Chapter Eleven
The hotel lounge is as dark as a cave in which glass-enclosed candles glimmer and flicker like stars reflected in a nocturnal pool. Two figures are seated at the bar.
Lucia pauses on the threshold just in time to see Mark lean toward the woman and whisper something in her ear.
She’s been buffeted by so many conflicting emotions lately that the wave of jealousy that hits her meets with no resistance, as if she is only dreaming, and this almost enables her to enjoy watching Mark caress the woman’s long blonde hair.
True to his word, he did not make love to her after whipping her with his belt. They had come downstairs for dinner instead, where she had wolfed down her chicken and couscous, wishing they were filet mignon and lobster. He had then suggested they hit the bar for a nightcap and she had agreed even though she would have preferred going straight to bed. On the way she had stopped to use the bathroom. But now she turns away and hurries toward the elevators.
She is barely halfway across the lobby before Mark catches her. “Hey, I don’t mind you being jealous, Lucia, but that wasn’t what it looked like, so relax. I guess you haven’t noticed.”
Inside the lift, she stares miserably at the panel of numbers, wishing she could sweep them all up into her hands like glowing dice and roll them to win what she desires more than anything—Richard alive again. “Noticed what?” she asks listlessly.
“That this gorgeous blonde you think I was hitting on is really a man.”
She glances at him, wide-eyed
“A man in drag,” he clarifies.
“Are you serious?”
“When you get close it’s obvious.”
“And you got close enough to caress her hair!”
“Only to make sure it was a wig. Doesn’t she look a little familiar to you, Lucia?”
“I saw her in the Luxor Museum and yesterday in the Valley. You were looking at her there too,” she accuses.
He asks sharply, “She was in the museum the morning you saw Richard?”
“Yes.”
Mark doesn’t drop the bomb until they are in their room.
“I’m pretty sure that’s your brother-in-law.”
She deflects her shock with anger. “Then shouldn’t I go down and confront him? If that is Julian then I can end this horrible game!” Yet the concept frightens her. It offers her control but in a much less exciting universe, one in which Richard remains dead and buried forever.
Mark surprises her by saying, “He knows we’re on to him and that’s enough for now.”
“But…”
“But what?”
His expression silences her.
“If he keeps trying to haunt you, Lucia, he’s either stupid or he’s dangerous. I need to find out just how determined he is.”
* * * * *
The next morning Mark gets up early and Lucia watches him dress, struggling with her emotions, which are as slippery as fish still half caught in a tangling net of dreams. She can’t remember them, which is just as well because it enables her to avoid the issues they forced up out of her subconscious. She concentrates instead on a more tangible concern. “Where are you going, Mark?”
“Don’t worry about that, just go back to sleep.”
She rephrases the question. “Will you be gone long?”
“No,” he bends over her and kisses her cheek, “just long enough to find out what was in that water. Will you stay in bed like a good girl or do I have to tie you to the bedposts?”
She smiles but then turns away on her side to hide her disappointment that he is only teasing. Like a doctor’s probing fingers, his attitude makes her sexual submissiveness feel like a sickness, like a psychological tumor rather than a dark gem shaped by metaphysical laws, which is what it had felt like with Richard.
He closes the door so quietly behind him she suffers the unpleasant impression that she is in a hospital and her perverse desires are a dangerous fever he is trying to cure her of.
An emotionally healthy woman wouldn’t have loved a man like Richard.
A completely sane woman wouldn’t believe in ghosts more easily than in greedy brother-in-laws.
With the thick curtains drawn over the glass doors the room is depressingly dark.
When the phone rings suddenly her heart rate doubles in the mere seconds it takes her to snatch up the receiver. “Hello?!”
“Did I wake you?” Lori inquires with her usual polite indifference.
“No,” she replies numbly.
“Look, Lucia, I’ll get right to the point. Okay? I’ve known Mark for over two years now, he’s like a brother to me and frankly I’m worried that he’s getting in the way of whatever the hell is going on with you.”
She sighs. “What has he told you, Lori?”
“Pretty much everything but don’t be mad at him for it. He’s like a brother to me.”
“I’m not mad at him, Lori.”
“Good, because he really cares about you. How long has your husband been dead, Lucia?”
“Seventeen months.”
“Mark has described your visions to me but maybe you should tell me about them yourself. Mark doesn’t believe in life after death but, personally, I feel it would be wrong to disregard the supernatural angle completely. If Richard needs you, you have to help him, Lucia.”
“Yes!” she whispers, scarcely able to believe that someone is finally seeing things her way.
“If he is appearing to you it means he’s trapped between worlds and he either wants you to help him move on or he’s trying to take you with him.”
