Household Gods

23

So, she thought, no surprises. Or should she assume that? If she did, she could make a call or two of her own now without feeling guilty for wasting the time.

Before she reached for the phone book, she called up a file from the computer and printed it out. She wanted to be sure she had all the facts handy. As she read over the two pages from the laser printer’s tray, she smiled grimly.

County Government Offices, the heading in the white pages said. The office she wanted was on Ventura Boulevard, only two or three miles away. She dialed the number. “Good afternoon, District Attorney’s office,” said the voice on the other end. “Family Support Unit — spousal- and child-support cases. How may I help you?”

Nicole steadied herself. Here it was. Moment of truth. She said it baldly, in her best and crispest professional voice. “My ex-husband has been late on a good many child-support payments, and he’s missed a good many others altogether,” she said. “I badly need the money, and I want help collecting it.”

“Please hold,” the voice said without expression. “I’ll put you through to the Child Support Enforcement Section.”

For her listening pleasure, or lack thereof, the FSU offered 101 Strings — soothing enough if you weren’t the sort who preferred acid rock. Nicole, whose taste ran to Top Forty when it ran to anything at all, lived through it until a new voice came on the line: “Child Support Enforcement. This is Herschel Falk. I understand you have a collection problem. May I have the details, please, Ms. -?”

“Nicole Gunther-Perrin,” Nicole said. His silence had an interesting quality: like an open door, or an open mind. She gave him the details he’d requested. All of them, with scrupulous exactness, from the date and number of the child-support order to the dates of Frank’s checks that had come late to those of the checks that should have come but never had.

“Well, well,” Herschel Falk said when she finished, and then again, a moment later: “Well, well. You certainly have all that at your fingertips, don’t you, Ms. Gunther-Perrin? I wish everyone who called here were so well prepared.”

“I’m an attorney,” Nicole said with a hint of tightness. Her teeth had clenched while she ran through the list of Frank’s delinquencies. She couldn’t seem to pry them loose.

“I see.” Falk sounded like a man who’d heard everything at least once, and most things a lot more often than that. “Now you’ve had it up to here with your ex, and you’re going to hit him up for everything you have coming to you.”

“Mr. Falk,” Nicole said, “that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Let me give you Frank’s — Frank Perrin’s — work and home telephone numbers, too, while I’m at it.”

She heard the scratch of pen on paper as she read them off. Then he said, “If I don’t get him, I will leave a message at both those numbers this afternoon. Let me put the figures into the computer, so I can tell him how much he owes to the penny. There’s ten percent interest on delinquent payments, you know.”

“Now that I had forgotten,” Nicole said with a grin Frank would not have been happy to see. “I’m in corporate law, and I really thought he would keep up after we divorced. I didn’t pay as much attention to the regulations as I should have.”

“That happens,” Herschel Falk said with every evidence of sympathy, and a degree of relish that she took note of. This was a man who enjoyed his job. Not a nice man, oh no, but a very good man to have on her side. “We’ll take care of it from here,” he said. “Some people find a call from the District Attorney’s office amazingly — mm, maybe therapeutic is the word I’m looking for. It doesn’t work on everyone, but it does for a good many.”

“I thought that might be the case,” Nicole said. “Frank wouldn’t even think of holding up a bank, and God forbid he should walk off with a wallet someone dropped on the sidewalk in front of him, but when it comes to stiffing me — well, that’s not really a bad thing, is it? I’ve got my job, after all. It’s not like I’m starving. And it’s so difficult to come up with the money some weeks, what with the trips to Cancun and the payments on the Acura. And it really gets inconvenient, you know?”

Herschel Falk laughed shortly. “Believe me, Ms. Gunther-Perrin, I do know. And we’ll do our best to teach him that one doesn’t just obey some of the laws some of the time.” He added dryly, “And, of course, we’ll do it for nothing: your tax dollars at work. Quite a bit less of a bite than your own attorney’s two hundred dollars an hour.”

“Two-fifty,” Nicole said. “Yes, that does enter into it. Ironic, isn’t it? If he’d been paying up, I’d be able to afford the fees.”

“Life’s little ironies, yes,” Falk said. “All right, then. I’ll call and see what Mr. Perrin has to say for himself. If he doesn’t dispute the facts, we’ll go from there. If he does… well, we’ll see. May I have your number, please, so that I can reach you when I have something to report?”

Nicole gave him her office and home numbers. “I don’t think Frank will dispute the facts,” she said. “He’s in computer science — he knows what’s real and what isn’t. Sometimes he just does his best to ignore it.”

“Maybe this call will do some good, then,” Falk said in a neutral tone. “We can but hope. Good day, Ms. Gunther-Perrin.”

“Good day,” Nicole said, and fought an urge to giggle. His slightly old-fashioned style had infected her. It was appealing, really. Even though, as a confirmed governmental cynic, she wasn’t sure he really would do as he promised, or do it in any kind of timely fashion, she still felt good about the call. Finally she was doing something about a long and frustrating problem.

She went back to her analysis with a lighter heart, and a sense that she should have done this a long time ago. There were legal mechanisms in place here, and they would work in her favor, even if they took a while. She wouldn’t have to beard an Emperor in his den, and then rely on his goodwill, to get what was rightfully hers.

