Household Gods

She was glad he was in front of her, so he couldn’t see her wince. Something she hadn’t expected to deal with when she traveled in time: the past life of the body she wore. People made assumptions about her. They expected things of her, things she was supposed to do or think or say, because Umma had always done or thought or said them. Sometimes, as with Lucius and Aurelia, it came in handy. Sometimes…

The fuller and dyer stopped and looked back at her then. Fortunately, she’d managed to pull her face straight. Calidius was nothing if not forthright: “Then why didn’t you want me to come over last night?”

“Because I didn’t feel like it,” she answered, not angrily but without any hesitation, either. If he made a habit of coming on by whenever he felt like a roll in the hay, he was going to have to get himself some new habits.

He grunted. “All right. Can’t expect a woman to know her own mind from one day to the next, I guess.” Before she had a chance to bridle at that, he redeemed himself, at least in part, by adding, “Women likely say the same about men. I’ve known enough who’d give you cause to, anyhow.”

If he was in the habit of mocking everyone impartially, she could deal with that. All the cops she’d ever known, in Indiana and California alike, were the most cynical people on the face of the earth. Maybe soldiers were the same way. Because of that, and because she felt, for a moment, as if she could almost like him, she said, “Besides, it wouldn’t have mattered either way. I was sick last night.”

“Belly, I’ll bet.” Calidius grunted again, apparently a noise that indicated his brains were working. “Julia told me you and the kids were drinking water all day yesterday. What got into you, Umma? One of your new ideas? Water’s handy if you haven’t got anything else, but if you do, forget it. Kids all right?”

“Not too bad, “ Nicole answered. The amphora of Falernian he was carrying for her was glazed. God only knew what was in the glaze, but she could make a pretty fair guess that lead was part of it. But he wouldn’t believe lead was poisonous. Even if he did, so what? If lead killed you, it killed you a little bit at a time. Drinking the water, she’d discovered, was liable to be lethal in a hurry.

“That’s good,” he said. “I’m glad they’re all right. They’re pretty fair kids, they are.”

His stock jumped several points in Nicole’s book. She’d gone out only a couple of times after Frank broke up with her. She might have done it more often if so many men, on learning she had children, hadn’t reacted as if they were a dangerous and possibly contagious disease. I still don’t want to go to bed with him. she thought. She didn’t want to go to bed with anyone.

She started down the street away from the market, back toward the tavern, but Titus Calidius Severus held up a hand. “Wait. You still haven’t told me what you’re angry at.”

Nicole gritted her teeth. He was losing points again, and fast. “I did tell you, Calidius: I’m not angry at you. I will be, though, if you keep pushing at me like this.”

“There – you did it again,” he said.

And there it was again: the prickle of alarm. What have I done? What’s wrong?

Thank God, finally – he went on in a growing heat, spelling it out in terms even a time-traveler from West Hills could understand: “How can I help thinking you’re mad at me when you haven’t called me by my praenomen since day before yesterday? If you can’t be that familiar with someone who knows you’ve got a little mole halfway down from your navel, what in Ahriman’s name is a praenomen good for? “

Nicole bit her tongue. Good God! He knew her body – no, knew this body – better than she did. How had she managed to miss a mole in that spot?

Because, she told herself with tight-drawn patience, she’d been too busy overdosing on her new reality – and freaking at the shaved parts south of the mole. But if she did start calling him Titus, would he take it as a signal and assume she was open for business again? She’d been formally polite, and he’d taken it for displeasure. If she didn’t go back to the intimate use, he’d be convinced she really was mad at him. Except she wasn’t. Except probably she was, because he was a man and she was a woman and it was all too clear that relations between the sexes were no easier to figure here than they’d been in Los Angeles.

She couldn’t take all day making up her mind, not with him standing there studying her. Finally, with an exhalation that wasn’t quite a sigh, she said, “I’m sorry, Titus. I just haven’t been myself the last couple of days.” And you don’t know how true that is. But, instead of the truth, she opted for the simple, the rational, and the practical: “Too much to do, not enough time to do it.”