Household Gods

Cyndi nodded vigorously. Her curls were elaborately styled and piled, but by no means as elaborately as the styles the wealthy Roman matrons had affected. Those had looked as immovable as marble curlicues on a monument. These bounced as she moved, in a way that was pure modern America, and pure Cyndi. “I should say it’s not the end of the world,” she said, “especially compared to losing your health.”

Like people in Carnuntum, she was putting her own spin on Nicole’s words, making them fit into patterns she found familiar. It was the human way of doing things. Nicole was glad of it, too: it made life easier for those who didn’t fit those patterns. If she even approximated one of them, the people around her filled in the rest.

Not that Cyndi was wrong in this particular instance. Nicole said, “I was never so surprised in my life as when I woke up in that hospital bed.” That wasn’t exactly wrong, either, though it was only about an as’ worth of an aureus of truth: certainly less than a cent on the dollar.

Nicole didn’t linger too long, and Cyndi didn’t try to keep her, though Nicole could tell she’d have been glad to babble on indefinitely about everything and nothing. The office was waiting. Nicole had to face it now or not face it at all.

It didn’t look anything like the cluttered cubicle she’d left. It was jammed full of flowers and get-well cards, arranged by Cyndi, she could suppose. There was just barely room in the middle for the desk and chair, and for the IN basket with its stack of papers waiting to be dealt with.

She’d deal with it. It would take a while, but she’d dig out from under. For sure it was better than grinding flour for hours at a stretch, than keeping fires fed a few sticks at a time, than breathing smoke all day long because nobody had heard of chimneys.

Her voice-mail tape was close to maxed out. She’d have to ask Cyndi to fill her in – she even had a good pretext: some of her business had been taken over by other people in the firm.

Why, she thought in a pause between messages, Cyndi was her Julia in this world. She hoped, at least, that Cyndi didn’t feel like a slave, or feel she needed manumission.

It took her a moment to remember how to use her computer, but her password came right back to her: justkim, the first syllables of her children’s names. It wasn’t secure, it was much too easy to guess, but if she’d been more paranoid she might never have remembered it. Once the system came up, she found herself as inundated with e-mail as with voice calls and paperwork. Most of the e-mail was intraoffice, and most of it was personal: sympathy notes at first, some from surprising people, and then get-well wishes. She had more friends here than she’d thought. It touched her, made her eyes prickle and her throat go tight.

So many cards, so many flowers, so many good wishes. She took a deep breath and set them aside to savor later, and turned to the in box. She’d pick up where she left off, she resolved. Right… here. She reached for the top folder in the stack.

But she’d reckoned without the rest of the world. Once word had spread that she was back, everybody and his third cousin from Muncie came by to say Hello and Glad you’re feeling better. Hardly any of them stayed more than a minute or two, but a minute here and two minutes there added up to a good many minutes altogether.

She wasn’t the slightest bit startled when, toward midmorning, Gary Ogarkov poked his head into her office. He looked as if he expected her to throw something at him, and probably something sharp.

His expression was so nervous, she started to laugh. “Come on in,” she said. “I won’t bite, I promise.”

“No?” He didn’t sound convinced. “I wouldn’t blame you if you did.” But he slid in and sat on the edge of the chair she kept for clients.

Nicole looked at him and sighed. “Gary, it’s over. It happened the way it happened. This isn’t the end of the world. I’m not starving” – I’ve done that – “or sleeping in my car.” Even if it might be more comfortable than that bed over Umma’s tavern.

Gary eyed her a little dubiously. “You’re taking it really well,” he said. “I guess when you set a partnership against your health, it’s not such a big thing after all. But even so…” His voice trailed away.

“That is part of it,” Nicole agreed. Part of the rest, she realized, was the emotional distance her time in Carnuntum had given her. And part was an insight she’d also gained on the other side of time: the distance between bad and worse was a lot greater than the distance between good and better. Winning the partnership would have been better. What she had was still pretty decent.