Martin shakes his head. “It’s much too soon to even suggest that to her.”
“Oh.”
“She’s not had it easy in California, either. Her husband left her some years back for another woman. She’s had financial difficulties and I’ve been able to help her out a bit.”
“That’s so kind of you,” I say, and I mean it.
“Belinda’s always been very good with plants and herbal concoctions, and she’s come up with a tonic that stimulates hair growth for balding men. She’s very unsure about how to market her tonic, so I’m going to help her with that.”
“Oh. How?”
“I’m going to bring the bottles here to be properly cured. The tonic works best if it’s cellared first. She doesn’t have any kind of cellar at her place and we have the boiler room. I will take the finished tonic on my route, and when I’m not doing insurance business, I can take it to various stores and encourage the proprietors to carry it. Belinda would never be able to do this. She’s a very private person and stays close to home. If her tonic begins to sell, she won’t have to worry about her future.”
I’m so touched by his care for this cousin that I want to reach across the table to squeeze Martin’s hand. But the only time we touch each other is when he’s assisting me in and out of a carriage. “I’m so glad you’re doing this,” I say instead. “I truly am, and I hope she will soon want to come see us, or perhaps someday Kat and I could go with you to see her.”
“Perhaps someday,” Martin says, and then takes a sip of his tea.
“Does Belinda know about me?”
He places his cup back on its saucer. “She knows I have recently remarried, yes. But the thought of engaging with more family does not suit her right now. It may be a long while before she will agree to that. It might not ever happen. I think we will just have to wait and see.”
“All right. Well, is there anything I can do to help with the tonic?”
“No,” Martin says quickly. “The tonic is a bit unstable at first, so the bottles mustn’t be moved or jostled after I’ve placed them in the boiler room, or the cure will be ruined. And each batch takes a surprising amount of work to produce. The best thing you and Kat can do is to stay out of that room so that there’s no chance of the bottles being knocked over.”
“All right.” I’m disappointed that I can’t have more of a role in helping Martin’s cousin, and at the same time so taken by Martin’s good heart and generosity. For the first time in a long while, I feel a measure of fondness for him, and I wonder if this is how it will begin between us, a growing affection that is almost like love.
This fondness gives me the courage to come to his bedroom that night. He is sitting up in his bed reading from a slim volume when I knock on his door and then open it. If he is surprised to see me he doesn’t show it. His expressionless face makes me stutter as I ask him if I can come in. He nods and watches me as I move across the room to the other side of the bed. I pull back the covers and I will my eyes to stay affixed to his as I slip in besidehim. His eyes are still on mine with no hint of what he is thinking behind them.
“I told you the night we married that I wanted to wait to be with you until we had a bit of affection for each other because I didn’t want to give my body to a stranger. I don’t think of you as a stranger anymore,” I say, as confidently as I can. “I would like to be with you tonight, if that’s all right with you.”
It takes courage to say those words because I’m risking that he might say that it isn’t all right. He might say he still mourns his wife even though I’m sure he visits the Barbary Coast brothels. I’ve smelled the hints of cologne on him. The brothels are a place for mindless relations and nothing else. He surely doesn’t think of his wife when he is with a prostitute. But letting me in his bed, his new wife who bears his name? I’m sure it will be different with me.
Or he might say he’s not attracted to me.
Martin regards me for a moment, and then says without emotion, “If that is what you want.”
“It is.”
He nods once, places the book on his bedside table, and extinguishes the light. My heart is aflutter when he pulls me to him and pulls my nightgown up over my head. I chase away all thoughts of the last time this was done to me and focus instead on how it was the first time. I want Martin’s kisses. I want them so badly. But he’s not kissing me. His hands are moving across my body in every hidden place, and I feel a hundred thousand needles of delight, but he doesn’t kiss me. He is on top of me and then inside me and it is wonderful and pleasurable, beyond any pleasures I have ever known. There is none of the violence of the last time Iwas with a man. But there is no passion, either. When we are finished Martin still does not kiss me. He has enjoyed my body as I have enjoyed his, and that is all. We haven’t shared affection for each other; we have only shared our flesh. He doesn’t ask me to leave and I don’t want to. But I don’t curl up into his embrace, either. When I awake in the morning, he is already up. And there is nothing in his morning greeting to indicate that anything has changed between us.
I find him in the boiler room at the far wall laying bricks one atop the other and setting them in place with a trowel. Next to him is an old washbasin in which he has mixed the mortar. The length of bricks is at least seven feet long and extends outward by perhaps five feet.
“The hair tonic needs to cure in a warm, dark place,” he says, in answer to my stare, as though that was the only question on my mind. “I’m making a vault for it.”
It seems such a drastic measure, disrupting the boiler room with such a permanent structure. And needless.
“Isn’t it dark and warm enough down here anyway?” I ask.
“If it was, do you think I’d be going to all this work?” He doesn’t say it unkindly, but I sense his displeasure at my question nonetheless.
“No, of course not.”
He slaps on a layer of mortar and sets a brick in place. I wonder when Martin had the bricks delivered. While I was sleeping in the wee hours? While Kat and I were at the market yesterday? Some other time entirely?
“Are you wanting some breakfast?” I ask a second later, after deciding it doesn’t matter. And I want to recapture a sliver of the intimacy we had last night. Martin is doing a kind thing for histroubled cousin. I am never in the boiler room anyway. So what if there is a brick crypt crowding one length of the room?
“Later. I want to get this finished so the mortar can set,” he replies.
