Passage to Queen Mesentia (10 page)

Chapter 12

Thursday May 5, 2005

“After I drop you two at the hotel, I’m going back to the airport. I’m going home.” Wade kept his attention on what was going on outside the window of the taxi, not wanting to see Ben all snuggled up asleep on Lilly. When Lilly didn’t say anything, Wade turned his head to see if she had even heard. She’d heard all right. She stared at him like he had said something wrong. “That’s what you want… right?”

She shook her head gently. “No.”

“How could I possibly stay when I can barely stand to look at you?”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“I can’t believe I thought you needed rescuing.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you. It wasn’t something that was premeditated. It just happened.”

“The hell it wasn’t,” Wade said, pointing his finger at Ben. “
He
wanted me to see. When I glanced back to check on you, he looked me straight in the eyes and then went in for the kill.”

He could see Lilly thinking, remembering. “I don’t know about that. All I know is that I want you to stay.”

“Stay? For what? So, you can torture me some more? Ever since this whole thing started, you’ve been telling me to get lost. I finally get it. Believe me; you’ve made it loud and clear. So what the hell is this sudden, I want you to stay? If I leave, I’ll be out of the way so you two can get it on without any guilt. You’re guilt-free,
Lillian
, and no one will stop you next time.”

“That’s not what this is about.”

“Isn’t it? I’ve been trying to protect you from this guy and you’ve wanted to sleep with him the whole time. Is this like some sort of game to you? Is my being here actually making him more appealing to you? I think I’m going to be sick. That’s why you want me to stay. Isn’t it! The thrill of the unattainable.” 

“No, that’s not fair,” she said, head down, shoulders slumped.

“Then what? What possible reason could there be?”

“I thought… Well, here, in Egypt, it’s not a good idea for a single woman to travel alone. It’ll be safer if it looks like I’m married. I would be more at ease staying in a room with you.”

If she had said those words to him the day before, he would have fantasized about them making up, even leading to getting back together. Not now. The thing that killed him the most was that he couldn’t say no. He had to stay. How could he get on an airplane knowing he had made it easy for Ben? If he left, he wondered, would she actually check into a room with Ben? Why should he make it easy for him? Still, he didn’t know how much more of them
together
he could take. He shuddered at the thought of catching them in the middle of another make-out session or worse. What would he do if they ever actually disappeared and he found them having sex. He felt like taffy, being pulled and stretched in every direction. Lilly had him so screwed up he had to turn and compose himself before he punched Ben while he slept.

After unclamping his teeth and wiping his eyes, he turned back to her and asked, “Do you have an extra scarf in your bag?”

“What for?” she said meekly.

He ignored her somber expression because the thought of her feeling sorry for him only made him angrier. “Maybe if we cover his eyes, he’ll be shielded enough from the sun so he can walk into the hotel.”

She shrugged her shoulders and tried to reach her bag from the floorboard but couldn’t because of Ben. Disgusted, Wade pulled Ben off of her and held him up with his arm against the seat. Lilly pulled an olive-green scarf out of her bag and handed it to Wade.

“Don’t you have anything prettier?”

“What?”

“Nothing. Hold him up.”

He wrapped the fabric around Ben’s head and then tied it. “There,” he said.

As the taxi drove into the driveway of the Philippe Luxor Hotel, Wade pulled the scarf over Ben’s eyes.

“Ben, we’re here,” Lilly said. “Can you walk?” Ben was still snoring. “It’s not working.”

Wade began giving little slaps to Ben’s face. “Hey. Hey. We can’t carry you all the way in there.” One final wham! and Ben’s eyes flew open. Both Wade and Lilly jumped. “We’re at the hotel. We need you to walk. We put something over your eyes, will that help?”

Ben nodded and sat up a little. “I’ll try.”

They still had to help, but Ben moved his own legs as they walked inside. They finally made it to the main lobby where Lilly and Ben sat down while Wade checked in at the front desk.

The hotel room was nothing like what the Egyptian touristy lobby and exterior of the hotel would suggest. The room was basic with a set of twin beds, end tables, and an old television.

After they helped Ben to one of the beds, Wade asked, “What are we supposed to do now? Wait until sundown to do anything?”

