Gideon, on the other hand, was paying his own way, being basically along for the ride, although he’d promised to help out if needed. The trip had struck him as a good idea. He’d be between spring and summer quarters at the university, he’d never seen Italy’s lake country, and the kayaking sounded like fun. And of course, a week with Julie in northern Italy, even with the “flock” in tow, sounded a lot better than a week at home without her, especially with no classes, active forensic cases, or papers in preparation to keep him engaged. The bicycling part and the overnight stays at “clean, convenient campgrounds” were less enticing, and he’d reserved to himself the right to spend the nights in more deluxe accommodations. He’d made it clear that he intended to sleep in a clean bed in a pleasant room every night, get at least one good, hot meal a day, and shower every morning-in a private bathroom of his own.
Phil had taken good-natured offense. “Hey, wait’ll you see the campgrounds I lined up. Platform tents already set up for us, laundry machines, delicious hot meals every night, luxurious sleeping arrangements-”
“Oh, right,” Gideon said, “On the Cheap is well known for its attention to the finer amenities.”
“Okay, maybe not exactly luxurious, but-”
And what was more, Gideon said, he intended to rent a car for himself so he could get around on his own and drive wherever he pleased in luxury while the 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 occupation he’d been made for. The book had done better than anyone expected, and Phil had been made a contributing editor for the new series, a position he still held. In addition, he also led eight or ten no-frills tours a year for the company, of which the Italian lakes trip was the latest.
Gideon, by contrast, had taken a more conventional path, beginning as an assistant professor of physical anthropology at Northern California State University, where he was promoted after a few years to associate professor and contentedly settled in for a long, rewarding career of teaching and scholarship in San Mateo, California.
But fate had a jog of its own in store for him. Almost by accident, he had begun consulting for the FBI on the side, on cases involving forensic anthropology, and eight years ago one of those cases had taken him to Washington State’s Olympic rain forest, where two things had occurred that would change his life forever, one to his mild but frequent embarrassment, the other to his great and unremitting joy. The first was that a local reporter following the case had referred to him as the Skeleton Detective, and the sobriquet had stuck to him like glue, providing a rich source of not-so-subtle ragging to his colleagues at meetings and conventions ever since.
The second thing, the enormous, life-altering thing, was that he’d met a beautiful young park ranger named Julie Tendler, who had been incidentally involved in finding the human remains that had brought him to Washington. His much-loved first wife Nora had been killed in a car crash two years earlier, and Gideon had never gotten over his grief. In his case, it had slowly evolved into a terrible impassivity, a sense of deep isolation from everyone around him. For two years he had felt himself to be as cold and dead and impervious to emotion-to positive emotion-as a stone. It was Julie who had reawakened him, unthawing feelings and sensibilities that he had truly thought frozen for good.
A year after that they’d been married and he’d lucked into an associate professorship at the University of Washington’s Port Angeles campus (he’d since advanced to full professor). They had bought this hillside house that was a ten-minute walk in one direction from Julie’s office in the headquarters building, and a ten-minute walk in the other direction to campus. A perfect location. A perfect life. A day didn’t go by that he wasn’t grateful to her for bringing him to life again.
“Filiberto Ungaretti,” she said now, also shaking her head. “That’s amazing. Sure, it’d be interesting to visit your family, Phil. If you’re really sure they wouldn’t mind.”
“Interesting I can’t promise. Weird I can guarantee.”