“We could probably both use some alone time,” she said. Her tone was reasonable even if her teeth were clenched. “I’m going down to this market and see if I can find a cold Coke, since I can’t get anything better. Why don’t you enjoy nature for a while and I’ll see you later.”
She turned on her heel and stalked off without giving me a chance to answer.
This, too, was typical of her. She got into a mood and turned into Bitchzilla for a while, but sooner or later the evil spell wore off and she returned to her sarcastic, bossy, lovable self. It wasn’t much fun for those of us who retained our human form full-time. And just when I thought I was used to her moods, she could still say something to infuriate me.
I started walking, mostly to have something to do. The path closest to the western shore provided a marvelous view of both water and sand. The far bank rose sharply from a scrubby line of trees in a forbidding bank of undulating dunes, giving way to the rocky outcropping that housed the Tombs of the Nobles. From this distance, the tombs, a series of small doorways carved right into the stone, looked more like a mysterious and primitive village than the resting place of the lords of Egypt. Steep rock staircases led from the doors right to river’s edge. I started wandering slowly along the path, taking pictures of plants to my left and dunes to my right. I glanced at my watch occasionally. Sticking to a schedule was another of the small drawbacks that went with being part of a tour group.
A group of school children came running down the path, laughing and shouting. I smiled at them and turned down another path leading to the center of the island. I like kids in general, but I made it a policy to avoid roving feral packs of them.
As I reached the main path that ran down the center of the island, I saw Kyla talking with Alan. She was curling a strand of her dark hair around a finger and smiling that brilliant smile up into his face. I couldn’t see his expression, but he wouldn’t have been human if he hadn’t been dazzled. In fact, the only surprising thing was the sharp pang of jealousy that stabbed through me. What did I care if Kyla flirted with some guy on our tour, a guy we would never see again after next Sunday? Yes, he was nice looking, but so what? I knew dozens of nice-looking guys. Well, half a dozen. Okay, three. And they were married. But, again, so what? I decided to slip down a side path before they could spot me, but I was too late.
“Jocelyn,” called Alan and smiled, and I had no choice but to join them.
Kyla was shooting daggers at me to go away, but I ignored her and held up my camera. “Let me get your picture.”
Alan smiled and stood straight, while she leaned into him in what I considered a most suggestive way. I snapped the picture.
“We were just heading toward the market to get something to drink,” said Kyla.
“Yes, do you want to join us?” asked Alan.
I could see how enthusiastic Kyla was about that idea. I almost said yes just to annoy her, but decided there was no point. I had never been able to compete with her and any pathetic attempts on my part now would just embarrass me and amuse her. No … that wasn’t fair. Kyla might be in full bitch mode at the moment, but she loved me and wouldn’t have intentionally gone after someone that she knew I wanted, not again. I probably didn’t want him anyway, I told myself sternly.
Realizing they were waiting for me to answer, I said quickly, “No, you all go ahead. I’m going to take some pictures on the Aswan side.”
“We’ll walk with you,” said Alan pleasantly.
“No, really, that’s okay,” I said.
“But I want to go sit down,” said Kyla at the same time.
“I’ll catch up with you,” I promised.
“No problem. This is on the way,” he said. And the three of us walked on together.
Being a man, Alan was probably completely unaware that the warmth of the afternoon had just been replaced by a subarctic front. Kyla was refusing to look at me, her lips pressed into a thin little line. I wanted to kick her in the pants.
“Did Kyla tell you about our encounter with a guy named Aladdin?” I asked, desperate to say something.
“Aladdin?”
“Really. He said his name was Aladdin. He wanted to show us his wares. Very creepy.”
I stopped to take a picture of the largest hibiscus I had ever seen. I loved plants, at least those cared for by others. I had a hard time keeping anything alive.
“What kind of wares?” asked Alan.
“I don’t know. We didn’t get that far. He wanted us to go with him, but Kyla convinced him otherwise. You were great, by the way,” I added.
