The Old Neighbor Who Celebrated My Affairs

Aitor had stepped out for a moment while Sonia was getting ready in the other room. He had something pending at Amparo’s apartment and very little time. The old woman opened the door on the third ring and he shot into the living room like an exhalation. She closed the door and followed him without the slightest hurry, dragging her slippers down the hallway.

—Look at this —he said, holding his phone in front of her face with his arm stretched out.

Amparo calmly studied what the boy was trying to show her. After a few eternal seconds, she tore her gaze from the screen and fixed it on him.

—You’d have to be stupid to think that at my age I can read that ant-sized writing without my glasses.

Aitor swallowed an expletive and swept the living room with his eyes. He soon spotted the glasses on the side table and handed them to her.

—Here —he urged—. Now read it.

She took the glasses and the phone and sat down on the sofa with a slowness that drove the young man crazy. With the glasses half-way down her nose and the phone held in both hands, she read slowly, moving her lips and sliding her finger to the end of the text. She frowned and read it a second time, as if she still couldn’t quite believe it.

—The message is from my girlfriend —he explained, sick of waiting for a reaction.

Amparo nodded, as if she had reached that conclusion on her own, and a sly smile began to form. She took off the glasses, put them back in their case, and returned the phone.

—Your girlfriend… does she hate you?

—No. She loves me madly. She adores me! —he corrected, somewhat embarrassed.

The woman lifted an eyebrow, suspicious, and leaned back on the sofa. She didn’t believe that even if you paid her in wine.

—Yeah, right, fuck off. What you read is our little game. A set of trials we put each other through to keep the spark alive.

—To torture each other —she clarified.

—Yes… no. Well… —he rubbed his forehead with two fingers—. That’s what it’s about. We like winding each other up, and now it’s my turn to pay up.

—Let me get this straight. Your girlfriend, the one who loves you madly, asks you to record yourself jerking off with the panties of your “old lady neighbor”?

—With my neighbor “the swimsuit model” —he pointed out.

Amparo burst out laughing at how ridiculous it all sounded. Then she rested her arms on the back of the sofa, in the pose of a queen on her throne. She had just received the most deliciously dirty news of the last few years of her life: her young neighbor, the one who took her breath away, was going to masturbate with a pair of her panties. She bit her lower lip, savoring the fantasy.

—Don’t get your hopes up, Doña Eustaquia —he said, guessing what she was thinking—. I’m not touching your old lady rags with tongs. I brought my own from home.

From his pocket he pulled out a pair of white lace panties. The last ones he had left from Sonia, his father’s girlfriend. His neighbor clicked her tongue, annoyed, but she didn’t lose her mischievous smile.

—This is what we’re going to do —he explained—. You sit over there, talking about your war stories, like you’re busy. I film you secretly, so it looks like a stolen video. Then I pretend I’m going to the bathroom, I go into your room, grab these panties from wherever you keep your things, and jerk off locked in there. I send the video to my girlfriend and that’s it.

Amparo listened with an interest she didn’t bother to hide, nodding at each step of the plan. When he finished, she pointed toward the bedroom. What that kid had going on with his girlfriend was absurd childish nonsense, but she was having a blast taking part.

—Second drawer of the nightstand on the left.

That was all Aitor needed to hear. He turned around and headed down the hall to the old woman’s room. A sweet fruity scent filled his nose; that, together with the yellowing photographs on the wall, completed the room’s retro look.

On the nightstand rested the portraits of her dead husband and of her with a baby in her arms. Underneath he found the drawer. He opened it and inside found a heap of underwear. He compared the garment he was carrying with the ones he was seeing.

They’ll do. They can pass for hers.

He put the panties back carefully, as if afraid of contaminating them, and closed the piece of furniture. Before leaving, he thought about snooping through the rest of the drawers, but the possibility of coming across one of the old woman’s sex toys made him think better of it.

***

—You took a long time —Amparo shot at him when he returned to the living room.

—What did you expect? I rummaged through your things as fast as I could.

She raised an eyebrow, doubtful whether to believe him, but the look he returned nearly singed her eyebrows off.