The calls from well-wishers had tapered off, but they still kept coming. Her patience was wearing thin by the time Frank added himself to the list. Obviously he hadn’t heard from Herschel Falk, or he’d have been screaming in her ear. The good Mr. Falk must have been operating in lawyer time when he promised to call this afternoon. No doubt he meant some afternoon this week, or possibly some afternoon this month.

Then, at about a quarter to four, Cyndi rang in to report, “I have your ex-husband on the line, Ms. Gunther-Perrin.” Her tone had a slight hint of question, and an edge of warning.

Nicole smiled and shoved the environmental impact report to one side. “Really? Good, then, I’ll talk with him.” She waited for the small click that meant the secretary had transferred the incoming call, then spoke in her sweetest, most reasonable tones: “Hello, Frank.”

“Nicole!” Frank sounded neither sweet nor reasonable. “What the hell are you doing? I just got off the phone with this crazy bastard from the DA’s office, and he says — “

“What am I doing?” Nicole broke in. “I’m doing what I’m legally entitled to do, and what I should have done the first time you missed a payment. You’re violating a court order, Frank. It’s just as much against the law as knocking over a liquor store.”

“Oh, give me a break,” her ex snarled.

“I’ve given you too many breaks already,” Nicole snapped. “So many breaks that I’m broke. I need the money you owe me. If you pay up, Mr. Falk goes away. If you don’t, he goes after your assets. I can tell him — I will tell him — where a lot of those are, and I’m sure he can find any I’m not aware of. People in the District Attorney’s office have all sorts of interesting connections, and their software is getting better all the time.”

She didn’t know how true that last was, but it certainly rattled Frank’s cage. He howled a suggestion that sounded a lot like Falk’s last name. Then he calmed down a bit, or at least got his voice under control. “That bastard says I owe you some ridiculous amount. I may have missed once or twice, but — “

“Shall I e-mail you the dates of all the checks you missed?” Nicole asked sweetly. “You can add them all up and figure the interest due on each one. If your number doesn’t match the one Mr. Falk gave you, I’m sure he’ll be happy to discuss the discrepancy.”

Glum silence on the other end of the line. At length, Frank said, “I find Woodcrest for you, I pay for the first month, and you go and do this to me. Thanks a hell of a lot, Nicole.”

“You’re welcome,” she said. “You can take that off the total; fair’s fair. Now, suppose you tell me when I can expect the rest. If it’s later than Thursday, I expect you’ll be hearing from Mr. Falk again.”

“Thursday!” he howled. “Do you have any idea how much money that bastard says I owe?”

Just about enough for a nice vacation in Cancun, and a couple of payments on the Acura, Nicole thought. She elected not to say it. “I’m sure Mr. Falk will be pleased to discuss the matter with you,” she said.

“He can talk to my lawyer,” Frank snarled.

“That’s perfectly all right with me,” Nicole said equably. “You can pay me, or you can pay me and your lawyer both. I’m sure you can figure out which one is cheaper.”

“Bitch.”

“Thank you. Remember — Thursday. Send it here to the office, so I can get to the bank on the way home. Now that the kids are at Woodcrest, that will be a lot easier,” Nicole said.

Frank had to be on his cell phone. There was no satisfying slam of receiver into cradle. Just a prissy little click. Nicole threw back her head and laughed. Oh, that had felt wonderful! And the beauty of it was, he would pay. She was as sure of that as of sunrise tomorrow. Sunrise in West Hills, what was more — not in Carnuntum.

Cyndi popped her head into the office, wide-eyed and reminding Nicole vividly, just in that moment, of Julia. “What’s so funny, Ms. Gunther-Perrin?”

“Not funny, really,” Nicole said. “But you know what?” She waited for Cyndi to shake her head. “This is a pretty good place.”

“What, the office?” Cyndi sounded amazed. But then, Cyndi had no idea how much she automatically accepted as the physical and mental furnishings of her place and time. Nobody did. Nicole certainly hadn’t, not till she got her nose rubbed in it.

She leaned back in the comfortable padded chair, glanced at the computer screen and the color photos of her children next to it, and took a long breath of clean, odor-free, air-conditioned air. “It’s not so bad,” she said. “It really isn’t.”

Nicole started to wonder about that as she pulled into Woodcrest’s godawful excuse for a parking lot. If Kimberley and Justin had turned out to have a difficult day, she’d be back to square one again. But this time, for absolute certain, she wouldn’t be whining to any gods or goddesses. She had every intention of staying right where she was.

The preschool building was much better than its parking lot, though it had a tired, end-of-the-day feel to it. Kimberley let out a squeal and did her best to tackle her mother. Justin was right behind her. Nicole braced automatically and took the brunt of the double blow, and smiled down at them. They smiled back. From the look of those smiles, they’d had a good day.

Kimberley got hold of her hand and dragged her toward the four-year-olds’ cubbyholes. “Mommy, come here! Look at the picture I made!”

A heavy weight of worry dropped from Nicole’s shoulders. It was all right; the kids were happy. As she initialed the sign-out sheet, Miss Irma appeared from the depths of the room to say, “Kimberley was a very bright, well-behaved girl today. I think we’ll enjoy having her here.”

Justin hadn’t tried too hard to tear the place apart or burn it down, either, from Miss Dolores’ account of his day. For a two-year-old, that was moderately high praise. Nicole left Woodcrest in a warm glow. She’d forgotten how good that felt — and how good it felt to feel good.

