Death on Tour (12 page)
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. Mesmerized, 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.”
I blinked and let his words sink in, as if giving them a couple of seconds would make them more intelligible. It didn’t. What the hell was he talking about? The twilight was turning the shadows purple all around us, and the last of the sunlight was deepening to crimson and violet on the western horizon. His eyes looked dark gray now as he watched my face, his eyebrows drawn together in a worried frown. He leaned forward, as if conveying something of great importance, but I could not figure out what it was. I thought back to the questions at the hotel, the odd way he’d stuck by Kyla and peered into her bag when they searched it at the airport, his interest in our encounter with Aladdin, and now this.
“Walk away from what?” I finally asked, as the silence between us lengthened.
He sat back abruptly on the seat, then gave a shrug and rose. “It’s nothing.” He looked grim, and yet somehow disappointed, as if I’d done something wrong.
“Tell me what you mean,” I said. I could hear a pleading note in my own voice, and I didn’t like it.
“Never mind. Come on, let’s go back. It’s about time for dinner.”
And have Kyla blow a gasket if she saw us walking up together? “No, I don’t think so. I’m going to sit here a few more minutes. You go ahead.”
I watched him walk up the path until he was out of sight, but he never looked back.
Spend the morning at leisure in Aswan or join an optional excursion to Abu Simbel near the Sudanese border. Here you will see the magnificent sandstone temples of Ramses II and his beloved wife Nefertari, rescued first from the desert sands in the early nineteenth century, then again from the rising waters of Lake Nasser in the 1960s. In the afternoon, board your luxury cruise ship and begin your journey up the Nile, Egypt’s mythic river of destiny.
—WorldPal pamphlet
I awakened in the darkness to the sound of prayers broadcasting over the water. The red glow of the digital clock on the nightstand told me it was 4:30 a.m. On the other bed, I could hear Kyla breathing slowly, still in deep sleep. It would take a canon going off on the roof to wake her. I slipped out of bed and softly tugged the sliding glass door open and went out on the balcony, then immediately darted back to pull the bedspread off the bed. Wrapping it around my shoulders, I returned to the chilly darkness. The lights from the hotel reflected in yellow rippling streaks across the water. Under its still surface, the Nile was running swift and black and deep. I gave a little shiver, my feet freezing against the chill of the concrete. The eerie wailing of morning prayers, so alien to my western ears, made the little hairs stand up on the back of my neck. The morning chill finally drove me back to bed, but I lay awake for a long time after the haunting sound had ceased. I’d barely drifted off again when my alarm beeped, followed closely by the sound of the telephone with the wake-up call that Anni arranged every morning. Kyla and I dressed in groggy silence and staggered down to the hotel restaurant in search of coffee.
Breakfast was scheduled at the ungodly hour of six-thirty today because we were flying to Abu Simbel, site of the legendary temples of Ramses II. The hotel restaurant had just opened, an ordinary long room filled with large round tables, covered in white tablecloths, and already set with silverware and glasses. A long buffet was ready for us in the middle of the room, loaded with fruit, rolls, pastries, and a wide assortment of traditional American breakfast foods from sausages to Cheerios. Waiters in white coats carrying pitchers of coffee and glass carafes of juice waited for us to sit down.
Surprisingly, everyone but us seemed wide awake, and they were all chattering excitedly about the trip. I hesitated at the door, but Kyla headed straight across the room to join Keith and Dawn Kim and the Petersons, leaving me on my own. Still mad, apparently, although at least not openly hostile. I sat down at the next table beside Nimmi Gavaskar. An attentive waiter immediately filled my coffee cup, and I cradled it between both hands, enjoying the warmth and inhaling the rich fragrance. DJ returned from the buffet with a plate loaded with eggs, bacon, and sausages, and sat down on the other side of Nimmi. He was soon followed by the de Vances and less charmingly by the Morrisons. Looking at his plate, I felt my stomach rumble a little. I rose, deciding to fetch a couple of rolls, but somehow ended up with two croissants, half a dozen sausages, and a strip of crispy hot bacon. Buffets are my nemesis.
When I returned, the octogenarians Yvonne and Charlie were just announcing they were not accompanying the group to Abu Simbel.
“We’re going to walk around the market, see a bit more of Aswan,” said Yvonne, cracking open a hard-boiled egg with a spoon. Her bifocals made her faded brown eyes seem larger than they were.
The group gave a dismayed protest.
“Not going?” said DJ. “But you can’t miss this!”
Kathy Morrison chimed in with her flat California voice. “He’s right. It’s one of the highlights of the tour. And you might never be this close again.” She didn’t actually add the words, “because you’re so old you’ll be dead before you could make it back,” but she might as well have.
From her table, Kyla met my eyes with a delighted smirk, then remembered she was still mad at me and hurriedly looked away. I was pleased. She’d be speaking to me before lunch at this rate and maybe neither of us would have to apologize.
Yvonne and Charlie were not to be swayed. “It will be nice to be on our own,” Yvonne said, stroking Charlie’s arm slowly from wrist to shoulder. “After all, we are on our honeymoon.”
That killed the protests dead, and with a little metaphoric shudder, the group dropped the subject.