Free Thieves Fall Out by Gore Vidal

heat gets worse across the river. It is all desert where the kings are buried, no shade of any kind.”
    “Will you come with me?”
    “You’ll need a real guide.”
    “I have one—old fellow named Osman. He’ll chaperon us.”
    “Yes, I’ll go, if you want me to. Here is the temple.”
    It was a cube-shaped building with squat columns of brown stone and no roof. Inside, between cracks in the stone-paved floor, flowers grew. There were no houses nearby; only a grove of acacia trees separated it from the road. There was a full sweeping view of the river and the mountains beyond that. The temple was deserted.
    They walked in silence through the main part, looking at the carvings on the wall, the rows of hieroglyphs. Then, on the other side, through the portico, they found a courtyard with what looked like smaller chapels built around it, to one of which she led him, a shadowy little room with no windows, only a door.
    “To think how old it is!”
    “How old?” asked Pete, turning to look down at her, at the lovely face pale in the shadows, the eyes shining as she looked not at him but at the tall statue of some god with the head of a hawk.
    “Nearly four thousand years, Peter,” she said softly. She had said his name at last. It was like magic, like an incantation. He slipped his arm around her and slowly, carefully pulled her to him. Their lips met; he breathed the warm scent of her young body, of her hair, which brushed his face as lightly as the wind. Then, as naturally, they were separate again.
    There was a long silence at the feet of the hawk-headed god. At last Anna said, “Why did you do that?”
    “Because I wanted to. Because I thought you wanted me to.”
    “Is it so easy?” and she touched her lips with the back of her hand, as though to feel the impression of his mouth with her fingertips.
    “I think so…unless I was wrong.”
    “Do American men always kiss women when they meet them?”
    “I don’t know what they do, only what I do.”
    “Do you do it often? Like this?”
    “Very often,” he said, telling the truth. “But never like this, Anna.”
    “You don’t know me.” And she turned away from him and pretended to examine the carvings on the wall. A man wearing the double crown of Egypt was riding in a chariot, followed by a row of captives, grotesque little figures, all in chains.
    “Does it make so much difference?” He studied her straight back. The long hair gleamed in the dim room.
    “It would…if you knew.” Her voice was even.
    “That you have had lovers?” He was moving boldly now, driven on not only by his desire, but by something else, by a power he had never suspected himself of possessing: a need not just for a woman, but for this woman.
    “Worse.” The word was like a small explosion of bitterness.
    “I don’t care.”
    “But perhaps
I
do.” She turned and faced him, her dark blue eyes sad. “We won’t talk like this again, will we?” Then, before he could say anything, she pointed to the train of captives some long-dead artist had etched on the wall with a skillful hand. “Look at those poor creatures! Prisoners of war.”
    “More like freaks,” said Pete, wondering if he should pursue her further or not. He decided to wait, for a time. “Like a sideshow back home. There’s even a hunchback, like—” For some reason he paused.
    She looked up at him quickly, her eyes wide. “You know Le Mouche?” Her voice was tense.
    “Yes, I know him.”
    “It must be nearly noon,” she said, moving toward the door of the stone chamber. “We should get back to the hotel before the sun is too hot.”
    And, try as he might, he could not regain that intimacy with her that had begun in the ruined temple.
    At the hotel they parted in the lobby. When he suggested a later meeting, she was vague. Puzzled, angry at himself for having made a wrong move somewhere along the line, he went to his room.
    * * *
    The revolver was very large, of a foreign make with which he