Getting home was dead easy, once Nicole escaped that miserable parking lot. Small price to pay, she thought as she did her best to keep her car from getting clipped coming out. If this was the worst she had to do to keep the kids happy, she’d take it.

“We had tacos for lunch today,” Kimberley informed her. “Chicken tomorrow, and hotdogs the day after. That’s what Miss Irma said.” If Miss Irma said it, Nicole gathered, it must have come down from Mt. Sinai with Moses.

“Hogs!” Justin agreed gleefully. He couldn’t say hotdogs very well yet, but he loved to eat them.

Too much fat, Nicole thought automatically. She couldn’t get as exercised about it as she used to. It was food — something she’d learned to appreciate, deeply, when she hadn’t had enough of it.

Dinner went as well as dinner could with a pair of rambunctious kids who were tired from a long and exciting day. When she’d got them both bathed and put to bed — so clean and sweet-smelling, and no nits to pick, not even one — she did a little work with reference books and notepad. Then, yawning, she put herself to bed. Just as she turned out the light, she slid a glance at Liber and Libera on their plaque. “It was a good day,” she said. “It was a very good day.”

She slid back into the routine of her late-twentieth-century life almost as easily as if she had in fact been away for only a week. Everyone’s assumption that she’d been away only that long helped a lot; if she slipped up, they attributed it to her illness, and brushed it off.

She didn’t slip up much, at that. Old habits died hard. Her life in Carnuntum began to fade, to seem more distant than it actually was, like an intense and vividly memorable dream.

On Wednesday morning, she went to see Dr. Marcia Feldman. The doctor wasn’t any happier to see her than she’d been before, or any happier to report, “By all the tests, Ms. Gunther-Perrin, you’re still perfectly normal.” Her eyes on Nicole were accusing, as if she suspected there was something Nicole wasn’t telling.

Nicole wasn’t about to tell it, either. No matter how tempted she might be to share her experience with someone, this meticulous medical scientist was not the person she’d have chosen. She fit her response to one of the things Dr. Feldman must be wondering. “No, I didn’t take any drugs you couldn’t detect. I don’t do that kind of thing.”

“Everything I was able to learn about you from your coworkers and your ex-husband makes me believe that,” the neurologist said, “but it leaves what did happen a mystery. I don’t like mysteries, unless I’m reading one.” That was meant to be a light touch, but it fell flat. She shrugged. “Under the circumstances, I don’t know what I can say, except that I hope it doesn’t happen again. Everything’s been all right since you went home?”

“Everything’s been fine,” Nicole answered truthfully.

“All right.” Dr. Feldman sighed. “In that case, all I can do is give you a clean bill of health and tell you I do not know whether it will last and how long it will last. Just that, for this moment, you are as healthy and normal a specimen as I could hope to see.”

“Thank you,” Nicole murmured, quashing the small jab of guilt. The truth would upset this good doctor a whole lot more than her current uncertainty. Nicole had to remember that.

“Good luck,” the doctor said at last. “That’s not very scientific, I know, but it’s the best I can do for you.”

“It’s good enough,” Nicole said. “Thank you, Dr. Feldman. Really. You did your best for me; I do appreciate that.”

Dr. Feldman didn’t look exactly pleased, but she had the grace to see Nicole out, and to shake her hand at the door of the waiting room. Feeling oddly as if she’d been given a blessing at the church door, the kind of thing a priest did to equip a parishioner with some small defense against the big bad world, Nicole made her way back to the office.

Cyndi was at her desk, trying hard to look busy. She raised a questioning eyebrow as Nicole came in. Nicole gave her a thumbs-up. Cyndi silently clapped her hands. Nicole grinned and sailed past her, and tackled that analysis. She’d hit her stride there. No matter what Sheldon Rosenthal had done to her, she was going to give him the best piece of work she could. She had her pride, after all. And if she wanted to show him up just a bit, well, who could blame her?

Thursday was D-Day: the deadline for Frank to pay up. Nicole twitched all morning and all through lunch. By mid-afternoon she’d made the sanity-saving decision to call Herschel Falk first thing in the morning and find out what, if anything, was happening.

But late that afternoon, a little before she had to pack up her work for the day and head out to fetch the kids, a FedEx deliverywoman set a cardboard envelope on Cyndi’s desk. Nicole resisted the urge to leap out and grab it. Properly, as an attorney should, she waited for Cyndi to bring it in to her for signature and release. Only after both secretary and FedEx driver were gone did she rip open the envelope.

Inside she found a certified check, a receipt for her to sign and return, and a note. I’ve taken out the cost of the microwave along with the first month at Woodcrest, Frank had written. If you don’t like it, call the damn DA.

Nicole grinned like a tiger, and called Falk — but not to complain about that. It wasn’t too unreasonable, considering. “Good,” the attorney said when she thanked him. “I wish they were all that easy. Most people these days don’t have any respect for anything, let alone law or authority.”

“I thought my ex would,” Nicole said. She turned the check over in her fingers. It wasn’t enough to get her all the way out of the hole, but it would help quite a bit. “Now, if he just keeps up from here on in, I’ll be in fairly decent shape.”

“If he doesn’t,” Herschel Falk said, “you know where to call.”

