My Husband Gave My Lingerie to His Nephew

The whole house smelled of roast meat and red wine the night Nicolás arrived. He was Esteban’s distant nephew, a twenty-year-old who had just turned twenty and was moving to the city to start university; he would stay with them until he found a room near the faculty. Marisol greeted him with a polite smile, served him a generous plate, and sat down across from him, in her usual place at the table.

All through dinner the boy barely spoke. But his eyes never left her.

It wasn’t an innocent look. It was a look that slid down the neckline of her dress and lingered too long on her lips every time she laughed. Marisol noticed at once. She felt her cheeks grow hot, an uncomfortable mix of modesty and something harder to name, that tingle a forty-two-year-old woman thought she had left behind.

When dessert was over, she stood up, gathered a couple of plates, and excused herself.

—I get up early tomorrow —she said—. You both get some rest.

Esteban and Nicolás were left alone in the living room, with a bottle of whiskey half-finished between them.

—So, the big city —said Esteban, pouring his nephew another drink—. And how is it? Lots of girls at university?

—I don’t know, uncle. I haven’t really started yet —Nicolás emptied the glass in one swallow—. But girls my age are boring. They don’t know what they want.

—And what do you want, then?

The boy hesitated, gave a low laugh, with that clumsiness alcohol brings when one is young.

—I like mature women. Women who already know. Women like… —he stopped, looked toward the hallway where she had gone—. Like Marisol.

Esteban froze with the glass halfway to his mouth. The comment was direct, almost a provocation, the kind of line that would make any husband get up out of his chair. But the whiskey had loosened his pride and turned it inside out: instead of anger, he felt an absurd stab of vanity.

—She’s an attractive woman, yes —he said, with half a smile.

—Attractive? No, uncle. She’s something else. —Nicolás leaned forward on the sofa—. You must have photos. From vacations, from the beach. Show me one.

And Esteban, in an act of betrayal he later wouldn’t be able to explain, took out his phone.

He scrolled through the pictures slowly. There were photos of Marisol on the sand, golden under the sun, and others more recent that he himself had taken of her in the bedroom: in lingerie, lying back, looking at the camera with the confidence only a wife’s husband gets to see.

Nicolás looked at them with his mouth slightly open, not bothering to hide anything.

—Fuck, uncle. She’s a goddess. Is that lingerie real? The black one?

—It’s a set she has —said Esteban, and felt, dangerously, the power of owning what the other man desired.

The boy swallowed.

—I know this is really weird —he murmured—, but would you give it to me? The black set. Something of hers. Just to… you know. To imagine her.

The request was so obscene, so far beyond any limit, that Esteban found it almost funny. He stood up, swaying a little, and walked toward the bedroom.

It’s nothing, he told himself. A drunk joke. Tomorrow we won’t even remember it.

He came back with the black lace set Marisol had worn the night before and still hadn’t washed. He handed it over as one passes a trophy.

What happened after that, Esteban watched without moving, too drunk and too fascinated to stop it. The boy brought the fabric to his face, inhaled deeply the perfume still clinging to it, and, without the slightest shame, unbuttoned his pants. Esteban stayed there, seated, witnessing it like someone else’s ritual, until Nicolás finished with a rough groan and dropped the stained garment onto the carpet.

—Thanks for the hospitality, uncle —said the boy, and laughed.

Esteban didn’t laugh. All at once, whiskey wasn’t funny to him anymore.

***

Marisol didn’t sleep. On the other side of the wall she had heard voices, laughter, then the thick silence of the house. She didn’t know exactly what had happened, but she knew her husband and she knew that kind of silence.

The next morning she went down to the kitchen while he was making coffee with a hangover splitting his head. She folded her arms in the doorway.

—What happened last night, Esteban? After I went to bed.

—Nothing, my love. We talked. A little whiskey. —The cup trembled in his hand.

—Don’t tell me “nothing.” I know you talked about me. I saw the way he looked at me during dinner. What did you tell him about your wife?

Esteban set the cup down. He lowered his head. His façade crumbled piece by piece.

—He said he liked mature women —he admitted—. Like you. And he asked to see a photo. I was drunk, Marisol. I showed him a few.

—And what else? —Her voice didn’t rise a single notch. That was what was frightening.

—He asked me… —he swallowed— he asked me for one of your sets. The black lingerie. And I gave it to him.

