Life Goes On--Chapter 5

CHAPTER 5

On Monday afternoon I went to see Professor Barnes. Nick was already sitting in the small lounge outside the offices reading when I approached. We hadn’t seen or talked to each other since Sunday morning and he set aside his book as he stood awkwardly.

“Hey.” He’d shoved his hands into his pockets and avoided my eyes.

“Hello.” I smiled slightly at him. Being close to him was hard and I just wanted to give him a hug and maybe let him work his magic lips on me. But that would be a bad idea…very bad. God what is wrong with me?

“So….this is it,” he said awkwardly.

“Yup.” I pursed my lips. “It’s time…” I glanced at Barnes’ office. “That’s the place…”

Nick burst out a laugh. I couldn’t keep my face straight either. “God, it sounds like we’re on a blind sex date,” he said.

I covered my open mouth with my hand and stared at him with mock shock. “Nick Hamilton talking about sex?! I can’t believe it.”

“Well I was going to just say a blind date, but blind dates are never that awkward.” He looked ashamed. “Guess I don’t know how to act around you now.”

“That’s fine, actually. I’m definitely drowning some irresponsible thoughts of my own over here.” I grinned. He blushed. “I guess we’re back at square one.”

“I think that’s a good thing.” He checked his watch. “You said the meeting is at four? You should probably get in there if you don’t want to make him wait.”

I took a deep breath and stretched my arms to make sure that I had full range of motion, just in case. I noticed Nick watching me intensely as I stretched my neck. “You like?”

He coughed and flopped into the overstuffed leather chair, putting his feet onto the coffee table and re-opening his book. “Go.”

I grinned again, for just a second before I made my face go blank. I walked towards the office and knocked.

“Come in.” Professor Barnes’ office looked a lot like other professor’s offices: packed. There were bookshelves covering nearly all of three walls, each filled to capacity with books and binders. The desk, tucked against one wall, was equally covered with books and papers and a computer so covered with post-it notes that its brand was unidentifiable. He gestured for me to sit in the chair tucked awkwardly next to the desk. I had to shift a pile of papers first. Yeah, it was starting to look like Barnes was one of those socially awkward professors and the phone call was harmless.

“So, how’s the studying going?” he asked, looking at me through his thick rimmed glasses.

“Not bad,” I lied. I hadn’t done more than keep up with the reading assignments for the class, though every assignment but one I’d already read before at least once.

“Good, good. No questions?” I shook my head. “But then, I guess you wouldn’t have any.” I frowned.

“Why wouldn’t I have any questions?” I asked slowly.

Barnes stood up and sat on the corner of his desk. “Well, this class is beneath you, isn’t it?” he said lightly. “You have knowledge of medieval history that vastly surpasses everything that we in this department could ever hope to discover.”

I couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or not. That scared me. His eyes were wide, but his tone was cheerful. “Excuse me, sir? I thought I came here to discuss the midterm questions.”

“You really don’t think that you could fool an expert like me? I’ve been studying this period for over forty years. You can’t imagine my shock when you just walked into my classroom.” His voice had hardened and his fists were clenched. The way he leaned towards me made me think that he wanted to grab me and shake me. “I’ve been following your story for nearly two decades, finding your face in paintings, finding men mention you in their journals…you can’t be stupid enough to think that your body would pass through time unnoticed. Your scars made it easy to pick you out no matter where you were or who you were with.” He was staring at my left breast. He licked his lower lip. “I want to see them.”

“What?!” I yelped. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. And you’re creeping me out.” I stood up and grabbed my bag to leave.

Barnes moved faster than I would have believed. He grabbed my bag to push me back into the seat before he turned back his desk and the binder that was lying on it. I was so surprised that he’d knocked me off balance that I sat heavily. Then I was furious that he’d been able to do that.

I clenched my jaw and my fists and was moving to stand up again as Barnes dropped the open binder into my lap. I stared down at it in shock, the fight driven completely out of me. It was a two inch binder and it was entirely filled with dozens of plastic sleeves enclosing a variety of 8x10 photos of paintings and statues in just about every style used in the past thousand years, all of them seeming to come from the same model. There were photocopies of journal pages and Barnes had highlighted wherever I’d been mentioned. I recognized the handwriting and I was actually stunned to read what Phillip wrote the night that I’d caught him with Thomas. He wasn’t complimentary and in fact the word bitch was used a few times. Apparently he thought it was absurd that I would follow him to work. He neglected to mention what he’d been doing when I shouted at him and made the decision to leave, though.

