THE GOD'S WIFE (13 page)

No, Neferet rejoiced to breathe in the scent of pomegranates and stewing lamb. This would be a repast to be remembered. She took her place at the royal table, sending a longing look down to the end toward Kamose. His eyes sparkled in return. At the arrival of the Pharaoh, most of the crowd prostrated themselves to the ground, but the royal family remained standing, merely bowing their heads.

The Pharaoh motioned for all to rise. He gave a small speech about the joining of all lands for this noble event. Then he ordered the food to be served.

Neferet was just biting into a piece of tender fruit when a hand clasped her on the shoulder. She turned to see the Grand Vizier, the Pharaoh’s closest advisor and an expert in palace politicking. A tall man, he bent nearly double as he whispered in Neferet’s ear.

“I hear you will be housing the foreign visitors,” he said.

She nodded her head, wondering what the Vizier could want with her. His role was secular, and she served a god.

“Eye them carefully and keep an ear ready for what you hear,” the Vizier said. “They come as friends, while in reality, they plot to attack us at any time. Some of them will be sizing up our defenses. Make sure you talk to none of them but report to me anything you happen to stumble upon.”

Caught in the web of spying and counter-spying, she thought. I should have known they’d snare me in their political games. She lifted her chin in assent and looked into the Vizier’s small, shaded eyes.

“Watch yourself, too,” he continued, rasping like a snake. “Some of these men would love to take you by force, and kidnapping is common in their countries.” Icy prickles made their way down her naked arms.

The Vizier smirked. He held out his arms in a gesture of respect and shuffled away, leaving her to eat in troubled silence.

The car door flew open, and Rebecca blew inside, propelled by a gale-force wind. She reached up to pull the hair out of her eyes and let out a huge breath.

“It’s even worse by the lake,” Jonas said. The gentle spring had faded away, and thunderstorm season crashed upon them. A dark, ominous sky over Chicago signaled the imminent detonation of a major monsoon. “But there’s no rain yet. Just this wind. I don’t get it.”

The howling wind pushed pedestrians scurrying down the street in Lincoln Square. Some would walk in short bursts and then stop to rest. Others clung to sides of buildings for support. Everywhere, trash somersaulted down the road.

Jonas pulled a fast U-turn and took off into the wind. The powerful gusts of air acted like a force field, and the car rocked as if pounded by a large boulder. Rebecca grabbed onto the safety bar by her seat.

“You don’t have to worry, I’m okay driving in this stuff. I grew up on weather like this,” he said. The car jolted again, and her heart leapt.

“June,” Jonas said. “Thunderstorms and the opening of your show.” He gave her knee a squeeze. She tried to smile.

“So, how did you get Raven to start talking to you again?” he asked, eyes lit with interest and a lopsided smile on his face.

Rebecca let out a sigh.

“We were rehearsing, and there’s a scene where she takes out a knife and threatens to kill me over the prince’s love. She held that knife over my head and looked so menacing that I whimpered. Just like a poor little puppy. She just couldn’t keep a straight face anymore. We both laughed our butts off. After that …” she waved her hand as if to say, “life went on as usual.”

“I’ll bet Randy loved that little scene.”

“Interrupting rehearsal this close to the opening? Oh, you bet he had a fit. But it was worth it to get my friend back.”

A power bolt of air smacked the car again as they made progress east. Jonas changed lanes just before a guy in a Mini careened inches from their side. A tumbleweed of newspaper and trash hurled across all four lanes of traffic, sending cars skidding in all directions. Jonas dodged the chaos like a pro. Rebecca looked up at the sky as they approached Lake Shore Drive. The color didn’t look healthy — gray with tinges of blue-green. Tornado colors.

Jonas tapped his fingers on the steering wheel and was silent a beat too long.

“What’s wrong?” Rebecca asked, watching small trees nearly double over in a strong gust.

“I tried to get a hold of Sharif,” he said, putting a dramatic flourish on the foreign name as if he were announcing a movie star. Rebecca looked up in alarm This was the confrontation she feared.

“He’s really great at dodging people,” Jonas continued, squeezing the wheel with a bit too much force, whitening his knuckles. “Lots of voice mail, never returned.” She fidgeted with her hair, not looking at his face.

