Crook & Flail

by Maira Isabel Pita

“Stop it!” She pushes her chair back. “He’s not…what you’re implying!”

  “I envy your self-confidence. Please, don’t go, I simply had no idea you were so naïve.”

  “I’m not hungry anymore.”

  “I’m sorry you can’t face the truth but I’m glad I opened your eyes. I can’t prove it but I think it’s fairly obvious that Mark is after your money, Lucia. You’d better get used to it. You might as well even try to enjoy it. I know I would.”

  Back up in her room, where she can break down in private, Lucia is forced to consider the possibility that Elizabeth is right.

  Whether it was stupidity or vanity or both, she had fallen for Mark’s declaration of love as though it was the most natural thing in the world. Like a spoiled little girl opening yet another exciting present, she had accepted a second chance at happiness with scarcely a thought.

  She takes refuge out on the balcony again but it only depresses her how bright and lovely the view remains even as her vision of the world darkens by the second.

  Across the Nile desert mountains undulate like the backs of naked bodies lying exhausted around each other.

  She tries to get past her profound self-confidence and see the world as it supposedly really is but she cannot. All her perceptions are inextricably rooted in her positive nature. She simply cannot bring herself to believe that the chemistry between her and Mark is only a desperate romantic illusion on her part, or a form of emotional hysteria caused by nearly two years of unrelieved sorrow.

  She looks down at her hands where they are gripping the railing and suffers the impression that her little balcony is a boat caught on a seemingly inescapable current of despair. Then she notices that the veins beneath her skin are the same dark blue as the river. Yet if she were to cut herself now the blood that flowed out would be red.

  She turns her hand over to follow the delta of her arteries up through her wrist. It would be so easy to slit open the dam of her skin and to add a final line to the map of her palm—the unnatural path of suicide.

  She hurries back into the room away from this thought and is opening her last bottle of water when the phone rings.

  She answers it warily, “Hello?”

  A breathless silence is followed by a loud rush of static that makes her think of waves crashing on a shore at high tide. Then suddenly a distant voice yells, “Can you hear me, Lucia?!”

  The green bottle slips out of her other hand and hits the floor with a dull thud.

  “Don’t be afraid, my love!”

  She watches sparkling water flow in a dark path across the sand-colored carpet.

  “Lucia, promise me you won’t.”

  The connection dies abruptly.

  She stands listening to her own silent scream of despair until the dial tone returns a moment later. It hums hypnotically through her blood before abruptly giving way to the lifeless pulse of a busy signal.

  She sets the receiver, very gently, as if it might explode in her hand, back into its black cradle.

  * * * * *

  Lucia throws off the summer dress she wore down to her hellish breakfast with Elizabeth, slips into a black T-shirt and jeans and, disobeying Mark’s order, leaves the room.

  It is a short walk to the Temple of Luxor.

  She purchases her ticket and then waits to one side of the kiosk while a large group of German tourists makes its way down the avenue of sphinxes toward the temple. Then she starts slowly down the avenue by herself.

  The inscrutable smile of Amenhotep III is carved over and over again on both sides of her like a single frame of film endlessly unreeling. And alone with the sphinxes and the sky she begins to feel strangely, reassuringly embraced by the endless smile. Yet its relentless repetition also has the effect of demanding something from her, of fists beating against her rational mind, trying to impress some mysterious truth directly upon her emotions by bypassing her brain. The man’s smiling face on an animal’s body…consciousness as a pure, untamed force learning to contain itself…

  She succeeds in not thinking about that impossible phone call for over an hour, even though she doesn’t forget it for one second.

  At one point, finding herself completely alone near the end of the temple, she pauses in the center of a small courtyard.

  The sun is high in the sky so not a single shadow breaks up the luminous expanse of sand all around her. The columns themselves might be rays of solid light, the prison bars of the physical world’s three dimensions. Dressed entirely in black, Lucia suddenly feels beautifully powerful. At that moment she actually experiences the belief that her consciousness is the darkness that gave birth to the sun and to every other star passionately burning in the infinite space of her awareness. She stares fixedly into the empty space between two of the columns and dares Richard to appear to her again.

  A little blond boy runs out from between the pillars, laughing. His mother appears a heartbeat later and, catching him gently by the arm, kneels beside him to retie one of his shoelaces as he smiles happily over at her.

  Lucia quickly turns away in search of another courtyard.

  Part of her desperately wants to believe that Richard has somehow managed to communicate with her but it would be incredibly foolish to forget how much Julian sounds like his dead older brother.

  “Hey there, Lucia.” Lori stands out vividly against the pale stone in a terracotta-colored T-shirt and blue jeans. “I thought you didn’t know how to read hieroglyphs.”

  “I don’t,” she replies shortly, startled out of her reverie.

  “Really? You were staring at that wall as if you could. I thought Mark was planning to show you around.”

  “His brother’s leaving today.” She is desperate to avoid another potentially demoralizing conversation. “How long will you be in Egypt, Lori? It must be hard on you and Doug, specializing in two completely different cultures with archaeological sites half way across the world from each other.”

