More Bitter Than Death

by Dana Cameron

  I nodded. “What was it like before? The display, I mean.”

  “Nice, real nice. It had a couple of replica pots—you know, based on the fragments that were found—and some nice gold coins and a gold chain. I guess it was meant to be a shipwreck that was found off the Carolinas, but I don’t know for sure. Everything was fake, of course, except for a few of the actual sherds themselves, but it’s a shame that someone had to go and ruin all the guy’s hard work, you know?”

  “Yeah. When’d it happen?”

  “At night, Wednesday night, before everything got started. The cops found the door was forced open, but nothing else was taken. We’re not stupid enough to leave anything valuable in here, that’s the funny thing. Someone went to a lot of trouble for about ten bucks worth of costume jewelry and some pots they could have found at any tourist shop.”

  “Pity. Thanks,” I said, turning to leave.

  “Hey, you don’t want to check out my table?” He held his hands out invitingly. “Got some great stuff here…”

  I looked over at the table full of display models of metal detectors and catalogues, and shook my head.

  “Come on,” he cajoled. “There are plenty of legitimate archaeologists who use these, to good effect.”

  I kept shaking my head. “No, thanks. I know, but it’s kind of a personal thing with me. Those things give me the willies. Take it easy.”

  I left the dealer with a puzzled look on his face, and went out to the lobby to find my lunch.

  After I bought my boxed lunch, I noticed a backlit, built-in display case with a collection of blue-and-white ceramics in the lobby. I slowed down to check it out. Bait for historical archaeologists. There were five shelves of plates, saucers, cups, and service ware, like platters and a teapot; a card said that it had belonged to one of the families who’d owned the tavern. I glanced at it for a moment, and thought about how an archaeologist moves from a tiny sherd of one cup, something that may be part of an entire set, to thinking about how a person incorporated that item into everyday rituals, fraught with meaning. There was more to drinking tea than satisfying thirst, there were political and social and economic realities at play, and we had to get at all that culture from a collection of broken sherds. After another moment, I frowned briefly, and then turned when I heard my name.

  “Emma, over here!” Chris was calling me. He, Lissa, Lissa’s friend Gennette Welles, Sue, Carla, and Jay had snagged chairs around an ottoman near a large planter and were eating their lunches. “Jay’s got a question for you.”

  “Shoot.” I squeezed in between Chris and Lissa.

  “I just saw you looking at the collection over there,” Jay said. “What’d you notice about it?”

  “Uh, not much. Why?”

  “Just humor me. What did you see?”

  “Well, most of it was pretty ordinary blue-and-white whiteware, Staffordshire, most was a little earlier than mid-nineteenth-century. There was one piece of Chinese export porcelain in there, a cup, which might have been a present or something—it was a lot nicer, higher style than the rest of it and the pattern was different, of course. The Staffordshire material was imitating the Asian export porcelain patterns.”

  “Okay, what else?”

  I looked at Jay. “Why don’t you tell me what you’re looking for, and maybe that would help.”

  “We’ve got a little derby going, seeing how many observations each of our colleagues made walking by there,” he explained.

  “Fine, whatever. What else? Um, there was an odd number of cups to saucers, and there were fewer of them than plates. There was one piece where the pattern was messed up—the piece of inked paper that was set down onto the unfired clay must have wrinkled. There was an odd-sized plate in there, looks like a later addition to the collection, or it might have been one left over from a complete set of smaller plates.”

  “Nothing else?” Jay was disappointed. “Duncan Thayer got one more.”

  I couldn’t tell whether that was just a simple statement of fact or a goad. “One of the cups had a repaired handle.”

  “Duncan didn’t get that,” Jay said, “but he did notice that one of the plates was a different pattern.”

  “Right, most of them were a pastoral scene—cows, pastures, shepherdesses, whathaveyou—and there was one of a Gothic architecture scene. Later in period. I said there was a later one.”

  “But you only mentioned the pattern after I mentioned that Duncan saw it,” Jay said, shaking his head. He turned to Chris. “Sorry, man. Pay up.”

