, and I was foolish. It was so grand to be led solely by stupid crazy love. We only regret the sensible decisions.
Nic, for all his intelligence was a man driven by hope over experience. You have to, he pointed out, in order to keep digging. Each new day could be the day you discover the artifact, the statue, the mummy, the mummy case that will catapult you to fame and solvency.
Every goddamn day.
After a couple years of all these days strung together in endless succession, I was exhausted emotionally and physically, seemingly suffering from perpetual sunstroke. Or suffering from an overdose of Nic. Miranda, who took me back, claimed it wasn’t the sun; it was Nic in all his attractive neediness. At one point she called Nic my Egyptian curse. Maybe.
My brothers often parroted my parents pointing out that there is always a price to pay for pleasure. I’ve lived abroad long enough to know, deep in my bones, that isn’t true. I wanted to take a photo of Nic and me at dinner, floodlit St. Mark’s in the background. Just to make Vince’s weekend that much more stressful. Already paid the price—here are the pics.
Nic noticed me fingering my phone. “You really must stop, you know.”
I set the phone face down and tried not to look at it. “Stop what?”
“Caring for others, you are always caring for others instead of taking care of yourself.”
“I cared for you. You didn’t seem to mind.”
Cheshire cat smile. “I’m different. I give back.”
So did Max, charming to the end, lively, grateful. So did Miranda, brittle, fascinating. So did my parents…my parents were family.
While we waited for the second phase of paying for our meal, Nic circled back to the whole point.
“The hippo may be the real thing, but I couldn’t tell over Skype.”
“And what exactly does that mean?”
“It could mean a major dig, a major find.” His eyes lit up, but it was just because the waiter was finally returning to take Nic’s payment.
“Or it could mean someone did not take good care of their souvenir from the Met.”
He nodded, “That would be better.”
“Why better?” I poured the last of the second bottle into my glass. “That’s not like you, turning down an opportunity to discover something new.”
“Not as easy anymore. The digs are hellishly expensive and the government, at least the group in charge this week, is not interested in more artifacts, they are interested in progress, taxes,”
“Graft.” I supplied. I wasn’t naive. Promising discoveries, promising digs were routinely re-buried so as not to disrupt a housing project or building large retail establishment. That the Sphinx was directly across from a KFC outlet only proved the point. What made more money? The chicken.
No woman with a solid education in romantic comedies and paranoid newscasts would have taken Nic at face value tonight. We had met at a party, me looking fabulous, Nic, working for the Cairo Museum to track a ring of smugglers, looked exciting. He was following a lead; I was trailing a long Ralph Lauren. It was all very James Bond, which appealed to me so much I only asked general questions to which he replied with vague answers. Within hours of meeting, Nic had swept me and a small overnight bag out of Venice and into adventure in the grand desert. I do not regret a second.
I sipped my wine and smiled at him, thankful for what we had. Thankful I had one more chance to thank him.
A good Nebbiolo will do that to you: help you forgive. “If we can’t find the hippo, then what?” I had locked the apartment as we left, but there was no reason a determined person couldn’t just smash the door. We were eating very early likely, so the thieves had more light for their search. Did Nic ask them to be sure to return everything back where they found it? As neatly as possible? I spent the better part of the day making sure the place was presentable, I didn’t relish cleaning it again.
I leaned back and grinned at him. He was still handsome. I was still attracted at least to the idea of him. I was not yet dead. Game on.
I asked Nic up. Whatever I would find, I did not want to find it alone. He hesitated, but dutifully followed me up the stairs.
“Oh, no!” It was almost difficult to sound surprised.
The apartment was once again, trashed, this time more obviously since I had straightened up everything before the robbery. I hurried to the kitchen to make sure the espresso machine was unharmed, then hurried to the bedroom to make sure Miranda’s hidden toys were undisturbed. The closet was rifled, but there wasn’t much to rifle. My suitcase had been opened, but again, not damaged; none of my things were disturbed.
I had already added the locksmith to my favorites list and left a message.
Nic’s eyes darted around the living room as I emerged from the bedroom. “Anything missing?”