She was torn between annoyance and gratification. “Well, someone had to stand up to him.”
Alan looked from Kyla to me, finally picking up on the undercurrents. “You were smart not to go with him, but he was probably just an overeager salesman.”
I frowned. “Except he was really persistent. And he almost acted as though we should recognize his name.”
“He probably thought that tourists like the name Aladdin,” said Kyla impatiently. “What difference does it make, anyway?”
Alan looked like he was about to say something, but just then the group of boys playing in the grass kicked a ball too hard. It sailed past us and looked as though it was on its way to the Nile. Alan made a lunge for it, missed, and then ran after to save it from dropping off the steep bank.
Kyla took the opportunity to grab my arm.
“What is up with you?” she hissed in a low angry tone.
I eyed her narrowly. She wanted a fight, I just wasn’t sure why. “What do you mean?”
“Alan. Do you have a problem with me talking to him?”
Wow. She used to be much more subtle when we were in high school and she’d been making the moves on Matt Fletcher even though she knew I had a huge crush on him. I’d cried into my pillow back then, but I was far too old for that now.
“Is that what you’d like? It’s no fun if someone else doesn’t want him?” I kept my tone low, but I didn’t bother to hide my irritation.
She went white, then bright red. “At least I have a life. What do you have? Riding herd on a bunch of ungrateful delinquents all day and then spending the evening with a beer and a remote isn’t much to be proud of.”
“Better than vodka and a vibrator,” I snapped.
We glared at each other like a couple of grizzlies getting ready to go at it over a cub. Or maybe like a sleek jungle leopard against a wildebeest. A peacock and a wet hen? A Doberman versus a dachshund? Anyway, all we needed was a fight ring and a bell to turn this into the ugliest showdown since Tyson gnawed off Holyfield’s ear. Fortunately, Alan returned, tossing the ball back to the kids.
Kyla grabbed his arm. “Come on, Alan, let’s go find a drink. Jocelyn, you can catch up later, right?”
Tactful she was not, but her methods were effective. Alan escorted her up the path at a very respectable clip, leaving me in the proverbial dust. He glanced at me over his shoulder, and I quickly turned to take a picture of something or other.
I managed to arrive in the little market on the southern end of the island right on time for our group meeting. Everyone else was already there, even Fiona and Flora. I joined Lydia, Dawn, and Nimmi at a low railing. They were looking down at a lower level where DJ was busy haggling with a woman over a brightly colored scarf. Even from this distance I could tell it was of exceptionally poor quality, but DJ was having so much fun. His hands waved enthusiastically as he talked, up by his ears one minute, down low the next. His audience was commenting loudly on his performance and giggling like kids.
I glanced back at the rest of the group. Kyla was sitting alone on a bench holding a plastic bottle of Coke, and Alan stood thirty feet away, talking with Ben and Lydia. I did not know quite what to make of that.
After a few minutes, Anni called us together and we followed Hello Kitty a very short distance to look at the Aga Khan mausoleum where it perched across the water on the western shore. By now, the sun was well on its way to th
e western horizon and the building was almost a silhouette. Although pretty in its way, and probably enormously expensive, the building was very new. I might have learned why this seemed to be such a tourist point of interest, but I caught sight of a man in white near the drinks booth and stepped away. It was Aladdin, looking pleased with himself.
I slipped away from the others and followed him a few paces, trying to look like I was just casually walking down the path. I probably didn’t need to bother—he never looked back, and I didn’t have to pretend long. He called a greeting to the man behind the counter of the cold drinks stand, and slipped inside the little booth. Just a hawker after all, I thought. I turned back and almost ran into Alan, who had come up behind me silently.
He looked at me with a strange expression. “Problem?”
I glanced past him to where Kyla was glaring. “No. Just wanted something to drink.”
I turned back to the stall quickly and bought a Coke I did not want, glad that Aladdin was hidden from sight. I could feel Alan’s eyes on me as I returned to the group.