  “Actually, it’s kind of nice having time apart. It makes it more special when we’re together. I only got here two weeks ago so I’ll be around for a while. It all depends.” She shrugs her broad shoulders. “I hear you weren’t feeling well yesterday.”

  “No.”

  “Well, it’s rough on the body, suddenly finding itself half way across the world in an entirely different climate and surrounded by a whole different energy, if you know what I mean.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Doug’s obsessed with a culture that glorified death, yet he doesn’t believe in an afterlife himself. Go figure. He must be compensating. Personally, I’ve seen enough I can’t explain to keep my mind open. We’re standing in the Birth Chamber, you know.”

  Lucia glances briefly up at the sky, in which the sun sizzles like a magical yolk in the temple’s cracked shell. “The Birth Chamber?”

  “Yes. Doug loves this temple, which means I know more about it than I ever wanted to. Schwaller de Lubicz called it ‘The Temple of Man’ because each section is supposed to correspond to a different part of the body. He’s the one who founded the symbolist school of Egyptology Doug is so into. According to them this particular part of the temple corresponds to the vocal chords.”

  “The vocal chords. But I thought you said it was the Birth Chamber?”

  “It is. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was God. The Egyptians said this a long time before John, the apostle. The Egyptians believed the created universe was the word of Re uttered by Toth, the spirit and the intellect. Look, I’ve got to go now but I’ll call you if you feel like talking. Okay?”

  “God, Lori, I’d love that. I’m really…”

  “Confused?”

  “Overwhelmed is more like it.”

  “I’ll call you, Lucia. I’m a good listener. It comes from being married to Doug.”

  Chapter Six

  When Lucia returns from the temple, six more complimentary bottles of water are sitting outside her door like a miniature green colonnade.


  She finally finishes unpacking, putting everything away neatly in a symbolic attempt to straighten out the metaphysical mess of her desires. Then she orders a martini and prepares her body for it by drinking more water.

  When her drink arrives she stands sipping it out on the balcony, alternately watching the sun set and looking down at her left hand where it rests on the railing, intrigued by how far away it seems and by how oddly detached she feels from it.

  Richard’s haunting shots, followed by no rational chaser, are affecting her perceptions. She can’t blame the gin, even though it is certainly contributing to her intense thirst.

  Like blood exposed to oxygen, the river has gone from the afternoon’s profound blue to a darkly glistening red.

  Not only does she still miss Richard, she now also regrets the loss of a young man who never truly existed.

  She longs to call Mark and hear him tell her that Elizabeth is crazy but it would only be the phantom of her romanticism on the other end. She is surrounded by ghosts.

  It is getting darker and colder by the minute but Lucia stays out on the balcony holding her empty glass.

  If she had seen Richard’s body it might have been easier for her to find closure but Julian had reached the hospital first, identified his brother and kept her away from the bloody remains to spare her the shock. Before she knew it her husband had been cremated and handed to her in a black granite urn with his full name, Richard Lee Taylor, sandblasted on one side. She couldn’t bear the sight of it so she had it buried beneath the oak tree in their front yard.

  She can’t conceive of any reason Julian would encourage her supernatural fantasies by pretending to be his brother calling from beyond the grave but her reason insists on this explanation for that impossible phone call.

  She steps back into the room and turns on a light to pull her black leather jacket out of the closet. She slips it on and walks back outside again.

  The horizon is invisible now.

  Even though she didn’t eat anything all day she isn’t hungry, just endlessly thirsty. Not even Richard’s death had killed her appetite as completely as his possible resurrection has.

  She keeps wondering what Mark did all day and where he is now but pride still won’t let her pick up the phone and call him.

  Finally she walks restlessly back into the room. Thinking she might feel better if she forces herself to eat something, she opens the top drawer of the nightstand looking for a menu.

  The square wooden space is empty.

  She sits on the edge of the bed and then falls languidly back across it, surrendering to gravity.

  Covered by a white spread, the king-size mattress feels vast as an arctic wasteland…and the ceiling is breathing. It is bobbing like a block of ice on the bottomless darkness outside, the night sky foaming with stars. Richard’s naked force is out there. She can feel it. She can sense his willpower using the haunting womb of her love for him to try and manifest himself again. The lamp by the bed suddenly goes out, blindfolding her with the night’s soft, velvety darkness.

  Her head falls heavily to one side so she can look out at the balcony.

  At first she suffers the impression that the full moon is looking in on her, then she realizes it is Richard wearing a luminous white shirt. The challenge in his stare thrusts straight between her heartbeats and runs her through with a joy she wishes would kill her before slipping away again.

  Mark’s voice says from behind her, “What the hell?” And like a shining tear caught in her lashes, Richard vanishes again.

  “No!” she cries. “No!” She rolls over onto her stomach and plunges off the bed onto her hands and knees like an arthritic cat. She crawls weakly toward the balcony but there is nothing out there anymore so she curls up on the rug, miserably hugging herself.

  A small eternity seems to pass before she becomes aware of the strong current of Mark’s arms lifting her up and laying her across the bed.

  Awareness floods back into her skull’s painfully tight shell as a bright light blinds her.

