Steam #4
Sliding his hands down his face, David stared at her. “Palpitate?”
She blushed, then lifted her chin. “Yes. My mother’s doctor told me about it. It’s a medical technique used to relieve hysteria and stress in women. Surely you’ve heard of it in this day and age?”
Hysteria and stress . . . A snippet of learning from his wide-ranging study of the previous turn of the century resurfaced in his brain.
Doctors used to relieve “hysteria” in women by .
. . masturbating them. Flushing with a mixture of embarrassment and arousal, David reminded himself firmly that he was supposed to take a couple weeks at least in courting her first.
“David?” she asked, guileless and clueless, for all of her intellect.
“Uh, yes, men have something similar,” he agreed.
Such as what I did after I found the photographs my future self will have taken of you .
. . “Um . . . don’t worry about the DVD player.
It was a little old, and I suppose I can afford something new.
I’m just going to go up to my room and lie down, as you suggested. ”
With the photographs I took of you to study as I “palpitate” my stress away . . .
“All-right, then – I am S-sorry for dismantling your thingy without asking first. I won’t do it to anything else without double-checking,” she added, her hand stillon his arm.
Pressing in sympathy, she hesitated, then leaned in and kissed his cheek.
“Thank you for putting up with me, David. It’s V-very sweet of you. ”
Yes . . . yes, I do believe I feel the need for an attack of “palpitations” coming on, he thought dazedly. He headed for the stairs with a smile, enjoying the lingering impression of her lips on his skin.
Day ten of his first seventeen days in the past, David was longing for air-conditioning.
It was a hot, humid summer evening, filled with the drone of insects and only the slightest stirring of the air as a sort of breeze.
Although a man of the year Ought-Nine never took off his shirt in front of a lady, Elaine had taken pity on her house guest, permitting him to strip off his upper clothes.
The straps of his suspenders chafed a little, but the occasional, rare puff of air felt too good on his naked chest to care.
Plus, she did slant her gaze towards his torso every few paragraphs, immersed though she was in a borrowed future book extolling the virtues of superconductors.
David himself was trying to read back issues of the Chronicle, but the heat made it hard to concentrate on the articles in the “Local News” section.
Part of his reason for reading the paper was his curiosity about how people lived and thought and, well, gossiped about each other.
The other part was to make sure that Elaine’s name wasn’t besmirched by his presence.
So far no one had enquired as to where he was staying – a hazard since Elaine’s father was currently overseas lecturing on the newest learnings in electricity to his fellow scientists, leaving her essentially unchaperoned – but he didn’t want to take chances with her reputation.
The hilltop house was fairly isolated in this age, with no neighbours at the bottom of the hill.
They had, however, driven her father’s automobile into town a few times already, with David introduced as “a fellow scientist and colleague of Mr Cuttleridge’s” to explain his presence and peculiarities.
That had come in handy when trying to explain away certain oddities in his speech and demeanour.
He tried to focus on a description of a soirée given by the mayor and his wife up at the county seat, but just couldn’t focus. Groaning, he dropped his head on his hands.
“Stressed again?” Elaine asked, looking up from her book, which she had covered in plain brown wrapping paper to disguise its out landishly bright cover. “Have you palpitated recently?”
He winced again and dropped his head to the table, slumping in his chair. “If I ‘palpitate’ any more, I’ll palpitate myself to pieces.” Wiping his forehead on his forearm only smeared the sweat around; it did nothing to remove the damp, sticky feeling. “What I need is a shower.”
“I’m afraid all we have is a bathtub in this day and age,” Elaine reminded him. “But if you mean to bathe, do not look to me to heat up your water. I’ll go nowhere near the stove in this B-beastly weather.”
“I’d rather have a C-cold bath instead,” he muttered. “One more week of this, and then it’s back to blessed air conditioning.”
Elaine hmphed. “I distinctly recall suggesting that I come to the future again. But no, you insisted you wanted to live in the past. To revelin its lack of amenities. Well, R-revel all you want. It was your own choice.”
“It wouldn’t be so bad if you at least had a swimming pool,” he pointed out, rolling from his forehead on to his cheek so that he could look at her.
Elaine looked up, but not at him. The thoughtful pinch of her brow intrigued him.
Nodding slowly to herself, she picked up her book ribbon, marked her spot and set it aside.
She nodded sharply and placed her hands on the table.
“Up you get. I might not have a formal pool, but there is a small pond down at the bottom of the hill. Down about where that mini-market thing is located in your era. If we take a lantern and a blanket, some towelling cloths and so forth, we can go down there and . . . erm . . .” She paused, blushing.
“No, that wouldn’t work. You didn’t bring a bathing suit, did you? ”
It’s been a couple of weeks, the devil in the back of his mind whispered. Or maybe it was the one in his trousers. David shook his head slowly. “No, I didn’t. But I won’t tell if you won’t. This is a private pond, yes?”
“As private as it gets. The land goes down to the bottom of the hill, where the Attenborough Farm takes over; technically it’s a stock-watering pond,” she explained, “but the Attenboroughs have been pasturing their cattle on the west side of their property of late. However, there are many bugs to worry about. If you don’t wear a proper swimming suit, you’ll run the risk of being bitten in unpleasant places. ”
“Then the bathtub it is,” he decided, pushing himself upright. “At least the windows of this house have mosquito netting on them.”