Channeling Cleopatra by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough Page A

specimen of the
truly decadent American woman with all of the wild and crazy
privileges allowed the species, was rather awestricken. Clearly, as
the aunts had seen from their hiding places the night Leda arrived,
even her own father approved of her lifestyle and behavior and
accompanied her on her adventures, so she was a nice girl, despite
her otherwise scandalous behavior. Leda suspected she gave them
something to fantasize about. They didn't seem to get out much.
    However, when she and Gabriella returned
from setting up the beluga to collect her own belongings, a
delegation awaited her. The aunts and a couple of female cousins
were dressed with their head scarves pinned securely beneath their
chins, and each one insisted on carrying some item of Leda's
belongings, no matter how small. Then they all piled into the same
taxi Gabriella had been using all along, which turned out to belong
to Mohammed. A short time later, they exited the cab like a line of
graceful and noisy native bearers and wended their way to her new
room at the Cecil, where the bed, the chairs, and the television
were all duly tested by the family. The aunts liked the room but
were chilled by the air-conditioning, which they disdained,
chattering among themselves.
    Leda felt like she could finally breathe for
the first time since she'd arrived, but Gabriella said, "They fear
you will catch cold. It is better you should acclimate yourself,
they think."
    "Tell them I'll turn it off before I get
frostbite," Leda said.
    This required some explanation from
Gabriella, but once the joke was understood, everybody laughed,
then departed to leave Leda in peace for her third night in
Alexandria.
     
     

CHAPTER 7
     
    By the time the first
tremor came, Leda felt like the whole excavation could use a shaking up.
Unwilling to stay cooped up in the windowless lab, however cool,
while the science and exploration went on in the harbor bed, Leda
had set out to charm all and sundry. She introduced herself to
Namid and actually apologized for putting him out on the day of her
arrival with her inopportune phone call. She used her best phone
sex voice and her eyes to full effect. He wasn't as receptive as he
would have been if she looked as she had twenty years earlier, but
he did make a grab at her ass when she was bent over the
scaffolding looking at the carving on a stone emerging from the
filth on the harbor floor.
    She didn't even break his
hand. Duke was impressed, which pleased her. He had been her main
tutor when it came to figuring out how to turn on the charm, but
she wasn't about to tell him that. "You'd better watch it, Kid, or
you'll get the rep for being a team player," he teased her one
evening when they were sipping nice cold brews on the lanai that was part
of her hotel suite. He preferred staying in the barracks with the
other unattached men. He could keep an eye on things better from
there, he said. She didn't have anything except the equipment to
keep an eye on, herself, and he posted a guard on the beluga when
she was away, so she didn't worry about it.
    "Well, all those years in
the Navy teach you nothing if not how to kiss up and worm your way
into the good graces of total creeps," she said with a shrug.
"Besides, I am a
team player; we both are. We're just not saying whose team we're
on."
    She kissed up with a vengeance, begging for
the shittiest jobs and pleading her ignorance often, while still
performing the hard, dull work she was given with meticulous
competence. Meanwhile, she spent a lot of time listening to people
young enough to be sure they had all the answers pontificate for
hours about the subjects of their theses—usually the diving
expeditions conducted in the harbor's waters a couple of decades
ago.
    It wasn't all bad. After the initial
complaints from her arthritic joints, which she medicated and
ignored, as usual, she actually began to feel better. Maybe it was
because she was doing something that she'd always wanted to do and
her mind