What My Attic Neighbor Said About My Mother
There are things one doesn’t choose. The house where one grows up, the neighbors one ends up with, the friend who appears one random day and stays forever. Adrián appeared that way, without warning, on a Saturday afternoon when someone in the landing was playing music so loud that my father had to put down the newspaper and frown.
I was fifteen. He was eighteen.
My mother was the first to say something. She said it from the kitchen, in that voice of hers that could cut through walls, conversations, and anything else that got in the way.
—Esteban, go see who it is.
My father folded the paper with the precision of someone used to interruptions and went out into the hallway. I slipped out behind him, curious. On the landing, a door stood wide open—the attic one—and from inside came a mix of reggaeton, the smell of moving boxes, and something sweeter that I couldn’t identify then, but that with time I would come to recognize perfectly.
Adrián opened the door before my father could knock. He filled the doorway. Eighteen years old and already built like someone who’d spent half his life in the gym: broad shoulders, thick neck, that physique that doesn’t go unnoticed and that he carried with the naturalness of someone who’d grown up knowing the world looked at him. Shirt open, dark jeans, tousled hair. A smile that apologized for nothing.
—Neighbor —he said, looking at my father—. Sorry about the noise. I was putting things away.
My father nodded. Said it was no problem in that calm, terse voice of his, the usual one, the one that didn’t waste words where a gesture would do. Adrián held out his hand and, when my father shook it, I had the strange feeling I was watching two different species share the same space.
That was when he saw me.
—Got a Play?
That’s how it all began.
***
Four years give you a lot. They let you learn someone’s ticks, their quirks, the way they smoke—slowly, as if time were something they had to spare—and the way they laugh when something genuinely amuses them: a short laugh, almost private, very different from the one they use in front of people. They let you know that Adrián Velasco had bought that attic not out of necessity but on a whim, or rather because at some point his father had told him that money sitting idle is dead money and he had taken it in his own way. Eighteen years old, a property attic, and a checking account I never saw but whose effects were obvious in every corner of the place.
The place was enormous for one person. High ceilings, floor-to-ceiling windows opening onto the terrace, an open-plan kitchen he used almost exclusively to leave keys and lighters on. The TV was obscenely large. The Play controllers, on the other hand, he kept in an almost surgical order on the little coffee table in the living room: the only truly tidy thing in the whole house.
I spent many afternoons there. Too many, some would say. Enough, I say.
My father never objected. Neither did my mother, though she did it her way, with that silence of hers that isn’t approval but simply the absence of a veto. Mónica had her world: the beauty salon, the clients, the orders, the calls. She came home with that particular smell of products, changed clothes, and the whole house changed with her without anyone having to say it out loud.
That’s something I understood very late, or maybe I always knew but took a while to admit: my mother has that effect. She doesn’t seek it out, or at least not always. She simply walks into a place and the place reorganizes itself around her. Men look without meaning to, their jaws tighten, the bulge in their pants shows when they turn their backs to hide it. Women size her up out of the corner of their eye. She smiles with that broad, easy smile of hers, the one she uses with customers, after years behind a counter learning how to make people feel comfortable, and the effect multiplies.
Forty-three years old. Nobody would have guessed forty-three.
She’d had the breast operation six months earlier. I already knew before it happened; there was no big secret at home, it was her decision, discussed, reasoned through, carried out with the same efficiency with which Mom does everything she decides to do. What I wasn’t entirely prepared for was the result. Two breasts, high, firm, round, pushing against the fabric of any top she wore and outlining her nipples when the beauty salon’s air conditioning cooled her too much. Not because they were excessive, but because they weren’t. Because they suited her in an almost infuriating way, as if something had always been missing and now that something was finally in place, stretching her blouse tight, swaying just slightly when she laughed, forcing any man to look twice and swallow on the third.
My friends noticed before I could say anything.
The first was Pablo, on a Wednesday after school, when my mother came to pick me up because she had parking and was dropping something off nearby. She was wearing a fitted top and jeans, nothing out of the ordinary, but Pablo froze in the middle of the sidewalk with his sandwich halfway to his mouth.
—Dude —was all he said. And then, lower, once she’d gotten into the car—: fuck, man, your old lady’s tits. I’d fuck her right there, against the hood.
I pushed his arm away and didn’t answer. That was the first time. It wasn’t the last.
With time I stopped counting.
***
The afternoon everything really began was a Thursday with nothing special about it. October, I think. It had rained in the morning and the floor of Adrián’s terrace was still dark when I went up. He was on the sofa, barefoot, in a gym T-shirt, the controller in his hand, the game paused, a joint half-burned in the ashtray. He greeted me without looking up.
I sank down on the other end of the sofa and picked up my controller. We spent a while like that, in that comfortable silence that only exists with real people, the kind that doesn’t need filling.
He was the one who spoke first.
He did it without taking his eyes off the screen, with that naturalness of his that at times is more brutal than any intent.
—Your mom was coming down when I was going up —he said—. In a dress. Red. Tight as hell.
I didn’t answer. Kept looking at the screen.
—Dude. —Now he looked at me, sideways—. Your mom is insane. I got hard just running into her on the stairs. I swear.
—Stop. —I said it without much conviction.
—I’m not disrespecting her. I’m telling you the truth. —He turned back to the screen, picked up the joint, took a slow drag, and let the smoke out through his nose—. I’d fuck her. I’d fuck her until I broke her, seriously.
The controller suddenly felt heavy in my hands. I said nothing.