I flipped through the pages, honestly fascinated. “This is pretty cool. But I don’t see what it has to do with me.” I said, looking up at him. He’d been hovering over me the entire time that I’d been reading.

He flipped to a page in the back, one of the last paintings I’d sat for, back in the late 1890s. He turned the page and showed a photograph from the thirties. The next page was my first photo driver’s license. “That’s your face,” he said matter of factly, pointing to the driver’s license.

“Huh. It does look similar…maybe it’s some long lost aunt? That’s awesome! I don’t have any family left so far as I know.” My voice didn’t even shake as I lied, but my heart was beating madly. “Do you know where she is now? I’d like to meet her.”

“That’s your face!” he shouted, his eyes cold. I jumped. “Tell me how you did it!” he demanded furiously.

“Professor…” I said slowly. “You’re scaring me. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I stood up tentatively, and as I expected, he shoved me into the chair again. I glanced at the door, biting my lip. I knew Nick could hear the shouting and I imagined that he was standing right on the other side waiting tensely.

Barnes was shaking now with anger. He’s a relatively short man, easily half-way through his sixties with little muscle left underneath his paunch. It wouldn’t take me much effort to overpower him, but until he actually hurt me I couldn’t find it in me to harm him. “Tell me the truth,” he said quietly through clenched teeth. “I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to know how you’ve lived this long.” He’d put his hands on the arms of my chair and leaned towards me, his face so close his nose was almost touching mine.

“Sir…” I breathed, letting my voice tremble. “Please…”

“NO! You aren’t leaving here until you quit lying.” He grabbed my shirt, a black button down, and ripped it open.

Nick threw the door open then, letting it crash into a bookshelf. “What the hell is going on in here?!” he demanded loudly. I felt my body slump in relief.

Barnes’ hands were still fisting the tattered sides of my blouse. “This is none of your business Nick. Get out.”

Before he’d finished the statement, Nick had strode up behind me and saw where Barnes’ hands were. He grabbed his wrists and shoved Barnes so hard he fell back onto his desk, sending the books and papers flying. I stood up, clutching the binder to my chest.

Nick put his hand on my back and urged me out of the office before he turned to look at Barnes, who’d managed to slide himself back onto his feet. “You crossed the line,” he said, his gritted teeth barely opening, his fists clenched. “We’re going to the dean right now and getting your ass fired.”

“Nick, you don’t understand. She’s not normal,” Barnes said almost kindly, stretching out the last word with a roll of his wrist to emphasize it.

“I don’t give a damn if she’s from Mars, you have no right to touch her!” he shouted.

“She’s immortal!” Barnes yelled, almost as loud. “Look at the photos—she has the same markings on her body. Look at her breast and back—those journals talk about the scars.”

Nick stared at Barnes for a full minute. “You’re crazy,” he said finally, sympathetically sardonic. “You are certifiable if you believe that.”

“Look in that binder if you don’t believe me.” He gestured at the binder I had in my arms. I gulped and held it closer. Nick stared into my eyes and I couldn’t read his expression. He took a step towards me and I automatically stepped back before I cursed myself. I had to act like I had before if I wanted to get out of the building without being a test subject. “See how she doesn’t want you to look at it?”

“No jackass,” I snapped at him. “I just had my shirt ripped open; you can imagine that I’m not very excited about men coming near me right now. Here.” I shoved the binder at Nick and started examining my shirt to see if it would close again. The top four buttons had been pulled free, but only one was lost, so I was able to mostly re-cover myself.

Nick flipped through the pages slowly, his eyes widening. His back was still towards Barnes so only I could see his face as he glanced at me and the book repeatedly. I tried to keep my face impassive as I saw the skepticism slowly turn to surprise. He looked at me again, a question burning in his eyes. I didn’t dare answer it and he shrugged before his expression changed once more to disbelief.

He turned back towards Barnes. “You have quite a collection here. But it doesn’t prove anything.”

“Look at her chest! That will prove everything.”

