Erased From Memory (10 page)

Rita announces loudly that there’s nobody there; she checked.

Egon gestures ahead as his button-pushing makes a section of fake marble wall roll up into the ceiling. Lights come on, revealing a psychedelic mix of columns, murals, sculptured finials, solemn erect figures, and in the middle, the monumental construction of a double marble coffin on pilasters, one coffin container below, one above. There is an interesting smell of cold, incense-flavored stone.

I want to say, “Wow,” but don’t. Cherie says, “Egon, absolutely fab. My God.”

I also want to ask who the second coffin is for, but Egon answers my question. “I, of course, will rest here later.”

Should we say, “Much later?” I guess Egon assumes this.

There is a reverent silence. “And your grandmother is below,” Cherie says.

Below? Cherie catches my eye and winks. Rita aims her flashlight at the roof, where a parade of people is led by the hawk-headed god.

“The whole thing was her idea,” Egon says reverently.

Bunny has come in behind us. “That sure is gorgeous white marble,” she breathes in appreciation.

“Genuine Parian,” Egon says. “You see that there are Egyptian murals, but under them is the marble. Not exactly consistent, you know. I mean the Egyptian tombs have terra cotta walls, not marble ones. But the Egyptians loved marble. They used it any time they could. I felt it got the spirit . . .”

Our backs are turned and Egon is gesturing at the wall scene, a handsome depiction of the outfitting of the mummy, with the jackal-headed Anubis leaning over the recumbent figure.

But I have very good peripheral vision and I can see Rita behind us. She has begun poking at the carvings on the sarcophagi. She isn’t using her flashlight, but she appears to be looking for something.

Beside me, Cherie’s brisk little shoulders flex. I think she also has noticed Rita. And I think she decides, like me, to cover for her. The two of us fix on Egon and make a lot of noise about the fascinating mural and does he maybe remember the source, perhaps one of the texts of
The Book of the Dead
; of course he, Egon, will know.

To which Egon agrees enthusiastically, “Why yes, my dears, yes.” And he’s off into chapter and verse about which text, which page, his whole speech interpolated with comments of, “Wonderful!”

Meanwhile Rita, behind us, appears to be doing a Braille search of the carvings on the sarcophagus. Her nose is very close, her hair stands up very pointy. I’ll interview her later.

There’s an interlude while Egon bleats along about mummification and the cult of the god Anubis, and Cherie supplies admiring Southern comments. Bunny says, “Wow.”

“Hey, Egon,” Rita finally calls out from behind us, “way to go; that was super. God, have I forgotten a lot.”

Cherie squeezes my hand. She announces, “Oh, I just feel so stupid.”

One of Cherie’s methods of dealing with the world is to act dumber than she is. This is disarming and makes people like her. Perhaps I should try it.

“Now,” she says, “we’ll go up into that bright upper world and suddenly we’ll just be sitting under a date palm with a mango drink. Am I right, Rita?”

“Never happened to me.” Rita sounds suspicious. But then she usually does.

“So.” Cherie bustles an arm around Egon and an arm around me. She doesn’t have extra arms to put around Bunny and Rita, but she turns a multimegawatt smile their way. The five of us leave the crypt, the best of friends.

I half hate Cherie for stealing my boyfriend and half am attracted to her for being sharp and interesting. I’ll bet she has a good theory about what Rita was up to.

And I wish I didn’t have to ask her about her theory. When this is all over, I’ll never speak to her again.

 
 
“Sweetcakes,” Cherie addresses me at the door of the museum, “we got to talk; walk out to my car with me.”

But right away we pick up an admiring following of both Egon and Bunny.

“Call you later, darlin’.” Cherie has one foot inside the Mustang; she leans forward to kiss me on both cheeks.

I hope she wants to talk about what she saw in the crypt. If she’s planning a heart-to-heart on Rob, I’m not interested.

Chapter 9

“Well hel-lo. And how are we this A.M.?”