I shook my head. The only things in my suitcase were recent acquisitions from the store. My key ring, cash and phone were secure in my tiny green purse.
“Do you even have it?” Nic’s tone was casual, credit for keeping his voice steady.
The locksmith pinged me back. Tomorrow morning, first thing.
“No.” Completely and totally true. I did not have the hippo.
He needed to ask a different question if he wanted a different answer. I smiled. “Is that what you think the thieves were searching for?” Point for me.
As if they hadn’t been in the house before, as if this wasn’t the second time in a week the house had been tossed. As if they didn’t figure that with a new person, there was a new possibility the hippo would emerge. Because they knew where I was and exactly what I was doing.
“I told you I hadn’t found it; did you really need to do this?” I turned on him, hands on hips as if he were Matt still holding a smoking fire extinguisher. Nic looked just as guilty.
He let out a sigh as he massaged the back of his neck. He didn’t even bother to deny it, too much trouble.
“We need it.” He held out his hands in supplication. “I need it.”
“It’s not here.” I repeated. “I only saw it on Skype as well.”
“Some very important men want to find the hippo,” he finally admitted.
“You can order one on-line.” I held my ground. He rubbed his face, then carefully circled the room picking up the cushions, righting the end tables, retrieving the pieces of a broken lamp.
“And why you?”
“Because I know Miranda and I know you. And they thought it would be easy.”
“But it wasn’t.”
He shook his head.
“You were here the night Miranda died?”
“No! Yes, but earlier, she was alive, I asked her for the hippo, but she wouldn’t give it to me."
“She liked it.”
“She said she didn’t trust me.” He clutched a cushion to his chest.
“I wonder why.” I took the cushion and replaced it.
“Look, we parted on good terms. Mostly good terms,” he amended.
“Mostly.” I confirmed. “But she is my friend and I am feeling rather protective right now. Do you blame her for not trusting you? You were the one who bounced me out of the tent to make way for a younger and, I may add, thinner woman. She had to pick up the pieces and I wasn’t as easy to re-assemble as one of your finds.” It was possible I was at fault as well, but this wasn’t about me.
“How did you know?”
I sat on the newly replaced cushion and gazed out over the canal. The lights from the hotel across the canal lit up the water in undulating yellow squares.
Black figures strolled the quay below.
“No one eats at 6:00.”
“Jet lag?” He offered.
“Lame.” The mess wasn’t bad; his work had righted most of it back to show-worthy order. The wavering squares of light were mesmerizing. I rose and retrieved the wine and the glasses. “They left this.” I poured him a glass and poured the rest into my glass.
Nic took his glass, offered a silent toast and almost downed the whole thing.
I sat down, feeling superior as the wronged one. I had morals and ethics on my side. As well as danger. Damn.
I sat forward resting my arms on my legs. “I can’t stay here, and I can’t check into a hotel without my passport.”
He sat next to me mimicking my position. “You can stay here, no one will be back.”
“Comforting from the bad guy.”
“I just need to know where it’s from and how she got it. All she said is she found it here, at a shop in the city. Where?”
“The shop or the dig?”
“Both, we need to stop the flow. If there is a new dig, and it’s producing artifacts, we need to know.”
“You don’t know there’s a new dig? The country is not that large.”
“But it’s a vast desert. The government is small, and not necessarily on board, UNESCO and the Ministry of Antiquities can only do so much. If I had a small clue, if we could trace the hippo back to at least the end of the supply chain, we could find the origins.”
“You have enough men to invade Miranda’s home, steal my purse, rob the place again.”
He waved his hand. “Locals.”
“Call them off?” I looked at the lock, still intact but useless if someone could pick it.
He followed my gaze and immediately took a dining table chair and shoved it under the doorknob.
He sat back down and pulled out a rumpled photo. It was the hippo, my hippo since I inherited it. The glass had either faded or this was a greener tinged hippo in the first place. I had seen it, held it in my hands. But I was not about to admit that. I had the one thing he needed; it was not necessary to give it up to soon. Not even for love. Not even for sex.
After I'm Buried Alive Page 9