True Love, the Sphinx, and Other Unsolvable Riddles

by Tyne O'Connell

  “That’s true,” Octavia acknowledged. “I hadn’t thought of that. You should have chased after Sam, Rosie. Maybe if you talk to Salah … ?”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  With that, Octavia jumped out of her bed and came over and climbed in with me for a cuddle. “That’s why you’re my best friend, Rosie. You’re the wisest, cleverest, most darling creature in the world.”

  And at that moment as the plan took shape in my head, I had to agree with her.

  • • •

  Artimis and Perdie were sitting alone when we arrived at breakfast, so we joined them. Perdie was braiding her hair as usual. Artimis grabbed us and said, “Perdie went to second base with Yo last night. I went to third with Astin.”

  Yuck!

  “Cool,” I said. I looked at Octavia and asked her if she wanted me to get her breakfast. Turning to look at the buffet, she spotted Sam and Salah filling their plates and nodded. “Thank you, darling.”

  Right, Rosie, this is it, I thought. Confrontation. You must speak to Salah and sort out this whole mess, I told myself as I hovered near the buffet. I tried to listen to what they were saying, but all I heard was silence.

  Something wasn’t right. I grabbed a few pastries and returned to the table where the girls were all laughing.

  “Oh, darling, is that all you got me? I’m famished!” Octavia cried, her lower lip curled like a little child’s. But as her eyes darted in the boys’ direction, I knew that what she was really saying was, “What are the boys talking about?”

  Before I could reply, Sam stormed past our table and left the restaurant, virtually knocking over a waiter carrying a large tray of cheeses.

  “Just a minute, I have to go to the loo,” I told Octavia, and raced out after Sam. The truth is, I had no idea what I was going to say to Sam, but I needed some answers if there was any chance of sorting out the four-way love square Octavia, Sam, Salah, and I had fallen into.

  “Great idea, darling. You go after Sam and give Salah a chance to speak to me on his own,” Octavia said. She really had no idea.

  “Hey Sam, wait,” I called as he flew down the stairs to reception. He didn’t seem to hear me. I couldn’t tell if he was intentionally snubbing me or genuinely hadn’t heard.

  After chasing him down the long, narrow corridor, I finally caught up with him as he was opening the door to his cabin. “Rosie? What’s up?” he asked as he turned to face me. He seemed genuinely surprised that I had been following him.

  I was a bit out of breath, and now that I was face-to-face with him I couldn’t for the life of me think of a thing to say. I just knew I had to say something. “Can I come in for a moment?” I asked.

  “Uh, maybe that’s not such a good idea. Pretty gross in here. You know, Salah’s socks.” He pinched his nose.

  “Oh, okay,” I agreed. “Look, do you have any idea what went on last …” I stopped short as I caught a glimpse of the interior of their room through the crack. I mean, it was just like all the other cabins except for one thing. There were hundreds—I’m not exaggerating—hundreds of small, brightly colored glass candleholders over every surface and large Egyptian-fabric-covered cushions thrown across the floor.

  I tried to get a better look but Sam pulled the door closed. “Sam? What was that?” I demanded.

  “What was what?”

  “All those candles and cushions,” I said. After years of being Octavia’s best friend I’ve learned a thing or two about dogged persistence. “Look Sam, I’m not an idiot. You know what I saw in there. It looked like a … like a … well, some sort of harem affair. What are you and Salah up to?” There were lots and lots of thoughts running riot in my head.

  Sam opened the door. “It has nothing to do with Salah.”

  “Then what?”

  “Wasted love. An exercise in futility by Sam, now showing on a Nile cruise near you. It was a stupid idea,” he explained.

  “I don’t understand. This was for Octavia?”

  “I was going to give her the scarab and the sphinx I got at the Valley of the Kings and Queens yesterday. Only then, Astin said I needed to set the scene. Hence the candles and cushions. Dumb, huh? I don’t know what I was thinking. I mean, why would a girl like Octavia …” His sentence trailed off again, and he ran his hand across his face as if trying to wake himself up from a dream. “I must have been crazy to think I had a chance.”

