True Love, the Sphinx, and Other Unsolvable Riddles

by Tyne O'Connell

  Eventually I lined up this brilliant shot of a couple of the guys leaning against one of the hieroglyphed columns, scrolling down their BlackBerrys. I didn’t even have to ask them to do anything. It was a perfectly constructed natural shot, exposing the historic temple complex in a totally now way. They were all discussing their scores on Yo’s infamous Hottie Chart. He’d e-mailed the chart to the class on the bus to the temple.

  Yo had been doing his Hottie Charts since the ninth grade. Here’s how it worked: All the London girls’ names were listed, and we then gave each of them a score so that everyone knew where everyone else’s intentions lay. Then we cc-ed everyone else our scores. We had only a week, after all, so we couldn’t exactly afford to leave anything to chance. I’d already filled in my scores and cc-ed the class. I’d given Octavia a top score of Off the Scale. So had everyone, except for Salah, who has never filled in one of Yo’s Hottie Charts. In his words, “they’re lame.” No one really expects Salah to do anything other than stand apart, but Yo always tries to convince him to participate. Salah usually rolls his eyes.

  Mohammed was getting increasingly exasperated with the interruptions and kept pulling on the toggle of his hat. “The temple complex, how long you think it take to build?”

  “Well, Rome wasn’t built in a day,” Nigel quipped to chuckles from some of the other teachers.

  “No, not a day! They take bloody two thousand years to build!” Mohammad cried.

  “The builders must have been exhausted by the end of that,” Carol added, and Nigel clapped his approval.

  Poor Mohammed. He was already competing with dozens of other guides, who were giving the same spiel in Russian, French, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, and God knows what else, without having to battle our own teachers and their lame jokes. I went back to taking surreptitious digital shots of people in the temple complex. I loved the contrast of modern technology and the ruins. I took a few stealthy shots of Octavia, who was comparing the hieroglyphic pictures of the goddesses to models on the catwalk.

  “I am so going to channel Hathor,” she was saying to Rosie.

  “Many people say this is where Rameses II, who was married to Nefertari, signed the world’s first peace treaty. Yes, this was over three thousand years ago,” Mohammed said proudly.

  “That was with the Hittites, wasn’t it?” Mr. Bell interrupted, taking the bottle of water from his hat and undoing the cap. “And as I recall it was Rameses who came off rather badly from that battle. The Hittites wiped the floor with Rameses the so-called Great.” He laughed at his own joke.

  Poor Mohammed. He tightened the toggle on his hat and ushered us into the Great Temple of Amun. He did not look happy. In fact, he looked like he was entering the Temple of Doom.

  My cell rang. It was my mom. I assured her that I hadn’t been shot at yet. It was the third call since I’d arrived in Egypt. As I was saying another long good-bye and promising to watch out for gunmen, Octavia sidled up to Salah and me and took our hands. “So, darlings, are you loving Mohammed?”

  “Oh yeah, loving him, darling,” I told her. What I was loving was the feel of her hand in mine.

  “I think he’s gorge, don’t you, Salah?” she asked, spritzing herself with Evian.

  “Yeah, I think he’s going to be very interesting.”

  “I know exactly what you mean, darling. He has a sensitive, vulnerable nature. I think we should save him from the teachers, don’t you? They’re being so know-it-all-ish and horrid. Let’s show him a good time.”

  “What do you have in mind?” I asked, hoping she might mean something fun, but she had danced off and joined Rosie again. They were both dressed in skimpy shorts. Octavia’s were shocking pink linen with a black silk belt around the waist. Rosie’s were a peach-colored satin with an orange Hermes scarf. They were both wearing heels that were totally impractical but they didn’t seem worried about ruining them as we trawled around the hundreds of acres of awesomely large temples. They giggled when they slipped in the sand, they giggled when they squirted one another with Evian. I took some quick shots before they noticed me photographing them.

  When we got to the obelisk of Hatshepsut, Mohammed asked, “So, what would you think of woman who wants to erect two golden obelisks to her father?”

  “I’d say she was a really, really loving daughter,” Octavia replied earnestly.

