Good Blood by Aaron Elkins Page B

others sweated over their bicycles during the cycling phase.
    These provisos had been received with the contempt they deserved. “And he calls himself an anthropologist,” Julie had said with withering scorn.
    “I am an anthropologist. That doesn’t mean I have to be a masochist.”
    “Soft,” Phil had sneered. “Pathetic. Not the man I once knew.”
    But Gideon had stuck to his guns and there the matter stood. No camping out, no sweaty bicycling up and down hills. “I’m paying my own way, I’m not on a dig, and I see no purpose in being uncomfortable,” was his sole and frequently repeated defense.
    For their first night Phil had booked rooms for them in a three-star family-run hotel in Stresa, though he’d claimed it violated his populist principles by one star.
    “Besides which,” he said, “Stresa isn’t really that great a place. It’s like one big English tea shop, all cutesy and super-clean and full of flowers and doilies and things. It’s a resort town.”
    “Sounds wonderful to me,” said Julie, “but if you don’t like it, why are we staying there?”
    “Basically because it makes it easy for me to grab the boat in the afternoon for a quick visit to my family.” He hesitated. “Hey, I don’t suppose you guys would want to come along? I don’t like being alone with those people.”
    Gideon stared at him. “You have family in Italy?”
    “Sure, you didn’t know? Didn’t you know I was Italian? Why do you think I go there every couple of years?”
    “Phil, you’re on the road all the time. I don’t keep tabs on where you go.”
    “Hell, I was born in Italy. I lived there till I was seven. You’re telling me you didn’t know that?”
    “No, I didn’t know that. Do you suppose it could be because you never mentioned it?”
    “I didn’t? Well, maybe I didn’t,” Phil allowed.
    “Amazing,” Julie said, “truly amazing. Men and women really are different species, you know that? Two women would know that kind of thing about each other inside of twenty minutes. And you two, you’ve been friends for twenty years.”
    “Well, how could I know if he never told me?” Gideon said defensively. “But now that you mention it, I should have figured it out on my own. What else could somebody named Phil Boyajian be but Italian?”
    “Yeah, well, see,” Phil said, “that’s because my mother’s second husband was Armenian-he was a petroleum engineer, which is how come I was living in Cairo and Riyadh in my teens-”
    “You lived in Cairo and Riyadh?” Julie exclaimed. “Phil, I’ve known you for five years myself. How could you never have told me that?”
    Phil shrugged.
    “See?” said Gideon.
    “Anyway,” Phil went on, “he adopted me, and I took his name. I figured Boyajian sounded more American, you know? But no, I had a good Italian name to start with.”
    He bowed. “Filiberto Ungaretti,’atsa me.”
    Gideon just shook his head. Even after two decades, Phil was always coming up with something to surprise him. His career had been one unexpected (and entertaining) twist after another, a sort of career-in-reverse. When he’d gotten his Ph. D. in cultural anthropology, he had stepped into a coveted tenure-track position at a big state university but had found university politics more than he was willing to cope with. He’d then tried teaching at a Seattle community college, but couldn’t stand the committee assignments. Next had come a period as a high school teacher (but the nonteaching, largely custodial responsibilities weren’t to his liking), followed by a three-year stint teaching grade school. While he pondered his next move-kindergarten? preschool? day care?-he was offered a summer job going to Egypt to research and write Egypt on the Cheap, the very first On the Cheap guidebook.
    It had turned his life around. With his scruffy, eager, friendly manner and his natural willingness to see the best in common people and in their customs, he had at last found the