  He seemed so very young and vulnerable at that moment, and I felt so uncharacteristically strong and un-me. And I liked it. I took his hand, pulled him into the room, and put my hands on his shoulders. I was about his height in heels, thank goodness, or I would have felt like a dwarf talking to a giant. “Sam,” I said authoritatively.

  “Rosie,” he said, his mouth turning up in a small smile.

  “You love crazy, right?”

  He grinned and nodded.

  “Well, as the best friend of the craziest girl in the world, trust me, I know a thing or two about crazy. Crazy is a lot of hard work.” Then I pushed him and he fell back on the bed. “But mostly it’s worth it. That is, if you’re up for the challenge?”

  “Oh, I’m up for it!” he insisted.

  “If you want a chance with a girl like Octavia, you need to think carefully about two things. First, every boy wants to pull a girl like Octavia. So, Octavia expects to be chased and pursued and obsessed over. That’s all she knows. Next, think about why she’s so into Salah, when as far as I can see, he’s practically ignored her the entire time.”

  “So, what you’re saying is, I should ignore her?”

  “No. I’m just saying that you should think about those two things. I haven’t told you what you have to do yet.”

  He was gripped and even I was feeling caught up in the plan. “So, with every guy on the planet falling over themselves for Octavia, how many of them do you think take the time to really get to know her?” I said.

  Sam shrugged, but I could see his mind was turning this idea over.

  “Exactly. They’re too busy fighting off their competition to get inside her head and heart, too frantically obsessed to want to find out about the real Octavia.”

  “So, I should …”

  “Stop thinking about your competition, because you know what? You haven’t got any. So take the time, Sam. Take the time.”

  “Take the time,” he repeated.

  Chapter 13

  Sam

  The Feast of the Beautiful Meeting

  “So, we take the horse and carriage. In Egypt this is called caleche,” Mohammed explained once we were all gathered in reception.

  “Each caleche takes four peoples and will take you through the town and on to Edfu Temple. This is the second largest and most perfect preserved temple in all of Egypt. We do security check, then after we do a small blah, blah outside, not long because I know you English, you go a little crazy in the heat. Americans, you already crazy peoples.” Mohammed laughed and put on his Indiana Jones hat.

  “Then inside the temple, we study magnificence of the ancient Egyptians. But this temple has a roof. It’s very cold, so take a jacket. After two hours, we return and sail to Kom Ombo. Okay, any questions?”

  No one said anything.

  “So, four to a carriage.”

  Rosie and Octavia were ahead of us. Salah and I were at the back because all our boys had paired up with their girls. School trips are meant to be about hot girls in foreign countries, but somehow, Salah and I were turning into the Odd Couple. The only two guys who hadn’t paired off. But after Rosie’s talk that morning, I was more fired up than ever to make a move on Octavia. And that meant that Salah and I needed to join their caleche.

  Salah wasn’t fired up though, so I had to literally grab him by his suit lapel and drag him down the red-carpeted gangplank and out to the carriages. Each carriage had a brightly colored canopy, so I had to check inside to see who was sitting there.

  Eventually I found Octavia and Rosie in one of the front carriages. Unfortunately, Astin
and Artimis were already seated opposite them on a small bench seat behind the driver.

  “Hey dude, would you mind?” I asked, and Astin wasn’t the sort of guy you needed to ask twice. He and Artimis jumped out.

  “Darling,” Octavia said, only she wasn’t talking to me. I pushed Salah up into the carriage and I’d barely climbed in behind him when the driver flicked his whip and we were off. Rosie gave me a small smile of encouragement.

  We passed through a dusty, smelly, fly-ridden town built of mud brick and cement. I took some shots of plastic-sandaled feet walking along the dirt streets. Vendors selling vegetables, women carrying bags with boxes on their heads, and of course the standard donkey shots.

  “So, Octavia and I were wondering if photography was your thing, Sam?” Rosie asked.

  “We were?” Octavia exclaimed, clearly surprised.

