Flirting With Forever

tie so subdued it made regimental stripes look like fluorescent tie-dye. If she didn’t know better, she’d swear he was an accountant.
She looked at Jacket, then back at Mertons, waiting for a clue on the backstory Jacket had been handed.
Mertons cleared his throat and stood. “Gregory Mertons.
Do you remember our appointment? Sorry to arrive so late.
I’m on my way to the airport.”
Was he supposed to be a pilot? A chauffeur? The new breed of British middle-class terrorist? She looked at the briefcase at his feet as wel as a huge, oversized suitcase next to the fireplace. “Um …”
“I’m here to discuss the insurance you asked about.
Whole life?” He returned to his seat.
“Riiiiiiight.” She dropped her laptop bag on the table, hugged the wine a little closer and said to Jacket. “Sorry, I, uh, forgot.”
Jacket gave her a questioning look. “Insurance?”
She shrugged. “You’re welcome to join us. I’m trying to decide between whole life and term. I want to be covered, you know, with renewable or decreasing term, but I also keep thinking of the cash value. I asked Mr. Mertons to run a few different scenarios for me—”
“Seventeen, actual y,” Mertons said, patting the briefcase at his feet.
“I might need your advice.” She smiled.
Jacket waved away the idea like it was a swarming cloud of locusts and broke into a jog. “Lots of work,” he said. “Wine’s in the kitchen.”
When she heard the studio door shut she turned to demand an explanation, but Mertons had his head buried in the briefcase. Good God, she thought with a start, I’m not actual y going to have to hear about insurance, am I?
He pul ed out a piece of paper, nearly laid it on the table, then picked it up again. “I need to talk to you about Peter.”
She felt a charge of fear. “Is he okay?”
“He’s fine.” Mertons regarded her closely over the top of his glasses.
“Oh. Good. I guess.
“Have a seat.”
She sunk into the couch opposite him and put her wine on the table.
“Is he your boyfriend?”
She flushed. “Look, I don’t know what he told you, but sleeping with Peter doesn’t exactly make you his girlfriend.
If anything, it makes you something a little closer to an idiot.”
Mertons examined a nonexistent crease in his tie. “I was talking about Jacket, Miss Stratford.”
Great, Cam. Maybe you can post the story on Face-book, too. “Um, yes, I guess you could cal him that.”
Mertons nodded and bal ed the paper in his hand.
Pressing the bridge of his glasses upward, he said, “You’re aware what you’ve done is il egal.”
She felt a different sort of warmth creep across her cheeks, the sort of warmth one feels when cal ed into the principal’s office. “I’m not aware of any law I violated.”
“Ignorance is a very weak defense.”
“Who are you?”
“Gregory Mertons, Guild time-jump accountant.” He held out his hand.
“Time-jump accountant?”
“Yes.”
“What were you doing in Peter’s studio?”
He lowered his hand. “I’m an envoy and an observer. I travel the world to ensure the appropriate rules are being fol owed. Think of me as a U.N. ambassador, the painting world’s version of Angelina Jolie.”
She looked at his hangdog eyes and Abraham Lincoln–
like lank. “Um …”
“The Guild has been watching for you for some time.”
“Watching? Spying, do you mean? And what is the Guild?”
Mertons reached into his pocket and retrieved a mechanical pencil. “It’s not spying when the use of the time tube is unlicensed.”
“Gee, and I swear I sent in my application.”
“We don’t consider this to be humorous, Miss Stratford.
Time travel is exceedingly risky, especial y unprecalculated time travel.”
“Good news. I aced precalculus in high school. I never travel without my quadratic formula.”
“Miss Stratford—”
“Mr. Mertons, why are you here?”
“How shal I put it? Your travel visa has been revoked.”
Jacket had won every game of strip blackjack they’d played until he taught her to read the “tel .” Mertons clicked his pencil.
“You’ve shut down the tube?” The laptop with the extra-special version of Amazon was in her bag on the table in the entry hal . She tried to keep her eyes focused on Mertons.
Click click click click. “Yes.”
“Gosh, it was my favorite part of the DeLorean.”
The pencil stopped. A muscle contracted at the corner of Mertons’s eye. She felt like her laptop was practical y tapping her on her shoulder, and she cupped a hand around her eye to block her view.
“Yes, wel , I’m certain you’l find other uses for it,” he said uncertainly.
Wel , wherever he’d been in his life, he hadn’t been anywhere in the western world in the 1980s. She should have introduced herself as Pat