He shifted gears and passed a Focus crawling along at thirty m.p.h. on the drive. “But I did get him once. I think he was expecting a call and got me instead.”

“What happened?”

“I stated my name, and he was flummoxed. Didn’t seem to connect it with anything. It wasn’t until I mentioned your name. That seemed to brighten him up.”

“Was he mad?”

“On the contrary. He went on and on about how he’s your biggest fan. Couldn’t say better things about you. Then I mentioned that I’m your boyfriend.” He coughed. “That put him off a bit.”

“Did he try to hang up on you?”

“No, but he tried to say his intentions toward you were ‘entirely honorable,’ as he put it. I told him that he’d better quit seeing you, or I’d talk to him about it in person.”

She toyed with the button on her jacket. This was the conversation she didn’t want to happen. Jonas dodged some more debris on the road as a sudden roar of thunder sounded over the lake.

“So, what exactly is your relationship?” he asked.

“There is none, Jonas. He hangs around and makes me nervous, but he hasn’t put any moves on me since the night of the dinner.”

Jonas set his jaw. “Wait a minute. He put moves on you?”

“No. No. He danced with me, that’s all. And I got away from him.” Her ribs squeezed.

“Good. It better stay that way.”

“There’s something else, I’ve found out,” he said as white and purple lightning flashed over the lake. The windshield remained dry, but he was having trouble maintaining control of the steering as the wind continued to surge.

He began to relate how he did an Internet search on an Egyptologist named Cadmus and found no one: no authors of scholarly papers, no professors, no archeologists. He called a few Egyptologists at the nearby universities, and not one had ever heard of him. Jonas still had some police contacts from his newspaper days. A check there turned up some tantalizing information.

“The Cadmus family owns a giant shipping business and much of it operates on the shady side of the law,” he said. “My sources suspect smuggling and even gun running. You see what you’re playing with?”

“You don’t have any proof of any of that,” she said, feeling a strange need to protect Sharif — a man she herself didn’t trust. “And I’m not playing with anything.”

“Well, you have no proof he’s an Egyptologist. Anyone can print business cards.” Rebecca turned her head to look out the window and saw nothing but windblown gravel from a construction site.

Large waves, rarely seen on Lake Michigan, began to rush over the pavement after they crossed over the Chicago River. He moved into the right lane. Rebecca noticed tourists in Millennium Park running for cover with newspapers over their heads.

“At least, they’re not riding on those silly Segways,” she said, and Jonas snickered.

Rebecca turned and gave him a sweet smile. “Would you do me a favor?”

He nodded.

“My little sister Amy is going to come to the show next week by herself. So someone needs to get her at the Greyhound Station. I’ll be tied up at the theater.”

“No problem,” Jonas said. He whipped his car into his condo’s underground parking lot just as an empty plastic bottle slammed into the windshield. “I’ll be happy to do that for you.”

Relieved to be indoors again, she let her shoulders relax. “Amy’s the best of the bunch,” she said.

“But why is she coming alone? Isn’t the rest of your family coming?”

Rebecca stared out the window again, counting flying plastic bags before answering. She didn’t want to let Jonas see her cry about this. Without turning to face him, she said, “When have I ever explained my family to you?”

He drove, silent. Words came to him at length. “In the year we’ve been dating, you’ve never spoken about them. Odd, I know, but I didn’t want to pry.”

“Well, they are simple farm people. They hate the city and don’t understand contemporary dance.”

“But that’s no reason — Aren’t they proud of you?”

“Listen, Jonas,” she said, turning to face him, eyes starting to glisten. “I’m the freak of the family. A mistake in the gene pool. Maybe if I get married and have a baby, they might see me.
If
I visit them in Iowa.”

Rebecca folded her arms close to her trembling middle and tried not to let her thoughts trail back to growing up in Cedar Rapids. But they did, and soon, she explained the family dynamic that made her flee to the city. Everyone was “normal,” but Rebecca. There she was, skinny and tall, looking like no one else in the family, listening to classical music in her room and thinking of little else but ballet. She became Mom’s favorite target. No matter what went wrong, Mother blamed Rebecca. The anger always fell on her, yet she never stopped trying to please her bullying parent.