  Mohammed looked confused. “No! She was bloody crazy woman. She claims she is daughter of god Amun! You can’t be daughter of god! No. This, we cannot accept.”

  “I accepted that my father was a god when he gave me my first black Amex,” Perdie said. “Perhaps one day I’ll build him an obelisk.”

  “They’re very phallic, aren’t they? I’m sure as a banker he’d love that,” Octavia added, squirting Perdie with Evian.

  Mohammed drew the cord on his hat even tighter. The poor guy was close to strangling himself.

  Karnak was a cool place. Big, awesomely big, but so crowded with tourists from every nation it felt like a theme park—like maybe the statues of the gods or the pillars might double up as thrill rides. I took dozens of shots of the police, who were everywhere in their black woolen uniforms clutching their AK-47s. One dude kept loading and unloading his cartridge magazine, which was disturbing, especially after my mother’s call. I got a shot of his cartridge belt when he dumped it on the ground at one point.

  Salah as usual had all the girls falling at his feet. Not that he seemed aware of it. Octavia was getting the lion’s share of attention. She managed to ooze sex appeal while being funny, which was a huge turn-on. There was this one point when we spotted a couple of dozen people all dressed in white, their hands placed on an enormous black stone scarab beetle. Octavia said to Carol, who was wearing a white sari, “Darling, look over there, your brethren!” Carol muttered something inaudible and then Octavia went over to the group and pointed Carol out to them. I don’t know what she said, but they reached out their arms to Carol, and if Nigel hadn’t interceded, I think we might have lost Carol to a cult.

  “Sometimes, madam, you go too far,” Nigel told Octavia.

  “Don’t be silly. I’ve told you, you can never go too far!”

  Nigel patted his sweating brow with a white handkerchief and said, “Yes, yes, yes, Octavia, just have some respect for the, erm, what you call it? Culture.”

  “Oh, do try to be less of a bore,” Octavia whispered to Nigel. “You’ll never pull Carol if you don’t loosen up a bit.”

  Astin nudged me, raising one eyebrow. “Can you believe that girl?”

  I was about to answer but Octavia had heard him and shimmied up to him singing, “You’re unbelievable!” It was as close to a lap dance as Astin had ever had, and it sent the jocks into a frenzy. They started yelling “You go, girl!” and taking pictures of her with their cell phones.

  “Peasants,” Octavia sneered teasingly. I jumped away from Astin and the jocks, hoping to single myself out as a nonpeasant and grinned like an idiot only to have Astin and the jocks shove me aside. Not one of my proudest moments.

  Afterward, we sat in a Bedouin tented café, which got us out of the heat. We drank Coke and a hot, sweet, milkshakelike drink called salep. Octavia smoked a shisha, a sort of water pipe with fragrant tobacco. She made it look ridiculously erotic. The teachers were all talking with Mohammed further off so they didn’t see her, but even if they had, I wondered what they could have said to reprimand her. I was guessing none of them wanted to go there.

  Before long, Octavia had attracted a crowd of local tour reps and hustlers. The girls I knew back in Manhattan would have freaked out if a crowd of Egyptian men had swarmed them, but Octavia chatted quite happily with them. The more outrageous she was, the more hilarious they seemed to find her.

  I elbowed Salah and pointed to Octavia. “I think you’re in there, man.”

  He was sipping on a glass of salep and sucking on his own shisha. “She’s not my type.”

  “Come on, Octavia’s not a type, she’s a g
oddess.”

  Salah shrugged. “Whatever. She doesn’t do it for me. But hey, if you like her, Sam, go work your mojo.”

  I was about to grovel in gratitude to him, when Rosie came and joined us. She perched on a carpeted stool beside Salah. She was wearing a quirky vintage black lace shirt over a lime green bikini top. She was definitely hot in a classic sort of way; leggy, long strawberry-blond curls. Not in the same league as Octavia, but cute just the same.

  Salah grabbed a passing waiter and called to him in Arabic.

  “Wow, that’s so cool! You speak Arabic?” Rosie asked.

  I listened to their conversation while I went through the pictures I’d been taking. “Yeah, it kinda helps that I was born here.”

