More Bitter Than Death (18 page)

Meg made the introductions. I shook hands. “Okay, take your name tags off.”

Confused glances were exchanged around the table, but everyone reluctantly did as I told them. “I thought the point of these things was to get to know people,” a young woman said. I recognized her as the Gypsy-clad woman from the opening reception dance. Jordan.

“Yep, and now we all know each other. You need to turn
off the conference thing for a little while every day. And,” I added, as I removed my own badge, “if you take your name tags off when you leave the site in a big city, you’re no longer marked as a tourist and a potentially easy mark for muggers.”

There were a few nods and some shrugs. They’d learn how useful this was in the years to come.

The waiter began filling up water glasses, and someone else arrived with a basket of bread. This was handed around and emptied before you could blink.

“Next. It is altogether too easy to forget to eat, or eat whatever happens to be at hand. I always make a point to eat at least one meal a day with real food, not fast food: real chairs—not stools—and metal flatware. This meal doesn’t necessarily need to be dinner; if you get a good breakfast in, with lots of fruit and some protein, that works too. And just as important, if you can remember to keep drinking water—these conference hotels will dehydrate you faster than the Mojave Desert—that’s half the trick to keep from getting headaches on whatever cold is going around.”

“You sound like my mom,” said Kyle, who was baby-faced and prematurely balding. He didn’t seem to be complaining, though.

“Well, she’s right, on this score. Again, the idea is to take care of yourself, especially if you have to do the grab-stuff-and-run thing.” I looked at them, calculating how many were probably in a room together. “Or foraging snacks at the receptions or eating in your rooms, and I don’t mean room service.”

There were some grins at that last. I’d done my share of eating peanut butter crackers and dried apricots, washed down with tap water, and didn’t miss those days. I did miss the energy I had then, though.

After we placed our orders, I said, “Next, go to the gym if you can swing it.”

“But we’re here to work. We’re spending money to work,” spoke Alex, a heavyset lad with a pierced lower lip.

I tried not to stare at the stud in his lip, but it just looked so damned uncomfortable. I nodded and put the wine list aside. “You are, and if you’re going to get the most out of it, you need to relax. There’s no point in exhausting yourself if you’re not going to retain all of your contacts, paper citations, books, etcetera. And if you don’t work out, or you don’t have time, at least try to get some fresh air. The worst times I’ve had at conferences were the ones where we were snowed in, like now, and everyone started getting bug-eyed and stir crazy. The fresh air will help on a lot of levels, clear your head, kill cold germs, refocus your eyes. Who knows? You might even find someone you’re trying to meet out there doing the same thing.”

“Like smoking,” Jordan said.

“Not my choice, but sure. You may have noticed a big clot of folks clustered around the front door? That’s the Canadian Club,” I said. “Not just because they are always outside in the snow or drink cheap whiskey, but because sometimes they bring the good cigars to us benighted folk in the lower forty-eight. Just don’t accost people in the bathroom. They might want a moment to pee in privacy.”

Suddenly I felt two hands on my shoulders. The scent of lilacs reassured me, however, and I patted one of the hands and looked up at Michelle. “Need a place to sit, my darling?”

“Not a bit of it, cupcake. I’m over there with my fellow science freaks. I just wanted say good evening.”

“So thoughtful,” I said.

She smiled and drifted over to the other table.

“What was that about?” Alex muttered.

“That was Michelle Lima. Does good work for the park service, down in Delaware. We met about fifteen years ago.”

“You guys must be really good friends,” said Alex pointedly.

I ignored the implication. “Oh, you know. There were supposed to be five of us giving papers. One person was delayed, another canceled, and another never showed. Since they were the headliners, virtually no one showed up to hear us present, so since then, we decided if no one else loved us, we would always be there for each other.”

I saw them exchanging looks. “Oh, come on. You guys haven’t got a sense of humor? Never do anything silly? Ah, get over it.” Our drinks arrived.

“Where were we? Right, one last thing. Don’t forget to empty out your bags or notebooks regularly. If you tidy up all the flyers and books and business cards and little notes and lagniappes every so often, you’ll keep track of what you got and what you need, you’ll remind yourself of things to do, and you’ll save your back a lot of wear and tear.”

