That Night, the Moans from the Floor Above Turned Me On
Marina had arrived in Cartagena expecting a whole week of meetings, business lunches, and half-made promises. To her surprise, she closed the most important contract on the first day. It was exhausting; she ate standing up between one appointment and the next, but by the end of the afternoon she had signed the papers and was left with five free days ahead of her and nothing to do.
Back at the hotel, she took a long shower, put on a thin nightgown, and collapsed onto the bed with the television on as background noise. She reviewed the day without paying attention to the screen. It had been worth every minute.
Fatigue was beginning to get the better of her. Before giving in to sleep, she picked up the brochure from the nightstand and read the activities the area had to offer: sailing trips, wine tastings, tours of the walled city, an art gallery two blocks away. Five free days on a business trip were a rare luxury, and she promised herself she would make the most of them.
As she flipped through the pages, she thought about her children, about how huge the house felt when she was away, about how long it had been since she’d granted herself a moment just for herself. She was an architect, divorced, mother of three, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept in a hotel bed without thinking about blueprints or school schedules.
She turned off the television. The room went dark, barely lit by the clock and a strip of light coming in beneath the door. She closed her eyes.
Then she heard the ceiling.
It was footsteps. Sneakers crossing the room from one side to the other, above her head. She assumed the room upstairs had been occupied late. She sighed, shifted position, and tried to ignore them. The footsteps continued for a while longer, restless, and then stopped.
What came after was not footsteps.
First came a woman’s laugh, low, muffled against something. Then a murmur of a deep voice. And almost immediately, the unmistakable sound of kisses, of bodies seeking each other out, of one mouth tracing another’s skin. Marina opened her eyes in the dark.
Instead of annoying her, something in her chest tightened in a way she hadn’t expected. It had been a long time since she’d been with a man. Too long. Between work, the kids, and the divorce, that part of her life had been put away in a drawer she hadn’t opened in years.
The sounds above continued, unconcerned, as if the couple were sure no one could hear them. Complicit laughter, whispers she couldn’t make out, the rustle of clothes falling away. Each of those noises reached her bed and got under her skin.
I shouldn’t be listening to this.
But she didn’t cover her ears. She didn’t turn up the television. She stayed still, on her back, attentive to every detail, feeling her body temperature rise without permission.
She tried to guess who they were. A young couple, perhaps, newly arrived and with no one waiting for them at home. Or two lovers making the most of a getaway stolen from the rest of the world. It didn’t matter. The only thing that was certain was that, whoever they were, they had what she lacked, and they weren’t bothering to hide it.
She caught herself listening with a new kind of shamelessness. Every time silence threatened to settle in, she waited for the next sound like someone waiting for the next wave. And it always came: a brush of movement, a sigh, the creak of the bed against the floor. The room upstairs had become, without meaning to, the stage for a private performance only she could hear.
***
The rhythm above changed. Kisses gave way to something slower and heavier, a cadence Marina recognized at once. She closed her eyes again, but now not to sleep. In her mind she built the scene: the woman pushed down onto the mattress, the man on top, hands searching, mouth at her neck. The more she imagined, the more aware she became of her own breathing, of the heat gathering between her legs.
She thought about past lovers. About the first time with the father of her children, when hunger still existed between them. About a man she met at a congress and never saw again. Every memory left her a little more unsettled, a little more awake.
The nightgown started to bother her. It felt rough against her nipples, which had hardened without her noticing. With a slow movement, she slipped the straps down and bared her breasts. The coolness of the room against her heated skin made her shiver, and the contrast was enough to draw a sigh from her.
Above, the woman began to moan. Soft at first, almost shy, but the sound grew, gaining volume and boldness. Marina could hear the surrender in that voice, the total abandon, and she surprised herself by envying her. She wanted to be there. Or she wanted to be her. She didn’t know which of the two weighed more heavily on her.
She brought her hands to her breasts almost without deciding to. She squeezed them slowly, traced the nipples with her fingertips, first carefully and then more firmly, until pleasure turned into a current running down her belly. She moistened her fingers with her tongue and returned to her skin, and the slick sensation made her bite her lip to keep from making a sound.
How long has it been since I felt like this?
The thought hit her with a mix of sadness and excitement. Years. It had been years since she’d allowed herself this, since she’d listened to her own body, since she’d permitted herself desire at all. And there she was, alone in a hotel room in Cartagena, turned on by two strangers she would never know.
***
From above came the sharp crack of a slap against skin. Marina imagined the firm hand on the woman’s thigh, and the moan that followed, higher and longer, confirmed that it had been well received. The room’s air seemed denser, hotter, as if it were wrapping around her whole body.
She decided, at that moment, that she wasn’t going to hold back. That during those five free days she was going to reconnect with the woman she had put away so long ago. She would start that very night, alone, with only the sounds from the ceiling for company.
She slid one hand over her stomach, feeling the warm softness of her own skin, and lowered it slowly to the edge of her underwear. Already, through the fabric, she was wet. The simple brush of her fingers over the cotton made her arch her back and let out a moan that mingled, unwillingly, with the ones above.
Unable to resist, she slipped her hand beneath the fabric and found herself warm, slick, ready. She began to stroke herself with slow, circling motions, unconsciously following the couple’s rhythm. Every time the woman upstairs moaned, Marina’s fingers answered, as if the two of them were connected through the ceiling.
A ray of moonlight slipped through a gap in the curtain and fell across her face. Her cheeks were flushed, her lips parted, her eyes squeezed shut. Her breathing had become fast and ragged, and the moans escaping her no longer mattered. No one could see her. No one could judge her.
She imagined herself as the star of the scene upstairs. She saw herself pressed against the mattress, a man’s hands gripping her hips, a mouth moving over her body without asking permission. The fantasies she had spent years repressing rose all at once, jostling for space, and each one drove her temperature a degree higher.
***
The moans upstairs turned into screams. The woman was no longer holding back, and her voice filled the hotel’s silence with shameless, unrestrained pleasure. Marina quickened, letting herself be carried by that tide of sound, her fingers becoming surer, more insistent. Her hips moved on their own against her hand.
She brought her wet fingers to her mouth, tasted herself with a flavor that surprised her by being so intense, and lowered them again. She was on the edge. She could feel it rising from deep in her belly, a tension growing and growing and threatening to break.
Upstairs, the man let out a low, final groan. The woman answered with a piercing cry that seemed to stretch through time. And that was what finally pushed Marina over the edge.
The orgasm shook her whole body. Her muscles tightened and loosened in waves, and a long moan escaped her without her being able or willing to stop it. For a few seconds nothing else existed: neither the hotel, nor work, nor years of accumulated renunciations. Only her, her hand, and the pleasure flooding through her.
Afterward she lay there, trembling, breathing hard, her heart pounding against her chest. Little by little, calm returned, and with it a sense of peace she hadn’t felt in a long time. The frustration accumulated over years seemed to have dissolved in that single night.
Above, the sounds had died away. The couple had fallen silent, surely wrapped in each other’s arms in their own bed, unaware of what they had provoked one floor below. Marina smiled in the dark.
She realized that, despite everything life had piled on top of her, she still kept that hunger intact. That night, alone in a hotel room, she had found her own desire again, and she promised herself never to bury it again.
Fatigue hit her all at once, sweet and heavy. She shifted position, looking for a dry side of the sheet, and when she noticed how soaked the mattress had become she couldn’t help a low laugh, surprised by herself. With that smile on her lips, she finally sank into a deep, restorative sleep.
That night in Cartagena marked a before and after. Five free days stretched out before her, and Marina was no longer thinking of wasting them sleeping.