"Abdul seems to have taken everything very well,” Peter said, breaking into Gil's thoughts. For a brief moment, the Nile came into view on their right, visible through banana trees and sugarcane. Just as quickly, it disappeared amid that thin stretch of vegetation still possible between desert and river.
"Taken what well?” Gil knew the answer and hoped Peter would take the cue to continue talking about his and Gil’ relationship. Gil didn't want to believe that what they had shared had merely been one brief interlude motivated by little more than two-queers-in-heat.
"You know,” Peter said with a small laugh that offered Gil no reassurance, “I wonder if I would have been able to manage it with the same finesse that Abdul has."
"I wonder, too,” Gil answered. It was doubtful Peter noticed the edge to Gil's voice, especially since Peter was suddenly too involved in passing a donkey cart piled high with used car tires.
"I'm glad Abdul didn't challenge me to the Egyptian equivalent of an old-fashioned duel,” Peter said. He was making an attempt at humor, but Gil couldn't bring himself to be amused, because it occurred to him, despite himself, that such a call to battle might well have proved how committed Peter really was. A man involved in a casual affair wasn't likely to put his life on the line. “I would have hated dropping him low,” Peter added. “I mean, I genuinely liked the guy before it became so obvious he was out to get you.” He flashed Gil a smile that was nice but still seemed a little strained.
"And do you like him now?” Gil asked, wondering if it really were possible for a man to like his chief rival in love or lust.
"What's not to like about a gracious loser?” Peter asked. “Damned civilized of the man—the way he's handled himself in all of this—if you ask me."
Gil could have wished Abdul a little less civilized in refusing to challenge Peter, although it was true that Abdul had unarguably done more than his share to convince Gil he had more to offer than Peter did.
"It's nice and convenient, isn't it—you both managing to come through this as friends?” Gil commented; Peter turned to give a look that said he didn't quite follow Gil's reasoning. “Abdul has had his hawks shipped to Aswân ahead of him,” Gil explained. “Aswân isn't all that far upstream from where we're based, is it? I'm sure you'll be able to get away from the dig a few times to see Hatshepsût put through her paces."
"I never thought about that,” Peter said, and Gil didn't appreciate the insinuation that it might have completely slipped Peter's mind if Gil hadn't brought it up. “You're sure you wouldn't care?” Peter asked, finally sounding as if he were getting hints of Gil's unease and was putting himself on guard. Gil kept thinking that Peter's present behavior was not what one would expect of a man recently reunited with his lover.
Suddenly, Peter just stopped the car. They were momentarily engulfed in a cloud of dust that slowly drifted off to one side, leaving them in a position that would block traffic from both directions.
"Okay, what the hell is going on here?” Peter asked. Gil held back, because even feeling as he did, he was wise enough to know his love still left a little to be desired if he was beginning to doubt Peter already.
"Please note that pickup barreling down the road toward us,” Gil said instead of everything else he might have said.
Peter waited until the very last moment before starting up the Land Rover and moving it out of the way. He immediately turned onto a side road that cut through that last bit of vegetation separating them from the desert. He didn't drive on through, though, but stopped the vehicle again. He leaned forward to put his forehead to the top of the steering wheel as if he were tired. Then, with a loud sigh, he lifted his head and shifted in the seat to face Gil.
"You sense something is wrong, don't you?” Peter said. And the confirmation of Gil's doubts was like a wrecking ball suddenly hitting the car with Gil inside the auto. “So, what can I say?” Peter asked. “Make apologies for something over which I had no control?"
Gil couldn't believe Peter was about to offer up the classic excuse of animal lust for two people having made love without love. Gil wondered what further well-worn lines of bullshit were about to come out of Peter's mouth. Whatever, Gil wasn't anxious to hear them.
"No need to apologize,” Gil said; two people could play this little game. “If I've somehow given you the idea that I expect apologies for whatever briefly happened between us, I'm sorry for giving that false impression. Actually, it was no big deal ... something neither of us could help at the time. Casual fucking and sucking happens between horny gay guys every day of the year."
