The Best of Connie Willis (8 page)

“Sid,” Dr. Gedanken said. “If we’re all going to be on the same research team, I think we should use first names.”

“If it isn’t Grauman’s Chinese or the movies, what is it?” Darlene asked, eating popcorn.

“It’s Hollywood.”

“Hollywood,” Dr. Gedanken said thoughtfully.

“Hollywood,” I said. “Stars in the sidewalk and buildings that look like stacks of LPs and hats, and radicchio and audience surveys and bra museums. And the movies. And Grauman’s Chinese.”

“And the Rialto,” David said.

“Especially the Rialto.”

“And the ICQP,” Dr. Gedanken said.

I thought about Dr. Lvov’s black and gray slides and the disappearing chaos seminar and Dr. Whedbee writing “meaning” or possibly “information” on the overhead projector. “And the ICQP,” I said.

“Did Dr. Takumi really hit Dr. Iverson over the head with a gavel?” Darlene asked.

“Shh,” David said. “I think the movie’s starting.” He took hold of my hand. Darlene settled back with her popcorn, and Dr. Gedanken put his feet up on the chair in front of him. The inner curtain opened, and the screen lit up.

I wrote “At the Rialto” after an SFWA Nebula Awards Banquet weekend which actually featured many of the elements depicted in the story. It was held at the Roosevelt Hotel, which was right across the street from Grauman’s Chinese Theatre; we
did
go to the Bra Museum at Frederick’s of Hollywood, which has Madonna’s gold cone-shaped bra and Ethel Merman’s girdle; the desk clerk
was
a model/actress; and there were definitely signs of quantum effects occurring at a macrocosmic level. We did not, however, see
Benji IX
at the theater. We saw
Willow
. And we didn’t make it out to Forest Lawn.

But we had a great time. And what else can you expect from Hollywood? I adore the place. It’s so deliciously nutty. I mean, not only is every hotel clerk and waitress and valet car-parker an actor/something-or-other, but the trademark Hollywood sign up on the hill was actually an advertisement for a housing development called Hollywoodland till the last four letters fell over, and the shopping mall has rearing concrete elephants and a massive replica of the Babylon set for D. W. Griffith’s 1916 silent film
Intolerance
.

They named one of their cemeteries Hollywood Forever, and during the summer they project movies on the side of the mausoleum (I am not making this up), and the locals bring picnic baskets and sit on the grass among the graves of Douglas Fairbanks and Cecil B. DeMille and Jayne Mansfield.

And all those stories about crazy directors and clueless producers and pitch meetings are true. When they turned the Broadway play
The Madness of King George III
into a movie, they really did insist on changing the title to
The Madness of King George
because they were convinced the audience would otherwise think it was a sequel. You know, like
Spider-Man 3
.

How can you not love a place like that?

Chapter One: Preparing for Your Trip—What to Take

“ ‘To the ancient Egyptians,’ ” Zoe reads, “ ‘Death was a separate country to the west’ ”—the plane lurches—“ ‘the west to which the deceased person journeyed.’ ”

We are on the plane to Egypt. The flight is so rough the flight attendants have strapped themselves into the nearest empty seats, looking scared, and the rest of us have subsided into a nervous window-watching silence. Except Zoe, across the aisle, who is reading aloud from a travel guide.

This one is Somebody or Other’s
Egypt Made Easy
. In the seat pocket in front of her are Fodor’s
Cairo
and Cook’s
Touring Guide to Egypt’s Antiquities
, and there are half a dozen others in her luggage. Not to mention Frommer’s
Greece on $35 a Day
and the Savvy Traveler’s
Guide to Austria
and the three or four hundred other guidebooks
she’s already read out loud to us on this trip. I toy briefly with the idea that it’s their combined weight that’s causing the plane to yaw and careen and will shortly send us plummeting to our deaths.

“ ‘Food, furniture, and weapons were placed in the tomb,’ ” Zoe reads, “ ‘as provi-’ ”—the plane pitches sideways—“ ‘-sions for the journey.’ ”

The plane lurches again, so violently Zoe nearly drops the book, but she doesn’t miss a beat. “ ‘When King Tutankhamun’s tomb was opened,’ ” she reads, “ ‘it contained trunks full of clothing, jars of wine, a golden boat, and a pair of sandals for walking in the sands of the afterworld.’ ”

My husband, Neil, leans over me to look out the window, but there is nothing to see. The sky is clear and cloudless, and below us there aren’t even any waves on the water.

“ ‘In the afterworld the deceased was judged by Anubis, a god with the head of a jackal,’ ” Zoe reads, “ ‘and his soul was weighed on a pair of golden scales.’ ”

I am the only one listening to her. Lissa, on the aisle, is whispering to Neil, her hand almost touching his on the armrest. Across the aisle, next to Zoe and
Egypt Made Easy
, Zoe’s husband is asleep and Lissa’s husband is staring out the other window and trying to keep his drink from spilling.

“Are you doing all right?” Neil asks Lissa solicitously.

“It’ll be exciting going with two other couples,” Neil said when he came up with the idea of our all going to Europe together. “Lissa and her husband are lots of fun, and Zoe knows everything. It’ll be like having our own tour guide.”

It is. Zoe herds us from country to country, reciting historical facts and exchange rates. In the Louvre, a French tourist asked her where the
Mona Lisa
was. She was thrilled. “He thought we were a tour group!” she said. “Imagine that!”

Imagine that.

“ ‘Before being judged, the deceased recited his confession,’ ” Zoe
reads, “ ‘a list of sins he had not committed, such as, I have not snared the birds of the gods, I have not told lies, I have not committed adultery.’ ”

Neil pats Lissa’s hand and leans over to me. “Can you trade places with Lissa?” Neil whispers to me.

