What My Neighbor Did to Pay the Rent

I've spent twenty-three years behind the desk in this building, and if there's one thing I know how to do, it's watch. People come and go, greet me, leave me a package, complain about the elevator, and think that's where it ends. They don't know the concierge keeps every face, every schedule, every argument that slips through the stairwell. I remember everything.

What none of my neighbors imagine is that I'm not what I seem either. An inheritance that came when I least expected it left me with enough money, and as the apartments in the building went up for sale, I bought them. Today I own five flats and the porter’s lodge itself. I kept the gray robe and the keys hanging from my belt because it suited me. The man who seems to have nothing goes unnoticed, and the one who goes unnoticed hears everything.

In four of my apartments I installed tiny cameras when I furnished them. I didn't do it for security. I did it because it amuses me. At night, in my little room on the ground floor, I go over the day's videos. I know the infidelities, the debts, and the secrets of half the block better than they do. It's my private vice, and it has never harmed anyone. Until Carla and Diego arrived.

She must have been thirty-three. Newly married, black hair down to the middle of her back, not very tall, small-breasted, with hips that filled out a dress in a way that made me have to look away when she handed me the mail. At first she was all smiles. As the months passed, that smile faded, and I started seeing her with a tight mouth and tired eyes.

The cameras told me the reason before anyone else knew. The marriage was falling apart. They'd gone two months without paying the rent, he spent his paycheck outside the house, and she'd gotten used to masturbating alone in the living room while he pretended to sleep. One night I pressed my ear to the inner courtyard and heard the whole fight.

“If we don't pay this month, they'll evict us,” she said. “And then tell me where we're supposed to go.”

“Don't start.”

“I'm not starting anything. Either you spend your pay at the bar, or on other things, because you're not going to make me believe they don't pay you at work.”

“I'll fix it this week.”

“You always say that. If this keeps up, I'm going to have to start turning tricks.”

“You? Ha. You're no good for that either.”

I listened to the silence that followed and knew that sentence had hurt her more than any debt. There’s your chance, old man, I thought. All you need is patience.

***

The next morning I handed her the mail with my best harmless-man face.

“You haven't seemed in very good spirits lately, Carla. If I can help in any way, neighbors ought to help each other.”

“It's nothing, Aurelio. Life's expensive and a woman has her troubles.”

“There isn't a trouble that can't be fixed. And I'm very discreet, you know that.”

She laughed without much feeling and told me the only thing they lacked at home was money, and that on that point I couldn't help her. I asked, without raising my voice, how much she needed. She looked at me as if she hadn't understood, stammered a thank-you, and left. But the seed had already been planted, and I knew how to wait.

That same night, through the cameras, I watched her tell Diego about it between cruel laughs. He mocked the starving concierge who was pretending to be a loan shark. She answered that they were worse off. And then he, to wound her, told her that if she wanted it so badly, she should ask the old man to put her to work as a whore, and see what she could get out of him. She answered that she'd leave him. It wasn't the first time she'd threatened him without following through.

I let two days go by. On the third, when she handed me a package to sign for, she was the one who brought it up.

“Aurelio, what you offered me the other day... did you mean it?”

“I never say what I don't mean.”

“We'd need six thousand euros to get caught up. I'd pay you back little by little, I swear.”

I lowered my voice, as though sharing a shameful secret, and told her what I'd been rehearsing for days. That I had the money. That I wasn't a handsome man, or tall, or young, but that I'd liked her since the day she moved in. That if she didn't mind sleeping with someone like me, we could work something out, little by little, encounter by encounter, and I'd deduct it from the debt.

I expected a slap. What I saw on her face was something else: surprise, yes, but also the quick calculation of someone who's been up against the wall for weeks.

“I'm speechless,” she said at last.

“Don't answer me now. Think about it. And don't worry, my discretion is absolute.”

***

She thought about it for a whole day. I know because I saw her discussing it with her husband that night, the two of them in the kitchen, him laughing again, daring her to accept, convinced I was bluffing and that a man my age wouldn't last even one round. She threw the challenge back at him. They ended up agreeing on a price like people haggling at a market, not knowing I was listening to every word.

The next morning she came downstairs determined.

“I've thought about your offer. I accept.”

“I'll put two hundred on it per encounter,” I replied. “It's a good deal for you. But I have one condition: your husband has to be present.”

“My husband? What for?”

“I don't like cheating on anyone behind their back. If he sees it, if he consents to it, then it's not betrayal. It's a deal between adults. Besides,” I added, “that way there won't be any misunderstandings later.”