Scott has fallen into step with me beside the wisteria bush, which is as far as I’ve gotten on a tour of the museum garden. The sun is bright; something with a chirpy call is sounding off in the tall skinny bushes beside the walk. Egon has tried to decorate his landscape with a few plants that look Egyptian—as does the statuary positioned in and among these bushes, all stiff-standing gods and monsters. “Not very good, I’m afraid,” my father has judged them.

“
We
are okay,” I tell Scott. “And how are you?”

“Oh, hell.” He reaches for a wisteria leaf. “Caught again. Sententious, pretentious, yes? Don’t say yes.”

I squint at him. He has posed himself against the bright sunlight, but even without that electric surround, he gives off a kind of energy. A stocky man, vivid, anxious, a little pugnacious.

Was Cherie right, was he really staring at me all during lunch? He certainly is doing it now.

I keep on walking and he does, too.

“Are you settling in all right? No nightmares, sudden alarms? No figures glimpsed around shadowy corners?”

“I’m doing okay.”

“And your dad? . . . Listen, I wanted to tell you . . .” There’s a sizable pause, while we walk and crunch gravel.

Maybe I should say, “Proceed, proceed.” People threaten to tell me things a lot lately.

“I’m sorry if it seemed I was ignoring your dad. Sure, I knew him. Knew him well. We were all together, you know, good friends, one of those intense adult summer-camp kind of deals. That time was a good time, and now it’s hard to remember. And it was extra hard, seeing your dad . . . I just didn’t know how to take it.”

I turn to look at Scott. Now he seems embarrassed. I shouldn’t ask myself if he really feels all this, or if he half believes and half embellishes.

I say, “A lot of people don’t know how to deal with Daddy’s illness.”

“Yeah. Well, that’s no excuse.” Scuff, scuff. He does the bashful penitent act well.

We scrape gravel, moving forward for a while. Finally, I ask the question about the past that I’ve been poking at lately. “Thebes. That’s where you were all together, isn’t it?”

“Thebes? Yeah, sure.”

“When was that?”

“Like, five years ago? Yeah, four, five. But listen, enough of that, too much harking back to the past. You owe me a drink.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Okay. You owe me going out with me to get a drink. You pretty much promised.”

I didn’t pretty much anything, Scott
, I think, but I guess I’m flattered. I know I’m flattered. I don’t have time now to stop and analyze how much of that is because I’m mad at Rob and jealous of Cherie and how much is because he is, I guess, attractive. Not my type, of course. Neither was my Habitat friend.

“Tonight,” Scott suggests.

“Nope.”

“Tomorrow night?”

“Okay.”

What in hell is the matter with me?

Let’s face it, it will be interesting to go to the Best Western, where Cherie is staying and, presumably, where Rob hangs out now—it will be interesting to go there and see Cherie and Rob together. Or interesting to have Rob see me and Scott together. Really, really interesting.

“Eight o’clock?” Scott suggests, and I agree, “Absolutely. Eight o’clock.”

We walk back to the Museum Residents’ building with Scott talking about how the sheriff mistreated my father. “I was there. I saw it. You need somebody to testify? I’m your guy.”

He’d be a good witness, eager, alive, verbal. A genuine Hartdale Grant prospect. I guess he’s good at a lot of things.

 
 
I am standing on the steps of the Residents’ hall, brooding about Scott and our prospective evening at the Best Western, when the building’s double cedar doors pop open with a suitably tomblike squawk and Rita bursts forth.

She is all gotten up in a denim pantsuit with spangles and a denim bow in her hair. She wears her silver sandals and no socks and black toenail polish. It’s a look I would never attempt, but on her it does okay. “Well, hey,” she says. And, “Hi.” She grabs me by the arm.

Lately I am the Object. People keep zeroing in on me and grabbing.

“Rita, hi.”
Yes, I want to talk to you
, I think. “Come for a walk.”

“Right on. Like, exactly. I got this bottle. See?” She has one of those slouchy over-the-shoulder bags; a bottle neck sticks out of it. “I’m sorta drunk, y’know? No cigs; I’m giving them up, right? So, a lady has to do something.”

