The Tenant Who Bathed with the Door Open

It was a filthy boarding house that smelled of reheated soup and cheap disinfectant. The hallway was lined with wallpaper whose original color nobody remembered anymore: damp had turned it into a nicotine, dust, and mold brown. The doors were thin, made of bad wood, with locks that jammed and cracks through which conversations, moans, and early-morning coughs slipped through.

Rubén dragged his exhaustion around as if it were chains tied to his ankles. The office had left him drained, and the boarding house offered no refuge, only an extension of defeat. He climbed the stairs with his shirt wrinkled and his skin sticky with humid heat. Outside, the city boiled in a pot of horns, vendors, and starving dogs fighting over garbage bags.

That was when he saw her for the first time.

Dayana was sitting a couple of steps above him. She had a plastic bag on the floor, oranges spilling over the transparency, and she was calmly separating one braid from her afro hair, as if she were in no hurry at all. When she lifted her head, their eyes met.

There was something about her that didn’t fit that environment: she was too bright, too alive for that house full of shipwreck leftovers. A brown skin that shone like polished copper, eyes that didn’t drop away in modesty, and a full mouth that looked as if it had been newly invented for sin. From the step where she sat, with her knees barely apart, he could make out the beginning of thick, firm thighs beneath her skirt, and in the blouse’s neckline the weight of big tits marked by the rise and fall of her breathing.

—You live here too? —she asked, in a low voice thick with Caribbean accent.

The question sounded innocent, but it had an edge: it wasn’t curiosity, it was a test, as if she were measuring what kind of man he was. Rubén answered with a nod, unable to say anything worth saying. As he passed her, he caught the smell. Fresh soap, ripe fruit, cinnamon, a faint trace of sweat. A living, human smell, unlike the stale mix in the boarding house. A smell of clean cunt and young woman’s skin that stuck to his nose and his cock.

In his room he threw himself onto the bed without taking off his clothes. The sunken mattress swallowed him, and from there he heard muffled voices through the walls. He thought of Dayana. Of the curve of her shoulders, of the rhythm of her hips when she leaned over the bag. It wasn’t an animal, immediate kind of desire; it was thicker than that, a mix of attraction and unease, as if that woman carried a dangerous promise. His cock got hard without permission, straining his pants, and he ended up unzipping himself to masturbate while thinking of her, imagining those dark tits bouncing over his face, until he came with a dry gasp onto his stomach and fell asleep dirty, his hands sticky with semen.

***

Mornings at the boarding house were a parade of little miseries. Someone slamming a door late, a couple shouting, the radio playing out-of-tune salsa. Rubén got up with an empty stomach. The tap water came out lukewarm, with a metallic taste that even instant coffee couldn’t hide.

On the way to the office he passed through the central square, where old men with bottles wrapped in bags gathered, women selling cheap fruit, and cops who looked at everyone with contempt. Every step was a reminder: he had once had ambitions, he had written poems at twenty, he had dreamed of escaping into another life. Now he sweated numbers in a gray office, wearing a tie that smelled of defeat.

The boss treated him like a piece of furniture. The crude jokes from his coworkers slid over the surface and burned him on the inside. At lunch he ate alone, bread with cheese and a lukewarm soda. His past glory was only an echo: a scholarship he never finished, a youth literary prize, a woman who had left him because she refused to carry a failed dreamer on her back.

And there, in the middle of all that, was Dayana. She always appeared like a gust of fresh air in the swamp. In the hallway, with a towel over her shoulder and wet skin, and the dark nipple showing through the damp fabric. In the shared kitchen, cutting vegetables with an impossible calm in that place, bent over so that the base of her ass showed above her shorts. On the stairs, leaning on the railing, biting into a piece of fruit and looking out at the street as if she were waiting for something that never came, her tongue running over the juice on her lips in a way that made Rubén think of something else entirely.

One night he heard her laugh downstairs. A crystalline, clean laugh that clashed with the other tenants’ grunts. He closed the book he wasn’t reading and went down. He found her in a white T-shirt, no bra, afro hair loose, slicing oranges on a splintered cutting board. The yellow light of the bulb gave her skin the tone of liquid bronze and shone through the T-shirt, showing the round outline of her tits and two big, dark nipples, hardened by the kitchen’s cool air.

—Want some? —she said, lifting a segment toward him.

Rubén hesitated, but took the fruit. The juice ran down his fingers, sticky, tart. Dayana watched him straight on, with the slightest hint of shyness, as if she knew exactly what she was provoking and didn’t need to do anything else. When he finished sucking the segment, she took his hand and, without breaking eye contact, brought his stained fingers to her mouth, one by one, sucking them slowly, her warm, wet tongue curling around each knuckle, as if she were rehearsing something else. Then she let his hand go, gave a soft laugh, and went back to the knife as if nothing had happened. He went upstairs with the taste of orange in his mouth, his cock painfully hard against his fly, and the certainty that he would no longer be able to sleep without thinking of her.

