Sleeping Beauty (43 page)

“Alone?” Anne asked.

“Sometimes.” He shrugged his backpack off his shoulders. “Are you hungry?”

“No. I haven't had enough energy to think about anything but my legs.”

He chuckled. “They're pretty amazing legs.”

Anne slipped out of the straps on her pack and set it down behind her. She flexed her shoulders. “I could use some more water.”

Josh was already pulling the plastic bottle from his belt carrier. He handed it to her. “Take a lot; I have another one in my pack.”

She drank deeply, then sat on the largest rock, stretching out her legs, leaning back, supporting herself on her hands. She closed her eyes, her face to the sun.

Josh sat beside her. “If you want to talk about it, I'm a good listener.”

She shook her head, her eyes closed. “Thank you. There's nothing to talk about. Tell me about your work. I'd like to hear about Egypt if you wouldn't mind.”

Josh contemplated her. Her nose and forehead were pink. He should have warned her about the mountain sun, he thought. He should have stopped on the trail to see how tired she was, instead of forging ahead like a caveman. He should have let her go ahead of him and set her own pace. He should have tried to help her when he saw her with tears streaming down her face, her mouth trembling with the effort to keep silent while she wept. The polished image of Anne Garnett, lawyer, came to him, sitting in the solid surroundings of her office, arguments flowing smoothly from her sensual, and cold, lips. She looked human now, and even more beautiful, he thought: sunburned, her hair windblown, her long legs scratched from twigs that had stretched across the trail, her shirt wet with perspiration. But he remembered thinking, in her office, that he would like to see her smile with pleasure, and though she looked relaxed, she still was not smiling. And now he wanted more:
he wanted to see her laugh with joy, and show warmth to another human being.

“I'll understand if you don't want to talk about it,” Anne said, her eyes still closed. “I don't know much about superstitions, but I do know about keeping work confidential.”

“I've been working for six years on a theory about a pharaoh named Tenkaure, who lived in the Eighteenth Dynasty,” Josh said, surprising himself with the ease with which the words came out. He had not talked about this project with anyone but coworkers at the university and in Egypt. “I've found references to him, but no hard evidence; in fact, I suspect a political opponent tried his damndest to make sure he became a nonperson after he died.”

“When was the Eighteenth Dynasty?” Anne asked.

“Around 1570 to 1320
B.C.
The time I'm interested in was in the 1300s, around the reign of Akenaten.”

“The one who truly loved his wife.”

“Yes.” It was not comfortable to recall that birthday note to Dora, but he was more interested in Anne's remembering such a small detail. “You remember that.”

“You remember which table you sat at in a restaurant three and a half years ago.” She opened her eyes, and they exchanged a smile. “And what did your pharaoh do that makes you so interested in him?”

“I don't know for sure. And I won't, until I find his tomb. It seems he was involved in some family intrigues; he'd been quarreling with his son, and possibly with the priesthood at Thebes. It wasn't any easier to maintain family harmony then than it is now. Anne, I don't know about you, but I am definitely ready for lunch.”

“So am I. Once I got off my legs, the rest of me began behaving normally. Do you always hike like that?”

“When I'm alone or with friends from town. Not when I'm with someone who lives at sea level. I apologize.”

“I thought it might only be with me. That you were making sure you were the one to win this time.”

His eyebrows rose. “I might have been.” He paused in
opening his backpack. “I know I didn't start out that way, but when you stayed on my heels, I seem to have gotten stubborn.” He shook his head. “Like a teenager in a drag race. I apologize.”

Anne watched him take plastic bags from his pack. She had enjoyed the honesty of that exchange. “It can't have been the first time you've lost to a woman.”

Once again he paused. “It's the first time I've lost to anyone.”

“That can't be true.”

He set two plastic plates on the rock and filled them with thin slices of roast beef and tomatoes, lettuce, pita bread, and Calamata olives. He pulled a bottle of white wine from his pack and unwrapped two wineglasses from cloth napkins. He filled them and handed one to Anne. “You can eat quite neatly with a fork,” he said, “or you can stuff everything into the pita, which is sloppy but most satisfying. And most appropriate in this setting.”