Lilly yawned and seemed to have trouble keeping her eyes open. “Ben said he thinks the statuette is in the Luxor Museum. We could go see if it’s there. If it is, that means Schelsteder didn’t figure out the clues or couldn’t get the statue out.”

“What are we looking for exactly? A pyramid? Well, that should be easy to spot in a museum in Egypt.” Wade put his hand up, ready to slap Ben awake again to ask about it, when Lilly stopped him by saying, “He told me about it.”

“Of course he did. Y’all have been sharing a lot of things.”

He saw her slight grimace, but she took it and said, “It’s a gold pyramid with three stones, amethyst, garnet and an emerald. I think it is about this big.” She held her hands about 4 inches apart. “Ben said, as long as it’s there, then he’ll take care of the rest.”

“So, after we see it there, we’re done… right?”

She nodded and yawned, and then closed her eyes, doing a sleepy head nod and almost falling over.

Wade caught her. “Didn’t you sleep on the train?”

“I couldn’t.” She rubbed her face with both of her hands.

“Why don’t you go on and get some sleep, and I’ll check the museum out.”

“No, I want to go, too.”

Even though he knew she was exhausted, he didn’t want to leave her and Ben in the same hotel alone together, so he didn’t argue. 

They left a note for Ben, letting him know where they were headed before turning out the light and leaving the room.

As they walked through the hotel, it seemed as if everything reminded Wade that their relationship was over. He found himself wishing they were on their honeymoon or even anniversary. He wanted to hate Lilly, wanted to find something that made him feel less connected to her. But all he could do was wish the last few weeks had never happened and wish Lilly wanted him and not Ben.

When they stepped outside the hotel, cabs and ornamented horse-drawn carriages lined the street. They jumped inside a taxi, despite the calls of the carriage drivers. Wade hadn’t understood what most of them had said, but he knew it was something about taking his lady on a carriage ride. That might have been pretty cool, leisurely riding through Luxor with Lilly, enjoying the Nile, without having to worry about anything else.

Another thought hit him: if they had really been there on vacation, he might have protested a little because the carriages probably cost more than taxis. Although, after a couple of sad glances from Lilly, he most likely would have given in.

Wouldn’t he have? She did complain, all the time, that he wasn’t romantic enough. He had always thought that since he was faithful and would rather sit at home and watch the game on TV with her instead of with his boys at the bar, or even the fact that he was crazy in love with her, was enough… but at that moment, he guessed not.

After a long, silent cab ride, they pulled up beside a tall gate and got out. Behind the gate was a rectangular dull-tan building with huge Egyptian statues and Egyptian wording as well as English letters that read: Luxor Museum. They paid at the glass-faceted admissions building and then proceeded inside the museum itself.

When they walked inside the new wing of the museum, there was a movie playing. Wade figured it was an introduction of some sort, but they didn’t stick around to watch it. As they walked through the first area, Wade was surprised at himself for finding everything so interesting. He actually wanted to take more time to examine the unwrapped mummies in a darkened room and check out all the different types of weapons.

After they didn’t see anything like the statuette in that area, they moved on to a brighter part of the museum. There was a  person-sized stone head, a big bull-like animal with black outlined eyes in a glass enclosure, and the head of King Tut—the only thing he really recognized. The entire time, Lilly whispered names to herself, like Amenhotep the third, and Middle Kingdom, Ramses the first, and Tutankhamun, which he knew was a fancy name for King Tut. He was trying to pay attention and look for the little pyramid statue, but he was amused by how much all this old stuff meant to Lilly. She glowed, kind of like a kid in a toy store, or him at a car show. She was cute, but it made him more depressed at the same time.  

Half an hour later, they wound up and around the museum, making it back to the beginning without spotting anything even close to what they had been searching for.

“What now?” he asked, disappointed. He’d really wanted to find that stupid thing so that everything would be over.

“I… I don’t know. It’s not here. Ben said that if there would’ve been a burglary in the last couple of days, they would have shut everything down or at least upped the security. It seems as normal a museum as any. So I don’t know, unless we misunderstood the letter.” She pulled it out of her bag and read over it.