—You know what I’d do? —he went on, not looking at me, his voice low, almost indifferent, like someone commenting on a match result—. I’d put her on all fours over that table. I’d hike her dress up to her waist and rip her panties off in one pull. If she was even wearing any, because with a dress that tight she might not be. I’d put my tongue in her pussy until she came twice in a row, screaming my name, holding on to the edge of the table. And then I’d shove my whole cock into her, all at once, without warning. Right to the hilt. So she could really feel what it’s like to get fucked by someone twenty-two and not by your father.
I swallowed. Felt something that wasn’t exactly discomfort. It was more complicated than that. It was that mixture I’d gone years without putting a name to, the one that showed up every time Pablo or Sergio or anyone else said something similar and I put on an offended face while inside something moved in a direction I didn’t want to examine too closely. My cock was starting to swell inside my pants and I hated my body for it.
—She’s my mother —I said.
—I know. —Adrián exhaled the smoke slowly, still smiling at the screen—. And even so. I’d eat her pussy until I got tired. I’d open her up with two fingers and lick her slowly, all of it, sucking her clit until she dug her nails into the back of my neck. And then I’d fuck her every possible way. Standing up against the wall, holding her tits. On the sofa, her on top, moving herself on my cock. Face down, with her face mashed into the pillow, taking it like a good slut. And I’d fill her cunt with cum, man. Right to the top. And then I’d pull it out with two fingers and make her suck it off.
I closed my eyes for a second. Opened them. The game was still paused on the screen. Adrián took another drag from the joint as if he’d just been talking about the weather.
—You’re crazy —I said. My voice came out rough. I didn’t even believe myself.
—Not crazy. Honest. —He shrugged—. Any guy with eyes in his head would think the same thing. I just say it. The others keep quiet.
I didn’t say anything else. He didn’t either. The game went on. The music played low, something with a heavy bass that Adrián always put on when he smoked, and the sweet smell of the joint slowly filled the living room.
But something had changed.
Not in him, who stayed as calm as ever. In me. In the way those sentences kept turning over somewhere I don’t usually look, lit up like a screen someone forgot to turn off. The image of my mother on all fours over that table. Her ass raised, the red dress bunched at her waist, her cunt open and shiny. Adrián behind her, grabbing her hips, driving into her without mercy.
I’d fuck her until I broke her.
I went back down home an hour later with my cock still half-hard and a strange weight in my stomach. My mother was in the kitchen, with her back to me, still in the red dress. She had her hair tied up. She was stirring something over the heat and humming softly, not knowing I was there, and for a second I looked at her as if for the first time.
I noticed things I’d been seeing for years without seeing. The way the dress cinched her waist and outlined the curve of her ass, round, high, that ass the construction workers across the street stared at. The way the strap, too thin, had slipped a finger’s width off her shoulder, revealing the start of a full breast the fabric could barely contain. The heat still lingering on her skin after climbing the stairs, that fine sheen of sweat on the back of her neck. The way the fabric fell just below her knees and suggested, without showing, the curve of her calf, the thighs you could tell were taut underneath, the line where her buttocks split when she bent slightly over the stove.
My cock went fully hard against my jeans. I stood still in the doorway, not daring to move, afraid she’d turn around and see it.
Adrián’s voice kept echoing inside my head, rough, indifferent, almost bored. I’d put my tongue in her pussy until she came twice in a row. As if what he’d said were the most obvious thing in the world and I were the last person to find out.
I cleared my throat.
My mother turned. She smiled at me with that same smile of hers, the one from the counter, the one that multiplies effects. The dress tightened over her chest as she turned and the two breasts shifted slightly, heavy, firm, the nipples showing through the fabric because the air conditioning was on.
—Did you eat anything upstairs?
—I’m not hungry —I answered, and I was surprised by the firmness of my own voice. I dropped my arm to cover my bulge discreetly.
She tilted her head, looked at me a second too long, and turned back to the stove. I stayed leaning in the doorway, not daring to step all the way in, feeling that something invisible had settled between us and that neither of us was going to name it yet.
I went up to my room. Closed the door. Lay down on the bed with my eyes open, staring at the ceiling and listening to the clatter of dishes below. I unbuttoned my jeans without thinking too hard, pulled down my underwear, and took myself out. I was hard in a way I hadn’t been in months, the head already wet, throbbing against my palm.
I thought about the red dress. I thought about the slipped strap. I thought about the breast I’d caught a glimpse of without wanting to see it. I started moving my hand slowly, gripping myself well, imagining it was her on top, with a hand full of spit, wrapping my cock with those long, perfectly manicured fingers. I imagined the red dress falling to her waist, those two new breasts bared right in front of my face, the pink nipples hard. I imagined putting them in my mouth one after the other, sucking them until they were marked.
And then I imagined Adrián. The scene he himself had painted for me, word for word. My mother on all fours over the attic table, the dress bunched at her waist, her cunt shiny and open, Adrián behind her holding her by the hips and fucking her to the hilt. Her moans. The way her chest would move with every thrust. The expression she’d make when he filled her cunt with cum, that satisfied slutty look I had never seen on her and that suddenly I knew exactly how it would be.
I came without making a sound, biting my lip, all the cum spilling onto my stomach and my shirt riding up. It took me a good while to open my eyes. When I did, the ceiling was still the ceiling and downstairs my mother was still humming.
I’d fuck her.
That night it took me a long time to fall asleep. Not because of guilt, or shame, or anything like what you’d expect to feel in a moment like that. It took me a long time to fall asleep because, for the first time in a very long while, I was the one thinking about my mother the way Adrián did. And it was easier than I’d ever have admitted out loud.