Folly Du Jour

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Harland C. White of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania shuffled resentfully after his wife, May, through the Egyptian rooms in the Louvre museum. One vaulted stone room after another. You could lose yourself in here. Or lose your mind. He wondered whether this was a good moment to suggest they go for tea on the new roof terrace over the Samaritaine store.

‘Say! May!’ he called after her. ‘This is the fourth roomful of sarcophaguses — okay, then, sarcophageeee — we’ve done. How many more?’

They’d had lunch at Ciro’s. The food and wine had made him sleepy, the size of the check had made him grouchy. $1.00 for a slice of melon? $2.25 for a Baby Lobster? Still, lunch at Ciro’s was on his schedule. You couldn’t go home and not say you’d lunched at Ciro’s. Had to be done. Same thing, apparently, with the Louvre.

Maybelle (May, since she’d discovered all the girls over here had short names. . though it didn’t have quite the kick of Zizi or Lulu or Kiki) had come to a halt in front of a huge, dark-painted coffin box and was doing that thing with her hands. . Tracing the shapes in the air — hieroglyphs, she called them — and silently mouthing the sounds that went with them. Clever girl, May! She’d been to classes. She’d grown chummy with the arty folks at the State Museum. She’d gotten hold of a book called The Mummy by some feller called Wallis Budge and had learned — or so she told him. . what would he know? — to read the sounds out loud. She’d tried to teach Harland to do it but his attention had faded after he’d mastered ‘Tut — ankh — amen.’

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