  “Yeah,” I said, directing my answer to Octavia. “I’d like to have an exhibition of some of the shots I’ve taken here. I’m just not sure of my theme yet. Sometimes I think everything in Egypt is about color and then sometimes I think I should go for black and white or maybe sepia tones. It’s something about the ancient feel of the place, the timelessness of it all and then suddenly you see giant transformers taking electricity from the dam in Aswan up to Cairo. It’s the juxtaposition, know what I mean?”

  Octavia nodded vaguely. “Arty sort of stuff, you mean?” adding, “I prefer sunbathing to photography.” And then I was stumped for words about photography probably for the first time in my life. Salah ignored us both and turned to the driver to ask him something in Arabic.

  At Edfu we had to walk through a large parking lot filled with buses and wait in the heat while Mohammed dealt with the security. Policemen wielding AK-47s were out in force. Some of them looked pretty trigger-happy, too—like they’d been manning their post for years and were getting pissed at still never having had the opportunity to open fire.

  There was a long road of vendors selling galabias, belly-dance outfits, and other tourist junk, but we weren’t hassled too badly. Eventually we were asked to put our backpacks through the metal detectors and we walked through into the temple complex.

  Mohammed called out, “Nefertiti, follow me.”

  Without warning, Carol blew a whistle. Everyone around us panicked. Instantly the twitchy police were all over Carol like angry wasps. Every gun in the place was aimed at her head.

  Instead of falling to the ground like a normal person, Carol started crying, “Police brutality!”

  I guess Nigel saw his chance to step in and be the man of the moment, which was pretty laughable. “Look here, chaps. You’re terrifying this poor lady,” he squeaked. In spite of his attempt, a scuffle broke out and both Carol and Nigel were soon cuffed and led out of the complex at gunpoint by more than a dozen overly excited cops.

  None of us knew what to do. Only Mohammed seemed satisfied with this turn of events. Mr. Bell and Ms. Doyle looked less sure. “I think that was a little extreme,” Doyle muttered almost to herself. She didn’t seem bothered enough to do anything about the situation any more than Mr. Bell did—though he offered her a drink from the bottle in his hat.

  “It’s okay,” Salah assured the group. “They probably haven’t been arrested, just asked to leave. They don’t want troublemakers at the temples. Any nonsense, and visitors are automatically ejected.”

  Mohammed gathered us all together and we headed toward the entrance of the temple. The wall was covered with an amazing carving of a battle scene, and was about a hundred and fifty feet high. I took some random shots as I walked along. Feet, backpacks, tourists’ faces, hieroglyphics, police, guns, and Octavia.

  Mohammed had just started his talk when Salah headed off alone into the complex. Octavia followed him and Rosie gave me a look that made it clear I should follow Octavia.

  I soon found Salah in the courtyard by a statue of Horus, the falcon-headed god. He didn’t notice me, so once I’d established that Octavia wasn’t with him, I slipped out and continued my search for her through the incredible maze of courtyards and chambers in the complex.

  I eventually found Octavia in a chapel by herself, leaning against a pillar. She looked like an Egyptian goddess with her black hair streaming down her back. She was dressed in a long, flowing white dress. I took a shot of her looking up at the sunlight that filtered in from the gap between the walls and the roof. She seemed so much a part of the fabric of the building that I was startled when she finally looked at me.

  “Oh, it’s you. I was looking for Salah. Have you seen him, darling?” she asked quietly.

  “No,” I lied, my heart sinking a little. How could she still want Salah?

  She didn’t move but she didn’t look at me again either. Eventually she said, “I wanted him to find me in here,” she explained. “This is where Hathor would come to spend a fortnight with her husband Horus every year. There were the maddest ceremonies associated with it. It was called the Feast of the Beautiful Meeting. I feel like it’s my story. Now the only meetings going on are up there,” she mused, pointing at the ceiling, which was crammed with pigeon nests. A pigeon flew in and darted straight back out.

  “I wanted him to find me here,” she repeated quickly. “I wanted a beautiful meeting,” she concluded, still fixing her eyes on the ceiling.

  “I found you,” I said.

  She smiled and moved away from the pillar. “Do you think he’ll find me here?”

  “He’s probably on his way,” I told her, because I was afraid that if I said anything else, she might leave and I would never have time alone with her again. Rosie’s advice about getting to know the real Octavia was echoing in my head.

