Author's Note: I am on the biggest one-shot kick. I've got another one I just need to wrap up, so hopefully that'll be up soon, too.

Did you know Rachel Weisz's nipples had to be photoshopped out of the river scene because that wet nightgown was straight-up see-through? I think we all need to take a moment of silence to appreciate the fact that she was basically the only woman on the set of this movie, and the other women that there were, were not Rachel Weisz in a see-through nightgown. (I mean, sure, Patricia Valesquez was the naked woman in body paint, but homegirl only had to show up to work one day. Rachel Weisz filmed in the desert for weeks. In the summer. In Egypt. With a bunch of men. Did I mention she's Rachel Weisz? She's Rachel fuh-reaking Weisz. She's married to James Bond, for crying out loud.)

Disclaimer: The characters of The Mummy are the property of Universal Studios. Men Without Women is also the title of a short story collection by Ernest Hemingway.

Men Without Women

"Where would men be without women? Scarce, sir...pretty scarce."
Mark Twain

Their shoes were soggy, and squished as they trudged up through the marsh and onto the dusty semblance of a main road. Their clothes stunk like river water and clung to them in the most unpleasant way, and the most anyone had said was a stream of grumbled profanities here and there. Nice, white beds on the barge, and they never even got to sleep in them. Three days down the river - easily the most luxurious part of their highly un-glamorous trip to the middle of nowhere - and it was cut short by a bunch of crazy Egyptian pyromaniacs.

At least they got all the horses.

All the horses, a donkey and one lousy camel, but still. It was better than walking. Just the same, no one was in a very pleasant mood. Not when they might have been drinking and gambling and even maybe chatting one of those bobbed-haired tourists into their cabins. Three days on the Nile, hell. Maybe they wouldn't have gotten lucky that first night, but by the third night...Who knows?

Now, instead, they were trapped in the company of each other - a bunch of irritable, stinking men who'd had too much booze and not enough sleep. A bunch of men who'd had to swim like hell for the nearest bank and had nothing good to show for it, because (as that smug jerk across the way had pointed out) they weren't even on the right bank.

So now they had to travel back up the way they had come from, and wait for a ferry in the morning, and hope against all odds that their British competition wasn't already at Hamunaptra, waiting with their palms open for that five hundred dollars.

Nobody was in a good mood. But Henderson kind of smiled to himself, and glanced at his friend riding beside him.

"Hey, Burns. You get a good look at that broad goin' with, uh...what's 'is name?"

"Who?"

"The guy, ya know...British fella we was playin' cards with."

"Jonathan?"

"Yeah! Jonathan. You get a good look at that broad with 'im and, uh...O'Connelly?"

"Think it's just O'Connell, Henderson," Daniels put in, bored.

"Coulda sworn he said O'Connelly."

"Don't think he did."

"It was some mick name..."

"It was O'Connell, Henderson," Burns said.

And then another, foreign and nasal voice piped in, "It is O'Connell."

"There, see?" Daniels said. "Listen to the bohunk. They know each other."

"Anyway," Henderson said dismissively, "did you get a good look at the broad, over 'cross the river?"

Daniels chuckled and let out a long whistle, and suddenly all of them were laughing, dark and low in their throats. Dark and low because they weren't in mixed company, and -

"Could see her nipples and everything else from a mile away."

"Shit," Daniels chuckled, shaking his head.

Burns let out a nervous whistle. "She's a good-lookin' broad."

"That Jonathan's wife?" Henderson asked.

"Nah, think it's his sister, he said."

"Well. Guess she ain't a total loss, then."

They chuckled some more.

"So, what? O'Connelly screwin' her or somethin'?"

"It's just O'Connell, Henderson."

"Right. Is he screwin' her?"

"Hell would I know?" Daniels retorted. "Why don't you ask what's-his-name over there."

"It's Beni, barat'm."

Henderson glanced up at the slight man perched up on his camel. "So is O'Connell screwin' her?"

Beni scoffed. "No."

Daniels chuckled to himself. "Bet he is now..."

Beni choked back an amused chortle. "Did you see that woman, with her glasses and books?"

"Saw her with a seepin' wet nightgown," Henderson put in, smirking.

"She does not open her legs for anybody, even O'Connell," Beni said emphatically. "Besides," he added, "she is not his type."

Daniels let out an incredulous guffah. "Not his type? What's his type then, if not soakin' wet and gorgeous?"

Beni met his eyes smugly. "She is too good for him."

Burns sighed, rubbing his chin in a thoughtful manner. "Jonathan did say she's an Egyptologist..."

Dr. Chamberlain scoffed loudly, the first inclination that he'd been paying attention to them at all. "Please."

"Didn't know there was such a thing as female Egyptologists," Henderson said, more to himself than anyone.

"Mr. Henderson," Chamberlain said in his cool, even voice. "If it's a comfortable bed companion you're after, then find a woman. For all other serious matters, you're better off with a man."

Daniels glanced over his shoulder, a snide smile on his face. "Hey, Doc, you get a good look at the competition 'cross the way?"