“You bet I do,” Nicole said. It wasn’t going to be or stay easy, particularly if Frank got hardened to hearing from the District Attorney’s office if he got behind in his payments. But it wouldn’t be easy for him, either, if he got slack. With luck, he’d be smart enough to figure that out for himself. Without it, she’d remind him — as forcibly, and as often, as necessary.

Nicole finished the analysis Friday afternoon, saved it and printed it and checked it over before she took it upstairs to Rosenthal’s office. That would gain her points: turning it in early.

But as she read it through, prepared for the flush of achievement and the satisfaction of a job well done, her mood crashed into the barrier of the first paragraph. It was written in lawyerese. Eye-glazing, brain-numbing lawyerese. Half of it was deliberate obfuscation, which was part of the game. The rest could have read a lot better, too.

She hadn’t written her petition to Marcus Aurelius in lawyerese. Chiefly because she didn’t know the exact formulations of Roman law, but also because she wanted to be as clear as possible. She’d wanted him to understand exactly what had happened to her and why she was demanding restitution.

What was it Tony Gallagher had said, just after he hit on her? She wasn’t cooperative enough — by which he meant that she hadn’t been obliging enough to come across for him. But maybe he’d been trying to tell her something more, something important.

She reached for the phone and punched up Gary Ogarkov’s extension. “Gary,” she said when he picked up, “I’ve got an analysis here that I need to give to Mr. Rosenthal on Monday. Any way you could help punch it up so it reads better?”

“I’ll be right there,” he said with every appearance of willingness. “If I can’t do it all now, I’ll take it home and do it over the weekend.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Nicole said. She tapped a finger on her desk as she pondered what he’d said, and what he’d left unsaid. He was still feeling bad about the way things had gone. If he wanted to atone for it this way — why not? As long as he didn’t try to lay another guilt trip on her.

By the time she came out of her meditation, she was listening to a dial tone, and Gary Ogarkov was saying hello to Cyndi at her desk outside the office. He breezed in just after Nicole had dropped the receiver into the cradle, all ready and set to go. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s see what we’ve got here.”

Nicole handed him the analysis. He skimmed it, then slowly nodded.

“It’s not bad at all — I didn’t think it would be. Here’s what I’ll do. I’ll break up these sentences here, and here. There’s some passives I can turn into actives, and shorten up some of these fancy jawbreakers you’ve got here — see? Not too hard, is it?”

Nicole shook her head ruefully. “Not hard at all, if you paid any attention in English class.” Or if I’d stopped to notice what I was doing with my Latin, either.

“English class is a good thing to pay attention to,” Gary said.

Nicole didn’t argue with that, but neither was she going to let him take control. “I don’t want the meaning changed,” she said. “Just the way it’s written.”

“Of course,” he said cheerfully. “But you win a cigar if you can tell me how utilize is different from use.”

“It’s longer,” she said. “And cigars are gross.”

“Unlike some other things,” Gary said, “when it comes to readable prose, longer is not necessarily better.” He grinned at Nicole’s foreboding expression, and pulled a pen out of his pocket. “How about I get started? I edit better on paper. I’ll pass you each sheet as I get done with it, and you can key the changes into the computer. If you don’t like em, just leave ‘em off.”

Nicole nodded and, after a slight pause, thanked him. He didn’t notice. He was running down through the first page — scribble here, slash there, swirl and jot and flip, on to the next page. When the complete page flew her way, it looked like one of her freshman English professor’s slash-and-burn specials. But she had to admit, as she typed it in, that it read a whole lot better and more clearly than the original version.

They finished a few minutes after five. As Nicole was making the last revisions and deletions, Ogarkov said, “This is a hell of a piece of work, by the way. I should have said that sooner. If it doesn’t knock Mr. Rosenthal’s socks off — “

“Then it doesn’t, that’s all,” Nicole said calmly. “But I didn’t do it for him. I did it for me. You know what I mean? And you helped make it better. I appreciate it.”

“Hey, no problem,” he said. “Any time.” He saluted her as she typed in the last couple of sentences, scanned them, then set them to print. “Good luck,” he said, “and have a great weekend.”

“You, too, “ Nicole said sincerely.

Then he was gone. Cyndi had left just as the printer started. The rest of the office was emptying with Friday quickness. Nicole tapped her foot, starting to lose patience with the printer’s deliberate speed. At last, however, it was done, slapped into a folder, and ready to take upstairs.

As she’d expected, Sheldon Rosenthal’s secretary was still there, clacking away at that antique of a correcting Selectric. Nicole could just barely remember when it had been state of the art. She could also remember when state of the art had been a reed pen and a sheet of papyrus.

“Good evening, Ms. Gunther-Perrin,” Lucinda said in her cool, genteel voice. “What can I do for you?”

“I finished the analysis Mr. Rosenthal asked for,” Nicole said, setting the folder on the secretary’s desk.

Lucinda’s expression didn’t change in the slightest. “He’s with a client right now,” she said. “I will see that he gets it.” That part of her duty done, she went back to her typing. Salaried attorneys got efficiency, no more. Cordiality, she reserved for partners and clients.