Nick looked back at me before deciding something. “I saw her chest last Thursday and there was nothing out of the ordinary, even if they are a bit small.” He shrugged again before looking at Barnes. “You have nothing on her but the fact that apparently her face resembles some old artwork. I’m not an art historian so I’m not one to judge, but I’ve seen a lot of Renaissance art and if I didn’t know better I’d say Leonardo and Rafael used the same models. I think that you are greatly mistaken in your belief and I am going to go to the dean and suggest that you get professional help.” He took my arm and led me out of the office.

“I’m going to prove you wrong, Nick. She’s hiding something major and I’m going to find out how she did it. I will revolutionize history AND science!”

Neither Nick nor I turned back as we made our way through the lounge towards the stairs. I finally broke the silence when we reached the exit.

“How did no one hear that?” I asked him softly.

“Most of the professors like to have their office hours in the middle of the week and earlier in the day,” he answered simply. He hadn’t taken his hand off my forearm and he still had Barnes’ binder tucked firmly under his other arm. He stopped me just outside the entry door and opened his cell phone to call Dean Winters, leaving a message to say that Barnes had attacked a student and that we needed to schedule a meeting. He snapped the phone shut and turned to me. “We need to find some place quiet to talk.”

I looked up at him and knew exactly what he wanted. “Let’s go to my apartment.”

We walked in silence again. I wondered what was going through his head, but I knew better than to ask. He needed to get his own head straight before I could add anything that would further confuse him. I unlocked the door and casually tossed my keys and cell phone into the bowl. I hung my jacket on the hook before I turned to look at Nick. His back was to me. He’d put the binder onto my dining table and was staring at it as though it might explode.

“Are you okay?” I asked him tentatively.

“Good question.” He was still staring intensely at the book and his voice was hoarse.

“Umm…well you can ask me anything and I’ll answer you honestly.” I said. For some reason I couldn’t bring myself to lie to him. “But I’ll warn you now; if you turn on me like Barnes wants to, I’ll have to kill you.”

His spun around. “Have you…?”

“No,” I said quickly. I sighed. “Look, no one has ever confronted me like this before. I’m not ashamed of who I am, but I’m not going to be a test subject.”

“So it’s true?”

“…Yes.” I saw him grimace as his last grasp for reality left. He closed his eyes and let out a loud breath.

“Okay. Are there more of you? Are you like some vampire or something?”

I let out a bark of laughter, but for the first time in an hour a real smile filled my face. “No. I’m an anomaly. Three kind old ladies decided to bring me back to life and here I am. I’m one hundred percent human except for the lack of aging thing…and I don’t tan.”

“Uh huh. I need to sit down.” Before he’d completed the sentence he fell into the chair he’d been standing next to. He put his head into his hands and shook it slowly. “This makes no sense.”

“I know. Trust me; I’m the first one to say that my life is crazy.” I sat next to him and reached to rub his back, but stopped myself.

Suddenly he laughed and sat up, looking at me. “Well, I guess you weren’t lying when you said that grades didn’t matter to you.”

I smiled at him. “Yeah.”

“So…what do you do exactly? Just go to school?”

“I do whatever…college, work, travel…whatever I feel like. If you feel up to it, the second bedroom is full of stuff I’ve collected over the years.”

He gulped and glanced at the door. “There’re probably a lot of priceless artifacts in there…”

“They have a price.”

“I guess things like that have little value to you.”

“For the most part yes; I’m more attached to concepts than the individual objects. Indoor plumbing, man…praying to the porcelain goddess has a completely different meaning for me,” I said with a wink.

That finally got a real laugh out of Nick and he visibly relaxed a bit. “I can bet.” He glanced at the bedroom door again before standing up. “I’m going to peek in there,” he told me, cocking his head.

I nodded and watched as he inhaled and exhaled slowly before disappearing into the room. I moved to sit on my couch and turned on the news. Death, destruction, politics…status normal.

…

Nick was in my “museum” for most of an hour and the national news was just ending when he emerged, looking pale. He flopped on the couch as I stood up and went to the freezer. I brought us both a fudge pop. He took the chocolaty goodness limply.

“What a juxtaposition…thirteenth century coins in nearly perfect condition and fudgesicles. I don’t know my artifacts…those could all be fakes. In fact, everything in Barnes’ book could be fake and you’re just playing with him and, by extension, me.” He looked at me hopefully while sucking on his popsicle. Oddly, he looked like a five year old who wanted me to buy him an inexpensive toy.

I gave him a tight smile. “Sorry, hon. I’m real.” I took a bite of my fudge pop and settled next to him on the couch.