* * *
By the time we got back to the hotel, I felt uncomfortable and discouraged. Kyla was frigidly polite, which on the whole was a good thing. She could have taken us right back to high school by giving me the silent treatment, a game she had mastered and practiced a lot. It was a game I didn’t like much. My problem was that I was incapable of holding a grudge. One good night’s sleep, and I was ready to be friends again. She, on the other hand, had once ignored me entirely for almost a month when I’d criticized the boyfriend du jour. She thawed toward me only after she learned through another friend that I’d been right and that he had been playing footsie with her archenemy, Sandra Kowalski. Since that day, we’d been best friends and hadn’t had more than a moody spat or two or six hundred. Nothing serious though. Now we were seven thousand miles away from home and sharing a hotel room. We were going to have problems if she decided that I was untouchable.
Our hotel, the Elephantine Island Resort, was located on the high north end of Elephantine Island, which in turn lay in the middle of the Nile. The hotel itself looked like it had originally been designed as an air traffic control tower, but its rooms were clean and comfortable, if ordinary. I was starving and not very interested in talking, so while Kyla returned to the room, I sneaked down to the restaurant. Preparations for dinner were under way, but no one was paying me any attention, so I swiped a couple of rolls and a bottle of water, then slipped out the back and took the path leading down to a lower verandah. Two wrought iron benches rested under a clump of acacia trees, and I sank onto one. I could see Kitchener’s Island with its lush foliage across a little strip of water and beyond that the rocky dunes that lined the banks of the Nile.
After a couple of minutes, I gave a little shiver. The winds were dying down at last and my little bench was sheltered, but the desert air cooled down fast. I wished for my sweater, but it was still packed neatly in my unopened suitcase, and there was no way I was returning to the room, at least not for a while. I looked out over the water. The felucca and the motor launches had vanished, as had the white-tipped waves. The light changed slowly from the hard brilliance of day to a softer, ruddier glow. I began to relax. Blue shadows crept from under the trees and spilled into the water. The call to evening prayer floated across the water behind me from the Aswan bank, magnified by a loudspeaker. I listened, entranced.
“Mind if I join you?” a voice asked.
With a strangled squeak, I jumped about a foot and dropped my last roll.
“Sorry! I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you.” Alan Stratton held up his hands, in which he held two glasses of red wine. He was grinning. “Here. I’ve brought a peace offering.”
Mindful that Kyla had staked a claim, I gave him a smile that I hoped was pleasant and yet impersonal, the one I used with overly persistent PTA parents. The trick to getting rid of them was to appear to agree with everything they said, then sadly say the administration would not permit it, whatever it was. I wondered what the administration was going to have to refuse Alan this evening, and whether the administration was going to feel sorry. He looked exceptionally fine in the twilight, his hair still a little damp from his shower. He had changed for dinner and was wearing a dark blue knit shirt and khakis.
He sat down on the bench beside me and passed me a glass. He glanced down at the fallen roll. “Hungry?”
I looked at it sadly. “How did you know I was down here?” I asked. This bench was not visible from the patio above.
“Saw you walk past the bar.”
Odd. I hadn’t seen him in the bar, and I’d been on the lookout for people to avoid, not that he was one of those. I took a sip of wine and thought how romantic this could be if I were someone else.
“Here, I have something for you.” He half rose and fished for something in his pocket. Sitting back down, he handed me a little gold pyramid exactly like the one I’d inquired about at the airport.
“Ooh,” I said, very pleased. Turning it in the failing light, I could see it was even tackier up close than at a distance. “It’s wonderful. Where did you get it?”
“Over on Kitchener’s Island. You would have been impressed at my skillful haggling.”
“I’m sure of that. How did it go?”
“I pointed. The seller said, ‘For you, a mere thirty pounds.’ I handed over the cash.”
I burst out laughing. “I hate to break this to you, but that was not haggling.”
He was grinning too. “I know. In fact, I’m pretty sure the guy was really disappointed. He was thinking he’d left money on the table.”
“Well, I love it. Thank you very much.”
