My Neighbor from the Eighth Offered Me More Than a Job

I had been out of work for three months when it all began. Three months locked inside an apartment I could barely afford, eating white rice and selling used books on Saturdays at a fair on Avenida. The rent for the ninth floor had been signed by my ex-boyfriend when we were still something, and by some bureaucratic miracle no one had come to claim my moving boxes.

What happened with Federico —my ex-boyfriend— fell apart on its own. One morning he stopped answering my messages, and a week later my friend Carolina called to tell me he was living with a widow on the other side of the city. I didn’t cry that day. I cried later, when I looked at my bank account and understood I was alone and that no one was coming to save me.

That Monday I got into the elevator with my last printed résumé, inside a pink cardboard folder, the only clean one I had left. I had an interview at ten at a cosmetics distributor. I lied on the CV: I said I spoke English. I didn’t.

The elevator stopped on the eighth and he got in.

Esteban —I later learned his name was Esteban— had to be about forty-five. White shirt without a tie, expensive cologne, a leather briefcase worn at the edges. He glanced at me, nodded without smiling, and let out an automatic, emotionless “good morning.”

I answered in a voice that wasn’t mine. A low, slow voice, as if I were dragging the syllables on purpose. “Good morning.”

He was surprised. Not much. He barely raised his eyebrows and looked back at the lit number panel. But I had seen it, and in that instant I knew, with a clarity that frightened me, that something was going to change that morning.

I don’t know what gave me strength. Maybe the last crumpled bills in my pocket. Maybe anger.

I shifted half a step back, toward him. Esteban had his hands crossed over his belt, against his own body, that defensive posture men have when they ride alone with a woman in an elevator. My back ended up a few inches from his fingers.

The elevator slowed on the seventh.

An older lady with a white poodle in her arms got in. She said hello. Pressed zero. Looked at the dog. Didn’t look at us.

I pressed my ass against Esteban’s crossed hands. Slowly. As if by accident, as if the elevator’s braking had pushed me. I felt him go rigid behind me, felt him hold his breath behind my ear. And then, instead of pulling his hands away, he opened his fingers. Just a little. Enough for his fingertips to feel the seam of my pants, the curve, the heat. I pushed harder. I fitted my whole ass into his palms, and I felt, against the base of my spine, the hard shape of his cock beginning to show under his trousers. Very little, a warm bulge, but enough to know I already had him.

We went down the seven floors like that. Without speaking. Without looking at each other. The woman with the poodle hummed something I never managed to identify while I swayed just a little, a minimal movement of the hips, rubbing my ass crack against the cock hidden in his pants. He breathed through his mouth, very slowly, so it wouldn’t show.

On the ground floor we let her out first. Esteban waited. When the building door closed behind her, he turned around and looked at me face to face for the first time.

—Did you have breakfast? —he asked.

I shook my head.

—Come on.

We crossed to a small bar on the corner, one of those places with checkered tablecloths and watery coffee. He ordered two cortados and two medialunas. I ate mine in silence while he watched me eat with the curiosity of someone observing a strange animal he still didn’t quite understand.

—Why? —he said at last, stirring his coffee with the spoon.

I shrugged. I didn’t have a short answer. So I told him the long version. About the job, about Federico, about the rent, about the interview I had at ten that I was already going to miss. I told him I had two eggs and half an onion in the fridge, and that I had one hundred twenty pesos left in my wallet.

I told him other things too. That I liked him. That men his age made me feel safe. That I didn’t care if he was married, that I didn’t want to bother anyone. That I was twenty-six, that my body felt heavy after months without anyone touching it, and that I needed a roof, food, and the feeling, even if it was a lie, that someone was taking care of me.

I didn’t lie about everything. About my body, I didn’t lie. I told him, looking him in the eye over the cup, that it had been four months since the last time I’d been fucked, that I masturbated twice a day and still woke up with a wet cunt and a stupid need for a man to give it to me hard. I said it the same way I’d ordered the medialunas. Without lowering my voice.

Esteban listened without interrupting. Then he pulled a card out of the inside pocket of his jacket, wrote a name and an address on the back, and slid it across the wooden table to me.

—Go this afternoon. Ask for Mauricio. Tell him you’re there on my behalf.

I nodded. I put the card away like it was a big bill.

—And come by the house later —he added, without looking up from the coffee—. Eighth C. At seven.

***

Mauricio was the commercial director of an appliance importer. The office occupied two floors of a glass tower downtown. A woman with headphones and false nails received me and made me wait twenty minutes on a white sofa next to an artificial plant.

The interview lasted twelve minutes. Mauricio barely glanced at the résumé. He asked me if I knew how to handle spreadsheets. I said yes. He asked if I could start the following Monday. I said yes. He wrote something in a notebook, shook my hand —firm, held too long— and explained that human resources would call me about the paperwork.

When I stepped out onto the sidewalk, the midday sun hit me like a slap. I had a job. And I also had an unspoken arrangement that would begin that very night, two floors below mine.

