I Crossed the Border to Work and Fell in Love with the Landlord

It took my husband Andrés three years to forgive me for the last time. Not the first infidelity, not the second, but the one I could no longer hide. We went back to Quito with a mutual oath: I wouldn’t look for anyone else, and he would trust me again. Ten years went by like that, with faith and routine held together by force of habit.

We bought a house with the bank. Three bedrooms, a small yard, a loan that ate up half our pay. I worked at an optical shop downtown, and he drove a taxi in shifts. The truth is the debts weren’t only with the bank. I liked buying things. I liked walking into a store and coming out with a bag, a blouse, some shoes, a perfume. Added together, those bags were a hole that never closed.

My neighbor Rocío was the one who put the idea in my head. One afternoon, standing in front of her house with a coffee in her hand, she told me she was going to Mendoza. That her cousin was there and had gotten her a contract in a nursing home. That she’d earn four times as much, almost in dollars, and that there was work to spare for women who wanted it.

—Come with me —she said—. Even if it’s only for a year. You clear the debts and come back with a calm head.

That night I repeated every word Rocío had said to Andrés, with the necessary adjustments so it sounded like a serious proposal and not a whim. I showed him the numbers. I talked to him about the children, the house, the next increase in the payment. I told him I’d go back to church on Sundays and that I’d never leave him alone for more than a year. He looked at me with that face he makes when he doesn’t want to argue and said we’d think about it.

We thought about it for six weeks. In the end he agreed. He didn’t tell me all at once; he dropped it while he was washing the dishes.

—Go —he murmured without looking at me—. But do things right this time.

***

I arrived in Mendoza on a Saturday morning, with two suitcases and Rocío’s address on a crumpled piece of paper. Her cousin was waiting for us at the station. For three months I slept on the living room couch in that house. Three months of putting up with other people’s food smells, crossed schedules, shared bathrooms. Rocío started going out with a man from Mendoza named Gastón, and sometimes she would ask for the apartment for the two of them. I’d grab my purse and walk until my body got tired. One afternoon I came back early and heard them from the hallway: Rocío moaning out loud, Gastón whispering dirty things in her ear, the couch springs creaking under both their weight. I stood frozen on the other side of the door longer than I’d like to admit, with my hand clamped around the doorknob and my cunt soaking my panties without permission. No one had touched me in months, and Andrés hadn’t fucked me like a man fucks a woman with desire in years.

One morning, reading the notices pinned up in the greengrocer’s on the block, I saw a handwritten ad: “Room for rent with bathroom. Family home. Peace and respect.” I called that same afternoon.

Sebastián was in his early forties. Thin, tall, with light eyes and a scruffy beard that suited him. He lived alone in a large house in the San José neighborhood, with two rooms he rented out to help cover the bills. He invited me into the kitchen, served me coffee, and asked me about myself. Just enough. No nosiness. When I told him I had only just arrived and hadn’t gotten my first paycheck yet, he offered me the room anyway.

—You pay me at the end of the month when you get paid —he said—. I trust people’s faces. If I’m wrong about you, I’ll learn.

I moved in the next day with my two suitcases. The room was spacious, faced the yard, and had a big window where the morning sun came in. For the first time in three months, I slept alone and in a real bed.

***

For the first few days I barely saw him. I came and went on the nursing home schedule, and he went back and forth from the workshop where he fixed cars. We crossed paths in the kitchen at dawn, two shadows moving between the coffee maker and the toaster.

Then he started waiting for me with dinner made. He said it was the same cooking for one or two. I accepted, thanked him, washed the dishes. Sometimes we stayed up talking until late, seated at the table with the kitchen light off and only the glow from the patio lamp coming in through the window. He told me about his life. I told him what could be told.

One night he invited me out to dinner. He said he knew a good place near the river. I said yes without thinking too much, and only when I was getting ready in front of the mirror did I understand what I was doing. I’d put on eye makeup. I’d worn the blouse I saved for birthdays. I’d perfumed my neck. And my breasts too, and the hollow between my thighs, as if the skin there were going to speak for me.

—I’m a mother —I told him when we sat down in the restaurant—. I have three children in Ecuador.

It was true and a lie at the same time. I said it as if I were single. I didn’t mention Andrés. Sebastián listened, nodded, and after a long silence said:

—You don’t have a ring.

I looked at my hand. It was true. I had taken it off the day I crossed the border and I had never put it back on.

—No —I answered.

And with that word I opened the door.

***

From dinner we went to the bar. We had two glasses of wine, then a sweet drink whose name I don’t remember. My head filled with a heat that wasn’t just alcohol. When we got back to the house, we both knew what was going to happen, and we both pretended otherwise.