Nicole wasn’t about to let it irk her. Umma’s sisters in Carnuntum had been a lot sniffier. She’d got her point across, and she’d got the work done. She had a whole, free weekend ahead of her — and an empty one, once Frank and Dawn came to pick up the kids Saturday morning. She’d get them clean tonight, and see that they were packed and ready to go.

She sighed at a memory: Lucius going off to the baths with Titus Calidius Severus, the small dark boy and the sturdy dark man, both of whom she had, in her way, come to love. Whatever had happened to Lucius, he’d lived long enough to have at least one child of his own who’d lived to grow up and… and in seventy or eighty generations, here was Nicole, hurrying toward the elevator on the way to her car. She hoped he’d had a long life and a happy one, not too heavily touched with sickness or sorrow.

And what would a descendant seventy or eighty generations removed from her think about the life she was living? Considering what she’d thought of Carnuntum, ignorance was probably bliss.

Frank was none too cordial when he and Dawn came to get Kimberley and Justin. “I should have taken half my plane fare out of that check, and Dawn’s, too,” he grumbled, “seeing how you screwed up Cancun for us.”

“That wasn’t my fault,” Nicole said: not strictly true, but Frank didn’t need to know that. “And I did need the money.” She glanced at Dawn, who was French-braiding Kimberley’s hair. Kimberley looked pleased with herself. “I’m going to be so pretty, Mommy,” she said.

“You already are, sweetheart,” Nicole answered. It wasn’t a bad thing that Kimberley liked Frank’s girlfriend. Really. She made one more gesture toward civility: “Thanks for getting the money to me when I asked for it,” she said to Frank.

“That’s okay.” Frank caught himself; she must have taken him by surprise. It certainly wasn’t her usual approach. “No, it’s not okay, but it’s done. The… heck with it.” That wasn’t civility for Nicole’s sake. He’d always, made an effort not to swear when the kids could hear.

With Kimberley and Justin out of the house, the place felt empty and much too quiet. Nicole tackled it with vacuum cleaner and duster, scrub brush and plain old elbow grease. She hadn’t given it that good a going-over since well before she woke up in Carnuntum. By the time the place was spotless and all the kids’ toys picked up and put away, she was bone-tired. But it was a different kind of tired than she knew after a long day in the office.

It felt good to sit down to a solitary dinner: a small steak, pan-grilled with garlic and cracked black pepper, and a baked potato — no potatoes in Carnuntum. She ate this miniature feast in front of the TV, with the VCR running her tape of The First Wives’ Club. She howled all the way through it. She’d got even, too, by God. It felt wonderful.

Frank and Dawn brought the kids back Sunday evening, putting an end to a long, lazy, surprisingly pleasant weekend. Nicole had idled through the Sunday paper with bagels and cream cheese and lox, watched another video, even spent a little time drowsing in the cool and familiar quiet of her bedroom. She was awake and refreshed and able to smile at the kids as they burst through the door — minus their father and his girlfriend, who, true to form, had dropped them off and sped away for a night of, Nicole could presume, relentless debauchery. Or else they were going to buckle down to a little extra work.

Kimberley’s mouth was going even before the door was fully open, pouring out her latest news: a trip to the zoo. “We saw lions and tigers and chimpanzees and elephants and flamingos and meerkats — meerkats are so funny, Mommy — and we ate hamburgers and French fries and pink lemonade.”

“Elephant make big poop,” Justin added. He laughed. Bathroom humor and two-year-olds went together like ham and eggs.

“He sure did,” Kimberley agreed. She made a face. “It was disgusting.” Then, with a giggle, she stuck a finger in front of her nose and trumpeted. So did Justin. They ran around being elephants, at impressive volume, till Nicole snagged them and pitched them into the bathtub. They splashed enough water to turn the rest of the bathroom into a swamp. That might have been fine for elephants; their mother was not amused.

When Monday morning came, the elephants were magically transformed into preschoolers. They were eager preschoolers, as eager to head to Wood-crest as they’d ever been to go to Josefina’s house. That was good news — very good indeed. So was the trip to the office, short, sweet, and simple. She was definitely getting to like that part of her day.

This Monday’s return was rather different than her last one. The outpouring of good wishes had stopped. And yet there were still greetings, smiles, welcoming waves: a friendliness and sense of being wanted that she couldn’t remember from before. Was it new, or had she been too harried to notice it?

She took a warm feeling into her office with her. It helped as she tackled the mountain of work she’d neglected in favor of Sheldon Rosenthal’s analysis. More had come in while she was doing that, and some was urgent. The fact she hadn’t heard from Sheldon Rosenthal didn’t concern her too deeply. Word would come down from Mount Olympus, or it wouldn’t. There was no point in worrying about it.

By the time she came up for air, it was Thursday. She had a vague memory of the week, including at least one food fight between Kimberley and Justin — the kitchen curtains would never be quite the same — and a birthday lunch for one of the other women associates.

By Thursday morning, she was beginning to think she’d reach the bottom of the pile sometime in the not too indefinite future. She was so pleased to realize that, she didn’t even snarl when the telephone rang. Cyndi’s voice said, “Mr. Rosenthal’s on the line, Ms. Gunther-Perrin.”

“Put him through,” Nicole said — strictly pro forma, of course. One did not, no matter how wickedly tempted, put the founding partner on hold.

“Good morning, Ms. Gunther-Perrin,” Rosenthal said in his smooth, polished tones. “Could you come up, please, to discuss the analysis you prepared for me?”

