Page 36 of Blowing Off Steam

She looked up at him from under her sooty lashes. “And boy, do you. Thank you, Field.” It appeared difficult for her to utter these words. “I’d also nearly forgotten. What it was like for someone else to frig me. It’s quite different from doing it to myself. More powerful.”

“Or maybe I’m simply more talented.”

Calliope shoved him in mock anger. “Oh, you!” Her look softened. “You must miss her.”

“My wife? Of course. We were very much in love. The sting of the loss has faded with time, but there’s still a hole in my heart where she used to be.”

Calliope nodded slowly, examining his face closely. “I know,” she breathed. “An emptiness that you think can never be filled.”

Field nodded, too, and silence engulfed the hot, syrupy air of the galley. Outside the room, metallic sounds of men hammering and the mellow shoosh of the steam engine at rest barely disturbed their intense concentration on each other.

Calliope broke the gaze by saying, “Well! I’d best finish this venison stew.” She sipped more port. “Hmm. I don’t think the stew needs any more wine.”

And her devilish grin was almost too much to bear. Field kissed her lightly on her cheek. “I should go find out what’s up with that Celestial spy in the plaid hat. And I’ve got a side lever fulcrum pin that looks about to wear out.”

Calliope shivered comically. “Ooh. I love it when you get all educated and engineerish,” she said coquettishly.

She loves it. Field went down the passageway to the engine room. The mere idea that the chef had used the word “love” in a sentence involving him filled Field with a fresh happiness. He had not felt this way in years. Calliope loved his education—at least she loved that. That was enough for now. And Rushy was probably ignorant of the methods in which a woman could be pleasured, having mostly fixed on his own meat for most of his life, no doubt. Field couldn’t imagine Rushy possessing the talent he did. Rushy had never been married.

His fine mood didn’t last long, however, when he approached his engine room and that selfsame damned riceman with the funny hat emerged. From his own engine room!

“Hey! You!” Field yelled, and sprinted over.

But the riceman’s mouth turned into a little O, and he dashed off even faster toward the landing stage, leaving such a rush of wind in his wake Field’s hair was blown about.

He could tell by the riceman’s speed that he’d never catch him, so Field entered the engine room to see what the blasted spy had been fooling with. Since when did a Celestial know anything about engines? They only had those high-pooped ships called junks that had not changed design in centuries.

When they hoisted anchor that day, it became evident that not only was the spy not on board—if he had been, they could have walloped him into the middle of next week to discover what he was up to—but Samuel Brannan had not boarded with his special guest. There was all manner of speculation as to why he had failed to board, but the general consensus was that Soquel Haight had “taken care of him.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Calliope was in a chipper mood as she walked up Clay Street with Maurice. “You know what a good deed we’re doing, Maurice?”

“Very good deed,” Maurice agreed.

She was full of philanthropy, buoyed by her new realization that she was in love with Captain Field Trueworthy. “In love,” she said aloud, testing out the words.

“I love pie,” said Maurice.

Calliope chuckled. “Not that kind of love, little Maurice. This is the love between an adult man and woman. Or an adult woman and two men. Like your parents loved each other.”

“My parents loved each other like pie?”

“Yes. In a way.”

“I don’t think so. My mother’s parents told her to marry my father. She did not even know him before that, so how could she love him like pie?”

“Oh. I see. Well, maybe they grew to love each other like pie. Anyway, you know what? I love Captain Field Trueworthy.”

Maurice seemed to understand then, for he reddened and giggled. “That is why you’re always fucking him?”

“Maurice!” Calliope stood before the gateway with the gold Celestial characters carved into the posts. “I’m not always fucking Field! I haven’t even done that yet! What you’ve seen is just kissing.”

Maurice pondered on this. “Oh. Kissing,” he said skeptically and plunged into the turbulent street of clamoring ricemen vendors.

They passed little dens where they sold the drugged liquors that Kwok Lee had imbibed. Ricemen rolled “Havana” cigars at hovels where guards stood with hands tucked into their sleeves.

Calliope knew that the hookers here cost only forty dollars in Kwangtung, but were valued here at four hundred dollars apiece. They were all slaves, living an equally degraded life as that of a slave in Louisiana or Cuba, for in addition to their lifelong servitude, if one dared to escape, she’d be hunted down. Owners gladly spent ten times the girl’s worth to retrieve them as an example to others who might want to follow. Many of the fallen women wound up murdered.