The Hostel Owner Watched Me the First Night

I arrived at the address a friend from the neighborhood had given me five minutes before nine. It was an old house in downtown Quito, with peeling paint and a dark wooden gate that looked as though it weighed as much as a car. I knocked twice, and just as I was starting to think I had the wrong street, the gate opened and Salvador appeared.

The first thing I noticed were his legs. He was wearing light fabric pants that outlined his thighs, thick as tree trunks. Then I took in the rest. He was at least ten centimeters taller than me, with coffee-and-milk skin and a close-shaved head. Forty-something, I figured. He let me into a narrow waiting room with two leather armchairs and a fan spinning with no real conviction.

—So you’re the one Wilmer sent —he said, without offering his hand.

—That’s me. Mateo.

He made me sit and explained the job in less than five minutes. He managed some rooms—“rooms,” he called them, without wanting to say the easy word—that he rented by the hour. Each room had a piece of furniture, a TV, and a DVD player. Customers asked for a video when they came in; I put it on and also sold drinks and snacks to go. The pay was almost nothing, but it included a bed and three meals. The bed, though, was live-in: I couldn’t go sleep at my mother’s house.

—Does it work for you? —he asked.

—It works for me.

I told him I lived in Sangolquí, far from downtown, and that I needed to go get my things. Salvador took the keys to an old Hilux, checked the time on his phone, and drove me himself. He hardly spoke on the way. I watched him out of the corner of my eye every time he changed gears and saw how his forearm tensed. The truck smelled like cold tobacco. At a traffic light he asked if I had a partner, and I told him no, that I’d been alone for months.

—Better —he replied, without looking at me.

***

We came back carrying two bags and a backpack. He assigned me a small room at the end of the hallway, separated from his by a thin wall. Mine had a mattress on the floor. His had a queen bed with a carved wooden headboard. He sent me to shower before I started.

I came out of the bathroom with a towel tied around my waist, calculating every step. Salvador was lying on his back on his bed, his phone resting on his chest. He didn’t lift his eyes, but I knew he’d seen me come in. I changed slowly, deliberately turning my back to him. I bent down to take my underwear out of the backpack and let the towel slip for a second longer than necessary. When I straightened and looked over my shoulder, he was still staring at the screen. But it was no longer resting on his chest. He had lowered it to his lap.

Down there, beneath the fabric of his pants, there was a bulge that was not small.

I wasn’t going to be bored here.

***

The first few days passed without incident. I learned how to work the notebook where I wrote down the entries, how to put on the right video, how to charge the exact amount. Salvador came and went. Some afternoons I saw him talking at the door with street vendors; other times I found him napping with the door ajar. I started wearing a new pajama set, short bermuda shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt I had bought for the occasion. He said nothing, but sometimes he’d linger an extra second looking at me.

On Wednesday of the second week, almost at closing time, a guy showed up with a loose tie, gray suit, and shiny shoes. He asked for a room for an hour. I put on the video he himself chose and, when I went out, I noticed he’d left the door half open. I went back to the front desk with the strange feeling that it wasn’t an accident.

I walked down the hallway three times in less than ten minutes. Each time, I saw him sitting in the armchair with his pants open, pleasuring himself slowly, without hurry. The fourth time, he called me from the half-open door.

—Kid. A soda and some cookies.

I said yes, my breathing already broken before I even spoke. I came back with the tray. When I went in, he adjusted his shirt with one hand and kept going with the other. He didn’t bother covering himself. He handed me the bill, I put it in my pocket, and as I turned away he told me what I’d been waiting for.

—If you suck me off —he said— I’ll give you fifty more.

I closed my eyes for a moment. I thought about Salvador, who at that hour was sleeping a late nap. I thought about how long I’d already been holding out on something like this. When I opened them, the guy was still seated there, waiting.

—A hundred —I said.

He smiled and pulled out another bill.

I did it quickly, with the door locked from the inside. I knelt on the worn rug and took him without preamble. He had a short, thick dick, smelling of cheap cologne and sweat. I let him thrust at his own pace. I didn’t care all that much. What mattered was that I’d already crossed a line, and on the other side there was nothing I knew.

When he finished, he paid me another fifty without my asking. He asked if he could come back the next day. I told him yes.

I went back into the hallway with a dry mouth and trembling knees. Salvador was in his room, the door ajar and the light off. I peeked in for a second. I heard him breathing, deep and even, as if he’d been asleep for hours. I got into my mattress on the floor and fell asleep with a strange weight in my stomach.

***

On Thursday, the engineer came back. This time he didn’t want a video. He wanted me to go in and lock the door. I let him do it. He pinned me against the wall, turned me around, and pulled my pants down. He didn’t kiss me. It wasn’t necessary. I just wanted it to be over and to get back into the hallway before anyone noticed I was gone.

What I hadn’t figured on was that the back door, Salvador’s room door, also opened onto the same hallway, and that he had a perfect view of the crack if he left his own door half open.

When it was all over and the engineer left, I walked slowly toward my room, dizzy, my body still hot. I pushed the door open. Salvador was on his bed. But he wasn’t asleep. He was lying on his back, naked, with a sheet pulled up to mid-thigh. His eyes were closed, but his breathing didn’t match. And under the sheet, there was a bulge that made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that he hadn’t been sleeping at all.

I wanted to leave. My legs wouldn’t let me.

—How was it? —he said, without opening his eyes—. How did he fuck you?

I felt heat climbing up my face. I started stammering an apology, told him to forgive me, that I knew I shouldn’t have done it inside the place, that it wouldn’t happen again. Salvador opened his eyes slowly. He lifted one hand and scratched his chest. He had thick black hair there. Then he pulled the sheet all the way down.

I had imagined the bulge, but not that.

—I forgive you —he said— if you suck me off too.

***

I knelt beside the bed without thinking. I took it with both hands, because one wasn’t enough. It wouldn’t fit entirely in my mouth. Salvador didn’t push my head. He just propped the pillows behind his back and watched while I managed as best I could. Every so often he said something under his breath, a correction, a compliment. That made it worse.

—Come here —he said after a while—. Here.

He made me climb onto the bed on all fours. He took a small jar of cream from the nightstand drawer. He spread it on me slowly, first with two fingers, then three. I clenched my fists against the sheets and tried to breathe.

—Slowly —he murmured—. Loosen up.

When he tried to get in, I felt him hit, first, against a wall. It wouldn’t go in. Salvador didn’t get angry. He changed positions, put me face down, shoved a pillow under my pelvis, and tried again. He told me to push out, to breathe deeply, to hold on. I felt something opening inside me, slow and painful, as if I were splitting from the inside out. I bit the sheet so I wouldn’t scream. He waited. When I was ready, he kept going.

There was no kindness afterward. There was rhythm. There was weight. There were big hands on my hips. There was a low voice by my ear telling me things I’d rather not repeat. When he finished, I felt him emptying inside me in spurts, while he held me against the mattress as if afraid I’d get away.

***

He let me sleep in his bed that night. Face down, the burn throbbing between my legs, unable to close my knees. Before turning off the light, he leaned against my back and said, almost in my ear:

—From now on, the engineer pays you, but I’m the one who collects.

I didn’t answer. I fell asleep with his hand on my hip and my face buried in the pillow. I thought it was going to be just another job, any old one. It wasn’t. It was, in fact, where I learned what it meant to belong.