A good moment, I think. Rita is the impulsive type. We fall into step on the graveled walk, walking in unison, my Teva sandals contrasting with her silver ones. “Listen, Rita, what were you doing yesterday in the crypt?”

“Yesterday? In the crypt?” Her voice is loaded with total incomprehension.

“We saw you inspecting. Feeling around at the sculpture. We covered for you.”

“Covered? Wow, how sweet! But like, I wasn’t doing anything. I mean, I was just looking, y’know?” She waits. I feel her watching me. “I mean, totally nothing. I was counting Egon’s mistakes. That sculpture is so off. He can never get it straight. He doesn’t understand about Egyptian architecture, nothing, no way. He gets it mixed up with Roman and Renaissance.”

Rita, come on. I know what I know. I’m bored with people not telling me things.
“I was watching you. I could see what you were doing. You were looking for something; it was pretty clear.”

“Clear?” Rita stops to examine her wine bottle as if an answer hides inside. “You think I had an ulterior motive? For sort of, in passing, looking at a tomb carving?”

“It wasn’t sort of in passing. You were heavy-duty interested.”

Rita says, “Duh,” and takes a swig of her wine. “I’m an archaeologist, remember? Of course I was interested. That stuff is my business. It’s what I do.”

“And in this case you don’t want to talk about it.”

“Who said so? We’re talking now.”

And we’re walking. Slowly down the hill. Merrily, merrily. “I’m getting just a particle frustrated lately,” I say. “There’s a whole list of things people won’t talk about. That you especially won’t talk about, even though you cozy up to me and make like you’re my new best friend.

“First, there was Marcus Broussard you wouldn’t talk about, and then that spring in Thebes thing, and now this.”

Rita says, “Hey, I am your friend; really I am.” She puts intensity into her assertion. She cares, the way people do who’ve been through a bad spell and are coming out of it. It’s underhanded of me to attack her now. You’ve heard about baby ducks and how when they’re first hatched they get imprinted by the first moving object that comes by and then they follow that object? Well, Rita got imprinted by me. When she was coming out of her depression, I was the moving object that came by.

“I am so your best friend,” she protests. “You want me to tell you about something? Okay, I will. Thebes, I’ll talk about Thebes, then, okay. Not that there’s anything much to tell.”

Well, I guess so, if that’s the only subject you can manage this morning. “Okay.”

Rita says oratorically, “Thebes.” Off in the middle distance is something that makes her giggle. “Oh, hell.”

We continue walking, with her occasionally extending the bottle in my direction. It’s a white wine, not too sweet.

“It was a real wild scene,” she says contemplatively. “Hard to boil down. Lots of sex.”

She pauses. I spur her on. “Yeah. Right.”

“Sex and archaeology. Did you know they go together? Like, dig, dig, and then, sex, sex?

“Me and Scott,” she picks up. “Me and Marcus. Everybody and everybody. A lot of people named Fatima and Aisha and Naomi.

“Oh, yes,” she answers my slightly surprised shoulder motion. “Too much testosterone. Too many vitamins, too much archaeology. Gets into your privates. Marcus and me, Marcus and . . .” Rita screws her face up. She looks as if she has bitten into something sour. “Marcus and all the Fatimas.”

“And Scott?”

“Sure. Scott and a Fatima or two.”

“Rita, that sounds racist.”

Rita is a little drunk.

“It is. They were. I am, when I think back at it. Oh, shit.”

“And Danielle,” I supply. “Marcus and Danielle.”

“Where’d we get her?”

“She’s around. Everybody sort of walks around her.”

Rita turns a shoulder. “Walks around? Well, not exactly. You ran, one direction or the other. But yeah, she kept popping up.

“A bitch,” Rita adds.

“What kind of bitch?”

“The man-stealing kind.”

Egon has supplied a red marble bench at a turn in the path. We stop to sit on it.