***

I showered with the last bar of glycerin soap, put on the only lingerie set that wasn’t coming apart —black, simple, without lace— and over it a wrap dress my mother had given me for a birthday three years earlier. I went down the two floors by the stairs. I didn’t want the elevator.

Esteban opened the door in slippers. He smelled like a recent shower. The apartment was bigger than mine, with expensive furniture and very little personality, like a magazine catalog. One whole wall was covered in records.

—Champagne —he said, showing me a bottle already uncorked—. I don’t have anything else cold.

We drank in the living room. He asked me the usual things: where I was born, what I studied before I started working, whether I had siblings. I answered briefly. The conversation was a formality we both knew would end soon.

When I finished the second glass, I stood up, went to the wall of records, chose one at random —something jazz, I didn’t recognize the musician— and put it on the turntable. The needle crackled. A saxophone began, slow, rough.

I danced alone in the middle of the living room. Slowly. I untied the dress belt and let it fall to the floor in one movement. I stayed there in my lingerie in front of him. Esteban didn’t move from the sofa. He only watched me, with an expression that wasn’t eager desire but something more like concentration, as if he were studying a painting.

I moved closer in bra and panties, parted his knees with mine and slipped between his legs. I opened the buttons of his shirt one by one, slowly, and ran my tongue over his sternum, going down. When I reached his belt, I undid it with my teeth against the buckle, and he let out the first sound of the night, a rough throat-clearing. I lowered the zipper of his pants with both hands, pulled his boxer briefs down to his knees, and there I saw it for the first time: the hard cock, thick at the base, curving slightly upward, with a thick drop appearing at the tip.

I knelt on the rug between his feet. I grabbed it with my right hand, lifted it to look at it better, smelled it. Then I ran my tongue from his balls to the glans, slowly, in one long lick that made him close his eyes. I licked the tip, collected the drop with my tongue, swallowed it. I took the whole thing into my mouth, until I felt it hit my palate, and went lower, breathing through my nose, until my nose was pressed against the hair of his pubic mound.

—Holy fucking shit —he said at last, in a low voice.

I started sucking him in rhythm, going up and down, sealing my lips around the shaft and using my hand at the base. Saliva dripped down my chin and onto his balls; I used it to massage them with my other hand. Every so often I pulled his cock out of my mouth just to spit on it, to watch it shine, to take it back into my mouth all the way down. He grabbed my hair, not to force me, but to gather it behind my neck so he could watch me suck him.

When I felt him tense, when I heard that sigh that tells you a man is about to come, I lifted my face, bit his lower lip just a little, and climbed on top of him. I pulled my panties to the side without taking them off, grabbed his cock with my hand, parted my cunt with two fingers of the other, and lowered myself until I took him inside in one single motion. I was so wet he went all the way in without resistance, and I let out a rough moan against his ear when I felt him buried to the hilt.

I rode him right there, on the white leather sofa, without stripping completely, with my bra slipping down over my ribs and leaving my tits out and my panties shoved to one side. I started moving slowly, up and down, squeezing my cunt each time I reached the bottom. He grabbed my tits with both hands, sucked one nipple, then the other, bit them just a little. I sped up. I braced my hands against the back of the sofa, arched my back, and started fucking him hard, letting my ass slam against his thighs with every drop. The wet sound filled the living room over the saxophone.

—Like that, fuck me like that —I told him, and I grabbed his wrist so he would squeeze my throat, just a little, with his open hand.

Esteban understood. He squeezed, not hard, just enough for me to feel the pressure, and started pushing from below, driving into me with each of my movements. I came the first time there, with his cock inside me and his hand on my throat, a long orgasm that made my legs shake and left me limp over him. He gave me no time to breathe. He lifted me in his arms with his cock still inside me, turned me over, and laid me face down against the sofa back, with my knees on the cushions and my ass in the air. He slid into me from behind again and fucked me like that, holding my hips, watching his cock go in and out of my open cunt.

He came inside. He pushed three times all the way in and I felt the hot jets splashing against my walls. He didn’t ask. Neither did I. I’d been on the pill by habit for two years. He stayed inside for a while, his cock throbbing, until he gradually softened and came out with a wet sound. The cum started running down between my thighs.

I had my head resting on his chest, my heart still racing and his load drying in my crotch, when the bell rang.

Esteban didn’t startle. He reached for the intercom, pressed the button, opened the door.

—Mauricio —he said, without looking at me—. I told you he was coming.

***

I wasn’t outraged. I wasn’t surprised, either, really. Part of me had understood it at the bar, when he wrote that card without asking me for anything in return.

Mauricio came in with a bottle of red wine and the smile of a man who knows why he’s there. He kissed me on the cheek, like we were old acquaintances at a barbecue, and let his eyes drop without shame to my bare tits and the streak of cum still glistening on my thigh. He took off his jacket and hung it over the back of a chair with the kind of calm that told me he’d been in that living room many times before.