Anne filled the pita bread, and when it was bulging, she opened her mouth wide and took a bite. “Oh, wonderful,” she said. “What a perfect lunch.”

For a few minutes they ate quietly, gazing at the blue-green lake. They watched trout jump and catch insects in the split second before slipping back into the water, to swim just below the surface until spying another prey and leaping up again. The ripples they made moved majestically in widening circles to the shore, lapping peacefully against the rock where Josh and Anne sat. Clouds were building, great towering masses of pure white billows piling up against the azure sky. Something within Anne seemed to let go and she felt a longing she had not allowed herself for as long as she could remember. She wanted more of what was before her. More beauty and serenity, more of this strange contentment that was nothing like the triumph of winning at the law but had its own rare satisfaction, more of the feeling within her of opening out to whatever lay ahead. It occurred to her that somehow she had lost touch with the small, quiet wonders of the world; everything in her life was hard-edged, high-pressured,
crammed with work, brilliantly successful, absorbing and relentless. In the midst of that, the small pleasures of life had been overwhelmed.

But maybe that's how it has to be, she thought. That's the kind of life I live; I can't just change it overnight. It was something she would have to think about, not now, but later. For now, it was more important to talk to Josh. And something was nagging at her, something he had said earlier. She thought back, and recalled it. “If you've never lost,” she said, “how can you have memories that cause tears?”

He grinned. “Good question, but that wasn't what I said. I said I'd never lost to anyone. I've lost to fate, or to God, or as the ancient Egyptians would say, to many gods, or to myself, but I've never been conquered by another person.” He poured more wine into their glasses. “I've thought about that a lot; it sounds impossible but I don't think it is. I didn't get into fistfights when I was a kid, and I didn't compete in individual sports; I played baseball and football, and we won and lost as a team. I think that's true of most kids growing up. I was terrific at shooting marbles, and when I lost, I knew it was because I'd slipped up. Lost to myself, in other words. I think that's true of most people, too; we don't use our full potential all the time. And when my parents died, I blamed God, and every Egyptian god, and the Greek and Roman ones, too, and then fate. There wasn't any person I could blame. I think it's relatively rare that we're defeated by another person; usually that's an excuse we use to avoid facing the fact that we weren't good enough or strong enough to win; that we'd lost to ourselves.”

Anne sat very still. “That's incredibly presumptuous.”

“Is it? I've been told I'm too hard on myself. Why do you say it's presumptuous?”

“You can't be beaten by anyone but God. Or it takes a whole army of gods: Egyptian, Greek, Roman. But no mortal can do it; it's only when you slip up that you give some weak human being a chance to get his licks in and do better than you.”

Josh looked at her curiously. “You make it sound pretty
bad. I wouldn't put it that strongly, but what if I did? What's wrong with it? Don't you think there's something inside us that could win a lot more often if we could find it; wake it up, so to speak? Isn't it possible that most of us let ourselves be conquered because it's too much trouble to fight back?”

“You don't know what you're talking about,” Anne said furiously. “You don't know about the harm people can do, the destruction—”

“You're right,” he said quickly. “I went too far. I do that a lot, I'm afraid; I take a perfectly good idea and keep fooling with it until it stretches like taffy to some absurd and very thin extreme.” He kept talking, to give her time to calm down. He wondered if her tears today were connected with whoever had conquered her somewhere in her past. “I fight that every time I write an article. I have a great time playing with ideas, and I just keep at it until I'm way out on a limb, reaching the craziest damn conclusions. Usually, I come to my senses before I go too far. And in addition to all else I forgot to bring dessert.”

“I brought dessert,” Anne said. “And I'm sorry, too. I was rude. I don't know why I got so upset.”

Yes, you do, Josh thought, and whatever it was, it was terrible, and you've buried it, but not deep enough to prevent its leaping out when something disturbs it, as I just did. He watched Anne reach into her pack and bring out a small gold box. “Truffles,” he exclaimed. “You're wonderful. What kind?”