Wade thought about what it had said and remembered seeing something that reminded him of a particular passage. He grabbed Lilly’s hand, without thinking about it, and pulled her out of the foyer back up the stairs and around several corners before standing in front of a miniature boat display. He read the display, “Models of Funerary Boats from Tomb of Tutankhamen.” 

“What about it?”

“The boats are for dead people, right?”

“Yeah.” Lilly nodded but was frowning.

Wade didn’t think she actually comprehended. Her blood-shot eyes drooped heavily on the verge of closing, exactly like the other morning when they’d stayed up all night. “Why is it that every time I solve a mystery, you’re too asleep to get it?”

“I’m sorry.” She stared at her paper, blinking her eyes, and finally said. “Okay. I get it. I get it. You’re thinking that the part here, ‘Let death ride the Nile’ has something to do with these funeral boats.”

“Right. We both know how clear your mom was with everything else. So it makes perfect sense. She might have led us here to the museum, and this boat is a clue.”

“Okay. Maybe so,” she said, taking a closer look.

The canoe-shaped boats were inside a square glass display. Lilly and Wade took a few minutes, walking around and around it, putting their faces as close as possible to the glass. The boats reminded Wade of the paper boats he made as a kid, the way they were pointy at both ends and had a small, square hut in the middle. There was a little man at the front of one of the boats, his arm outstretched, pointing. Wade’s eyes automatically looked to where he pointed, but it was just to a blank wall.

“I don’t see anything,” Lilly said. “I don’t understand. I don’t get it, if this is a clue.”

“Well, maybe’s its not.” Wade quickly scanned the area as he thought about everything. Maybe he’d missed something else. As soon as his focus returned to Lilly and the boats, his mind retraced the scan and something triggered his heart. He didn’t dare turn and look again. So he pretended to inspect the boats inside the case again, making his way around to the other side. Lilly followed him, glancing from paper to artifact. Wade bent his knees so he could see straight through the glass...

Even though he had only seen him once and at night, he recognized him. Schelsteder stood, half hidden, behind a tall statue, and he was clearly watching them.

“I got it, Wade!” Lilly shouted. “I think I know what this is about.”

“That’s great,” Wade said and grabbed her by the arm and pulled her away as fast as possible. She seemed to have been caught up in her realization because she didn’t even notice his abruptness and kept on talking as they briskly walked.

“It said it right there. It was from Tutankhamen’s tomb—”

“Not now, Lilly,” Wade said, teeth clenched. He kept Lilly close and walked her toward the entrance.

“And Tutankhamen’s tomb is in the Valley of Kings!”

“Lilly, shut the hell up!” he said under his breath, and that got her attention. Wade glanced behind him but didn’t see Schelsteder. He wondered if he had imagined him.

“What are you doing?” she asked as Wade pulled her through the exit. “What is going on?”

“Schelsteder.”

“Where?” She looked around.

“In there. I know it was him,” he argued with himself.

“Do you think he followed us from the hotel or did he just now figure out the connection to the museum?”

“I don’t know.”

They walked out the gates of the museum. When they spotted a cab down the street a little ways, they walked faster, which turned into a mutual jog. As soon as they reached the taxi, it took off.

“Shit,” Wade said, not seeing any other cabs around, only carriages.

The carriage drivers were already summoning them to ride, and they really didn’t have much choice. They jumped aboard the closest one.

“Welcome aboard,” the driver said cheerfully. “I’m Mohamed. Who do I have the pleasure of taking on tour today?”

“Drive, Mohamed,” Wade said and paid him ten pounds instead of the five he had yelled out.

“Yes, sir. Thank you mister American cowboy and his beautiful woman. Nice to meet you.” They slowly joined the noisy traffic in the street. Wade looked behind him, and then Lilly did too. They watched the ghostly-white Schelsteder jump inside a taxi.

“Of course he gets a taxi,” Wade said and turned back to the driver. “Can’t this thing go any faster?” He felt Lilly moving closer to him.
Now she needs me
, he thought.

“Where to? Mister American cowboy?”

“I don’t know? Just drive.” He turned to Lilly. “We can’t lead Schelsteder back to the hotel, in case he didn’t follow us from there. We need to lose him, but how are we going to do that in this snail?”