—Esteban owed me a favor —he explained, slowly, as if talking to a little girl—. And you need a job. Everybody wins.

I nodded. I stayed where I was, barefoot on the rug, with my dress on the floor and my panties still shoved aside from my cunt.

Mauricio came closer, took my chin between two fingers, and made me open my mouth. He spat inside, slowly, and closed my lips with his thumb so I’d swallow. Then he pulled my panties down to my ankles, ran two fingers through my open cunt —scooped up Esteban’s load with his hand— and smeared it on my lips like lipstick.

—You’re going to do everything we tell you —he said, in a low voice, near my ear—. Right?

—Yes —I said.

What happened after that took two hours. They took turns. They learned my body in silence, with a strange efficiency, as if they had discussed it between themselves before I arrived. Mauricio dragged me by the hand to the living room rug, put me on all fours, and shoved his pants down without taking them off, impatient. He had a shorter cock than Esteban but thicker, and he rammed it into me in one thrust, without preamble, grabbing my hair with one hand and my hip with the other. He started fucking me hard, with dry thrusts that made me moan against the rug.

Esteban stood in front of me, still naked, his cock recovering slowly. He put it against my lips and I opened my mouth without being asked. I sucked him while Mauricio fucked me from behind, swallowing saliva and choking every time Esteban drove himself down my throat. My eyes filled with tears, my mascara ran, but I didn’t stop. They were fucking me from both sides and that was exactly what I had gone looking for.

Mauricio was rough, impatient; Esteban, more attentive, lingering on the details. They switched places without saying a word. Esteban lay on his back on the rug and made me ride him facing away, with his cock back inside my cunt. Mauricio knelt behind me, spat between my ass cheeks, ran the head of his cock over my asshole, and pushed slowly until I felt it open around him. I screamed. Esteban covered my mouth with his hand.

They drove into me both at once, one in my cunt and the other in my ass, finding the rhythm between them. At first it hurt, a burn climbing up my back, but then they settled in and started moving together, one going in as the other came out, and the pain turned into something else. A dense, unbearable sensation that had my mouth open against Esteban’s palm and my nails digging into his chest muscles. One of them held my wrists against the sofa back while the other went in from behind. Then they switched places without saying a word.

They made me come twice before they came. The first time was with Mauricio eating my cunt on the sofa while Esteban made me suck him seated over my face, resting his balls on my mouth. The second was with two of Esteban’s fingers inside my ass and Mauricio’s cock pushing me against the glass of the balcony window, fucking me standing up, my tits smashed against the cold glass and the reflection of my own wrecked face looking back at me.

It was something no man had bothered to do in a long time, and I was surprised to discover I could also feel pleasure in a scene like that, where the only thing I was supposed to feel was humiliation or calculation.

They came almost together at the end. They knelt me between them, my face tilted upward, and jerked off over me. First Mauricio, who unloaded a thick stream across my cheek and over my upper lip. Then Esteban, quieter, painted my tits and neck, aiming well. I stayed still, mouth open and tongue out, letting the cum run down me. Then I passed a finger over my face, gathered what I could, and licked it slowly, looking at them.

When we were done, the three of us in silence on the white sofa, Mauricio went to the kitchen, poured three glasses of wine, came back, and we sat as if we had just finished dinner. There was semen drying in my hair and I couldn’t have cared less.

—How much do you need —Esteban asked— until the first paycheck?

I gave him an amount. I said it low, out of shame. Mauricio took out his wallet and gave me double, in fresh bills, without counting.

—It’s not a loan —he said—. It’s a welcome.

I tucked the bills into the pocket of my dress. I got dressed in silence, slowly, not cleaning myself all the way, feeling the cum from both of them keep slipping down between my legs under my panties. I went up the two floors by the stairs again, with my legs trembling and a strange knot in my stomach that wasn’t regret but something else, something more like relief.

***

The following Monday I walked into the office in a suit borrowed from Carolina. Mauricio introduced me as his new personal secretary. They gave me a computer, a desk in front of his, a corporate card for lunches. I learned spreadsheets fast. I learned clients’ names fast. I learned fast when the office door had to be closed and when it didn’t.

Esteban came up to see me sometimes, on Thursdays after six, under the excuse of a coffee. Mauricio stayed some nights after hours, with the door closed and the blinds down, and fucked me over the desk with the spreadsheets still open under my ass, covering my mouth with his hand so the night watchman wouldn’t hear me moan. I learned to live between the two of them without asking, without begging, without expecting anything beyond what had been silently agreed that first night on the white sofa.

My rent is paid on time. My fridge is full. I changed the furniture in the apartment, bought a new sofa, two lamps, a rug that looks like Esteban’s but cheaper. Federico called me two weeks ago, drunk, saying he had made a mistake. I didn’t answer.

The three of us know what I am. Me, Esteban, and Mauricio. It doesn’t have a pretty name and I don’t mind not giving it one. I’m the girl from the ninth, and for the first time in a long time I owe no one anything.