***

He went down again another night, one of those nights when the air felt like glue. Dayana was alone at the Formica table, cutting bread with a nicked knife.

—Can’t sleep? —Rubén asked.

—And you? —she replied without looking up.

—I’ve got insomnia to spare. I could start a company.

The young woman let out a low laugh, half-disbelieving.

—And who’d buy that?

—The people who still think thinking time is useful. Or poets, which is almost the same thing.

—You talk like you’re rich.

—I’m rich in misery. In Valencia I’ve got a family that’s forgotten me with admirable efficiency. Two kids who barely answer me, a wife who learned to live without me long before I left. Now that’s pure wealth.

Dayana smiled, showing perfect teeth.

—So you came here to cry at night.

—No. I came to see if in this corner of the world somebody still remembers we’re alive. And look: I run into a girl cutting bread like it’s a sacred rite.

—Don’t bullshit, it’s stale bread.

—But you turn it into something else. You cut it like you’re about to offer it at mass.

The silence that followed was charged, but not uncomfortable. She bit off a piece and chewed slowly.

—I’m not a church girl. I’m from the countryside. Back home people don’t pray, they wait. For something to happen, anything. And meanwhile life gets used up.

—What you call using up life, I call literature.

—Literature doesn’t put food on the table.

—Neither does stale bread, if you don’t soak it in coffee —he replied.

Dayana looked at him with that mix of amusement and challenge.

—You talk pretty. Like men who tell you what you want to hear.

—No. I talk because I’ve got no choice. In Valencia I had words to spare and nobody wanted to hear them. Here I don’t have enough, but you at least give me the impression you pick them up.

She dropped her gaze to the knife, turning it between her fingers.

—I came to make things better, to study. Nursing. But the money wasn’t enough and I ended up here, serving tables, cleaning houses, surviving. Sometimes I feel like my life got left on the highway, like those crushed iguanas you see from the bus.

—Don’t fool yourself —he said, lowering his voice—. Your life is here, in your eyes, in the way you cut bread, in the way you laugh. The rest is cheap theater.

She held his gaze for a long time without blinking. There was a glint in those eyes that was not only desire or pity. It was the suspicion that someone was truly seeing her.

—You’re weird —she said at last—. The men here only want… you know. To stick it in and that’s it. You talk like I’m a book.

—A beautiful book. But with pages stuck together with sweat.

Dayana burst out laughing, throwing her head back, showing the long neck and collarbone that gleamed under the bulb. Rubén looked at her, and in that gesture he understood he was lost.

They talked until dawn. She hummed old cumbias from her hometown; he recited by heart verses by Neruda, Benedetti, Sabines. She didn’t understand everything, but she laughed anyway, as if words were music and nothing more. Before leaving, she picked up the bread and the knife, and turned back for a moment in the doorway.

—Good night, Don Rubén —she said, with a smile that was more than politeness.

***

On a Tuesday, when he came back from work, he found her in the back patio hanging laundry on rusty wires. She was barefoot, wearing denim shorts that showed the shining skin of her thighs and an old T-shirt stuck to her wet torso. She was singing an old bolero under her breath.

—You look like a statue, Don Rubén. You never saw a woman hanging clothes?

—Yes. But never someone doing it as if she were painting an invisible picture.

He lifted the next sheet to help her. Their fingers barely brushed, an electric contact that left them both motionless. They looked at each other too closely, with the smell of soap and sweat between them. Dayana didn’t pull her hand away; on the contrary, she slid it upward along the hairy forearm of Rubén, to his elbow, and he felt those brown fingers like a warm tongue running over his skin. She dropped her eyes to the bulge that was forming in his pants and didn’t hide it; she smiled faintly, almost pityingly, almost hungrily. Rubén swallowed and stepped back; she lowered her gaze with a shyness that seemed new in her, but before that she ran her tongue over her upper lip and gave the lower one a quick bite.

That night he found her again in the kitchen, peeling plantains. They talked about the village she had escaped from, the music of her childhood, the books he had abandoned. At some point he made her laugh so hard that Dayana bent over and rested her forehead on his shoulder. The contact was brief, but enough to feel the warmth of her body through his shirt, and the soft weight of a tit pressed against his arm.

—I like you —she said, suddenly serious—. You’re not like the others. It’s like you really see me.

Rubén wanted to answer, but his voice broke. Outside it had started to rain, and the water beat on the tin roofs like a drum.

—Don Rubén —she said at last—. Will you do me a favor? Tomorrow… will you come with me to a place? I can’t go alone.

