She stands, her foot tap­ping against the hard­wood floor to the ry­thym of some pop song long since dé­modé.

He kicks out at her and she falls silent for a mo­ment, but she can­not hold still for long.

Tap tap ta-ta-ta-tap tap…

He coughs out a long, be­lea­guered sigh. “Sarah,” he wheezes, “if you must tap your foot, use a song from this cen­tury.”

“It was from this cen­tury an hour ago,” Sarah points out, fid­dling with her glasses and twid­dling a ring on her fin­ger.

“Use a song from your na­tive cen­tury.”

“We spent enough time in 1983 that it got stuck in my head.”

“It was y­ou who in­sisted.” He throws the smart­phone he was fid­dling with down onto the table. “Use­less.”

“How else were we sup­posed to clean up that mess? We could barely even find it as it was, and then you had to go and read that doc­u­ment—“

“I can’t re­mem­ber that and you know it, and I will not ac­cept blame for some­thing I, as of now, never did.” He’s quite firm on this.

She be­gins to speak. He coughs. She tries again. Cough.

She speaks louder. “Well, you never did it now, but I re­mem­ber when you did, and you’re still the same you. So I do blame you, and it does­n’t mat­ter whether or not you ac­cept blame.”

Y­ou are the one who’s sup­posed to be Lady Time. You should have known I was go­ing to do it be­fore I did it!”

“If I had stopped it you’d never have learned, and then who knows what could have hap­pened?”

“I can’t re­mem­ber it now, so I still won’t learn!”

“This ar­gu­ment taught you well enough. Had we not done this, you’d have done it again on next Tues­day.”

“Just for that, I will do it again next Tues­day!”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

“…”

“What was it I did ex­actly?”