“Chocolate and hazelnut.”

“You have impeccable taste. It's the same as mine. Thank you.” He put the candy in his mouth without biting into it.

Anne did the same. Slowly, the chocolate melted on her tongue in a soft, warm, bittersweet flood that slid down her throat. She sighed, a long, luxurious breath, and looked at Josh. He grinned at her. “What every picnic needs. I can't imagine wanting anything more. Except . . . do I get another one?”

“Two more,” Anne said. “I didn't think the hike was long enough to merit more than three each.”

“We'll find a longer one next time.” He glanced at the
clouds, larger and darker than a few minutes earlier. “We ought to leave soon if we want to beat the rain.”

“I'm sorry,” Anne said. “It's so lovely here.” They finished the candies and the wine, and began to pack up the remains of lunch. “What upset you about Dora's suit?” she asked. “Losing to her or losing to yourself? Can you talk about it?”

“Of course. I lost to myself and to you. Money wasn't the issue. It was to Dora, but not to me, though I'd rather not have had to pay it. The important thing was my weaknesses and the fact that you used them in a way that made it almost impossible for us to build a defense. We could have shown that Dora understood from the beginning that I didn't want to marry her, and that she never had any reason to think I'd changed my mind, but once you'd established my silence when I should have spoken, any defense was weakened. Not necessarily destroyed, but seriously weakened. I've always prided myself on not letting that happen; good scholars don't let themselves get backed into corners where their positions can be torn apart and their arguments shot down.”

“And your birthday note?” Anne asked.

He pulled the cords that closed his backpack with a hard jerk. “That was the poet in me run amuck. I've learned how to control it since then. The odd thing is, I'm supposed to understand the past, and know how to use it. My life revolves around the past; I'm there almost more than I'm here. But I lived with Dora in ways that had nothing to do with what I'd learned all my life; it was as if the past had no importance at all.”

“Why
is
it so important?” Anne asked. “Why are you there almost more than you're here? That's such an extraordinary statement.”

“And not entirely accurate. I use the past the same way I used museums when I was a kid: as a haven. Sometimes a place to get lost. When my parents died—”

“How old were you?”

“Thirteen. They were in Alaska; my father was a photographer and they were flying to the Brooks Range in a small plane, and they got caught in a blizzard and went down. For
six months I wiped out the present, totally denied it, and lived in the past. I didn't go to school, I didn't see my friends, God knows I didn't play baseball. I did go to museums, and I read; I was in my grandparents' house and they had a fine library and that's where I spent my time. They were very patient with me; they worked out a deal with my high school principal so I could rejoin my class when I was ready, and make up my work after school and at night. At the time, I never thought about their feelings, but of course they were as devastated as I was; we talked about it when I was in college. They were remarkable people; they got me through that terrible year. For a long time, I thought the thirteenth year was one nobody should have to live through.”

Anne was watching him, completely absorbed.

“I didn't mean to make this a life story,” Josh said with a smile. “You asked about the past. I spend a lot of time there because that's what archaeologists do, and it gives me great pleasure to figure out what happened a long time ago, and why, and how it all piled up, like bricks, to build what we are today. And I spend time there because it's a retreat when I've had enough of university and museum politics, or Los Angeles traffic, or Los Angeles in general, or when I want to avoid thinking about something I've done that I know wasn't my best. The past is a good hiding place, you know; it's always there, waiting for you, and you can pick up where you left off and know that nothing's changed since the last time. And you don't have to share it to enjoy it.”

He paused, looking at the lake, almost talking to himself. “That's the problem with the present: it demands to be shared. There's an emptiness in walking through each day without footsteps to match yours, and thoughts to match and challenge yours. At least, that's true for me and it's what I've always looked for. Not with Dora; she was a lovely companion, at least at first, and I was lonely and so was she, and it seemed to make sense to live together. But what I still hope for is someone to help me feel connected to the world, as if it makes a real difference that I'm here, not in a
scholarly way, but in a direct and human way. I don't think any of us can do that alone, not fully. We need another person: two minds meeting, two hands touching, two hearts joining.”