More Bitter Than Death: An Emma Fielding Mystery - By Dana Cameron Page 0,41
my game face on, and prepared to wrap up the session with my paper. Things were going smoothly, and I was about twenty minutes into my paper, when the audience broke out in a gale of laughter. I looked up, startled, and reread my last sentence, convinced that I’d inadvertently written something rude, an accidental double entendre, but the sentence was fine. I was about to resume, still puzzled, when I realized what had happened and looked at the slide screen next to me.
There, instead of the last slide I was showing, and much, much larger than life, was Kermit the Frog. Someone had taken a puppet, dressed it in a smoking jacket and fez, given him a scaled-down martini glass and what looked like a hand-rolled cigarette, and set him next to a balk from a site that had nothing to do with the barrack building of Fort Providence I was discussing. Carla had struck back in retaliation for my switching her slide of French pottery for a movie still of a Tarzan knockoff, with an extremely buff young man in a very small loincloth. That had been the cause of the uproar from her paper this morning.
Although Carla had said she’d be elsewhere, I saw her at the back of the room and waved, acknowledging that she’d got me in spite of my instructions to the slide wrangler. I finished up my talk without the last slide, which was more of scenery rather than information, and suggested that if certain other people put down their drinks long enough, they might also come to the same conclusions.
A few questions followed, and as I answered, I noted a couple of points to clear up in my paper, if I reused any of it in a report. I looked up, and the last person with a hand up was in the back, obscured by the lights in my eyes. I pointed. “Right, in the back.”
“I’m wondering about your use of polychrome tin-glazed earthenware to date that particular feature.” It took only three syllables before I recognized it was Duncan asking the question. “If the only other artifacts you’ve got in the unit can only be dated to within twenty years or so, what makes you think that something that ubiquitous can support your assertions? I’m not trying to be picky, but it’s the lynchpin of your entire argument and it seems somewhat tenuous to me.”
Duncan, how freaking obvious of you. But it was trying to sound reasonable that gives you away; you still try to cover up an attempt to nail someone with politeness and it still doesn’t fool me, though you’ve gotten better at it. “I guess I should have emphasized this more strongly in the paper, considering how exciting this information really is. I’m looking at the color of the glazes. I got the data from a European source, as yet unpublished, but it’s coming from a good, sealed context, backed up with a recently discovered set of factory documents—”
“And this European publication?” He sounded doubtful.
“Right, Compton and Ashford, Proceedings of the Marchester Archaeological Society. The title is…” I spoke slowly, as if I was concerned that he might not be able to copy it down accurately otherwise. Duncan only nodded. “And it should be out next year.”
The moderator stood up, directed the last few questions to the appropriate presenters, and then thanked everyone for coming. As I collected cards from people who wanted copies of the paper, I saw Duncan watching me. He leaned over still looking at me, and whispered something into Noreen McAllister’s ear. She threw her head back and laughed.
I was hoping to collect my carousel and leave before they could catch me, but Duncan made a point of loudly congratulating me on my paper. Shit-heel.
“You know I have to bust your chops,” he said in a lower voice, like we were both in on the joke, but still loud enough for anyone to hear. “You know, now that you’ve got tenure, someone’s got to keep an eye on you.”
“And you think you’re the one to do it?” I couldn’t stand the way I sounded, the way I wanted to react. The greedy look on Noreen’s face was the icing on the cake, and I all but ran out of there.
I noticed a few startled faces—usually hanging around to chat afterward was the best part—and I knew I’d have to do some explaining later on. I didn’t care.