“What’s it like?”

“It gets a bit monotonous after awhile. Life doesn’t change even though the world changes around you. I still have to eat, work, socialize, sleep. And it’s not like I can be excessively active in public life so I’m generally stuck with whatever society is at the moment. Plus, I have to leave everyone behind every dozen years or so, which is a heartbreak waiting to happen.”

“How exactly did it happen? You mentioned the three women…” he asked me curiously.

“I saved my first husband from an assassin. His dagger pierced my heart, hence the scars Barnes mentioned. The three women were elders in the community and they decided to attempt a spell they’d found to bring me back. It worked…I guess. I don’t think I was supposed to live this long.”

“What do you mean?” He’d forgotten about his popsicle and it was melting over his hand.

“I was supposed to find my ‘true love’,” I included the air quotes, “and that would kick-start my dying mechanism…or kill me outright…I don’t know exactly. But all I’ve met are assholes and gay men, so I’m doubly cursed---cursed to live and cursed to never die, if that makes sense.”

“Hmm…” he noticed the chocolate dripping on his hand quickly ate what was not melted before getting up and washing his hands in the kitchen. When he sat back down his expression was thoughtful. “You seem like a pretty modern woman…maybe you were just waiting for a modern man?”

I started laughing somewhat hysterically. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard of,” I told him when I could finally catch my breath.

Nick was frowning at me. “Why? Are you honestly going to tell me that those assholes, as you called them, made you happy even as you were a product of the time? I can’t picture you being happy with someone who oppressed you and I haven’t seen much evidence that many men were above that in past centuries.”

I coughed and thought about everything that I’d learned about myself in the past ninety years…maybe he had a point. I chewed on the inside of my cheek.

Nick noticed my posture. “It’s not such an absurd thought now, is it?” He smiled. “Trust me; you aren’t the first woman from the past who was stuck in a world that she did not belong. Just because you were able to use the rules that they had in place to maximize the influence you had doesn’t mean it made you happy. And I’d be hard pressed to find a woman say that she’s in love with someone she isn’t happy to be with.”

I sighed and leaned back into the couch cushions. “Unfortunately, that means that I spent a lot of time pointlessly submitting to the will of the men in my life.”

“Not necessarily…in most time frames women who were too independent were forcibly removed from society, like the Salem witches or Ann Hutchinson. So submitting to your husbands was a coping mechanism. How many times have you been married?”

“Umm…twenty-two,” I said slowly, thinking. I had a list tucked in one of my journals where I’d counted them a few years back. “Plus a few lovers that I didn’t marry.”

“Good God! How old are you? Unless you’re like Elizabeth Taylor and went for efficiency of marriage.”

“I was born in 1055 and what do you mean by efficiency of marriage?”

“Most marriages in the shortest period of time. Wasn’t she married like six times?”

“Eight if you want to get technical; twice to the Richard Burton. And I will admit that I was one of those people fascinated by their marriage. ‘Course, now I’m sorry for buying the magazines that helped create the paparazzi industry that we know now. Are you hungry?”

Nick mimed whiplash at my sudden change in topic. “Sure, I guess.”

I went into the kitchen to see what I had on hand. I hadn’t gone shopping recently and the pantry and fridge were pretty bare. I did have everything I needed for sandwiches, though, so I quickly put together a variety that I cut in half, along with some apples and carrots.

“What do you want to drink?” I asked Nick while I put the food onto the table.

“Whatever you’re drinking,” he said, sitting down in the chair he’d vacated earlier, next to the binder from Barnes. When I came back with the glasses of apple juice, he’d opened the book and was slowly studying each page.

“This looks to be in chronological order” he said, conversationally. “Of course, there’s not much from your earliest years.” He took a bite of a turkey sandwich and raised his eyebrows. “Is this on cinnamon raison bread?”

“Yes. I have weird tastes.” I took the other half of the sandwich and ate happily, wriggling in my seat, my feet not touching the floor.

“You really like food, huh?” he assessed.

“And how. I’ve spent my fair share of time starving to death…or rather not death.” I licked some mayo off my lip. “It’s not fun and I don’t recommend it. Hence my round figure.”

“I like your curves,” Nick muttered so quietly I wasn’t sure whether I’d heard correctly, taking a bite out of a tuna sandwich, chewing slowly. “So, I guess by that statement, you’ve had times where you should have died, but didn’t?”