Could you come up, from the big boss, meant, How close to yesterday can you get your fanny up here? “Of course, Mr. Rosenthal,” Nicole said with what she hoped was suitably bright willingness — and no apprehension. “I’ll be right there.”

The seventh floor was as hushed and august a place as ever. It had, now she had a basis of comparison, a certain Roman feel — but she doubted very much that the decorators would have been pleased to be informed of real Roman taste in decor, including the nauseating color combinations and the gaudy, and X-rated, statuary.

She was keeping her spirits up rather well, she thought. Not stressing out. Not letting herself imagine horrors, or flash back too strongly to the last time she’d answered a summons from on high. She’d come up with such lofty hopes, and gone down like a soul into Hades, all the way down the helix of time to a tavern in Carnuntum.

Lucinda was sitting as always in the outer office, door dragon par excellence. She nodded as Nicole entered. “Go right in,” she said. Was that cordiality? It couldn’t be. It was just — a touch more than her usual civility. Maybe it was Nicole’s nice gray suit. Power dressing had its uses. “He’s expecting you.”

The office hadn’t changed at all — but it had only been three weeks of this world’s time since she’d seen it. Rosenthal stood up to greet her. She couldn’t read his expression. “Coffee?” he asked, just as he had when he’d dropped the bomb on her.

“Yes, thanks,” she said, and let him pour her a cup. There was a subtle protocol in that, and she was as well aware of it as he was.

It was excellent coffee. She sipped at it for a moment, admiring the view from his window, before she sat down across from that battleship of a desk.

She couldn’t tell what, if anything, he was thinking. Her gray suit, her cream silk shell, and her understated professional makeup wouldn’t offend his eyes, she didn’t think. Maybe she was a little more confident than she’d been, or a little less worn down by the world in general. She was definitely happier, now that she had a basis of comparison. Historical perspective, she thought, is an amazingly underrated thing.

Sheldon Rosenthal studied her for a moment, a scrutiny she endured with what she hoped was suitable equanimity, and tapped his forefinger on the analysis. “You think a challenge to developing this parcel, should one occur, would be likely to succeed.”

Nicole’s heart thudded, but she calmed it down. She nodded. “Yes, I do. Anyone who takes a look at that environmental impact report will find plenty of ammunition. I’ve outlined a couple of possible strategies, with citations.”

“Yes, you were most thorough.” Rosenthal tapped the top page again. “Most thorough,” he repeated. Nicole wondered if he meant it for a compliment. He coughed, then said, “I notice you credit Mr. Ogarkov with assisting you here.”

“That’s right,” Nicole said. And what do you intend to make of that. Mr. Founding Partner?

“And why did you seek his assistance?” Rosenthal asked. “Did you not consider that, since I gave the assignment to you, I might have wanted it to come from you and you alone?”

“I did consider that, yes.” Nicole spoke with great care. “But I also thought you would want the analysis to be as good as it could be, no matter how it got that way. Mr. Ogarkov writes better than I do” — you drove that home with a sledgehammer — “and so I asked him to polish it before I gave it to you. He was kind enough to oblige.”

“I see.” Sheldon Rosenthal coughed again. Nicole couldn’t help remembering what a repeated cough had meant once, in Carnuntum. But this was lawyerly pose, not pestilence. “He made a point of telling me that polishing, as you put it, was all he did: that the legal analysis is entirely yours.”

“That’s true,” Nicole said, cautious still. Of course Rosenthal had checked in with Gary before he summoned her. It was good of Gary not to try to take more credit than he deserved. But then, he didn’t need to hog credit now. He’d already made partner. Whereas Nicole -

I’ve got a job. she reminded herself firmly. It could be worse. I know how much worse it could be. She could hang on here till she got some resumes in the mail. If she found something better, she’d take it. If she didn’t, she’d keep hanging on. That was all she could do. All she needed to do, really. As long as she had food, shelter, and means to pay the bills, that would be enough.

“It is, I think, an excellent analysis,” Rosenthal said.

“Thank you,” Nicole said. He’d praised her work before. It hadn’t meant anything then; it needn’t mean anything now. Nevertheless, she couldn’t stop her heart from speeding up again… Just drop the bomb and get it over with.

He coughed once more. In another world and time, she’d have been waiting for him to break out in a rash and collapse. Instead, he plucked at the neat tuft of hair on his chin. Was he nervous? Of course not. He was playing a game of some sort, and she, it appeared, was the spectator. Or, perhaps, the target?

“Not long ago,” he remarked, “Mr. Sandoval informed me that he was resigning to accept a position with a firm in Sacramento. He has, I believe, ambitions of working closely with the State Legislature.” One of his eyebrows twitched microscopically, as if to say he found such ambitions unsavory.

Nicole had been prepared for a number of things, but this particular change of subject took her by surprise. She didn’t know Sandoval past the occasional greeting in the hall, but she could say honestly enough, “I hope he does very well.”

“I have no doubt that he will. He is able and personable and, as I say, ambitious. That, however, is not why I mention the matter to you.” Rosenthal got up, refilled his coffee cup, and Nicole’s as well, without waiting for her to nod. More power games. More odd resonances. He sat down, sipped, and resumed: “I mention it because, with Mr. Sandoval’s departure, we are left with a vacancy in our partnership structure. Would you by any chance be interested in filling that vacancy?”