He walked me to the door of my room and stood in the frame. I leaned against him so I wouldn’t fall. I caught the smell of soap on his neck, the large hand holding my waist, the beard against my temple. And against my hip, barely hidden by his pants, the hard bulge of a cock that had been waiting for a while.

—I’m taking you to bed —he said, and took me to his room, not mine.

He sat me on the edge of the bed and knelt between my legs. He took off my shoes one by one, slowly, as if he were unwrapping a gift. Then he ran his hands up my calves, my thighs, and lifted my dress to my waist. When he saw the panties soaked through in the middle, he let out a rough sound from his throat and pressed his mouth there, over the fabric. He sucked me through the cotton, slowly biting my cunt through my clothes, until the first moan slipped out of me and I let myself fall back.

—Shut up —I told him, covering my face with my hands—, shut up, I’m embarrassed.

—You shut up —he answered, and yanked my panties off in one pull.

His tongue went deep. He spread my cunt lips with his thumbs and started sucking my clit with a patience I had never known in anyone, alternating long licks with short sucks, unhurried, as if he had the whole night. I felt the beard scraping the inside of my thighs, his hot breath rising up my belly, two fingers sliding into me all at once and curling inside. I shook on the bed, grabbed the back of his neck with both hands, and pressed his face against me without thinking. I came like that, with a stranger’s mouth buried between my legs, biting the pillow so I wouldn’t scream and wake up the whole neighborhood.

My thighs were still trembling when he stood up to undress. He took off his shirt and pants without taking his eyes off me. He had a thin, marked body, and a hard cock, thicker than I’d imagined, with a vein running underneath. He grabbed his shaft with his hand and came toward the bed.

—Suck it —he told me softly—. I want to see how you suck it.

I knelt on the floor in front of him. I took it with both hands first. I ran my tongue over the head, tasting the thick drop that had already appeared, and then I took the whole thing into my mouth, all the way back, until my eyes watered. He held my head with both hands and started moving, sliding in and out slowly, looking down at me. I sucked his cock with my whole mouth, my tongue working his frenulum, my cheeks hollowed as if I wanted to drain him dry. Saliva dripped down my chin and onto my breasts. I licked his balls too, one by one, while he gave me short strokes with his hand.

—Enough, enough —he panted, pulling my hair back—, I’m going to come in your mouth and I don’t want to.

He threw me on the bed on my back and spread my legs with one rough push. He rolled on the condom with two fingers, hurriedly, and thrust into me in a single stroke, all the way in. I screamed against his shoulder. He filled me so suddenly I lost my breath.

—Whore —he said in my ear, starting to move—, how long has it been since someone fucked you like this.

—Months —I answered without thinking—, months, come on, harder, harder.

He drove into me every way he could think of. On my back, with my legs over his shoulders, fucking me so deep I could feel the tip of his cock hitting inside me. Then he turned me over and put me on all fours, my face against the mattress and my ass lifted. He grabbed my hips and slammed into me from behind, slapping one ass cheek, pulling my hair, talking dirty against the nape of my neck. He told me he loved my cunt, that it was hot, that it was tight, that he hadn’t fucked a woman like this in years. I answered with stupid moans, “come on,” “fuck me,” “don’t stop,” without remembering that across the hall was my room, my suitcase, my previous life.

He came inside the condom after an eternity, with his fingers sunk into the flesh of my waist and a long groan vibrating in his chest. He collapsed backward and dragged me with him. I stayed on top, my mouth against his neck, smelling his salty skin and feeling his breath slowly come apart.

I woke up the next morning naked, in a bed that wasn’t mine, with the sun coming in through a stranger’s blind. Sebastián was asleep on his back, one arm across his forehead. I wanted to get up and couldn’t. I stayed there staring at the ceiling, measuring the size of what I had done, calculating how obvious it would be from the outside. Between my legs I still felt the throb of the night, the burn of his beard, the dried dampness stuck to my thighs.

I dressed in silence, went to my room, changed for work, and left without breakfast. All day my hands shook. I prayed in the nursing home bathroom, prayed on the bus back, sent Andrés a message saying I missed him. When I got back to the house, there was a bouquet of red roses on the bed in my room. Twelve. Tied with a white ribbon.

Sebastián knocked on the door and asked permission to come in. He kissed me softly, unhurriedly, as if asking forgiveness and at the same time promising more. I started crying against his chest.

—I’m afraid of getting pregnant —I lied, because it was the only fear I could say out loud.