“Yeah. A few times and that’s not counting the famines. I’ve been in a variety of transportation related accidents where my neck was broken, my major arteries pierced by bone and/or wagon pieces, my chest crushed, yadda, yadda, yadda. I’ve also been murdered a few times.” I reached for a ham and cheese sandwich. It was fun being able to talk freely about my long life.

Nick’s face had turned slightly green and he set his sandwich aside. “What was that like?”

“Surprisingly enough, not too bad. It’s not quite like sleep because I can feel the pokes and prods while my body heals itself, but there’s not a lot of real pain. Being severely injured and not dying is definitely worse.”

“Did you ever get ‘the tunnel’?”

“No. Even during the time of my first death I just felt fuzzy.”

“Weird.” He emptied his juice before grabbing a handful of the carrots, munching them slowly. “Your oddities certainly make a lot more sense now. So, who were you originally to warrant such a re-birth?”

“My father was Harold Godwinson.”

Nick started to choke on the carrot he’d accidentally inhaled. I jumped up and started beating on his back to help him dislodge it. He coughed for a couple minutes even after it’d flown from his throat. “Not that Harold,” he rasped, rubbing his chest.

“The one and the same,” I said quietly, rubbing his back in small circles. I took his glass into the kitchen, filled it with water, handed it to him and sat back down.

“Okay…that line of questions will come later. I guess we should focus on what we’re going to do about Barnes.”

“Not much to do until he does something. I’m not going to worry about it. He’s more likely to get himself committed than I am to be found out if he starts running his mouth.” I smiled at him as I leaned my head against the back of my chair. “That sounds like you’re going to stand by me. Thanks.”

He shrugged and blushed a bit. “Nowhere else I could really be. It breaks all my rules to turn you over to someone who doesn’t have your best interests at heart.”

“Aww,” I grinned. “That’s sweet.”

“Whatever.” He threw a carrot at me. “But I’m still confused about one thing…”

“What?” I asked gently, figuring that it was something more than likely to hurt him mentally.

“Why the heck do you suck at video games?! I mean, you obviously have no trouble adapting and you don’t have to study or work so you have plenty of time to practice.” He pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes at me. “There’s no excuse.”

I laughed. Hard. I even had to wipe a real tear away. That was not the topic I’d expected. “Sorry. I bought my Nintendo back in the nineties,” I pointed at it, “and it was enough game for me so I never upgraded.”

“Pathetic,” he said, turning his nose up and shaking his head.

“Hey! Don’t bash my Mario Brothers. In fact,” I said, poking his ribs, “I notice that the original Mario Brothers games have recently been re-made for the new consoles. It’s called ‘retro’,” I told him in my most patronizing voice.

“Pu-lease,” he said, pulling a valley girl from somewhere. “The graphics on those retro-ed games are totally better than the original even if they are still two dimensional.”

“But I can still kick your butt with my old console.”

“You’re on.” He got up and turned on my television. He tried to load the game, but the cartridge wasn’t reading properly.

I sat on the couch silently laughing as he fiddled with the cords and removing and replacing the cartridge a few times. I finally felt sorry for him, plus I was bored waiting for him to figure it out. “God, children these days. You know absolutely nothing.” I knelt next to him and took the cartridge from him and blew into it thoroughly before replacing it and turned the game on. “There.”

He scowled at me. “I was going to get to that eventually.”

“Honey, by the time you got to that I would have not aged ten years. Let’s play.” I grabbed my controller and settled on the floor in front of the couch. “Okay, do you want Mario or Luigi?”

“Mario.” We swapped controllers as he settled next to me on the floor. He started out well, but a miss-timed jump put him right in the mouth of a Piranha Plant in the second world. I made it to the fifth world before Nick tickled my ribs and I let Luigi fall into a hole.

“Jerk,” I said, laughing.

“I had to do something. I only have one life left.” Which was quickly lost as he was hit by rebounding “Koopa Troopa”—those turtle things. “Well, I guess you proved your point.”

“Damn straight,” I said blandly as I stood up to stretch. He seemed mesmerized by my movement. I decided against teasing him and let my arms drop before I put them on my hips. “You know, if you aren’t interested in me that way, you might want to keep your tongue inside your mouth.”