I already have, I think. “We’re not supposed to,” I say, pointing at the lights above the seats. “The seat belt sign is on.”

He looks at her anxiously. “She’s feeling nauseated.”

So am I, I want to say, but I am afraid that’s what this trip is all about, to get me to say something. “Okay,” I say, and unbuckle my seat belt and change places with her. While she is crawling over Neil, the plane pitches again, and she half-falls into his arms. He steadies her. Their eyes lock.

“ ‘I have not taken another’s belongings,’ ” Zoe reads. “ ‘I have not murdered another.’ ”

I can’t take any more of this. I reach for my bag, which is still under the window seat, and pull out my paperback of Agatha Christie’s
Death on the Nile
. I bought it in Athens.

“About like death anywhere,” Zoe’s husband said when I got back to our hotel in Athens with it.

“What?” I said.

“Your book,” he said, pointing at the paperback and smiling as if he’d made a joke. “The title. I’d imagine death on the Nile is the same as death anywhere.”

“Which is what?” I asked.

“The Egyptians believed death was very similar to life,” Zoe cut in. She had bought
Egypt Made Easy
at the same bookstore. “To the ancient Egyptians the afterworld was a place much like the world they inhabited. It was presided over by Anubis, who judged the deceased and determined their fates. Our concepts of heaven and hell and of the Day of Judgment are nothing more than modern refinements on Egyptian ideas,” she said, and began reading out loud from
Egypt Made Easy
, which pretty much put an end to our conversation, and I still don’t
know what Zoe’s husband thought death would be like, on the Nile or elsewhere.

I open
Death on the Nile
and try to read, thinking maybe Hercule Poirot knows, but the flight is too bumpy. I feel almost immediately queasy, and after half a page and three more lurches I put it in the seat pocket, close my eyes, and toy with the idea of murdering another. It’s a perfect Agatha Christie setting. She always has a few people in a country house or on an island. In
Death on the Nile
they were on a Nile steamer, but the plane is even better. The only other people on it are the flight attendants and a Japanese tour group who apparently do not speak English or they would be clustered around Zoe, asking directions to the Sphinx.

The turbulence lessens a little, and I open my eyes and reach for my book again. Lissa has it.

She’s holding it open, but she isn’t reading it. She is watching me, waiting for me to notice, waiting for me to say something. Neil looks nervous.

“You were done with this, weren’t you?” she says, smiling. “You weren’t reading it.”

Everyone has a motive for murder in an Agatha Christie. And Lissa’s husband has been drinking steadily since Paris, and Zoe’s husband never gets to finish a sentence. The police might think he had snapped suddenly. Or that it was Zoe he had tried to kill and shot Lissa by mistake. And there is no Hercule Poirot on board to tell them who really committed the murder, to solve the mystery and explain all the strange happenings.

The plane pitches suddenly, so hard Zoe drops her guidebook, and we plunge a good five thousand feet before it recovers. The guidebook has slid forward several rows, and Zoe tries to reach for it with her foot, fails, and looks up at the seat belt sign as if she expects it to go off so she can get out of her seat to retrieve it.

Not after that drop, I think, but the seat belt sign pings almost immediately and goes off.

Lissa’s husband instantly calls for the flight attendant and demands another drink, but they have already gone scurrying back to the rear of the plane, still looking pale and scared, as if they expected the turbulence to start up again before they made it. Zoe’s husband wakes up at the noise and then goes back to sleep. Zoe retrieves
Egypt Made Easy
from the floor, reads a few more riveting facts from it, then puts it facedown on the seat and goes back to the rear of the plane.

I lean across Neil and look out the window, wondering what’s happened, but I can’t see anything. We are flying through a flat whiteness.

Lissa is rubbing her head. “I cracked my head on the window,” she says to Neil. “Is it bleeding?”

He leans over her solicitously to see.

I unsnap my seat belt and start to the back of the plane, but both bathrooms are occupied, and Zoe is perched on the arm of an aisle seat, enlightening the Japanese tour group. “The currency is in Egyptian pounds,” she says. “There are one hundred piasters in a pound.”

I sit back down.

Neil is gently massaging Lissa’s temple. “Is that better?” he asks.

I reach across the aisle for Zoe’s guidebook. “Must-See Attractions,” the chapter is headed, and the first one on the list is the Pyramids.

“Giza, Pyramids of. West bank of Nile, 9 mi. (15 km.) SW of Cairo. Accessible by taxi, bus, rental car. Admission L.E. 3. Comments: You can’t skip the Pyramids, but be prepared to be disappointed. They don’t look at all like you expect, the traffic’s terrible, and the view’s completely ruined by the hordes of tourists, refreshment stands, and souvenir vendors. Open daily.”

I wonder how Zoe stands this stuff. I turn the page to Attraction Number Two. It’s King Tut’s tomb, and whoever wrote the guidebook wasn’t thrilled with it, either. “Tutankhamun, Tomb of. Valley of the Kings, Luxor, 400 mi. (668 km.) south of Cairo. Three unimpressive rooms. Inferior wall paintings.”

There is a map, showing a long, straight corridor (labeled Corridor)
and the three unimpressive rooms opening one onto the other in a row—Anteroom, Burial Chamber, Hall of Judgment.

I close the book and put it back on Zoe’s seat. Zoe’s husband is still asleep. Lissa’s is peering back over his seat. “Where’d the flight attendants go?” he asks. “I want another drink.”

“Are you sure it’s not bleeding? I can feel a bump,” Lissa says to Neil, rubbing her head. “Do you think I have a concussion?”