Swan Song by Lisa Alther

Author:Lisa Alther [Alther, Lisa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2020-06-09T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

Trios and Quartets

“Have you recovered from our traumatic night?” Ben asked Jessie as they sat in comfy fabric chairs at a small round table in the Naxos Bar, overlooking the bow of the ship as it plowed through the waters of the Red Sea. Ben had kindly run the clinic all day long, dealing mostly with hangovers from the Flappers Ball and with sprains and bruises sustained by those who had fallen off the chairs they had clambered up onto while braying “Rule, Britannia!”

“I’m fine.” Jessie removed the cherry on the swizzle stick of her manhattan with her front teeth. “I appreciate your concern, but I can’t tell you how many deaths I’ve overseen recently. Mostly overdoses.”

“It’s different at sea. Sometimes the ship is so far out that even the coast guard and helicopters can’t reach us to transport emergencies to land.”

“Well, it’s what we’ve been trained for.”

“But it can still be unnerving when you recognize the reality. It’s like being stuck back in the nineteenth century, with inadequate equipment and diagnostic tools.”

“I can take it.”

“I know you can. That’s why I asked you to sign on for this job. You’re one cool chick. I always used to admire your sangfroid at Roosevelt. It seemed to come naturally to you.”

“It runs in my family. It’s turning it off that has always been a challenge for me.”

Ben nodded in agreement. “You were never an easy nut to crack!”

Jessie looked at him, hiding her annoyance at his possible implication that their failed relationship was solely her fault.

“Did you hear that the ship is skipping the Egyptian ports on the Red Sea and diverting to Aqaba, in Jordan, instead?” he asked.

“I heard, but I wasn’t sure why.”

“Too much political turmoil in Egypt since the ouster of Morsi. The Muslim Brotherhood is out for blood. The cruise line doesn’t want to risk docking at Suez and sending passengers on buses to Cairo and Giza. They’re offering excursions to Petra instead, which suits me fine, because there are some amazing digs going on there.”

“Can I go to Petra, too, or do I need to run the clinic?”

“Hardly anyone turns up at the clinic on shore days, and there’s a good hospital in Aqaba. So I think we can leave Amy in charge and both go to Petra.”

“Tell me about these digs.” Anything in order to sidestep a confrontation over plagiarized love poems. Jessie was regretting that she hadn’t put a stop to Mona’s half-baked vendetta. Just because Ben had behaved in bad faith was no reason for them to descend to his level.

“Well, Petra was the primary town for the Nabateans, an Arab tribe that controlled the land route from southern Arabia to Gaza, where frankincense and myrrh were shipped to Rome. It was carved out of cliffs of rose-colored limestone about the time of the birth of Christ. So the archaeologists at the dig sites are trying to work out how the carving was done so high up on cliffs with no evidence of scaffolding.

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