“What’s a lagniappe?” Katie said.

“It’s pronounced ‘lan-yap.’ It means a gimme, something you get with a sale or as a premium. Conference swag. It’s from the Spanish via Cajun French. Great word, isn’t it? And there’s one other thing. Very important. Something Oscar didn’t ever tell me, and I sometimes wonder whether he even knew about it himself.”

There were some whispered conversations when Jordan explained to Alex who my grandfather Oscar was. They all leaned forward, breath bated.

“Moisturizer. Trust me.”

They still looked disappointed.

“I’m serious. It’s almost as important as a sense of humor,” I added. “Here endeth the lesson.”

“Evening, everyone!”

I looked up. Duncan had swanned in, and it was as if we’d never had that last discussion. “Emma, are all these yours?”

I could feel my face freeze. “No, just a handful.”

“Aren’t you going to introduce me?”

Duncan, what the hell are you up to? Why the sudden
change? “Sure.” I went around the table and was horrified to see everyone looking at Duncan with something like worshipful adoration. Except Katie, who was staring glumly into her lap. Holy Gilderoy Lockhart.

“Well, I just wanted to say hello. I’ll catch you later, Em?”

Only if I get caught in a bear trap, Dunk. “Later.”

Katie looked better as soon as he left, I was relieved to see. I took a big sip of wine and was delighted when the food showed up shortly thereafter.

There wasn’t much talk for a few moments, while we tucked into the food, which was a good step above what you got in the café. My salmon was nice, but I thought that the sauce wasn’t very good, compared to Brian’s. I sat back and listened to the students chatting.

And complaining—apparently Hedia, an attractively dressed woman who’d been quietly observing until now, was a “mirror hog” by Meg’s lights.

“I like to make sure I’m put together,” Hedia replied, “and it’s not as if you were late for your paper.”

They went back and forth for a while, with no real heat, and the conversation drifted off to other subjects. I got a good feel for most of the folks who were new to me and answered the questions that they had about archaeology books or my own work. I wasn’t one of them, and it is an immensely complicated and difficult thing to try and be someone’s friend when you have so much control over their future, so I was happy to let them do most of the talking. Of course, discussions of beer and travel and movies weren’t too personal, and I had no qualms about chipping in here and there. About an hour later, I felt relaxed, smug about taking my own good advice, and pleased to see color in Meg’s cheeks again.

During dessert, I picked up the bill and settled it. There were a few protests, but I waved them off.

“My treat. And besides, you all gave me a good excuse
not to sneak back to my room and work on an overdue article.” Which wasn’t true, but it let them off the hook too.

“Well, thanks again, Emma,” Hedia said as we all got up, stretched, and collected our bags.

“My pleasure.” And it really was, because I felt better for having done something constructive. It was also like I was getting to pay back all the folks who’d sprung for drinks or meals when I couldn’t afford it, who gave me advice when I was ready for it, and who’d generally treated me like a human when others weren’t so concerned about the direction a twenty-something might take.

My buzz evaporated. I saw Noreen out of the corner of my eye, waiting for the elevator, just where I was heading. And damn if she didn’t turn around and see me. Drat, there was no avoiding her now.

She gave me the once-over, and flipped her hair. “What, are you running for office or something?”

“What do you mean?” Good God, with the dangling belt, dangling earrings, dangling pendant, she might as well be a fishing lure.

“Soliciting the underage vote?”

“Just giving some survival pointers to some of the coming generation, that’s all.”

“Half of them won’t be here in five years. Doesn’t stop you from always trying to find an audience.” She said the words almost to herself, but it was too blatant for me to let go. There was a lot of pent-up anger here.

“Noreen, what is your problem? You seem to have a real attitude about something, about
me,
and I’d really appreciate it if you’d just tell me to my face.”

She looked up, surprised by this. “What?”

“You keep muttering things, just out of my hearing, that I’m supposed to overhear. Why don’t you come out with it?”

