“Later. I want to get this finished so the mortar can set,” he replies.

I watch him place a few more bricks and then I turn for the stairs and the light of day.

8

As August gives way to September, I continue to leave my door open, and occasionally Martin visits me at night. Sometimes I visit him. He never stays through until morning in my bed. I do in his, but he is always up before me and gone from the room when I awake. We never kiss; we never whisper sweet words to each other. We never give each other knowing looks across the breakfast table the following day.

I want to think Martin is finding comfort with me that is different from what he got at the brothels. I don’t think he visits them anymore. At least I no longer smell the cheap perfume on his skin. But he doesn’t have affection for me. I would know it if he did. He would kiss me if he did. And what little fondness I was starting to have for him is frozen in place now as I wait to see if he will begin to have any kind of likewise affection for me.

In late September Martin brings in the first bottles of his cousin Belinda’s hair tonic. The unlabeled black bottles are the size of syrup containers, with white stoppers sealed with wax. I watch him the first time he sets them onto a little wooden shelf he placed inside the brick vault, which he keeps covered with a thick panel of solid wood. He positions the bottles like toy soldiers, like giant dominoes. By the time October arrives there are twelve bottles, the oldest ones on the far left of the shelf and the newer ones to the right.

I have only disobeyed him once. I reached inside the vault one day when he was home and the cover was off, noting that the temperature of the air seemed no different within the brick structure than outside it. I carefully lifted one bottle an inch or two off its straw bed. The glass was too black and the room too dark; I was only able to sense the heaviness of what was inside it. Whatever mixture was inside seemed dense with weight. I set the bottle back in place and went upstairs.

That same evening after supper I decided to speak to Martin about Kat’s schooling. Another six-year-old child who we sometimes see at the park is attending school and learning to read and write. I had asked that child’s mother about it and I learned that nearly all six-year-olds living in the state of California are enrolled in some kind of school.

“Do you think we should enroll her?” I asked Martin.

He did not seem to have an opinion. “I’ll leave you to do whatever you think is best,” he replied, sounding somewhat disinterested.

There is plenty of money, at least from what I can tell, and I asked him if I could check into the girls’ school that this other child went to. This he seemed to consider for a moment before deciding that, yes, I could inquire about it.