"What?” Peter asked and looked genuinely shocked by Gil's casualness in the face of inevitability.
"We'll simply chalk it up as a good time had by all, and leave it at that, shall we?” Gil said. It took all of his willpower not to tell Peter just what Gil really thought of him. Gil succeeded in restraining himself only because there was no way he wanted Peter to know how he had gotten to Gil in just a few short days. “If the right circumstances come up again, well, then, maybe we can once more jump in the proverbial sack. If not.... “Gil shrugged. He had no intention whatsoever of ever letting this man get that close ever again.
"Well, that's just great!” Peter said; Gil was surprised at Peter's seeming anger. “You damned little liar and whore! After all that garbage you were spoon-feeding me about love!” Gil would have told him that was rather like the pot calling the kettle black, but Peter didn't give him the chance. “What happened, huh?” Peter asked loudly. “Did you simply decide you, horny as hell, would hook up with me just because I was conveniently available at a moment when you had a stiff dick?"
"You hardly have the right...” Gil began but wasn't allowed to finish. Peter reached across the seat, took hold of Gil at the shoulder, and glared into Gil's eyes.
"Don't you dare talk to me about rights!” Peter commanded and released Gil so suddenly that Gil fell back against the car door. “I'm the one who was gullible enough to believe your line of bullshit to the point of calling to tell Uncle George about the great guy I'd met and was eventually bringing home."
He opened the car door and got out, slamming the door behind him with a bang that rocked the Land Rover, rocked Gil, and sent dust flying.
Gil watched Peter disappear into the growth of sugarcane at the side of the road.
CHAPTER NINE
GIL SHOULD HAVE RAN after him, so they could immediately figure out what in the hell was going on. Obviously, there was some kind of a communications problem existing between them. What else was new?
He did get out of the Land Rover. Cars still raised clouds of dust on the main road left behind. He had to decide whether to go back to that road and continue north or stay headed in his present direction. He was pretty sure the dig couldn't be too far, not only because of the distance they had already traveled, but because Peter had so readily gone stomping off. Peter wouldn't have concluded his bit of theatrics the way he had if there'd been any real chance of his being stranded in the middle of that sugarcane. Gil was quite certain Peter was far cleverer than that. It wasn't as if Peter had taken the keys to the Land Rover with him; they were still in the ignition. While Gil knew very little about mechanics, previous experience would give him sufficient expertise to turn a key, put the Land Rover in gear, and get on his not-so-merry way.
His problems regarding where he was, and where he had to go from there, were quickly solved by the arrival of Reginald Temple. “Hi, there,” Reginald said, suddenly out of the sugarcane as easily as Peter had disappeared into it. He then proceeded to introduce himself as a student from Northwestern University, majoring in archaeology, with minor in anthropology, and having signed on for the Hierakonpolis dig through connections had by his fiancée's father. He managed to get all this out in one breath, punctuated by a small gasp at the end. He then added that his fiancée was Tammy Journer, who was assigned the dig, too. Gil hoped Tammy and Reginald's romance was destined for a happier ending than Gil and Peter's seemed to
be at the moment.
Reginald looked as if he were out for a Sunday stroll in far-less primitive surroundings. His shirt, the kind with button-down epaulets, looked as if it had just been cleaned and pressed for someone in the French Foreign Legion. His pants were just as fresh with convenient pockets up and down both legs. His shoes were less new, giving the impression of having been sensibly broken in before being brought to a locale that would have turned newer ones into painful blister-makers. His brown hair was cut short. His face was freshly scrubbed, quite attractive, with large brown eyes, pert nose, and nice mouth. Gil immediately pegged Reginald s as someone whose appearance would likely still be in good order even after a hot and sticky workday on a dig. Gil presently seemed and felt as if he had personally been put through the proverbial emotional wringer. Which he had. “If I'm not looking my best,” Gil apologized, “you can well imagine why.” Actually, there was no way Reginald could imagine any such thing, unless he'd been hiding in the sugarcane all the while—which hardly seemed likely. The only logical reason for anyone being found there was that he or she was going to, or coming from, somewhere else. “The ride in from Idfu was a little dusty,” Gil said, by way of additional explanation.. “I'm hoping you can point me toward the nearest shower."