The car arrived and she got in. I followed her; she paused there, staring at the bank of buttons in the elevator before
she hit the button for the fourth floor. Then she turned around to me, amazingly bitter. “You’re never happy with what you’ve got, are you?”

This was so stupid. I laughed. “Is anyone?”

“You know what I mean. It’s always got to be the center of attention for you, doesn’t it?”

I reached over and stabbed the button for my floor. “And how do you reach this conclusion?”

“Oh, please.”

There was nowhere for her to run to, we were trapped between the mirrored walls and the posters showing views of the restaurant and business center, so I forced the issue. “No, I’m serious. I have no idea what you’re talking about and now’s your chance to tell me.”

She had been gearing up for this apparently. I imagined her counting over her grievances like a miser for years. “You get everything in the world and you’re never happy. You get your way paved for you in archaeology with your grandfather and his cronies. You get these awards for your dissertation, like the fix wasn’t in there too—”

“You’re kidding, right?” Unless that was a fox that Noreen had been nursing? Had she been up for the ASAA dissertation prize that year too? I couldn’t remember.

“The special secret card games that everyone in the world knows about—”

“I don’t believe this.”

She raised a hand. “Save the outraged modesty.”

“Did it ever occur to you that Oscar has been dead for years now? Or that perhaps by dint of having started in this field, oh, ten years before everyone else, I might have had a little more experience, had a better idea of how to go about things? Sure, I got more experience because of Oscar, but I also put in maybe twice as much time as everyone else. So don’t you ever let me hear you suggest that I might have got
ten that prize for something other than my hard work, because any suggestion otherwise is jealous bullshit.”

The door opened at the second-floor mezzanine, but there was no one there. It took an eternity for the doors to slide shut again.

“Hard work, like you got the Caldwell job?” Noreen spat. “And the Westlake chair?”

“
Exactly
like that. A friend of mine died, that’s how that chair was created. You know, I used to worry that I got where I did because of connections too. And let’s say they got me in the door. Then what? People don’t bother with you, unless you’ve got something else going on. And since I don’t have the clout that I might possibly if Oscar was still alive—and if you ever heard about how he drove his students, you should have seen how he drove
me
—then I think it might be fair to consider that I’ve got something else on the ball besides family connections.”

She looked as shocked as I felt. I never did this sort of thing, never stood up for myself like this, not even with myself. Duncan was right: I was no longer the person I used to be.

The door opened on the third floor, and I stepped across the threshold, keeping the door from shutting.

This new, more aggressive me, seemed like a trade up. Strange, but good.

“Whatever,” she said. “It just makes me sick, that’s all. You bustling around with the cops, making a scene about Garrison. You didn’t even like him. And now you’re using him, after he’s dead, to promote yourself or something. It’s sick.”

“I’m not using him. And you’re right, I didn’t like him—”

“Why on earth not?” And for the first time, I sensed genuine distress in her voice. “How could you not like him, after what he did for the field?”

“I have nothing against what he did for the field. It’s what he did to me, personally, that is why I don’t like him. Just personal stuff, even if I happen to think his reputation was overblown.”

“Straight party line, just like your grandfather.”

“Tell me again what this has got to do with Oscar?”

“Everyone knows that Oscar was always badmouthing Garrison. That he was jealous of him, and whenever Garrison tried to do his job, Oscar took it personally. Not very professional, if you ask me.”

“You can say whatever you like, Noreen, but it all sounds like sour grapes to me.” Suddenly I was tired. I stepped out onto the floor. “You might try working for something, rather than running your mouth off and complaining all the time. It will make a nice change for the rest of us.”

“Don’t even bother, Emma. You make me—”

And the doors slid shut before she could finish telling me again how sick I made her.

“Whatever,” I muttered, and gave the English two-fingered salute to the closed elevator doors. Two fingers always seemed to have so much more violence than that one, solitary finger.

I found my way back to my room without incident; the incidents started when I had the door safely locked behind me. I picked up a folded piece of paper I found shoved under my door at the same time I saw the red message light flashing on the phone on the desk. I flipped the sheet open as I crossed to the desk. “You were warned. If you’re not worried about yourself, then think about the kids.”