—Come on, stand there like you’re doing something useful —she ordered.

The woman, already getting up, went to a display cabinet and opened the glass door. Inside were some delicate crystal goblets, and she pretended to polish them. Aitor raised the phone and started recording.

—The draft? —she said with her back to him, pretending to carry on a half-finished conversation—. What my late husband did in Ceuta, that’s another story.

—I’m going to the bathroom for a second, Amparo —he announced at exaggerated volume.

With his arm raised, trying to keep the image from shaking, he crossed the apartment and slipped into the old woman’s room again.

—Corporal Otero —could be heard in the background—, what a piece of work he was.

Aitor opened the drawer and ran his hand over the lingerie, pretending to choose.

—These —he whispered, leaning close to the microphone.

Then he went to the bathroom and locked himself in. Again, a pleasant jasmine scent brought him an odd calm, like a happy memory. He set the phone on the toilet tank and stood in front of it, naked from the waist down.

He unfolded the panties in front of the camera and brought them to his nose, inhaling with his eyes closed.

—Is this what you wanted? —he said to the lens—. Well, here you go, so you can see I love you more than my own life.

He sniffed them again, kissed them. Then he wrapped the garment around his cock and started rubbing himself, slowly at first. It didn’t take long for him to get hard.

—I’m doing this for you, Noelia. I’m jerking off with the panties of a woman way older than me. —His forehead was furrowed and his face tense with effort—. And I’m going to think about her while I come, about how I fuck her, exactly as you wanted.

A good while later, amid obscenities and gasps, he finished by soaking the garment. He held it up to the camera so his girlfriend could see it clearly.

And… send.

***

—Already? —Amparo said in surprise when he walked in—. That was fast.

She was back on the sofa, glasses half-way down her nose and the newspaper open.

—Because I’m in a hurry. And because I came in motivated: I was just with my father’s smoking-hot girlfriend. —He winked—. We almost made up.

—And that means…

—That the score’s back to zero.

—That’s good —she smiled—. You can’t always start over in cases like yours. Now you have to wait for the right moment.

—Yeah, but now I’ve got another plan.

Amparo closed the newspaper and turned slowly toward him, practically salivating. Aitor was already expecting her reaction, with a wolfish smile.

—Noelia’s mother —he blurted out.

—Your girlfriend’s mother? —she asked, stunned.

He nodded, eyes dropping.

—Seriously, boy —she said, unable to believe it—, you never stop surprising me.

The compliment swelled the young man’s chest.

—Her stepfather must be impotent, or something like that —he explained—. The thing is… —he came closer and sat beside her— the thing is, he’s going to freak… he offered me his wife. —He straightened his back—. His wife! —The grin from ear to ear was pure happiness—. I’m going to fuck that bitch right in his face.

The expression on his neighbor’s face froze, as if what she had just heard was not to her liking.

—You’re going to rub it in your father-in-law’s face? —Neutral tone.

—No doubt about it. Damn, it gets me hard just thinking about it.

—That… isn’t right. —Wrinkled brow, serious look.

—What are you talking about? He’s a stupid gorilla. And besides, it was his idea: find a man who can satisfy his wife.

Amparo worked her jaw from side to side, thinking it over.

—And she agrees?

—No way. She doesn’t want to hook up with anyone, especially not her daughter’s boyfriend. Or maybe she’s frigid, I don’t know. But I don’t care, she’s definitely going to fall. You just have to know how to pull the strings.

The old woman’s face remained locked in the same expression of distrust. Her features had darkened and her lips formed a straight line of disapproval.

—Forget it. It’s not worth getting yourself into that swamp.

The warning was serious, and the young man didn’t like either the tone or the pessimism. It wasn’t the reaction he had expected, and he answered in kind.

—What are you talking about? You enjoy this as much as I do.

—Only when nobody ends up hurt. And your plan leaves no one standing. —She pointed at him—. Look, kid, one thing is playing without the cuckold finding out, and quite another is pissing on his pride and turning it into a public humiliation in front of the woman he loves.

—Ex-cuse me? And you’re saying that to me, when you were cheating on your husband with your boss, that bastard?