The rest of the men laughed, and Chamberlain composed himself as best he could while riding a donkey in wet clothes.

"That isn't competition," he told them, adjusting his monocle. "That's just an above-average Friday night."

"Ho!" Henderson shouted above laughter. "Bullseye, Doc!"

Dr. Chamberlain valiantly fought the urge to chuckle at his own joke, and resolved himself stiffly, clearing his throat. "That's quite enough, though. After all, she is someone's future wife and mother."

"Ah, hell, Doc."

Daniels groaned, "Why you gotta be like that?"

Chamberlain shrugged, his face set in a condescending expression. "Perhaps you'll understand one day when you're married yourself."

"You married, Doc?" Henderson asked.

"Fifteen years," Dr. Chamberlain sighed, as if every year had been a personal burden.

"Any kids?"

"Two boys."

"Huh," Henderson said. "Well, congrats. Bernard there's engaged, but me an' Daniels got better things to do than get hitched right now."

Beni snorted, and Daniels turned a hard eye up at him.

"What was that?"

Beni glanced down innocently. "What?"

"That...noise you just made there. What's that about?"

Beni's brow furrowed up in feigned confusion. "I don't know what you are talking about..."

"You made a noise," Daniels retorted, fierce and impatient.

"Ah, he's just jealous," Henderson said with a smirk.

Beni let out a sigh, staring down at Henderson with wide, woeful eyes. "If I am jealous, it is only because you are a free man, while I have a wife and seven small children to feed."

Burns frowned in confusion. "I thought you said you had six kids?"

Beni flinched uncomfortably, but quickly made up for his mistake: "Did I not tell you my dear wife is pregnant again? She told me just before I left. And all you are giving me is a mere seven hundred dollars to feed them..."

"Ah, not this shit again," Daniels grumbled. He shot a suspicious look up at Beni. "You know I don't believe for a second you got this ever-growin' family."

"I believe it," Dr. Chamberlain said dismally. Daniels raised his eyebrows.

"You do? Shrimpy little con like him?"

Chamberlain met his eyes, cold and conceited as ever. "Mr. Daniels, the only things I find hard to believe are that those seven children aren't spread amongst five different women, and that he bothered to marry their mother at all."

Beni turned a glare at the other man and said snidely, "We thought we should make it honest after the fifth."

"You're an absolute treasure, Mr. Gabor."

Beni's face twitched with an almost baffled expression, and he responded in a tone somewhere between suspicion and sarcasm: "Thank you."

"If you got six kids," Henderson said. "What're their names?"

Beni scoffed. "Is that supposed to be a test?"

"Well I'd think you'd know 'em if you had 'em."

Beni scowled, and rattled off, "Egy, Ketto, Három, Négy, Öt and Hat."

Burns let out a sigh, shaking his head. "Christ, foreigners use some weird damn names."

"Those are family names," Beni sniffed airily.

Dr. Chamberlain made a little noise in his throat, and muttered, "You people spread like fleas."

Henderson cackled to himself, and turned to Burns when he said, "I can't even imagine what a woman'd look like after havin' six kids."

Daniels chuckled. "Doubt she'd look as good as that little British gal 'cross the river."

That wet, transparent nightgown and the lovely form beneath it wandered through their minds again, and for a while no one said anything. No one made any noise at all, except the occasional sigh of a man coming out of a guilty reverie.

"My wife was once a beautiful woman," Beni said in a melancholy voice. "But she is so worn and tired from all of the children, one right after the other, and now a seventh on the way..." He sighed heavily, laying it on thick, "But I love her so. She is the most beautiful woman on earth to me, and she has been so good to me, having all of those children, one right after the other - "

Daniels looked up and met his eyes in the darkness. His gaze was narrow and hard, and made Beni swallow nervously.

"Shut up," he said. "You were lookin' at that broad same as everybody else, and you ain't gettin' a cent over seven hundred dollars."

Beni grumbled to himself in Hungarian, and Daniels snorted. He turned to his friends in a kind of irritable rush.

"So it's gonna be all of us, and that one broad out there?"

Burns sighed. "Far as I know, Daniels. Don't think any 'a the other women on the boat were with 'em."

"Shit," Daniels breathed. "How's anybody s'posed to concentrate knowin' she looks like that under her clothes?"

"Concentrate on the treasure, gentlemen," Dr. Chamberlain told them severely.

Daniels straightened his shoulders and sniffed. Henderson nodded his head.

"Yeah," he said. "That's the thing to do. Concentrate on the treasure."

"Eye on the prize," Burns agreed.

The group of them let out a collective sigh, their animals stumbling along wearily in silence. Henderson dug a hand into his pocket, hoping against all odds that his chewing tobacco had stayed dry in its tin. He squinted at it in the dim moonlight and shook his head absentmindedly.

"Damn fine lookin' broad, though."

end.

In case you didn't want to look it up, the "names" of Beni's "children" are actually the numbers one through six in Hungarian.