“Shhh, Mayra is already asleep,” Martin said.
With Martin’s arm around my waist and my arm over his shoulders, we walked up the stairs. He led me to a room at the end of the hall, where I noticed a portrait of a man that looked like an older version of Martin. I pointed at it.
“That was my father,” he said.
There were still things I wanted to ask about his parents, but I couldn’t produce any words. He set me on the bed and helped me remove my jacket and my boots. Then, he stood up.
“Well, have a good night,” he said.
“Wait,” I said with a hiccup. “Would you help me remove this?” I pointed at my corset. “I can hardly breathe with it.”
Suffocated by the dense air around me, I unbuttoned Cristóbal’s shirt. I might have choked if I didn’t remove the pressure from my breasts right away. Gently, Martin assisted me in unwrapping the fabric around my chest until I was left in Cristóbal’s undergarments. After I removed my facial hair, something came over me, something I couldn’t explain. It could’ve been his scent—a blend of sweat and alcohol masked under his citric cologne; or maybe the fact that I’d been alone for too long and I yearned to be embraced, or the way Martin had watched me all evening—and was watching me now that I no longer looked like a man. Whatever it might have been, I didn’t care. I clasped my fingers around his neck and brought his face down toward mine. Off came my glasses, the buttons of my undergarment, his shirt. We kissed with the urgency of two people who’d been thirsty for too long and had finally stumbled upon a glass of water. Martin’s kisses had an unexpected tenderness to them. He was gentle, yet vehement. His hand traveled softly over my breasts, his lips on my neck.
“Puri,” he said. “Mi Puri.”
I’d never experienced a more intense and sublime moment. It was almost as if my entire life had been leading up to this moment of complete communion. Martin seemed to have known my body all along—in ways that Cristóbal never did. He knew exactly where to touch, where to kiss, how to make me feel alive. Above all, I was touched by his kindness—I’d never imagined him to be so giving.
After it was all over, he lay next to me, staring at the ceiling. I kissed the line between his eyebrows. He smiled and asked me if I was all right. I said yes, I said I’d never been better. Our fingers interlaced. I expected him to say something along those lines, one of those trite words lovers say when they’re feeling satisfied. But he only kept that faint smile on his face, a smile that—in ways I couldn’t understand—made me shiver.
CHAPTER 36
I woke up like one of those heroines in a fairy tale: the sun filtering in through the translucent curtains, the sounds of the birds in the forest vivid and sharp, a soft sheet covering my nakedness.
Martin was nowhere in sight. I refrained from calling out his name. Maybe Bachita had already arrived and Mayra might be tidying up the house. The door to my room was shut. I wasn’t sure if Martin had slept here with me, or if he’d gone off to his own chamber.
There was a dent in the mattress beside me, but his clothes were gone. Mine had been collected and piled on a chair by the armoire.
The door opened. I covered my breasts with the sheet.
Martin snuck inside the room with a small tray in his hands, shutting the door behind him with his foot. He signaled with his free hand that I should be quiet. The tray had a cup of tea and bread and something that looked like caramel. I was delighted. In my twenty-eight years of life, nobody had ever brought breakfast to my room.
“Mayra is already up,” he said, “so we have to be very quiet. I told her you had spent the night here for you were too sick to get home.”
I smeared the caramel-like texture onto the bread.
“This is delicious,” I said. “What is it?”
“Dulce de leche. Some people call it manjar. It’s made out of milk and brown sugar loaf. Bachita makes it once a week.”
“I love it,” I said, taking another bite of my bread.
“You’re so beautiful,” he said unexpectedly. “I always knew there was something different about you. A man could never have such fine features.”
“Do you think other people might have noticed, too?”
“Nobody has said anything to me.”
Smiling, I took a sip of tea while he opened the curtains. He stood by the window for a moment, looking outside, and his smile vanished. He tensed up and shifted forward, fixing his gaze on something I couldn’t see. Forcefully, he shut the curtains and rushed to the door.