"Hence all those electrical cables in the lobby," I said.
"Yes. It's a bit of a mess, I know. But if you still want to attend, I'm sure you can. A couple of people canceled at the last minute. You probably got their room if you booked recently. We've already guaranteed the numbers for the meals and everything, so you could just take their places."
"Sure, we want to come," Moira said, starting to fill in the registration form and gesturing to me to do the same. When we'd finished and handed over some cash, Brenda rose to go as a rather attractive man in khaki pants and shirt rose from his table across the room and passed near ours.
"Hello, Brenda," he said.
Brenda merely nodded in his direction and turned back to us rather more quickly than normal politeness would permit. "I'll be back in a minute with your name badges and tickets for the cocktail party, which is just getting underway," she said. "Your first pisco sour is on the house."
"What sour?" Moira said after Brenda has bustled off.
"Pisco. Distilled from grapes. Very popular South American cocktail."
"Hmm," she said. "Does it have a little umbrella in it?"
"I don't think so," I said.
"Well, that's something. One of the things on my 'never again' list is drinks with umbrellas in them. Do you think they'd make me a very dry, very cold martini instead?"
"What was that about savoring the experience?" I said.
"You have a point. Sour, I'm thinking, is not just the pisco, but also Brenda when it comes to that rather attractive man who just walked by."
"She was a little abrupt, wasn't she?"
"Maybe we will see him at the cocktail party, and we can make nice," she said. "He looked interesting."
"Not fascinating?" I said. She reached across the table and pinched my arm.
Dinner finished, we headed out to the patio and the welcome cocktail party for this little conference to which we seemed to have managed to attach ourselves. The pisco sours arrived quickly, milky white and frothy in tall slim champagne glasses. Moira sipped hers carefully. "Yum," she pronounced at last. "I may have to have more than one."
My first impression of the congress was that it was a little unusual. It may have been a matter of interpretation, but when I hear the word congress, with a capital C, attached to an event like this, I expect a rather large crowd, maybe hundreds of people, with several tracks of programming, and huge banquets and all. There couldn't have been more than forty or fifty people at the opening reception for the First Annual Moai Congress, including the mayor of Rapa Nui, who gave a very nice speech welcoming us all, and his modest entourage.
Even so, for a few minutes we stood like wallflowers on the fringe of the event, but soon Dave Maddox came over with a "Hey girls," and we were drawn into the crowd. Jasper whatever his name was who swam with icebergs came over to shake hands and welcome us to the conference. He was attractive in a rather contrived way—perfect haircut, nicely pressed trousers, and I think he was wearing makeup, although maybe that was for filming. In any event, he didn't linger long. His target was quite obviously a woman in a saffron-colored sarong outfit that showed lots of skin. I swear she wasn't wearing a stitch under it. "That has to be Hottie Matu'a," I said to Moira.
We were introduced to a young man in his late twenties whose name was Brian Murphy, not Bob as Dave had insisted. At first I thought Brian was rather rude, peering as he did at the breasts of every woman in the place, but I soon figured out it was our name tags, hung on little strings around our necks, that he was interested in. Brian, it seems, was an archaeology graduate who'd been supporting himself as a computer programmer but was there to find himself a job in his chosen field. "I'm Birdman," he whispered conspiratorially.
"What?" I said.
"Sorry," he said. "Not one of the maniacs, I guess." I was tempted to say that if I stayed with this group for more than a day or two I most certainly would be.
I then made conversation with a Chilean by the name of Enrique Gonzales who had brought an English grammar book to the party. Enrique's family, loyal to Salvador Allende, had fled Chile for Russia when General Augusto Pinochet brutally took power and established a military dictatorship that was to last almost twenty-five years. Enrique had left as a child and returned as an adult. "We will speak English, please," he said. "For practice. I came home to make study as tourist guide. I am fluent in Russian, and so I wait for Russian tourists. How many Russians do you think have come here in the last three years?"
"I have no idea?" I said.
"Guess, please," he said.
"A thousand," I said.
"There are no Russian tourists coming to Chile, maybe only three in two years," he said. "So now I learn English and make specialty of Rapa Nui for tourists. Most Chileans do not come to Easter Island. It is too far. So this will be for me a specialization."
"Good for you," I said. "Do you know all about Rapa Nui?"
"No. That is why I come here," he said. "To learn." I thought this was refreshing, someone who knew as little as I did, but this moment of camaraderie was not to last long. "I wanted very much to be Enrique-Mau," he said. "You know, like ariki man, the rapanui term for king, and my name together. But someone else had it already. So I am Tongenrique. Is also good, no?"
"Fascinating," I said.
Seth, the history teacher from Albuquerque and expert in rongorongo, came over, and he and Moira were soon engaged in deep conversation. From it I decided that rongorongo was some kind of script that had recently been deciphered, at least in part, and that it was usually carved on wooden tablets. I may have been wrong. Tired of pretending to know what I didn't, I wandered off to admire the view beyond the patio. It was now dark, but I could still see a line of surf where the sea met the coast, and the shadow of steep hills beyond the lights of the hotel. Away from the lights, the southern sky was filled with stars.
"Lost?" a voice behind me said. I turned to see the attractive man who had been snubbed by Brenda. "I see they let you in. Dave Maddox has been lobbying hard on your behalf."
"My friend Moira's behalf really," I said.
"So you didn't get an invitation?"
"We didn't," I said. "And you?"
"I got an invitation, as did a number of my colleagues. Most of them declined, but I wouldn't miss this for anything." He laughed as he said it. "I'm Rory Carlyle. I'm currently teaching in Australia, but working here for a few months. I and some students of mine are doing an archaeological survey of Poike. I'm giving a talk about it tomorrow, relating local myths to actual archaeological data."
I introduced myself and told him how interesting I thought his work would be, not mentioning, of course, that I didn't know what a Poike was.
"Oh, it is," he said. "But I just had to tear myself away to hear the latest theories." There was a hint of something in his voice, I'm not sure what. Laughter at best, but more likely sarcasm. "So you have an interest in Rapa Nui?" he probed. "Some particular aspect of it?"
Many possible answers to that question flitted through my brain. I knew Moira would not be pleased, but I couldn't stop myself. "You know what?" I said. "I know nothing about this place you couldn't get from a documentary on television or in a guidebook except that I haven't read the guidebook because I didn't have the time to buy one, and Moira won't share hers yet. But I've wanted to see Rapa Nui and those wonderful stone carvings my whole life, and the opportunity presented itself. I have no idea what I'm doing at an academic congress. I could be standing on this Poike thing you mentioned right this minute, and I wouldn't know it. Furthermore, I have only the haziest idea that I may have seen Jasper what's his name on television once. I think he was riding a camel somewhere. There, I've said it."