Nicole sat in what felt, just then, like a perfect vacuum. He’d said words. The words meant something. What they meant…

She was sitting, she realized, and staring blankly at the founding partner’s face. It had blurred into an abstract, a pale oblong of features, two dark dots for eyes, and a grayish smudge of beard. Slowly, though perhaps not as slowly in real time as in the eons inside her head, she found the rags of her professional demeanor and put them on. The first thing that came to her, she didn’t act on. A shriek of Yee-haaaa! was hardly appropriate in the founding partner’s office.

The second response, the one she selected, came out rather well, she thought, and rather calmly, too: “Thank you, Mr. Rosenthal. I would like that very much.”

Was that the wintry ghost of a smile on that austere face? She let herself suppose it was. “Well, splendid,” Rosenthal said. “I know I must have disappointed you in our last, formal meeting. After this truly outstanding piece of work you’ve done here, I’m doubly pleased to make this offer.”

She might be half blind with joy, but she could read between those lines. He must have taken more flak than he’d expected when he named Gary and not her. He’d given her the analysis as a test of sorts. If she’d done it badly — maybe even if she hadn’t thought to ask Gary to help with the prose style — he would have had the ammunition he needed to prove he’d been right. If she did well, as she’d done, he had justification for promoting her. How long had he known Sandoval would be leaving? Had he by any chance encouraged Sandoval to leave just then?

She couldn’t ask, and she wasn’t about to try. If she hadn’t lived in Carnuntum while her body spent six days in a coma, what would have happened? If he’d just dumped the analysis on her in the state of mind she’d been in after she lost the partnership, she’d probably have told him to put it where the sun didn’t shine. Or she’d have given him a half-assed, halfhearted job, the work of an obviously disgruntled employee.

For all she knew, that was exactly what he’d expected of her. If so, he wasn’t showing it, and he wasn’t likely to. If she’d surprised him, he’d never admit it. Nor would he ever confess to disappointment that she’d proved him wrong and her supporters — the whole amazing number of them — right. Thank you, Liber, she thought. Thank you, Libera. But for you, I’d be out on the street right now.

Rosenthal was waiting for her to say something. She couldn’t let him know exactly what she was thinking, but she came as close as she dared: “Sometimes things need to work out at their own speed.”

Thanks again to the god and goddess whose answers to her prayers had taught her so much, and shown her how to conduct herself in two worlds, she’d said the right thing. “A very mature attitude, Ms. Gunther-Perrin,” Rosenthal said, nodding with more vigorous approval than she’d ever had from him. “Commendably mature. The proper attitude for a team player. Yes, I think you will be valuable to the firm in your new role.”

She heard everything he didn’t say — everything he’d said to her in this office three weeks ago. Would he attribute her change in attitude to her six-day coma? Or would he just assume that she’d taken time to rethink her priorities?

It didn’t matter. He’d changed his mind about making her a partner.

She was a partner. She’d broken out of the trenches; she had a future in the firm. Life was good. Life was very, very good.

This descent from the upper regions was far different from its predecessor. Nicole kept a deadpan expression, which must have been convincing: people glanced at her, some with curiosity, but for all they knew, she’d just gone up to get the feedback on her analysis. If the office grapevine had been humming, nobody was showing it.

Cyndi was making a point of being busy, no doubt to keep from noticing any new disappointments. Nicole thought of striding on past, but that wasn’t exactly fair to Cyndi. She let go her deadpan expression, let it go completely. What Cyndi must have seen out of the corner of her eye was a high-grade idiot grin.

She looked up from her keyboard and got the full blaze of it head-on. Her eyes went wide. “Did you —?” she asked. “Did he —?”

“Yes!” Nicole’s answer was all-inclusive.

Cyndi leaped up with a complete disregard for proper secretarial demeanor, and threw her arms around Nicole in a bruisingly tight hug. Nicole’s jaw ached with grinning, but she couldn’t seem to stop. When Cyndi whirled her in a little dance of joy, she went along, and let it spin her right into her office. She fetched up next to the phone.

She was aware, peripherally, of Cyndi setting the grapevine going at top speed. And why not? She picked up the phone and punched a particular extension. “Okay, Gary, ‘ she said when he answered. “Today I buy lunch.”

He couldn’t have helped but hear the jubilation in her voice. “Does that mean what I hope it means?”

“You better believe it,” she said.

He let out a war whoop right in her ear. It was still ringing as she set the receiver down and tried to get back to work. Futile as that was: between Cyndi and Gary, within ten minutes the news had traversed the entire sixth floor. The seventh had probably known for hours, if not for days, which way the decision would go.

It was all she could do to get away for lunch, with all the people streaming in to congratulate her. She caught herself noticing who seemed overjoyed and who eyed her speculatively — women associates, many of those last. They’d be seeing the crack she’d made in the glass ceiling, and contemplating ways of making it wider.

More power to them, Nicole thought. She had to drag Gary away, finally, which probably started a whole new spate of gossip.

So let people talk. Today, at least, she didn’t give a damn.