  “Hang on a second,” Chris said, smiling. “Emma, why didn’t you mention the pattern?”

  “Because that style of ware, well, it belonged to a middle-class family, right? If a piece was broken or lost, they just replaced it. In those days, it didn’t matter that it was a different pattern, it mattered that it was blue.”

  “See, Jay? You pay up. She saw the difference and added one factoid to the pile.”

  “Man.” Jay looked like he was about to protest, caught my eye, and reached for his wallet. “I was set up. It just ain’t fair.”

  I stuck out my tongue at him. Serves him right for betting on…against me.

  “It would be more fair if you started betting on the sure things, and left the flashy long-shots alone,” Chris said as he pocketed his money. “It’s like taking candy from a baby.” He smiled at me. “I believe I owe you a drink, m’dear.”

  “I’ll take you up on that later. I just want my lunch now.”

  It was strange to see so many of my friends together again, I thought, as I dug into my boxed lunch. Usually we scattered to the four corners of any conference after the first night.

  “Before you got here, we were talking about the latest ‘live like the old days’ reality television,” Lissa said. She bit into her sandwich with gusto.

  It was then that I understood why they were all still together. Taking bets and eating and talking about television kept you from thinking about death and gunshots. It had to do with the same reasons that conversations were muted in the hallways, and other people were moving around in small herds too. Everyone was looking for comfort, for answers, and if they couldn’t get them, then they’d make do with physical closeness.

  “What I can’t get is that people think that they’re actually going to live like people in the seventeenth century,” Carla said. “Like they’re suddenly going to be possessed of the historical spirit and fall into ‘thee’s’ and ‘thou’s’ and not notice any difference. No cards either, Jay. No basketball, no Vegas. Wouldn’t that be a pisser?”

  “They don’t think, that’s the problem.” Jay ignored Carla. “They just want to be on television.”

  “Whatever for?” I asked. “I can’t imagine anything less appealing.”

  “People think they’re famous if they’re on television.”

  “Um, yum, erm!” Lissa was waving her hand, chewing furiously.

  “Lissa, calm the hell down,” Gennette said. She was a willowy dark-skinned woman with close-cropped hair and big brown eyes. “You’re going to choke, and then I’ll laugh.”

  Lissa finally swallowed. “That will be the day! You’re too darn serious as it is. I was going to say those guys on TV think they’ll find a simpler life!”

  Gennette made a face. “Give me a break. I mean, even without the bland diet, the back-breaking work, the religious restrictions—”

  “They’re surprised at having to go to the bathroom outside, or in a bucket,” Chris said, shaking his head. “Talk about forgetting the essentials!”

  “Not everyone is into inflicting the past on themselves like you and Nell are,” Carla said. “Reenacting? I don’t get it.”

  “I know, and Nell knows, and you all know, that we’re not actually living eighteenth-century military life, any more than those guys on television,” Chris said. “Dental care, diet, disease—our immune systems probably couldn’t handle a fraction of the parasites that they did two hundred years ago.”


  “Excuse me! Eating, here,” Carla said disgustedly.

  I looked at my shrimp salad sandwich doubtfully. The bitten ends of the little shrimp were just too suggestive. Ah well, it was just words. I took another big bite. Not bad, for bugs.

  “You know what I mean,” Chris said. “The physical differences aside, let’s not forget the fact that culturally speaking, we’re from different worlds. Same language, maybe, but different outlooks altogether.”

  “Two cultures separated by a common language,” Sue said.

  “Look at the differences between Americans and Canadians,” Carla said.

  “Well, Canadians are just funny Americans,” Jay added. Carla kicked at his ankle; he dodged her foot but sloshed his drink all over his lap.

  “You know, you’re right,” she said. “That was pretty funny.”

  “Nell and I don’t imagine that we’re becoming people from the seventeen sixties,” Chris continued doggedly. “But we are learning about some of the things that make us different, learning how people would have had to think. Gives some insight into what we find in the field.”