“I guess I have my own secrets to keep,” he said slowly, not quite looking me in the eye.

I frowned at him. I’ve never met a man who didn’t try to get into the pants of a girl he was attracted to; Nick is his own type of anomaly. “What’s up?”

He sighed and finally met my eyes. “It’s embarrassing. Really.”

“Do you have a problem? You know they have medicines for that these days.” I laughed nervously, hoping that my smart mouth hadn’t just gotten me into trouble.

“No, no. That’s probably less embarrassing than my own issue.” He glanced around as though afraid that there was someone around listening in. “I’m a virgin,” he finally mumbled, so low I barely heard it.

“What?” I asked gently, afraid that I’d heard wrong.

“I’m a virgin,” he said, only slightly louder. “My mom’s a conservative Christians and ingrained abstinence only into my brother and me. After awhile it just became natural to want to wait until marriage.”

“Oh.” Huh. “Okay. I’ll stop with all the innuendos then.”

“That’s not necessary. It’s something I have to deal with and if I can’t control myself then it doesn’t say much about me, does it?”

“Alright. But we’ll agree right here that whatever I may say and do, I respect your choice. I will tease you about it, in private only of course, but I won’t change my ways.” I lifted the leg of my jeans to show him my ankle in a very seductive way…if we were living about a hundred years earlier. He obliged by licking his lips slowly staring at my ankle.

I laughed and dropped my pants leg. “So I guess we’re done with the video game?” He nodded and I saved the progress before shutting it off.

“Now what?” I asked, settling once again onto the sofa with my feet tucked next to me.

“Twenty, or more, questions,” he told me simply, shifting so that he was lying parallel to the couch, “not necessarily all being answered with a yes or no.”

“Alright, just let me get comfortable.” I put my head onto the arm of the couch before lying completely stretched out, my hands clasped on my stomach. “So, doc. I’ve been having this recurring nightmare where I don’t age.”

“I am not a psychiatrist. Psychiatrists sit in arm chairs, not lie on the floor.” He switched to a terrible German accent. “So, Gretchen, about this nightmare; is it all terrifying or are there some parts that you actually enjoy?”

“You sound like the Swedish Chef. I liked the eighties. It was a good time to be a woman, plus the music was good, especially given what the seventies were like.”

“A good time to be a woman? Really?”

“Yeah. Come on—I know you’re young, but haven’t you seen Working Girl or anything with Diane Keaton? Women were taking charge and making a name for themselves; crushing the glass ceiling. The sixties and seventies were all about making a statement, you know, burning your bra and acting out. It was all well and good, but pretty unproductive overall. The sixties and seventies got men to open their eyes to the power women have, the eighties made them open the doors before the women kicked them in.”

“I guess that begs the question of do you think that the glass ceiling has been broken.”

“For the most part, yes. You’d be hard pressed to find a man who is actively holding down the women beneath them. Now the problem is women who allow themselves to be held back. Do you know that the main reason why women make less than a man is because they don’t open their mouths and ask for more? It sucks, but I don’t have much sympathy. We’ve fought for over a century for the right to not be coddled; if women want something they need to open their mouths and not expect it to be given to them whether it is work related or in the home. I spent a long time accepting the life that my husbands’ gave me, and yes, I was for the most part cared for in the way that our economic status dictated. I wanted for nothing, but you were right, I wasn’t happy. Even when my husband wasn’t abusive, there’s something to be said for earning the life that I have. Maybe if I’d been a mother I would have felt differently.” I shrugged.

“You have no children?” he asked curiously.

“I can’t get pregnant,” I told him honestly. “Still have stupid periods, though. Aspirin and Midol make the top ten on my list of wonderful innovations.”

“Ouch, but wow. How did that affect your marriages? I would think that your husbands’ expected you to give them a dozen.”

“Some of them didn’t care. Other’s found their heir in the arms of another. But most held it against me. They blamed me for it and divorced me over it. Which actually made my life easier. I mean, there were only so many ways for a woman to legally leave a marriage.”

“Were all the break-ups clean?”

“I wish. Some went better than others. The easiest were where my husband died. Though, Alex was an idiot who should have listened to me. I still sometimes have nightmares of being scalped.”

“Oh God. What happened?”