“Oh God, Lori, do you really think…?” She can’t pursue the thought. Like a rough massage, the other woman’s confident grasp of the supernatural makes her feel uncomfortable even as it relieves some of her profound tension. “What can I do?”
“Talk to me,” Lori urges, “I’m listening.”
* * * * *
By the time Mark returns Lucia has put on black jeans beneath a form-fitting black shirt and applied her expensive makeup in a way that looks perfectly natural.
He sets a large brown paper bag down on the dresser. “Bagels and coffee and don’t worry, I remembered you take cream and sugar. But first let’s pack.” He walks over to the corner where his small suitcase, laptop and camera bag are lying, the former spilling the light and dark guts of socks and underwear across the carpet. He shoves everything back into it and zips the pliant black leather closed as he glances up at her. “Didn’t you hear me?”
“Where are we going?”
“Didn’t you want to spend a night on the West Bank?”
“Yes.”
“Then pack.”
She turns her back on him and opens the closet to hide her relief. She had thought they were leaving for Cairo.
“Don’t kill yourself deciding what to bring. We’ll only be gone a night or two.”
“What was in the water, Mark?”
“A kickass combination of downers, so you couldn’t run when you saw a ghost. I’ll bet you felt pretty damn good, relaxed and open to just about anything or anyone.”
She tosses a dark gray shirt onto the bed, not trusting herself to speak.
“Add alcohol to the brew and it’s no fucking wonder you kept passing out.” He returns to the dresser and begins conjuring plastic cups, bagels, small round containers of cream cheese, plastic knives and napkins from the bag.
“Mark?”
He doesn’t look at her. “Yes?”
She goes and stands beside him. “I don’t want anything to happen to you because you’re trying to help me.”
“Don’t worry about me.” He tries to hide it but she discerns from his tone that he hadn’t expected her concern and that it pleases him.
“Julian sees you as being in his way now, Mark,” she snaps the lids off the coffees while he spreads a lavish amount of cream cheese onto one of the bagels, “and I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“Nothing is going to happen to me.” He impatiently smears a modest amount of cheese onto the second bagel. He tosses the plastic knife away. “Listen to me, Lucia. You were unconscious when I found you last night. What did he do to you?”
“I don’t remember, Mark, honestly. All I remember is him holding me.”
He picks up his cup and waits, staring into her eyes.
She looks down into his coffee’s steaming black space. “One second I was in the arms of a man pretending to be Richard,” she says carefully. “Then this strange warmth flowed through my whole body and the next thing I knew you were bending over me.”
“Well, you weren’t drugged at the time,” he hands her the other cup, “so I don’t think you fainted. Do you know if Julian ever studied martial arts?”
“He’s a black belt,” she says, surprised, and then hesitates before adding casually, “so was Richard. But how did you know?”
“How did I know? Because he knocked you out cold without leaving a mark on you, which means he’s acquainted with the body’s pressure points. All it takes is a thumb in just the right place,” he illustrates by placing the ball of his left thumb in the tender hollow where her throat merges with her chest, “to make you see stars.”
She jerks away from him and a stream of coffee arcs out of the plastic cup like a muddy rainbow.
“What’s the matter, baby, didn’t you like that?”
“Of course not!”
“Well, don’t worry, our black belt blonde checked out this morning.” He bites into the bagel but the look in his eyes evokes a predator devouring its bloody kill.
“She did? I mean, he did? How do you know?”
“I told you, with enough baksheesh you can obtain the secrets of the universe. A carriage driver remembers taking a woman fitting her description to the airport this morning and a friendly bellhop informed me that she was staying in room 1016.”
“That would be the one almost right above mine.”
“A perfect vantage point from which to project a ghost onto your balcony.”
She experiences an echo of the numbness that cushioned her emotions after she received the news of Richard’s death. She hadn’t really believed he was gone, not forever, and she still can’t. “Then it’s over.” Her voice is hollow with disappointment.
“Or that’s what he wants us to think. But whether or not it’s true, he’ll still have to find out where we’ve gone, figure out where we’re staying, then get a room, and it won’t be as easy for him to hide on the West Bank. He also knows I’ll kick his skinny ass if he comes near you again.” He eyes her bagel. “Don’t you want that?”
“No, you have it, please.”
“Thanks.”
“So, where will we be staying on the West Bank?” She tries to sound interested.
“We’re camping out beneath the stars tonight, princess.”
“Oh!” A spark of excitement kindles again at the core of her being.
“It was Doug’s idea. He and Lori have all the gear so they’ll be coming with us. Doug wants to get you into more tombs and I want to get you away from greedy brother-in-laws.”