"That your only piece of luggage?” Reginald inquired, having bent slightly to check the back seat of the Land Rover. Gil nodded. “Then, we might as well take it with us,” Reginald said. It's really only a short walk."
"I imagine it's an even shorter drive,” Gil replied, hardly able to conceive as to why they should walk any distance, lugging his suitcase between them, when Gil certainly had no plans of making any such sacrifice just to leave Peter their only means of transportation. “Why don't we just take the Land Rover?"
"Is it running?” Reginald asked. Gil could see immediately how the younger man might have jumped to the false conclusion that it wasn't. It hardly seemed logical that Gil would be standing in the middle of a dusty road, the Land Rover stopped dead, Peter absent, if the vehicle were operational. The scenery didn't seem to warrant any stops for a closer look. “I assumed,” Reginald continued obviously not wanting Gil to think the college student really silly enough to prefer walking to riding, “that when Professor Donas—” He paused and snapped his fingers as if he'd once again forgotten something often forgotten; Gil had visions of how Peter might have turned on the charm at some time in the past, telling Reginald to call me by my first name. “—Peter,” Reginald continued, “arrived at the house and told me I'd better come out and see that you made it in safely, it was because the transmission had blown again."
"The car just stopped suddenly,” Gil said, motioning toward the Land Rover and deeming it wise to come up with something other than the complete truth. He didn't think it smart to start washing dirty linen in public before someone just met. Reginald might be the nice guy he seemed; then again, he might be one of those bored people on every dig who delight in hearing and spreading gossip. There was no sense in having it get around immediately that Gil and Peter were on the outs because of their personal involvement. “However, I tried it a few minutes ago, and it started up again,” Gil lied, insinuating that life was full of surprises. “The engine was probably just flooded."
The Land Rover having suddenly returned to working order certainly didn't do much to explain why it wasn't running but still parked where it was, or why Gil was still standing in the middle of the dusty roadway beside it. Thankfully, Reginald was naïve enough—or diplomatic enough—not to press for a more complete explanation. “This one has been giving us all kinds of problems lately,” Reginald said, slipping into the driver's seat as Gil climbed in beside him. He turned the key. Defying even a suggestion of having been out of order, recently or ever, the engine turned over with embarrassing ease.
Reginald put the car in gear. In a few minutes, the Land Rover and its two occupants managed a dilapidated bridge over stale and slimy green water to exit in sight of a small village built at the exact spot where the vegetation ended and the desert began. Farther in the distance, perched upon an apron of sand and rocky ground that stretched to bone-dry hills, was the only visible evidence that this spot might be slightly more special than any other area of desert wilderness. Even then, that solitary ruin, Khasekhemui's Fort, named after a Second Dynasty pharaoh, wasn't much to look at, especially considering the Egyptian grandeur to which Gil had been exposed during his few days in Cairo and along the Nile. It was a crumbling rectangular structure that had deteriorated far more than was suggested by the pictures taken of it back in the 1930's which Gil had seen before leaving Seattle. Its startling degree of new decay was due mainly to the climatic changes caused by the backing up of Lake Nasser into previously barren regions behind the High Dam at Aswân. While the water evaporation from the lake's surface was hardly enough to bring precipitation to an area that hadn't seen rain in fifteen years, there was no denying that whatever the increased atmospheric moisture content, it boded ill for something constructed entirely of mud brick. Efforts were in progress in certain quarters to bring in an architectural team to bolster and preserve what was still there, but red tape seemed destined to convert this fort, possibly the oldest standing structure in Egypt, into nothing more than a pile of windblown dust. In a country hard-pressed to preserve even its major monuments of the past, this paltry unimpressive heap of disintegrating rubble, which didn't hold much attraction to tourists quickly jaded on the more majestic fare of Giza, Karnak, Luxor, and even Idfu, wasn't given a very high priority.
