Household Gods

Her calling the two Calidii Severi by their praenomens left Nicole confused for a moment, but not for any longer than that. One thing was interesting: If Julia wondered what Titus Calidius Severus was like in bed, he’d never put down a couple of sesterces and gone upstairs with her when Umma was out shopping and the kids had gone off to play somewhere. A point of sorts for the fuller and dyer. Though a point for what, in what game, Nicole wasn’t inclined to say.

Julia still waited expectantly for her answer. She chose her words with care. With all the wine she had in her, she, unlike Julia, couldn’t have spoken quickly if she’d wanted to. “It’s not any one thing,” she said. “It’s not any big thing, even. We just haven’t been getting along as well as we did before, that’s all.”

“It’s too bad,” Julia said. In the dim lamplight, Nicole was surprised to see tears in her eyes. “The children really like him, too.”

“Children or no children, if you think I’ll have anything to do with a man who smells like sour piss all the time, you can think again,” Nicole snapped – or rather, the wine did it, before she could stop herself.

That wasn’t the whole story. It wasn’t even most of the story. But the wine could have done much worse. It was a part of the story that would make sense to Julia, and apparently did. She nodded thoughtfully. “You’ve been fussy about things like that lately, haven’t you, Mistress? I’ve seen you throw out a couple of pieces of meat we could have served without having anybody complain, or not much, anyhow.”

“If it smells bad to me, it’ll smell bad to the cush – customers,” Nicole said. How wonderful: she’d got Julia to stop talking about Titus Calidius Severus. She laughed with the wonder of it.

When she looked at the lamp, she saw two side by side unless she screwed up her eyes and tilted her head just so. Getting up required a distinct effort of will. “I’m going to bed,” she announced with a grand flourish that nearly sent her over onto her backside – and did send her into a fit of the giggles. Two blurry Julias nodded vigorously and gulped down all the wine in their cups before they trotted along after her like obedient puppies.

Nicole had danced to the music of the wine – had she ever. And come morning, she paid the piper.

She’d felt worse her first night in Carnuntum, when her day of water-drinking caught up with her, but not by much. That had been concentrated misery, too: bowels in an uproar, but the rest of her not so bad. Now she hurt all over.

She sat up with excruciating slowness. If she moved one bit faster, her head would fall off. Just as she achieved a wobbly vertical, an oxcart with an ungreased axle squeaked and groaned down the street in front of the tavern. She held her head on her shoulders with both hands, and suppressed a groan that would have made it ache even worse. No wonder her father used to complain that her mother was scrambling the breakfast eggs too loudly. If she’d known then what she knew now, she’d never have laughed.

Her mouth tasted as if she’d been drinking from the chamberpot instead of a wine cup. What she wouldn’t have given for a bottle of Scope or a tube of Crest with toothbrush to match – and a dentist on call while she was at it. Her bad tooth ached worse than it ever had before.

So that’s what a hangover is, she thought. Every nerve ending turned up high. Every sensation more intense than usual. A lot more intense. A hell of a lot more intense.

Sunlight streamed in through the open window. She would have been willing to swear it was the same watery sunshine she’d always seen in Carnuntum, but her eyes blinked and watered and ached as if it had been the fierce glare of the Sahara. She yearned for sunglasses – one more lifesaving idea no one in Carnuntum had ever had.

When she first came to Carnuntum, she’d told herself – and believed – that the loss of material things didn’t matter. She’d traded them for genuine equality: a good enough bargain, all things considered. Since then, she’d learned just how far off the mark she’d been. She’d lost all the little things that made life easier, and got in return less equality than she’d ever imagined possible, and almost as much sheer aggravation as she’d seen in the twentieth century. That’s not a bargain, she thought nastily. That’s a consumer complaint.

So where did she go to file? Was there a consumer protection bureau for victims of unscrupulous gods?

Her guts rumbled. They were happier than they’d been that first night, but they weren’t dancing in the daisies, either. She was glad, once she’d used the chamberpot, to fling its reeking contents out the window.

An irate shout rose from the alley. A laugh shook itself out of her – and half killed her head, too. Damn, she thought, half in horrified embarrassment; but only half. Now there was a hazard of urban life no one in Los Angeles had to worry about.