"Sure, why not?" Abe said, and then held up the sack Leon had left behind. "Don’t forget your fish paste."
"There’s an old story," Abe said, as Leon, clutching his paper bag, shut the door none too gently behind him. "Skolnick borrows a kettle from Mandlebaum, and when he brings it back, Mandlebaum says, ‘Look, there’s a big hole in this kettle; how am I supposed to use it anymore? You got to give me another one.’ Skolnick says no he won’t, so they argue about it, and finally they agree to go in front of the rabbi to settle it. You know this story?"
"Does a horse in a bathtub come into it?"
"No, that’s a different story. In this one, they go in front of the rabbi, and here’s what Skolnick tells him: ‘In the first place, Rabbi, it’s a lie that I borrowed a kettle from Mandlebaum. Never did I borrow anything from him. In the second place, the kettle had a hole in it already when he lent it to me. And in the third place, it was in perfect condition when I gave it back to him. So you can see I’m completely innocent. Don’t blame me.’"
Gideon laughed as he finished his coffee. He went to a sink in the corner to rinse both cups. "It sounds like Leon’s story all right: In the first place I never found a femur; in the second place, if I did, I don’t remember; and in the third place, I only thought I found it-it was really a steatite carving."
"And in the fourth place," Abe said, stretching, his hands clasped behind his neck, "it must be Frawley who made the mistake in the first place, so don’t blame me."
The find card was lying on the table. Gideon picked it up, read it once more, and waved it gently back and forth. "You know, Abe, I’m not sure what this is about, but something tells me it’s important."
"Me, too. I agree with you a hundred percent. There’s funny business, all right, only what it is I don’t know."
Gideon looked at his watch. "Almost one o’clock. I’m going to go down the hill and have lunch with Julie. And I think I ought to drop by the Cormorant and talk to Nate about this."
"Nate? I wish you luck. Twice I tried to talk to him yesterday, just to cheer him up, and he wouldn’t even come to the door." He shook his head worriedly. "All day long he sits in his room and sulks. They bring him his meals, which he doesn’t eat."
"Well, it’s easy to understand."
"Sure, but healthy it’s not. Nathan’s got a depressive side to him, you know that? Maybe even melancholic. Healthy," he repeated darkly, "it’s not."
SIXTEEN
But Nate, if he didn’t look precisely healthy, was far from melancholic when Gideon saw him next, and he was certainly not sulking in his room or refusing to eat. He was, in fact, at a table in the George, with the scant remains of a wedge of pork pie in front of him, while the barmaid was exchanging the empty, foam-webbed pint glass on his table for a second one brimming with dark, creamy stout. There was also a nearly empty highball glass before him. Flushed and disheveled, he leered and mumbled at the waitress, who gave him the blind smile reserved for unwelcome attentions from such patrons and hurried away.
This was all startlingly un-Natelike behavior. As often as the two them had huddled over mugs of weak beer in their graduate-student days, Gideon had never seen him drink enough to get sloppy. For a moment, Gideon, coming through the door with Julie, stared. Nate stared blearily back.
"Hey, Gid! Come on over. Buy you a drink. Bring the foxy lady."
Gideon hesitated, and then began to steer Julie toward his table. "That’s Nate Marcus. I’d like to talk to him."
"That’s Nate Marcus? The intense, dogged scientist I’ve been hearing about?"
"In the flesh, and stewed to the gills."
The closer they came, the tighter he seemed. Sweating and red-eyed, he wavered as he leaned forward to push out a chair for Julie, and he moved with a drunk’s exaggerated slow motion, as if his own chair was balanced precariously on a tightrope instead of sitting firmly on the sturdy old floor of the George.
"What are you drinking?" His speech was slow too, and overly precise. He’d been drinking, it appeared, for quite a while.
"Nothing, thanks. We just came in for some lunch. Julie, this is Nate Marcus. Nate, this is my wife, Julie."
"What do you mean, nothing? How often do you get offered a drink by an old buddy you just helped crucify?" He made an ugly, rattling, laughing sound.
Gideon sighed. It didn’t seem too promising. "I think maybe we’d better talk another time." He began to get up.
"Wait, hold it… please." Nate’s hand pawed flabbily at his arm. "I’m sorry," he said. "Not mad at you." His reddened eyes focused more or less on Julie. "How do you do, Mrs. Oliver? I seem" he explained graciously, "to be a little drunk." To Gideon he said, "Stay, please." Gideon lowered himself back into his chair.
When the barmaid came for their order, he and Julie both asked for Ploughman’s lunches. Nate ordered pints of stout for them as well. "Put it," he declaimed, "on my bill. If you please."
"Nate," Gideon said, "there’s no reason-"
Nate closed his eyes and held up his hand. "No, no, no, no. Nope." His head rotated gingerly back and forth. "No. Insist. Want you to know there aren’t any hard feelings.
Just trying to do your job, that’s all. Should have listened to you in first place. But…but…" His voice trailed away while he stared glumly at his pork pie. Then, as if drawing inspiration from it he went on. "But…God-damn-it," he said with labored precision, "how could you possibly think that I would… that I could fake a…"
"I never thought you did, Nate. Somebody did, but not you."
Nate shook his head and blinked. "But that’s what I can’t understand. How could… I’m telling you, I found it myself! " His hand jumped convulsively and knocked over the highball glass. The amber dregs ran over the wooden table, releasing a fog of Scotch fumes. Nate seemed not to notice. He stared earnestly at Gideon.
"What Gideon means," Julie said soothingly, "is that someone tricked you somehow."
"Tricked me?" He weighed this while he took another pull at his stout. "No, impossible. I found it by accident. It could easily have laid… lain there another three thousand years. It was under a bush, between the roots, with only a little bit sticking up. You could hardly see it when you looked right at it; just a tiny, teeny, weeny-"
"Then how did you see it?" Gideon asked.
"I thought," Nate said grandly, "that you believed me."
"I do," said Gideon, not a hundred percent sure that he did, "but just how did you see it?"
"Well." Nate appeared to be conducting a boozy search of his mind. "I was coming back from a walk at lunch, right? Okay. There was this scrap of paper on the ground, caught in the brush. I just happened to see it shine in the sun. Just a shiny blue scrap of paper. Naturally, I bent down to pick it up." He turned to Julie and explained primly, "Good housekeeping is essential during any excavation. That’s what good archaeology comes down to: good house-keeping." He raised his glass, toasting good housekeeping, good archaeology, or both, then drank and put the glass carefully down again, leaving a foamy mustache on his lip. He looked blankly at both of them, and Gideon thought he might be wondering who they were and where he was. But surprisingly, he found his thread again.
"I bent down to pick it up," he repeated, "and there, just a few inches away, I saw it. It was curved," he said, with sad intensity. "I knew it was part of a skull right away…" His eyes had begun to brighten, as if he’d momentarily forgotten what had happened since, but he checked himself, shivered, and stopped speaking.
The barmaid arrived with Julie’s and Gideon’s pints and wiped up Nate’s spilled drink, keeping well clear of him.
Tonelessly, Nate said, "Cheers," but did not lift his glass when they drank.