She said nothing else. She gathered the plantains and left, leaving behind a smell of wet skin and cinnamon. He stood motionless, knowing that favor was only the beginning of something that was going to overflow them both.

***

At eight in the morning she was waiting for him at the entrance, in a yellow blouse and a black skirt far too tight. She had her hair tied back and carried a small bag clutched like it held a secret.

—I still don’t know where we’re going —he said.

—Better that way. That way you won’t regret it on the way there.

They got to the center, to a metal door with no sign, painted a faded blue. They climbed a narrow staircase that smelled of urine and frying grease to an office with a splintered table and two crooked chairs. Behind it stood a skinny man with a mustache yellowed by tobacco.

—I’m here for the papers —Dayana said.

The man looked her up and down shamelessly and then turned his eyes to Rubén.

—And him?

—A friend.

She took out some crumpled documents and laid them on the table. The man leafed through them with boredom.

—This is incomplete. Without a sponsor, without a signature, it doesn’t go through.

—He’ll sign —she said, pointing at Rubén.

—Sign what? —he asked, surprised.

—That he takes responsibility for me —she replied, looking him straight in the eye, with a mix of pleading and challenge—. That I’m not just some vagrant, that I have someone here.

Everything began to fall into place: Dayana wanted to regularize her situation, maybe a permit, maybe stable work. And in that jungle of paperwork and humiliation, he could be the missing piece: a foreigner with papers, with a name that sounded more respectable than anyone else in that room.

Rubén took the pen. His hand trembled. He signed. The man put the papers away and muttered something about “a few more days of processing” and “an extra fee.” They went down the stairs in silence.

In the street, she stopped.

—Thank you.

—You used me —he said, with a mix of rage and pity.

—No. I asked you for a favor. And you agreed.

Rubén gave a dry laugh.

—You’re dangerous, Dayana.

—I know. But so are you.

***

The favor changed the atmosphere. Rubén felt it like an invisible rope tying him to her. It wasn’t just a signed piece of paper: it was a secret pact, almost indecent. She moved through the boarding house with a different air, handing out smiles, but she looked at him differently, with a spark of complicity nobody else noticed.

He, meanwhile, was trapped in a whirlwind. On one hand, the fascination of seeing her enter the kitchen in a light dress, hearing her laugh travel through the walls. On the other, suspicion. Was she using him? Was she a cunning survivor who had seen a rung in him? That ambivalence kept him awake, his body tense and his cock hard against the sheet almost every night, jerking off alone while thinking of the cinnamon smell of that cunt he imagined dark, tight, wet, waiting for him.

One night he came back loaded with exhaustion and two lukewarm beers drunk in a grimy bar. Passing in front of the shared bathroom, he stopped. The door was ajar. From inside came steam, the unmistakable smell of soap and hot water. And a sound: the soft splashing, the rub of hands soaping skin.

He stood still, frozen, like a thief caught in his own desire. He nudged the door open just a little. And there she was.

Under the yellowish light, her body shone like old gold. Hair flattened by water fell in heavy curls over her shoulders. The wet skin gleamed on every curve: the firm, heavy breasts, crowned by two big dark nipples pointing forward; the flat belly; the rounded hips; the strong legs. Water ran down the line of her back and disappeared between her full, tight ass cheeks that seemed to defy gravity. Between her thighs, a triangle of thick black hair dripped, and beneath it you could make out the swollen lips of a brown cunt, dark on the outside and pink inside, shining with water and something else.

She didn’t cover herself. She didn’t seem surprised. Instead of closing the door, she kept rubbing her arms, white foam contrasting with dark skin, soap sliding over her chest, slipping through the groove between her tits until it disappeared into her navel.

Rubén swallowed. He wanted to look away and couldn’t. It was like standing before a profane altar, disturbing and sacred at once. Everything in her claimed him: the wet flesh, the animal shine of her skin, the calm with which she accepted being seen.

Dayana lifted her head and saw him. She didn’t scream, didn’t cover herself, didn’t move. She held his gaze, grave, defiant, as if she had planned the whole scene for him. Her lips curved into a tiny, dangerous smile. And then, as if nothing, she went back to rubbing her thigh with both hands, slowly moving upward, never taking her eyes off him, until her fingers were lost between her legs and she stroked her cunt with obscene slowness, parting the lips for him, showing him the shining pink of the inside.

—Close the door, Don Rubén —she said, her voice hoarse—. On the inside.

He obeyed like a sleepwalker. The latch clicked dryly and there was no turning back. The bathroom filled with steam and with the two of their breathing. Dayana waited for him with her back against the greenish tiles, water falling between them, one hand still buried between her thighs.

—Come on —she said—. All this time talking pretty. Now I want to see what you’ve got under those pants.