  A shadow moves soothingly into its path—Mark sitting down beside her. “How do you feel?” he asks gently.

  Her throat is a sand-filled shaft she has to dig her voice out of. “Like hell.”

  “Do you have any idea who’s drugging you, Lucia?”

  She coughs. “What?”

  “Who would want to do this to you?”

  “Do what?”

  “Pretend to be Richard’s ghost.”

  The walls twirl nauseatingly around her like a dancer’s skirts as she sits up.

  Mark catches her against him. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “You should sleep it off.”

  “No,” she takes a tentative breath, “I’m all right! I think.” She pulls away from him. “Can you hand me one of those bottles?”

  “Not a chance, you’re not drinking anything else around here. You’re checking out of this hotel.”

  “Mark.” She has no intention of abandoning the balcony that has begun to feel like her own private launchpad to another dimension. “I’m not leaving. I just finished unpacking.”

  “Lucia, can’t you see that someone is fucking with you in a big way?”

  “Mark,” she desperately tries to organize her thoughts, “there’s no way we can possibly know how the human nervous system would react in close proximity to powerful concentrations of electromagnetic energy, which is what so-called ghosts—”

  “Let me help you, Lucia, don’t fight me.”

  “Mark…Elizabeth thinks you’re after my money.”

  He asks quietly, “And you believe her?”

  She looks down at her clenched hands. “I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

  “She made a pass at me, Lucia, and I turned her down. She resents that and now she’s jealous of you so to save her pride she tells herself I only want you for your money. She’s a bitch but that’s her problem.” He puts a finger beneath her chin and makes her look him in the eye. “I’m angrier with you for believing her,” he adds quietly.

  “Oh God, Mark.” She rests her forehead against his chest. “I’ve been in hell all day!” She doesn’t have the strength to mistrust him.

  “Lucia, whatever’s going on you’re not alone but you have to trust me. I can’t help you if you won’t trust me.”

  She does her best to sound casual, “Did you try calling me this morning?”

  “No. Why?” he asks suspiciously.

  “Because someone called me. I could barely hear who it was there was so much interference but the voice was clearly a man’s and it sounded…it sounded just like Richard.”

  “Really? That’s amazing. What did your dead husband have to say?”

  “Not much.”

  “I’ll bet. Tell me exactly what he said, Lucia.”

  “Can you hear me and don’t be afraid and promise me you won’t, then the connection died.”

  “Promise me you won’t… What do you think he meant? Talk to me, Lucia. What do did he want you to promise him you wouldn’t do?”

  “I have no idea.”

  He gets up abruptly.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Nowhere. I’m just taking a look around.”

  “Why? What are you looking for?”

  “I have no idea,” he echoes. “The haunting of Lucia Taylor,” he intones sarcastically. “I’ll ask you again. Who would have any reason to torment you like this?”

  “No one.”

  “Right.” He had closed the glass doors and drawn the curtains while she was “asleep” but now he opens them just far enough to slip outside onto the balcony.

  Lucia waits anxiously for him to return. She doesn’t want to be alone with all the questions she is trying to avoid. In the morning, when her brain doesn’t feel like a lump of lead, she will attempt to make sense of things. Tonight she is sure of only one thing—she is not checking out of the Etap. A profoundly stubborn part of her believ
es that really might have been Richard out on her balcony and that she lost consciousness because the proximity of what she can only think of as his “naked force” short-circuited her brain’s synapses.

  Moving slowly, to avoid another head-rush, she gets out of bed to use the bathroom.

  Mark is on the phone when she returns.

  “So there’s no way to trace the calls that come into this room?”

  She hears the insect-like buzz of a voice on the other end.

  “Fine.” He slams the receiver down.

  “Mark?”

  “What? Is there something you want to tell me, Lucia?”

  She slips off her jacket and tosses its reptilian weight onto a chair. “I’ve told you everything.”

  “Well, are you coming with me or not?”

  “Can’t you stay here with me, Mark? I mean, what good would it do to run away? I have to find out what’s going on and who’s behind all this.” Or if Richard is real.

  He stares suspiciously at the curtains blocking her view of the balcony. “Maybe that would be better,” he says beneath his breath.

  Relief propels her toward him. “Yes, it would be.” She sits half beside him and half behind him on the bed. “What are you thinking, Mark?” She dares to rest her hands on his shoulders. He is wearing black jeans and a black mock turtleneck and he looks so good all she wants is for him to take her.

  “Is Julian happy with his trust fund, Lucia?” He shrugs her hands off and turns to face her. “Someone’s after your money—it’s just a question of who and all my bets are on your husband’s little brother Julian.”

  He might as well be telling her that the world really is flat.

  “Look at me, Lucia. Who would inherit your money if you died?”

  “Mark, will you come stay with me?”

  “I’ll move my things over tomorrow.”

  “And you’ll stay tonight?”

  “Of course I will but now think. When they were reading Richard’s will was there a clause about your death?”

  “Julian gets it all,” she admits.

  “And he knew you were coming to Egypt?”

  “Yes. He thought it was a good idea.”

  “I’ll bet he did.”