Jonas rubbed one of his temples with his thumb the way he did when a deadline neared and he didn’t have enough material for a story. Rebecca had seen him like that many a night. He exited Lake Shore Drive and approached his high rise. It looked like a ghost town in the normally busy South Loop neighborhood.

“Did she beat you?

“She hit me, yeah. But the abuse wasn’t physical. Psychological damage. The words hurt.”

Jonas winced as he spoke. “How did you recover from this?”

“Therapy. I had to get some self-esteem back. You know, she used to call me ‘useless’ because I was so skinny and couldn’t pitch in with the farm chores. She called me ‘selfish,’ too. I just wasn’t strong enough to lift things. I couldn’t help the way I was built.” She rubbed her arms, feeling a sudden chill.

“Useless? Selfish? You? You’re the most responsible person I know. If someone needs help, you’re always there.”

Rebecca shook her head. “Skinny, tall, not like her. I was like some alien in that family ...” She wiped her eyes and realized tears were ruining her makeup. Jonas fished around in his pocket and offered her a handkerchief. She sobbed into the linen.

“You’re anything but useless,” he said. “Look how the show revolves around you. Your dancing and acting skills.”

She mopped up her face and managed a smile. Makeup had stained his monogrammed linen. She nodded, then straightened in her seat.

“Well, Amy said she’s going to come anyway. By herself. So we still ...”

“I’ll be honored to pick her up. She must be quite a special girl.”

“The best of the bunch.”

Leaving the car and entering Jonas’ building, they both turned to look out the lobby window at the storm outside. A single man forced himself to angle into the wind as he made slow progress up the street. Despite the wind storm, the rain stayed away. The bleakness of the weather mirrored Rebecca’s mood. Without a word, Jonas put his arm around her and pushed the elevator button for his forty-third-floor condo. She snuggled up to him, letting the sensation of safety and warmth work through her tense body. She wasn’t useless to Jonas. Lord knows why, but this man valued and protected her.

#

The blackouts continued to increase, but they confined themselves to nighttime. Rebecca would fall into bed, sometimes alone and sometimes with Jonas. Then she’d slip into a state that wasn’t sleep, yet not entirely devoid of dreams, either. She felt a pull from a dream woman who wanted her strength, her courage, yet Rebecca didn’t know if she stored up enough for two. Still, she mentally pushed a feeling of power through her reveries, and in return, Egypt became more and more real to her with every passing night.

Now that the blackouts retreated to the dark, Jonas and her friends never asked about them. To them, her odd little fainting spells disappeared. They chalked it up to anxiety, having no idea that some force pulled her ever deeper into a black hole of amnesia. When she’d wake, she had no sense that time had passed, and her grip on the modern world became tenuous.

One morning, she kept turning her cell phone over and over, trying to figure out what it did. Another time, she attempted to wear her Egyptian costume out onto the street before someone from the theater stopped her and dragged her back into the dressing room. Walking home one afternoon, she looked at airplanes in the sky and wondered what sort of birds had silver wings.

The forgetful fits didn’t last. Her befuddlement with the computer and fear of automobiles would dissipate within moments. However, Rebecca knew a transformation had the power to overtake her. Night by night, she became someone detached, more spiritual, in finer tune with nature. She continued falling out of time but had no idea where she would land.

During the day, she pored over Internet sites and combed libraries for information on Egypt. She even called an Egyptologist at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute. She delved into Egyptology like a swimmer aiming for the bottom of the ocean. One day, she grasped a concept that brought her up gasping for air. The Egyptians believed in a multi-leveled soul, much too complex to explain in standard twenty-first-century terms. However, two parts were essential: the Ba and Ka. The Ba resembled the spiritual side, the divine spark with which we are all born. The other part, the Ka, combined a complex of psychological entities that make up our essence from which personality derives. In Egyptian terms, the god Khum crafted the Ka — a cosmic double person — on a potter’s wheel. When an Egyptian died, relatives took every step to make sure the Ba did not flitter away from the Ka or all hope of immortal life would dissipate.

Rebecca kept thinking about that double, the Ka, and about her own double, the woman in her dreams. However, it was all so complicated. The Egyptians actually had seven segments that made up the soul, so one could hardly reduce things to just the Ba and the Ka. Still, she wondered. Rebecca pored over the Egyptian texts for hours trying to get a clue but never found anything that helped her predicament.