  “I think those shows are much better as laboratory cases of how twenty-first-century people adapt to adverse conditions,” I said. “But I still don’t get the desire to be on television.”

  “Why not?” Lissa said.

  “For a start, I don’t like the idea of losing my privacy like that. As much as I really don’t want to see other people having hissy-fits on television, I don’t want my own aired either.”

  “The Puritans would have asked you what you have to hide, if you want that much privacy,” Lissa said.

  “Sure. If you’re not doing something you shouldn’t, there’s no reason to want to be alone. Fortunately, I live in a time where people are aware that rats, stressed out and overcrowded, will go bonky and eat their young or each other. So I’ll take my locked doors and drawn curtains and no neighbors, thanks all the same.”

  “Hey, don’t knock the Puritans. They slept a dozen to a bed, so they weren’t all bad,” Lissa said. “But seriously, Emma, the Puritans were your people. So what have you got to hide behind all those curtains?” There was an edge to the way she spoke, like she was trying to drum up anything that would be a distraction. “And why do you scorn the light of the media?”

  I was growing annoyed with her. “They weren’t my people, Lissa. And I haven’t got anything to hide.”

  “Oh, come on,” she persisted. “Everyone does.”

  “Where you off to next, Emma?” Jay interrupted. He seemed as frustrated with Lissa’s persistence as I.

  “Session on immigration,” I said, grateful for the cover he provided me. “One of my students is presenting.”

  “Cool, I’ll go with you.”

  “Me too,” said Scott. “But I got to run to my room first. You guys come with me.”

  “Fine, as long as I can use your bathroom,” I said.

  We went up to Scott’s room on the fourth floor. He was about halfway down the hallway, and when we went in, I was hit with a strong scent of locker room. And it wasn’t a locker room that had been cleaned any time recently.

  “Jeez, Scott!” I said. “This place reeks!”

  He looked around. “It’s not that bad.”

  “Trust me.” I spotted the problem. “You’ve got underwear on the radiator?”

  He looked sheepish. “I didn’t think they’d dry fast enough, hanging in the bathroom.”

  I realized that he said that he still had no luggage with him. Based on the implications of this, I decided that the conversation needed to stop right here.

  Jay, however, wasn’t so discreet. “So you’re freeballing today?”

  “Jay!” Scott turned scarlet, and whipped around to look at me. I shrugged; I’d heard of men’s body parts and what happened when all the laundry was in the hamper. “What do you want, man? It was either go commando while these things dry or get a case of the itch. It’s not like you never got into a jam and—”

  That was too much reality for me. “Excuse me, I need to be out of here,” I said, heading for the bathroom. “Scott, you could at least get them off the radiator.”

  “It’s not the shorts, Em. It’s the rest of my clothes smelling up the place while I’m in bed. The heat doesn’t help, and my deodorant was in my suitcase.”

  I shut the door as Jay informed Scott that he should raid the sundries shop in the lobby. I tried not to listen as Scott said he didn’t want to spend the extra money when his stuff might show up at any moment, and when did Jay, borrowing Chris’s money, last I saw, suddenly become so willing to spend money? I sighed, finished up quickly, and returned to the room before their tempers could fray any further.

  With as little stuff as Scott had of his own things, the place was a tip. Housekeeping hadn’t been in yet—always a hazard with the irregular schedule of a conference—and there were three trays with leftovers adding to the smell.

  “What, did you have a party after the cops were done with you all?” Jay asked, looking around with interest. Then his expression changed to hurt. “You didn’t get another game going and not invite me, did you?”

  “No, course not. A couple of us ordered snacks last night. I guess we weren’t as hungry as we thought,” he answered, trying in vain to cover up a half-eaten burger that was not aging well in the warm room.

  “You know, you can put this stuff outside, and they’ll come and get it,” I said.

  “I meant to, but I got out of bed because of Garrison and had no time.”

  “Who’d you have up here, anyway?” Jay asked, interestedly. “We coulda got a game going.”