  I thought it was sweet the way she blushed. “Wow, that must be amazing. What a cool place to be born.”

  Salah laughed. “Thanks, I think so.”

  “I really like the way Arabic sounds. I mean, it actually does sound like an old language doesn’t it?”

  I looked up and watched Salah’s face as he considered this. “I suppose it does,” he said, and smiled at her as if she’d made him think about his native tongue for the first time.

  We all sat back and took in the scene. Rosie looked around the café. “This place is so civilized. Don’t you love it? How can you bear living in America?”

  While Salah and Rosie chatted about Egyptian customs, I drifted off into my own thoughts. Octavia still had the Egyptians in hysterics, and her audience was growing by the minute. Salah had given me the green light on her, which should have made me feel easy. What actually happened was that for the first time since middle school, I felt insecure. And for the life of me, I didn’t know why.

  I’ve been cruising on a wave of self-confidence since I was about fifteen and started dating one of Manhattan’s hottest ice queens. Some people think I’m a smart ass and sometimes I agree. It’s true that things are uncomplicated for me when it comes to girls. There are no serious ups and downs, just beginnings and ends. I’m not saying that’s how I wanted it, it’s just how it was. I had never imagined myself to be in love. Whatever that means.

  I’d seen guys in crisis over girls but I’d never experienced it and never envied it. I felt sorry for the lovesick schmucks. I’m saying all this in retrospect, of course. I can’t help wondering if I wasn’t overrating the uncomplicatedness of my love life when I look at the guy I was before my life was turned upside down by the prospect of Octavia.

  Chapter 6

  Octavia

  NO is only an option, one we are all free to choose to refuse.

  “The Salah situation isn’t going well, Rosie. I fear you may need to give things a bit of a push,” I told her after we’d showered off the temple dust. We were both sitting on our beds with one towel wrapped around our torsos and another wound turban-style around our hair.

  I took a snap of Rosie with my mobile. For a while I had managed to make not having a mobile an admirable eccentricity, but eventually even I had to succumb to the lure of mod technology. Now I’m on pay-as-you-go—not that anyone in my world would even know what that concept is. I doubt Papa knows what a mobile is—he probably thinks it’s a house on wheels. I made the money for my mobile by taking tour groups around the house for Mumsy last summer. Now I know why she’s such a cloth-headed nutty darling. Taking those tours would turn the stoutest mind soft.

  I checked the image on the screen but the result wasn’t very promising. Rosie’s eyes looked beady and cross. I showed her. “That’s not a happy snap, darling, what’s the matter with you?” I asked.

  “Oh, it’s just the heat,” she assured me. Rosie hated the heat, it made her skin prickle. That’s why she’s the only friend I’ve ever had to Farringdon House, where everything is cold and damp, thanks to the fact that the central heating packed up five years ago. She absolutely adored it. She didn’t even mind that the beds were like wet porridge while I know from personal experience the bliss of sleeping on the downy heaven of her mattress in Chelsea. She went down very well with the madre and padre too, but then they get out so little they’d probably be happy to have a balloon on a piece of string to tea.

  “I’m loving it. The heat,” I told her. “I’m going to get so tanned, but because you’re my bestest friend in the world, Rosie, I will apply sunblock all over you and keep you under a parasol.” That made her laugh. “But back to Salah. He’s obviously too shy to pull me, so you’ll have to do that subtle shove thing you do so well. Red or Pink?” I asked as I held up two bottles of nail polish.

  “Pink. Sorry, Octavia, but I don’t know about this.”

  “About the color, or the Salah thing?”

  “The Salah thing.”

  I gave her my most insistent look. “Of course you know, darling. I’ve done it for you loads of times,” I reminded her, which was true. Rosie was a complete ruin when it came to affairs of the heart.

  “I know, but you’re you and I’m, well, I’m not a bit like you, basically,” she said.

  “Now you’re not making sense. Have you been reading French literature again?”

  Rosie flopped on her bed. “Look, Octavia, you’re my dearest friend, but, shoving boys into your arms is not my style.”

