Page 7 of Across Time

I glance up. I’ve got just enough energy to slap that smirk off his face, I’d bet. "Are you always so pleasant to your female guests? I'm beginning to see why you're still single."

His mouth slips up on one side. "You think I'm single for lack of options?"

Marie-Therese smiles fondly at him. "Our Henri can't throw a stick without hitting a lovesick girl,” she says. “It’s almost irritating going into town with him, the way they all stop us and try to talk to him.”

I don’t doubt for a moment this is true, but I still long for a way to take him down a peg. "I assume it must be entirely women who don't know you well," I murmur.

Henri arches a brow. “Do you always bait men who hold your life in their hands?” he asks.

I’m more annoyed by the remark than I am threatened, because I’m still hard-pressed to imagine him as a killer. “Sorry. I’m not entirely clear on the rules,” I reply. “No one’s ever threatened to kill me before.”

He turns toward the room just past the kitchen, which I assume is his. “With the mouth on you,” he says, “I find that very surprising.”

* * *

After Henri emerges, freshly bathed and irritatingly handsome, we sit down to eat a dinner that is relatively simple, yet smells better than anything I’ve ever smelled. I'm still so ravenously hungry it feels like I might never get full.

"What happened to the bread?" Henri asks. I sigh. I should have known he'd comment.

"It was my first time."

He narrows one eye. "How exactly is it that a girl of your age has not learned to make bread?”

It’s no different than the question Marie-Therese asked earlier, except that he seems to regard even the most minute things about me as indicative of some greater evil, and it’s getting old.

I set down my fork. "Is there ever going to come a point where you don't act like I'm the antichrist?"

"Perhaps if I got to know you well enough,” he says, cutting into his ham, “but I don’t plan to. So why do you not possess such a basic skill?"

My lip curls. I think the inherent chauvinism of this era would kill me long before Nazis or my ineptitude at household chores. "Because where I'm from, we don't need to make our own bread. Once life improves a few decades from now, the ability to cook and produce children will not be considered a woman's foremost accomplishments.”

“But you still need to eat,” argues Marie-Therese. “Who cooks if women aren’t?”

“People eat out a lot in my time. And cooking is easier too. Faster.”

She sits forward, suddenly fascinated. “Faster how?”

"Are you sure I'm supposed to be telling you this?" I ask.

“No,” Henri intones. “You shouldn’t. You shouldn’t even be here.”

Marie-Therese shrugs. "Tell us anyway. I want to know. I want to know everything that's different. Just not anything bad."

I frown. The bad is probably what she most needs to know. I’ve spent less than a day with her, but already every bone in my body wants to urge her to flee—to move to the United States or some distant island that won’t be touched by the war. Except it’s not a choice I should make for her. As her asshole brother pointed out, I shouldn’t even be here in the first place.

Ignoring Henri’s thoughts on the matter, I tell them about microwaves and VCRs and MTV and drive-thrus. I tell them about air conditioning, something they could sorely use right now: even with the windows open my dress has been stuck to me all day. I explain that few people farm, and that—at least where I'm from—most people go to college and wind up working indoors.

Marie-Therese is enthralled by the life I describe, gushing over the idea of having weekends free to go to parties or movies or galleries. But Henri just listens, seeming to carefully weigh every word that comes out of my mouth with his arms folded across his chest.

When Marie-Therese runs upstairs to get her needlepoint, he leans back in his chair. “I think you'll find our small life here rather unpleasant," he says.

"There’s only been one unpleasant part so far,” I reply, narrowing my eyes at him. I rise to my feet, too tired to sit here being baited by him and he rises too, looming over me. Between his height and the width of his shoulders, I feel a little more vulnerable than I did when we were seated.

"You've charmed my sister, kelpie,” he says, his eyes brushing over my face, "but I promise I won't be quite so easy."

I don’t know how to translate kelpie and decide not to ask. I’m almost certain it isn’t anything good.

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