She looked at him for a long time without saying anything. There was no rage in her eyes, and that was the strange thing. There was something colder and more resolute: calculation. She turned and walked to the laundry room, where the hamper waited in a corner.

Esteban followed her like a dog that knows it has done something wrong.

Marisol put her hand into the hamper and pulled out the lace thong. It was stiff, marked, with a sour smell that left no room for doubt. She held it up at eye level. Then, without looking away from her husband, she brought it to her face and inhaled deeply.

—Well —she said, in a low, loaded voice—. Seems the boy ended up happy.

—Marisol…

—Shut up. —She put the garment back into the hamper slowly, as if deciding something—. Do you like this, Esteban? Do you like handing me over on a platter to a twenty-year-old kid without asking me?

—Forgive me. It was stupid, I didn’t…

—You were an idiot. —She came close enough to stand a hand’s breadth from him—. An idiot. And now you’re going to see what a woman does when her own husband gives her away. You’re going to see all of it, Esteban. That’s going to be your part of the deal.

***

That afternoon Esteban had to leave for the office to put out a work fire, or so he said. The truth was Marisol sent him. She gave him precise instructions, in a low voice, by the door, and he, pale, nodded without arguing. He would be back at five. He would come in quietly. And he would stay in the hallway, watching, without touching anything.

Nicolás stayed alone in the house, waiting in the living room, not quite knowing what to do with his hands. Marisol let him wait a full hour. She did it on purpose. She wanted the boy to simmer slowly, for every minute to weigh on him, for him to start doubting whether he had dreamed it all.

When she finally appeared in the room, the boy lost his breath.

She wore a black dress, shiny, so tight it looked drawn onto her skin. Nothing underneath to hide the shape of her breasts. Fishnet stockings, thin heels, her hair loose over one shoulder. She walked slowly, measuring each step, like someone who knows exactly the effect she’s having.

—Hello, nephew —she said, and the word sounded like something else in her mouth—. Did you sleep well?

—Y-yes, aunt. Fine…

—Liar. —She sat on the arm of the sofa, crossing her legs—. I know you didn’t sleep a wink. I know what you talked about with my husband. I know you asked him for my clothes. I know what you did with them.

The boy went white. He opened his mouth and nothing came out.

Marisol stood up, went to him, and sat astride his lap. She slipped her arms around his neck, unhurried.

—And do you know the strangest thing of all, Nicolás? —she whispered almost into his ear—. It didn’t make me angry. It turned me on. I liked knowing a young guy looks at me like that. I liked knowing my husband is capable of offering me up and just watching. So let’s give him something to watch.

And she kissed him. A deep, slow, wet kiss, the kind that leaves no doubt. When she pulled away, the boy was trembling.

She took his hand and led him to the kitchen, to the same place where the night before she had washed the dishes like any ordinary wife.

—This is where I spend half my life —she said, letting go of his hand and leaning against the counter—. Today it’s going to be used for something else.

She raised her dress without hurry, confirming what the boy already suspected: she wasn’t wearing anything underneath. She bent over the counter, offering herself, and looked at him over her shoulder.

—Come on —she said—. Show me you’ve got more than borrowing your uncle’s clothes.

Right then, in the reflection of the window over the sink, she saw a shadow appear in the hallway. Esteban had come back. He was there, motionless, as she had ordered, watching.

Marisol smiled, without taking her eyes off that reflection.

Nicolás gripped her waist and drove into her with the urgency of twenty years, without technique, all force and hunger, and a moan escaped Marisol that she didn’t fake. The boy rammed her against the counter again and again, holding her by the hips, while the dishes in the draining rack trembled with every blow. She clutched the cold edge of the steel and let the pleasure run through her whole body, deliberate, on display.

—Harder —she demanded, always looking at the shadow in the hallway—. Make sure he hears it well. Make sure he sees what he gave away.

And the boy, freed of all shame, obeyed.

Esteban didn’t come in. He didn’t say a word. He stayed in the doorway, with a dry throat and a pounding heart, understanding too late that offering up his wife had a price, and that price was exactly this: watching, in silence, as another man gave her what he, through pride and whiskey, had put on a platter.

When it was all over, Marisol pulled her dress down calmly, arranged her hair in front of the window reflection, and only then turned her head toward the hallway.

—Good afternoon, my love —she said—. You arrived just in time.