“It’s nothing,” he answered.
We sat in silence, listening to the sound of the breeze in the acacia leaves. I sipped my wine and clutched my little pyramid like a talisman.
“I’ve always wanted to see Egypt,” he said, gesturing at the Nile. “Ever since I was a kid. I was always particularly fascinated by the mummies.”
“Well, naturally. The mummies, the grisly rituals, the dark tombs.”
He smiled. “Did you like the mummy movies?”
“Loved them. Still do, actually. And it doesn’t matter how old or cheesy they are. I think the thing I liked best about the old black and whites was that the mummy always moved so slowly. I always felt like I could have escaped from that kind of monster.”
“Exactly. Unlike the heroine, who always seemed to fall down at exactly the wrong moment.”
“Yes! Didn’t you hate that? It was infuriating. An insult to women everywhere. My brothers made a lot out of that.”
He looked a little surprised. “Your brothers?”
“Yeah, I have two. And miserable little pests they were, too. They went through a phase when they tried to tell me I couldn’t play with them because I was a girl. At the time, I blamed those stupid movies where the girl was always such a wet blanket, but I finally figured out they were just little turds.”
He laughed. “What did you do?”
“Oh, I used a combination of physical and mental violence, coupled with a total willingness to tattle at the drop of a hat. There are advantages to being the oldest.”
“So the four of you are pretty close.”
“Four? Oh, you mean Kyla. Yeah, we are. My brothers are both in California now, but I still talk to them every couple of weeks. And Kyla and I hang out all the time. Best friends, basically. Most of the time,” I added thinking about the current situation, and deciding I really didn’t want to talk about Kyla with him. “How about you? Any siblings?”
“Just one brother. In Dallas.”
He took a sip of his wine and leaned back on the bench. I decided I liked the way his shirt was unbuttoned at the base of his throat, revealing just the right amount of chest hair. Realizing I was staring, I looked away hastily.
He shifted on the bench so he could look into my eyes, and I couldn’t help but catch his eye again. Mesme
rized, I continued looked back.
“So tell me about this Aladdin guy you met,” he said.
Not what I was expecting. Where was the compliment about my beauty or wit? The gentle probing about my marital status? The comparison of my skin to rose petals? It took me a moment to process his words.
I said, “You pretty much heard it all. And you were right. Just a pushy salesman. I saw him later down at the market area, and he seemed to know one of the other vendors, so I’m sure that’s all there was to it.”
“Ah. Well, that’s good.” He considered for a moment. “Did he seem threatening when he approached you?”
“No, not really. Just insistent. Kyla was the one who seemed threatening. She sent him packing,” I added, with a little laugh.
“She didn’t want to talk about it with me. She kept changing the subject.”
Well, of course. She wanted to flirt, and talking about pushy little salesmen was not conducive to romance. I wondered if he was really that oblivious to her motivations.
“You know,” he said slowly. “Sometimes people lump siblings together. Judge all of them based on the actions of just one.”
I nodded in agreement. I saw it all the time at school, and teachers were notoriously bad about it. In fact, I did it myself. I’d have a fantastic student one year and then get a sibling in class and expect the same stellar performance. Sometimes it happened, sometimes it didn’t. The same was true the other way, although I tended to feel sorry for the siblings of a troublemaker and tried to give them the benefit of the doubt. But I definitely watched them more closely than the other students. It wasn’t fair, but that was the way it was.
Alan looked out over the water. He seemed to be weighing his words. “Sometimes we get into something with a brother or sister, and then they go further than we intended. It can be hard to get back out.”
“Did your brother get you into trouble, or was it the other way around?” I asked with a smile. I could envision him in the midst of any number of pranks, but I couldn’t imagine any real trouble. He seemed like a decent guy.
He ignored this, and went on earnestly. “I just think you don’t always have to finish everything you start. You know, if someone talks you into doing something and then things go bad, you could always back out. Just turn around and go home. Even if it seems too late, maybe it’s not.”
Death on Tour Page 9