I rolled onto my stomach to look down at him. “You know that Proclamation made in 1763? Where George III told the colonists to not cross the Appalachians because he was not going to fund soldiers to guard anyone who went that far west? Yeah, Alex was one of those people. He dragged me to a settlement just past the present Virginia border in what’s now West Virginia after two years of marriage. I still don’t know what caused him to make the decision, but I bet he was running away from some gambling debt. Anyway, he told me that it was going to change our lives. Three years later we were murdered in our sleep by a rogue group of Indians. Actually, the Indians were probably a good thing because our farm was in sad shape. Alex didn’t have a clue what he was doing and he didn’t like taking my advice.”

“Why did you marry him?”

“Good question,” I said slowly. “One I wish I could answer for most of my husbands. He was cute; I was bored and tired of fending for myself. That’s generally the reason why I do anything.”

“So what did you do after the scalping?”

“I hiked my way up to Pennsylvania. I took my time getting there and married a guy in Gettysburg.”

“You walked from western Virginia to Gettysburg?!”

“Pre-Interstate System, too. Yeah. It’s not hard; it’s pretty much the Appalachian Trail. I’d stop at whatever farm house I came upon to work for food. I stole some breeches at one of the first and passed myself off as a boy—you can fool anyone with that; well, except for the robbers. They don’t really care one way or the other, so it’s easiest to just let them do their thing and wake up later from the slit throat. I’ve had worse husbands.” I shrugged when Nick sat up and stared at me.

“You make it sound like getting raped and murdered was as common as brushing your teeth.”

“More common. Teeth brushing wasn’t very well advertised. In fact, the smelly breath was probably the worst part.”

“God,” he whispered. “But if you were robbed so often, how were you able to keep all that stuff?” he asked, gesturing towards the museum.

“At first I buried it, then I put it into banks. I’m sure there’s a few stashes of stuff that I’ve forgotten about buried in what was once woods around London. That’ll make a few archeologists happy.”

“You’ve lived such an interesting life. I think I could spend a century just listening to you describe it.” I could hear the wistful tone of his voice as he lay back onto the floor.

“You didn’t see my journals? What were you doing in there for an hour?”

“Journals?!” Nick bolted upright and went into the museum. I followed him.

“They’re on the shelves inside the closet,” I told him pointing. I’d chosen this particular apartment because the second bedroom had a proper closet. In the bedroom itself, the walls were lined with cheap wire shelving that I covered with all my…crap. Priceless artifacts? Maybe. But a brush is a brush to me no matter when it was made. Inside the closet, though, I had four dark stained bookshelves with glass doors to keep the dust off my books. Most of them were the leather bound journals that my husbands’ laughed at me for keeping, but I also had a few favorite books and pamphlets I’d collected over the years. I’d donated a couple of the oldest ones to various college archives because I couldn’t bear to see them disintegrate any more than they already had.

I cursed and went to the dining table to look at the first pages of Barnes’ book. He’d not only found journal pages from the men in my life, but also pages from my own journals, where of course, I often complained about my husbands. It worked perfectly for showing that I actually knew the men who were talking about my breasts or lack of femininity. Gah!

I took the binder and went back into the museum to find Nick poring through the journals. He’d moved out of the closet and was sitting in the middle of the floor with five of them scattered around him while a sixth, the oldest, was nestled carefully in his lap. I sat with my back to the door and started reading through exactly what Barnes had on me. I wasn’t sure what was worse: that Barnes had been able to find me or what awful things some of my husbands’ had written. Apparently I could do little right.

“The enclosure movement really screwed over your sheep farm didn’t it?” he asked, finally remembering that I was in the room.

“Which time? It wasn’t exactly a comprehensive movement. And of course, I was on both sides of it at one time or another.” He was nodding absently and I realized that he hadn’t really been talking to me, but making a comment aloud. I smiled before returning to my own book. Damn my artists made me look good. Maybe I should try modeling again.

It was nearly midnight when I yawned and set the binder to my side. “Are you going to spend the night?”

“Huh?” he asked, blinking at me. It was cute the way he was so totally engrossed in the journal in front of him that he forgot about everything else.

“I’m going to go to bed. Are you going to stay the night?” I told him, using small words and speaking slowly so he would understand.

“Sure. If you don’t mind,” he retorted, equally slowly. “And can we use words that have more than two syllables?”

I smiled. “Yes, if you’ve returned from the past, that is. Don’t try to tell me that you weren’t time traveling for the past three hours…I know I was.”

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