  A crowd of Japanese tourists entered a few moments later and I took Octavia’s hand and led her through the crowd and over to a narrow staircase, which seemed to lead up to somewhere. Octavia sat on one of the cold steps and hugged her knees. I was used to the wild extravert, but this subdued and vulnerable Octavia was intriguing. I needed to find out more about this girl.

  I sat beside her, my own leg touching hers in the tightness of the stairwell. We sat silently as group after group and guide came in and did their thing. But we didn’t say a word.

  Finally our group arrived. Salah wasn’t with them. Mohammed began his spiel about the Beautiful Meeting. “It was here, after the priests had dressed the statue of Horus and fed him and given him some entertainment, they took his statue up those stairs for the sex union with Hathor.”

  “It’s always sex, sex, sex with you, Mohammed!” Octavia exclaimed to the delighted surprise of everyone as she suddenly jumped up from next to me, revealing herself to the group. I wanted to grab her, to hold on to the Octavia she’d just revealed to me. Not the wild Octavia she seemed to think she needed to be.

  Mohammed blushed and fumbled with his hat in embarrassment. “Okay, we are off!” he announced, and we were rushed off back to the waiting caleches.

  “I wonder what could have happened to Salah,” Octavia asked our group.

  “Oh, he went back to the boat with Carol and Nigel,” Rosie replied.

  “Typical,” Octavia said, rolling her eyes at me.

  I looked up at Rosie and she winked.

  Chapter 14

  Octavia

  No wonder it’s always down to the girls to do the pulling.

  We were all gathered on the pool deck, lazily sipping on drinks and eating sweets and not really saying anything much. It was nice just enjoying the cool breeze and watching life on the Nile as we passed by.

  Salah was wearing a cool white double-cuffed shirt, unbuttoned, which revealed his lovely brown tummy, which was positively rippling with muscles. He was maddeningly fit and not focusing on me. But for the first time, I really didn’t care.

  I mean, obviously it was mortifying that everyone—apart from Rosie—seemed to have paired up while I remained resolutely unpulled. Thank God there was no one from Tatler there to witness my loveless state. I would be laughed out of
my mad little world.

  I was so worried that Sam would say something about how I’d waited for Salah in the chamber of the Beautiful Meeting that I clung to them both at lunch. Afterward, I was desperate for the loo but I couldn’t afford to leave my post. I couldn’t risk Sam saying something that would make me appear desperately lovesick for Salah. Which I so wasn’t. Anymore.

  In fact, I was beginning to wish I’d never fancied Salah in the first place. Why had he kissed me when he rescued me from the Elderly Cruisers? Why had he let me put my head on his lap during the movie? On the other hand, Rosie would never have the confidence to pull Sam and have a lovely holiday romance if I didn’t show her the way with Salah. And if anyone deserved a lovely holiday romance, it was Rosie. It was frustrating beyond belief.

  I liked Sam. He was definitely good enough for Rosie. He’d been adorable to me all day. I’d told Rosie how kind he’d been that morning, so she wouldn’t get jealous and think I was moving in on her boy, because I absolutely didn’t see him in that way. No, Sam was a mate and nothing more. I loved that he was so much fun to hang out with. That afternoon Sam had gone swimming, and held me on his shoulders so I could dive off. We were just mucking about, but then I’d noticed Rosie watching us from the shade and I pulled myself out of the pool. I didn’t want her getting the wrong idea about my feelings for Sam.

  We pulled our clothes back on after we dried off so we could sit on the sofas and drink tea, but Sam’s shiny black hair was still mussed up, which made him look quite rugged. I don’t normally go for the rugged type, but for a split second I thought, I definitely could. Not that I’d ever steal a boy from Rosie. I’m so not that sort of girl. The thought hadn’t crossed my mind.

  Well, barely at all.

  • • •

  The first plastic-wrapped bundle came hurtling through a gap in the canopy around five, followed by another and then another. They kept coming at us like missiles. Some fell in the pool, some hit us on the head, some just kerplopped at our feet. We could hear yelling from the Nile and everyone looked over the side of the boat to see what was going on.