  “Just some guys,” Scott said, coloring. “I gotta go to the head.”

  Jay and I looked for places to sit and wait, when Scott yelled, “I’m going to be in here for a while.”

  “For Christ’s sake,” Jay muttered. He hollered to Scott, “I’m going to run down the hall to my room. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  He left, and I tried not to think about what kind of orgy had been going on here. A couple of guys, let off the leash, come back after partying hard. Order some room service, are too drunk to eat, all the while, Scott’s lingerie was drying into a husk on the radiator. But Scott hadn’t admitted who was up here…and one of the glasses had lipstick on it.

  The phone rang. “You want me to get it?” I shouted.

  “Yeah, would you?”

  “Scott Tomberg’s room,” I said.

  “Who the hell is this?” said an irate female voice.

  “This is Emma Fielding. Scott can’t come to the phone now.”

  She calmed down right away. “Hey, Em, it’s Cathy.”

  I knew Scott’s wife from way back. “Hey, Cath. Scott’s going to be a minute. You want to call back?”

  “No, I can hang on. How’s it going?”

  “Uh…everyone’s a little stir crazy. What with the weather and all.”

  “I meant, since they found out about Garrison.”

  “Okay, I guess. People are pretty sad, which is kind of a surprise to me.”

  Cathy laughed, and it was an ugly sound. “Surprise to me too. Maybe they’re just sorry that they didn’t get to him first.”

  I shrugged, and then realized that she couldn’t see me. “I thought I was in the minority, as far as the disliking Garrison camp is going.”

  “Oh, hell, everyone gets ennobled when they’re dead, didn’t you know that? Everyone forgets all the bad stuff and gets all sentimental and all that crap. It’s just like listening to a presidential funeral. Remember Nixon? You’d have thought Watergate never happened. I’m just glad for Scott’s sake that the old bastard’s dead.”

  But Scott had seemed as distressed as anyone by Garrison’s death. “I got the impression that Scott had put a lot of his experiences with Garrison behind him. He’s never spoken a word against him.”

  “That’s men for you. Trying to make like it never happened, like it wasn’t as bad as it was. Ty
pical. Man, I was just dating him at the time, but he and that other guy he’s friends with—actually, you might know Duncan Thayer—they used to talk up some serious violence. Bad craziness, like what you could do to someone with woodworking tools.” She laughed. “It was like a game, with them, almost. Killing Garrison inventively was like a sport. Get him good and toasted sometime, and ask him about Plan B, the one with the c-clamps and the auger.”

  “Uh, maybe I’ll give that a miss.” I heard water running in the bathroom. “Okay, I think he’s coming now. Scott, phone!”

  He took the handset. “Hey, hon. Yeah, I was in the can. I’m running late, can I call you later? Greatloveyoubye.” He turned to me. “Let’s go get Jay and get this show on the road.”

  We walked down the hall, and Scott began to bang on the door to room four-twelve. “Open up, Jay. Let’s get moving.”

  Jay opened the door, looking annoyed as he finished a phone call: “Yeah, Salt Lake, by sixteen. Gotta go, man.” He glared at Scott. “Like I’m the one who’s been holding us up?”

  “What can I say? You gotta go, you gotta go.” Suddenly, Scott pushed his way into the room. “Hey, you got that paper you promised me? Can I get it now, while we’re both sober and thinking of it?”

  “We’re running behind,” Jay said.

  “Then stop arguing and get moving, asshole.”

  “Hang on.” Jay sorted through a bunch of papers, colorful flyers from the book room advertising books that were available at a discount, and the usual collection of coupons for local establishments that we couldn’t visit until the snow had been plowed away.

  Jay’s room was better than Scott’s, but only by degree. It wasn’t underwear, but pants and socks on the radiator, and a single tray was on the desk with the papers. A few more personal items—after all, Jay had his suitcase—but most of these were stashed away. One drawer was closed on a pair of underpants, tidy-whiteys. What one did learn from visiting one’s friends’ rooms, I thought. Mostly more than I wanted to know.