He held me tighter.

—Don’t worry. I took care of it last night. And from now on too.

That night I slept in his room. And the next. And the next. And each of those nights he spread my legs and fucked me with a patience different from the first. I discovered he liked eating my cunt until he made me come twice before he even put it in. I discovered he liked me sitting on top, riding his cock while my tits bounced in his face, and he sucked my nipples until they were swollen and bruised. I also discovered that I liked it, more than I was willing to admit, when a man turned me against the wall, pulled down my panties with his teeth, and made me come with his tongue in my ass while two fingers worked my cunt from the front. Things I had never asked Andrés for. Things I hadn’t even known I wanted.

***

Two weeks later I hadn’t gone back into my room except to get clothes. Three weeks later, Sebastián asked me to stop pretending I paid rent. Four weeks later he took me to the registry office to ask about the marriage papers. We accepted an appointment for three months later.

Andrés called me every night at nine, Mendoza time. I’d go out to the patio to talk in peace. I told Sebastián he was my first cousin, the one who looked after the kids. That he lived in my house because my mother had a hard time with all three of them and he helped me in exchange for a roof. I showed him an old photo of a real cousin, just in case. Sebastián didn’t ask anything else.

Every two weeks Andrés asked me how much I’d sent and I made up numbers. Half my salary went to things I hadn’t bought before: new underwear, a different perfume, a more expensive haircut than I needed. I bought black lace thongs, a red garter set, a pair of panties open at the crotch that Sebastián made me wear under my dress when we went out to eat, so he could slide his hand under the table and make me wet before dessert. The other half I deposited in Andrés’s name, as proof. I had become an expert at dividing small lies that, from far away, looked like a single truth.

The strangest thing is that I was in love. Not completely, not like in a novel, but enough to imagine a whole life with Sebastián. I imagined him waiting for me with dinner, taking me to the mountains on Sundays, welcoming my children at the airport. I believed him when he said he would bring them. I believed him when he said he hadn’t been happy before either. I believed almost everything. I also believed him when he told me, with his cock still inside me and sweat sticking us together, that he had never fucked anyone like this, that he wasn’t going to let me go back, that this cunt was his.

***

The mistake was falling asleep with the cellphone on the bedside table. One dawn, Sebastián got up to use the bathroom, saw the phone, and picked it up. He later told me he only wanted to set the alarm. That he saw a missed call and the contact saved as “Andrés husband.” That he sat for a while in the kitchen with the phone clenched in his hand. That he took a long drink of water and dialed the number on the screen.

I don’t know exactly what they said to each other. I know Andrés heard the phrase “my future wife” and understood everything at once. I know he then called my mother crying. I know my mother called my father and my father called my sisters. I know that in less than six hours my entire family in Quito knew what I had done.

I kept sleeping. I woke up to the sound of the phone vibrating against the wood. It was my mother.

—Come here right now —she said, her voice breaking—. We bought you the ticket. Either you come back to your home with your children, or you forget you have a family. Choose.

I went out barefoot to the patio and sat on the step. Only then did I see Sebastián standing in the kitchen doorway, looking at me. His eyes were red and his jaw was tight.

—Tell me it isn’t true —he begged.

And I couldn’t.

***

We both cried until dawn. I apologized for things that could not be forgiven. I told him I had never loved Andrés the way I loved him. I told him every night with him had been the truth of my life. I told him the children were the only thing I couldn’t leave behind. Sebastián listened without interrupting me and in the end only asked me why I had lied to him from the first day.

—Because I was afraid you wouldn’t rent me the room —I answered.

It was the smallest truth of all.

I packed my bags that same afternoon. He drove me to Rocío’s house in his car, without speaking. At the door he set down my bag, looked at me one last time, and told me something I still repeat to myself in a low voice when I’m alone: “Never do this to anyone again.” Then he started the car and left.

The next day I boarded a plane back to Quito. I flew the five hours with broken sleep, looking out the window as the mountain range split open below. I thought about my children. I thought about Andrés. I thought about Sebastián, who at that very moment would be stripping the bed, washing the sheets, returning the room to its former shape, as if no one had ever slept there.

When I landed, no one was waiting for me in arrivals. Not my mother, not my sisters, not Andrés. I took a taxi and gave the driver my home address. He turned on the radio. An old song was playing, one of the ones Andrés used to put on Saturday mornings when we were still happy.

I got out of the taxi with my two suitcases and stood for a while in front of the door. Inside was a life that was no longer mine and another I would have to rebuild from the ground up. I rang the bell and waited.

I didn’t know what would be waiting for me on the other side.