—I found pleasure in the silence and the sweet ignorance of my husband, who never suffered because of me. What you’re after is hurting, humiliating, feeding on his shame and dragging him down as far as you can.

—But it was him, fuck!

—Because he loves her so much he’s capable of giving up his pride —she raised her voice—. He’s already lost his mind with grief and doesn’t know what he’s getting into. Stay away from that woman.

—Not a chance.

Amparo was boiling with rage. She was breathing hard, and in her eyes shone the anger of someone arguing with an idiot convinced he’s right.

—You’re going to ruin that man and turn her into a miserable woman. —She shook her head, saddened—. Not to mention your girlfriend. You’re going to lose her, and she’ll never be able to look her mother in the face again.

—Leave Noelia alone. She doesn’t need to know ANYTHING.

—She’ll find out. She’s her mother, and that kind of thing always comes out in the end. —She drew a breath, trying to be more diplomatic—. You’re going to destroy a marriage and your own relationship. Back off, boy. This isn’t like what you had going with your stepmother. This one isn’t going to give in.

—Me back off? I’m Aitor, AITOR, and no woman who’s ever gotten it into my head has resisted me yet.

—You’re going to fuck this up, and this time there won’t be a second chance.

—Shut up, you old fossil! You don’t know me.

—You’re wrong, boy. I know you better than you know yourself. And I’m telling you it’s not going to end well. Drop it.

—Why?

—Because I know what I’m talking about. Her stepfather will change his mind when the time comes to take the leap. Her mother will feel dirty for having agreed to betray her husband. And her daughter… —she paused to catch her breath— her daughter will stop speaking to both of them. —She stood up, towering over him—. But above all, because you’re just a stupid kid who confuses manipulating with understanding, and fucking with mattering.

—And you’re just a bitter, lonely old woman dying of envy because you can’t get what I have!

The woman was left with the words in her mouth, surprised by what he had said and, above all, by the tone. The conversation had completely spun out of control.

—Look at my girlfriend, my family, my buddies! All the women I’ve slept with —he was almost shouting—. Even my father-in-law, who’s a brute, offers me his wife. He offers her to me! —He stood up, emphasizing the difference in height—. And you… you… what do you have?

He started pacing around the room, breathing hard. Amparo watched him, afraid he might turn violent, but showing not the slightest sign of fear.

—Look at yourself: living off memories. That’s all you have left, miserable echoes of yourself. —He turned back to her and pointed a finger at her—. Yes, that’s your problem: you live in the past, in the time when you were someone. I realized it the first time I went into your room. There are no photos of friends, or parties, or trips. Just portraits of you, of what you were, of what you’ll never be again. —He was truly furious—. In this whole house there isn’t a single image of anyone who isn’t you when you were young. And what do you really have left? Nothing. A sad old woman chasing herself around the walls. No family, no friends.

—And you? Do you even have friends? —she spat—. No. Just buddies. —Her lip trembled—. “BU-DDIES.” That’s what the useful idiots of a little shit with the ego of a strategist and the brain of a pawn are called. Extras who only exist to drink with you.

—Like the company your son keeps? The one who avoids you and hasn’t spoken to his own mother for years. —He came closer until they were face to face—. What happened? Did she catch him in bed with someone else while her husband was crying in a corner?

Amparo’s eyes gleamed. They would have cried if they hadn’t forgotten long ago how to do it.

They stood in silence, staring at each other, letting the seconds pass. The echo of what had been said was still ringing hard. Perhaps both were beginning to regret it, or perhaps they were only preparing the next attack.

—Get out of my house.

Aitor clenched his jaw until the muscles along both sides of his mouth stood out. He took a while to speak, letting the seconds fall before moving his lips.

—Fine. —He straightened and took two steps toward the door. Before disappearing, he turned back to her—. Do yourself a favor and call him. Tell him you want to see him laugh again like in that photo in your room that you miss so much and keep so close. —He moved to leave, but stopped again—. Or better: tell him you’re the owner of your body, that you can sleep with whoever you want and that if anyone doesn’t like it, they know where the door is.