Gary chose Yang Chow for lunch. That seemed fitting. Nicole had eaten there when things looked their worst. It was only right she should go back now that they were looking as good as she could ever remember. She even ordered the chili shrimp again, to take the curse off it, and to make it a good-luck dish. Then she sat back in the cool open space with its white tablecloths and its candy-pink napkins, and looked out through the blinds at the green-lined street, and indulged in a moment of great contentment.

“It’s a shame you don’t drink,” Gary said. “You should have one to celebrate.”

“You have one for me,” she said, “since I drove. I don’t think I want to begin my drinking career” — which, in this body, it would be — “by drinking and driving. A 502 on the day I made partner? No, thanks.”

He laughed ruefully and agreed — and ordered a double Scotch on the rocks, in her honor. Watching him drink it, she didn’t think she was ready for that yet, even if she wasn’t driving. What she was ready for, however…

She got hardly any more work done the rest of that day than she had when she came back from the hospital. She didn’t worry about it a bit. Sooner or later, she would catch up. In the meantime, she’d enjoy herself. She’d earned it.

And if that wasn’t a change in attitude, she didn’t know what was. Seize the day, the Romans had said. Eat, drink, be merry. Tomorrow you may die. It wasn’t macabre at all, or particularly pessimistic. It made a great deal of sense, as worldviews went.

On the way home with the kids, she stopped at Cost Plus Imports. Kimberley and Justin loved the place. Among other things, Cost Plus had weird toys from all over the world — and imported candy bars, too. Nicole wasn’t ready quite yet to corrupt them that far, though she almost yielded to the temptation. Instead, she bought Kimberley a child-palm-sized frog with bright green, satiny skin, and Justin a red-and-blue lizard. They were delighted with their prizes.

And she bought herself a bottle of red wine. She didn’t know anything about wine; except in Carnuntum, she’d never had anything to do with it. The brands had changed a bit since then: no Falernian in stock here. She hoped it would be good. It certainly had cost enough, even at a steep discount. If it wasn’t as upscale as its pricetag, she could only hope Liber and Libera would forgive her.

There was a certain comfort in the routine of a Thursday night at home: dinner she actually cooked, fried fish and mixed vegetables and, as a treat, a package of curly fries; then baths and bedtime story and bed for the kids. They didn’t understand why Mommy was so happy, or just what a partnership was, but they were glad because she was glad. It mattered more to them that there were two new additions to the population of stuffed animals. Nicole was amused to hear Kimberley explain to Scratchy the stuffed bobcat,

“Now, remember, Scratchy, you can’t eat Ribbit, even if he is a frog. You have to be friends.”

Justin protested loudly: “Lizzie! Lizzie too!”

“Lizzie, too,” Kimberley agreed. “You hear that, Scratchy? You can’t eat Lizzie, either. Except,” she added with calculation worthy of both her parents combined, “if Justin is naughty — “

“No exceptions,” Nicole said, exercising parental veto. Kimberley glowered, but for that particular sentence, there was no court of appeals. She sulked for a minute or two, but she’d survive it. Nicole kissed her good night and left her clinging tightly to both the much-mended and much-battered Scratchy and the shiny new Ribbit. Justin was already asleep in his own bed. Nicole kissed him on the forehead, too lightly to wake him, and went back to the brightly lit and newly quiet kitchen.

She had to rummage through the drawers before she found a corkscrew. She’d never used one before, or paid much attention to anybody else who did — she’d been too busy being censorious about the evils of alcohol — as if good red wine and rubbing alcohol were the same poisonous substance.

She managed to push the cork down into the wine instead of pulling it out of the bottle. Her mouth twisted in chagrin, but really, it didn’t matter. She found a goblet deep in a cupboard, one of a set of crystal she’d been given as a wedding present, and filled it nearly full of wine that looked like the Falernian she’d sold by the cup in the tavern. It smelled much less sweet, but no less rich; a richness that felt, somehow, very modern, very spare and contemporary. That was fitting, when she thought about it.

She picked up the goblet and a dishtowel, and carried them into the bedroom. The bedside lamp was on, shedding a soft glow on the plaque from Carnuntum. She folded the dishtowel at its base and poured a little wine, first over Libera’s face, then over Liber’s. Whatever the deities didn’t drink ran down the limestone surface and soaked into the towel.

“Thank you,” Nicole said to the god and goddess. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” She set the glass in front of the plaque as a second offering. But there needed to be more. She lifted the glass again and, for the first time in her modern life, took a sip of wine.

It wasn’t nearly so sweet as Falernian. The flavor, like the smell, was richer, and more complex. After several sips and some moments’ thought, she decided she liked it better. She could hope Liber and Libera did, too.

However they felt about it, they weren’t saying. She set the cup down half empty, leaving it for them if they wanted it, and turned out the light. She’d sleep well, she was sure. Whatever worries she had, for this night at least, none of them mattered.

In the dark silence of the bedroom, Libera’s stone eyes swung toward Liber’s. The god was already looking her way. They nodded. The wine had been a little on the sour side, but it was the first formal offering they’d had in a long, long time. They were both well pleased.

They were also both amused. They were gods; they could read a human soul as easily as a man could read letters on a parchment. Nicole had not simply been thanking them for returning her to this time — which she, for incomprehensible mortal reasons, preferred to their own. She was thanking them, too, for all that had gone well in her life since.

And that, Liber and Libera knew, was foolishness. How could it be anything else? She’d done those things, every one of them, herself.