Rubén approached slowly, his hands trembling. She began unbuttoning his shirt, one button after another, unhurried, biting her lip. When she opened his fly and pulled down his pants, his cock sprang out, hard, thick, veined, with the purple head peeking from the foreskin. Dayana let out a low, satisfied laugh.

—Look at that thing. And you were trying to hide it.

She knelt in front of him on the wet floor, not caring about soaking her skin. She took his cock with both hands, measured its thickness, squeezed it, drew out a drop of clear fluid that she licked off without breaking rhythm. Then she opened that full mouth and took it all in one swallow, all the way down, until Rubén felt her throat against the tip.

—Fuck… —he groaned, gripping the shower curtain so he wouldn’t fall.

She began sucking with real hunger, not the timid choreography of a novice whore, but with that wisdom of a woman who knew exactly what to do with a cock in her mouth. She sucked it up and down, licked his balls, ran her tongue under the glans, and took him back in, leaving thick strings of saliva hanging from her chin. Her dark tits swayed with each thrust, her nipples hard as stones, wet with water and foam.

—Like this… I wanted to eat it from day one —she murmured, pulling it out for a second to speak and then taking it back in—. Since you climbed those stairs looking like a beaten dog. I knew you had a tasty cock hidden in there.

Rubén couldn’t speak. He put both hands on her head, buried his fingers in her soaked afro, and started fucking her mouth slowly, watching her. She let him do it, eyes open, never breaking eye contact, swallowing every push to the root. When he was about to cum, she noticed, pulled his cock out of her mouth, and squeezed the base with her fingers.

—Not yet. Not yet you don’t get to cum, poet man. That cunt’s been waiting for weeks.

She stood, turned around, and braced her palms against the tiles, arching her back, pushing her ass out. Those two tight, round cheeks opened, showing him the wet cunt and, higher up, the dark, puckered eye of her ass. She moved her hips as if she were dancing a slow cumbia, inviting him.

—Put it in. Now. No stories.

Rubén pressed himself to her from behind. His cock sank in on its own, without resistance, into a hot, tight cunt that closed around him like a velvet fist. They both moaned at once, an animal grunt that bounced off the tiles. Dayana was soaked inside in a brutal way, and at the same time so narrow that he had to hold still for a second so he wouldn’t blow his load immediately.

—Move… don’t just stand there —she panted, pushing back against him—. Fuck me hard. Break me.

He started thrusting slowly and soon lost control. He grabbed her hips with both hands and pinned her to the wall, driving in to the hilt with sharp strokes that made his balls slap against her clit. Each thrust drew a wet slap from her cunt, a dirty, beautiful sound that mixed with their gasps and the shower water running down their backs. Dayana’s tits flattened against the tiles, leaving two circles of steam every time he drove into her.

—Yeah… like that… harder… —she moaned, the Caribbean accent breaking through her gasps—. Deeper, daddy, because tonight you owe me everything.

Rubén grabbed a handful of hair and yanked her head back. He bit her neck, the nape, the shoulder. With the other hand he found one of her tits and squeezed it, pinching the hard nipple between index finger and thumb until he tore a howl from her. She slipped her fingers between her own legs and rubbed her clit while he kept hammering into her, and within seconds she started trembling from the waist down, her cunt clenching in spasms around the cock that was fucking her.

—Ah… ah… I’m cumming… I’m cumming with you inside, Don Rubén…

She came with a deep, long scream that cracked in her throat. Her cunt turned into a liquid tourniquet, sucking the cock, milking it. Rubén held on for a few more thrusts, eyes shut, trying to stretch it out, but it was impossible. He pulled out in time, spun her around with a quick yank, and put her back on her knees in front of him.

—Open your mouth —he ordered, in a hoarse voice he didn’t recognize as his own.

She obeyed, eyes shining, tongue out, wet tits rising and falling. Rubén jerked himself two, three times in front of that face and came with a roar. The first jet of semen hit her tongue, the second her cheek, the third hung from her chin and dripped onto her dark tits. Dayana didn’t close her mouth until he had finished emptying himself; then she ran her tongue over her lips, swallowed what she had inside, and smiled like a satisfied cat.

—Tastes bitter, like you —she said, and gave a low laugh while the water washed the semen from her chest.

Rubén sank against the tiles, his legs like jelly, breath ragged, cock still dripping. Dayana stood up, calm, pressed herself against him, and passed one wet tit over his lips, like someone feeding a small child.

—This isn’t a favor —she whispered in his ear—. This was something else. And it’s going to happen again. Every night I feel like it.

Rubén knew, with a certainty that chilled the back of his neck, that that image —Dayana bathing with the door open for him, kneeling there swallowing him whole, biting her lip while he smashed her against the tiles— was going to corrupt his loneliness and his soul forever.

(To be continued)