She had a hard time swallowing that, but in the end she said he wouldn't object, that to him she was already no good for even that. We arranged it for that same night. I told her I'd come upstairs with the six thousand euros in my hand.

What neither of them knew was what I'm like under the robe. At fifty-eight, I still train every morning in the little machine room I set up downstairs. Lean body, wiry, and a cock that's always been my best-kept secret. The bald head and the uniform made me look like nobody. That night I was going to show them the truth.

***

Diego opened the door for me with a smug smile, already drunk on his own bravado. He let me in laughing, convinced he was about to witness an old man's humiliation. I left the bills on the table and said, looking him in the eye, that the money was for her and that she would collect it.

Carla appeared in a nightgown. She was nervous, biting her lip, avoiding her husband's gaze.

“The deal is that you stay,” I told Diego. “Seated, watching, touching nothing. That's all.”

“I'm dying,” he replied. “The old man's into spectators. Fine, let's see what you can do to her.”

I took my clothes off slowly. I enjoyed the exact moment when Diego's smile froze and Carla's breath caught. Neither of them was expecting what they saw.

“My God,” she murmured. “Will that even fit?”

“I'll make sure it does.”

I started slowly, at her neck, with soft kisses behind the ear, my palms flat on her back. I wasn't in a hurry. I wanted her body to start demanding me before I gave it anything. I worked downward, uncovering her small breasts, pausing at her navel, where I felt her shudder in a different way. I stayed there longer than necessary, until her legs went weak and she clung to my shoulders.

“It's been ages since anyone touched me like that,” she whispered.

I laid her down and spread her thighs. When my mouth found her clit, she bit her hand to keep from screaming in front of her husband. It did her no good. The first orgasm came quickly, long and shaking through her entire body, and I went back to her navel then, because I'd already understood that was her weak point.

“Fuck,” she panted. “It's been years since I came like that.”

Diego, in the armchair, had stopped laughing. I glanced at him sideways: his hands were clenched on his knees, and beneath his trousers there was a bulge betraying him.

“Don't talk about me,” he spat when he realized I was watching him.

“I didn't say anything. Your body is speaking for you.”

***

I put her on her knees and let her suck me while I stroked her hair. She did it with a hunger that didn't seem like that of a woman being forced, but of a woman who had gone far too long without feeling desired. When she was ready, I positioned her on all fours, facing her husband, so he could watch her enjoy what he no longer knew how to give her.

I entered her slowly, letting her get used to me, then settled into a firm rhythm. She buried her face in the pillow and stopped pretending to be modest. Her moans filled the bedroom. I grabbed her hips and drove into her until a second orgasm bent her in two, trembling, repeating my name as if it were the only thing she remembered how to say.

“Don't stop,” she begged. “Please, don't stop.”

I turned her over, lifted her legs, and went back to that navel that drove her wild while I fucked her from another angle. Diego wasn't protesting anymore. He'd half risen from the armchair, trapped between rage and desire, unable to leave and unable to look away. That sight, of a husband humiliated by his own arousal, took me to the edge.

I came inside her with a rough groan. Carla lay there, spent, with a satisfied smile she hadn't worn in months. And before I left, I leaned down and kissed her slowly on the mouth, a long kiss, the kind you don't give to a whore but to a lover. I felt her answer with the same intensity, and I knew, by the shattered look on her husband's face, that that kiss hurt him more than everything that came before.

“It's paid for now,” Diego muttered from the doorway. “Get out.”

“I leave when she asks me to,” I replied without raising my voice.

She didn't ask me to.

***

The next morning, Carla came down to the lobby different. She had painted her lips, wore a dress I didn't know, and walked with her back straight. She paid the overdue rent that same day. When she thanked me, she wasn't talking only about the money.

“I thought it was going to be a bitter pill,” she confessed in a low voice, leaning on the counter. “And it turned out I hadn't enjoyed myself that much in years. I'd never had an orgasm like that with him.”

“I'm glad an old man like me was useful for something.”

“Old?” she laughed, and for the first time it was a real laugh. “Plenty of younger men would love to have what you've got. And, hey...” she lowered her voice even further, “whenever you want to collect what I owe you, I'm here.”

I smiled and told her what I'd been waiting to tell her from the start: that discretion came first, that her secret would always be safe with me, and that on Friday, if she wanted, we could keep settling the account.

“Friday is going to feel eternal,” she murmured.

I watched her go into the elevator with a different walk, a different face, a different woman. I went back to my little room, turned on the camera screens, and watched her smile alone in front of the living room mirror. Diego was asleep on the sofa, turned away, defeated.

I've spent twenty-three years behind this desk, watching everything without anyone knowing. And at last I'd found a video I didn't need to record in order never to forget it.