"Home!” Reginald exclaimed after steering the Land Rover through the small village that little hinted of the past importance of this site first called Nekhen—city of the falcon-headed god Horus—by the ancient Egyptians, and later called Hierakonpolis—city of the hawk—by the Greeks. Gil didn't miss the irony of having come to a place named after the bird of prey that had already caused him so much chagrin.
"Home,” as Reginald termed it, was a fairly large house at one edge of the village. It had been rented from a wealthy Arab whose dealings in the area's sugar crop allowed him and his family the luxury of spending their summers in the more pleasant temperatures afforded by the sea breezes at Alexandria. Despite the wealth of the owner, the place could be considered, by American standards, only luxurious in size. Composed entirely of mud brick, made in very much the same way brick had been made in the time of Moses’ exodus from Egypt, the house had been no more impervious to decay than those more ancient buildings once erected on the spot before it. That the house was standing at all was only because the weathering hadn't had quite as much time to work on it as on the far more ancient fort visible from the balcony of Gil's second-floor window. Great hunks of the house, including its stucco veneering, had simply dropped off, both inside and out. Additional damage to walls and foundations had been sustained from the ground reverberations that had occurred as a result of war-time efforts to bomb the strategic bridge across the Nile at Idfu. A great crack—accompanied by so many smaller ones that the total effect was that of a topography map depicting some intricate river-and-tributaries’ system—took up the whole wall behind the twin beds that occupied the room Gil and Reginald stood in.
"I hope you don't mind having me as your roommate,” Reginald said, setting down Gil's suitcase after having insisted he be the one to carry it up the stairs. “As big as this place looks, we still have to double up."
Gil felt a little better than he had, although he knew he was bound to feel even better as soon as he got a chance to wash up. “I remember once being crowded with three other scientists and a few scorpions into a tent about half as big as one of these beds,” he said.
"This is my first dig,” Reginald admitted, seeming genuinely sorry he didn't have any anecdotes about his past experiences in the field. “Actually, I came expecting to do a bit more by way of roughing it."
"Take what comfort you can get, when you can get it,” Gil said, the voice of experience. “You'll wish you had all
of this back the minute you suddenly find yourself assigned to a tent, believe me. Now, if you'd like to tell me which of these gloriously comfortable beds is mine, and then point me toward the nearest spigot of running water, I'll try to prove that Gil Goldsands is in this thick dirt cover somewhere."
"Take whichever bed you want, Professor Goldsands,” Reginald obliged.
"Firstly, call me Gil, okay?” He wouldn't be any more formal with the staff than Peter was apparently being. “Secondly, I was so poky in getting here, you've obviously already settled in, so your bed presently is...?” He waited as Reginald pointed to the bed on which the kid had slept the past few nights. “Right!” Gil said, hoisting his suitcase to the other bed and watching the bedspread puff dust as he did so. “And the bathroom?” he asked.
"It's down the hall, third door to the right,” Reginald said. “We men share it. The women get the one downstairs."
Gil headed for the bathroom and the welcome shower he found there. As much as he would have liked to talk to someone, knowing that there was nothing more cathartic than a good old-fashioned talk-about, he didn't want to be the one to let this cat out of the bag. Also, things told to Reginald, now, offered the decided possible disadvantage of eventually being routed, intentionally or not, to Tammy Journer. Gil didn't want his private life bantered around any sooner than Peter would probably see that it was.
He was right about the shower. It did do wonders in reviving his spirits—so much so that he was able to clean up the resulting mess on the floor without having it seem like one more in a long line of catastrophes specifically designed to get him down. Egyptian showers were famous for drains that somehow always managed to be located at the highest spot on the bathroom floor, allowing the whole room to fill to at least the depth of an inch before any water whatsoever could even begin to escape.
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