  I waved her objection away and started on my toes with the red. Red is so much more the color of pulling. “Look, we only have a week, and if shoving is what’s required, we must roll up our sleeves and shove. It’s not a style statement, it’s a necessity,” I pointed out. I can be a very practical girl when situations demand it. That’s what comes from growing up in a crumbling ruin.

  Rosie groaned and kicked her legs in the air to vent her frustration.

  “Don’t worry, Rosie,” I reassured her. “I’ll feed you your lines and you can deliver them in your own adorable way. He’s probably just ultra shy and weird like you. I mean, who knows what goes on in the American psyche? I don’t even think they have a word for pulling. They have that funny dating thing happening, and I don’t see how we can waste time on a dating regime when we’ve only got a week.” I held up my foot and wriggled my toes to admire the rather professional result.

  “I’m sure they still pull, Octavia,” Rosie said. “You can’t not pull. They probably call it something American, like, erm … actually, I don’t know. I’m sure they must do it though.” She started doing her fingernails in clear gloss. “Yes, I’ve seen them do it on television and in films.”

  “I’ve got it. Why don’t you ask Salah what the American word for pulling is and then you can suggest he do that word to me.”

  Rosie laughed but not in a completely enthusiastic way. More like a “you’re a genius but that doesn’t mean I’m cooperating,” annoying way that made me take another unflattering snap of her.

  She snatched my mobile and deleted the photo. “You don’t think that will be too subtle?” she asked.

  “You can’t afford to be subtle with boys,” I reminded her.

  “Well, I have brothers, remember, and I don’t think Salah is the sort of boy who likes to be shoved,” she mused. It was an annoyingly good point. As shy as Rosie is, having grown up with four brothers, she knows loads about how boys work. She’s always sharing handy tips with me on what boys really mean, and what they really think.

  “Rosie, it’s not about whether he likes being shoved or not, it’s reassuring him that I like him. Anyway, take a shot of me,” I insisted, passing her my phone. “All this Egyptian-ishness is making me feel too Cleopatra for words.”

  After Rosie had taken a few shots of me in different poses, Perdie and Artimis charged into our cabin. “Darlings!” they cried breathlessly. “The boys have just invaded our room!”

  It was just the thing I had been hoping for. “Oh, how fabulous! Rosie and I were worried the Americans would be all awkward and intimidated by us.”

  “Which boys came into your room?” Rosie asked with surprising interest.

  “Astin and Yo!” Perdie and Artimis squealed, jumping all ov
er the room. “You know, Astin’s the one with the squadie haircut, and Yo’s the big guy with the funny VR visor,” Perdie added dreamily.

  “Yar and he let us have a go of his visor thing. It was so cool,” Artimis added.

  “It was amazing. We went into King Tut’s tomb and struggled with mummies and everything,” Perdie explained excitedly.

  “That’s cool,” Rosie agreed, relaxing back on her bed.

  “They’re still in there,” Perdie added. “Come and see them? They’re only wearing towels!”

  I looked at Rosie and Rosie looked at me. “Boys in towels? Take us to them!” I demanded, and we charged off without bothering to dress.

  Sometimes I find keeping up my over-the-top banter with boys a bit exhausting. But like so many other aspects of my character, it does the necessary job of hiding how poor I am. By acting madder-than-mad, everyone just presumes I’m eccentrically rich. And once they’ve assumed, I feel I can’t let them down or they’ll feel I misled them intentionally. Which, of course, I have. Really, being a teenager is terribly complicated, isn’t it?

  All the cabins on the boat were the same. They were furnished in a clean, modern Egyptian style, the main feature being the two large windows, which offered up a spectacular view of the Nile. There were two single beds, a chaise longue, a desk and chair, and a tiny en suite. The two boys—in white towels as promised—were stretched out on each of the girls’ beds. They looked like two Mark Antonies.

  Perdie sat on the bed with Yo, who was like a giant in the room even when he was sprawled on a bed. She snuggled closer to him.

  Yo said, “Yo!” and put aside his VR visor. He was actually really handsome, which wasn’t something I’d noticed under all his techno paraphernalia.