The Afternoon Lola Stripped Me in Front of the Neighbors

I met Lola one July when the heat gave no quarter. She lived on the third floor, right above my apartment, and every afternoon she watered a few geranium pots that dripped down onto my balcony. I’d go upstairs to complain, she’d laugh with that Andalusian accent that dragged its s’s as if the language itself were too much effort, and in the end she’d invite me in for a cold beer. That was how it all started, without either of us ever naming it.

That afternoon the sky was white with muggy heat. I went up because my laundry had gotten wet again, but the moment she opened the door I knew the excuse was the least important thing there.

“Come in, babe, there’s at least a bit of air in here,” she said, and left the door ajar behind my back.

The living room opened onto a wide balcony overlooking the courtyard. Opposite us, no more than fifteen meters away, the windows of the other buildings lined up in rows. At that hour most of them were thrown wide open, chasing a breeze that never came. You could hear televisions, a radio, the distant crying of a child.

“Doesn’t it bother you having everything open like this?” I asked, peering out.

“Bother me about what?” She came up behind me and rested her chin on my shoulder. “Let them look if they want. I’m not hiding from anyone.”

I felt her breath on my ear and a shiver ran down my back despite the heat. For weeks we had been brushing against the edges of something—a hand lingering a second too long, a look held until one of us looked away. That afternoon there was no one to look away first.

I turned slowly, still trapped between her body and the railing. Up close her eyes were a light brown, almost honey-colored, and there were tiny freckles the summer sun had brought out on her cheekbones. She smelled of cheap lotion and clean sweat, and that mix of hers stirred me more than any expensive perfume ever could.

“What if they really see us?” I asked, and heard my own voice: hoarse, changed.

“Then they’ll have something beautiful to remember tonight,” she said. “Stop thinking so much, babe. You’ve been thinking for weeks.”

She was right. I’d been thinking about her for weeks every time I heard her footsteps above my ceiling, every time the watering can dripped on the dot at seven. Thinking had been my way of not daring.

Lola stepped away, went to the center of the living room, and, never taking her eyes off me, pulled off her T-shirt. She tossed it onto the sofa. Her breasts were bare, small and firm, her nipples tight from the fan’s draft. The light coming in from the balcony outlined her whole body against the wall.

“Lola,” I said, my throat dry. “The windows.”

“What about the windows?” She smiled and bit her lip. “Let them see what they’re missing.”

I should have closed the balcony doors myself. Instead I stayed rooted there, watching as she slid her thumbs under the waistband of her shorts and slowly pushed them down, bending forward without a shred of shame. She wasn’t wearing anything underneath. The dark, unruly hair didn’t take away one ounce of her elegance.

Across the way, a curtain moved. Then another. I couldn’t have said how many pairs of eyes were behind those panes, but I knew they were there, watching, and instead of scaring me the thought tightened something inside me.

“Come here,” she said, holding out her hand. “Don’t stand there like a dummy.”

***

I crossed the living room. When I reached her, she grabbed the back of my neck and kissed me, and it was a kiss with no preamble, deep, with teeth grazing and tongue searching. She tasted of beer and summer. I let her take the lead for a moment and then kissed her back with the same hunger, gripping her waist and feeling her skin burning under my fingers.

“Take that off,” she murmured against my mouth, tugging at the hem of my dress.

I hesitated half a second. Only half. I lifted my arms and let her pull it over my head, and suddenly I was naked too, right in the middle of that living room, with the balcony open and half the neighborhood on the other side of the courtyard. The fan’s air ran across my damp back. I had never felt so exposed. I had never liked it so much.

Lola gently pushed me back until my legs hit the sofa and I sat down. She knelt between my knees, pried them apart with her palms, and looked at me with that face of hers that said she knew exactly what she was going to do.

“Relax, babe,” she said. “This is going to take a while.”

She lowered her head. First came her breath, then her tongue, flat and hot, stroking me from bottom to top with such slowness that I clenched my fists in the sofa fabric. I threw my head back and a moan escaped me before I could stop it. I didn’t try to stop the second one. I didn’t want to.

“That’s it,” she murmured without lifting her face. “Let them hear you.”

And they heard me. Of that I’m sure. Because across the way, when I half-opened my eyes, I saw a silhouette standing still behind a lace curtain, and farther over, a window where there had been no one before and now a shadow could be made out. Shame should have arrived then. Instead a wave of heat came over me that arched my back and made me tangle my fingers in Lola’s curls, pushing her harder against me.

Something about knowing I was being watched changed everything. Every caress became more intense, every moan more mine and at the same time more for them, the strangers in the windows. I didn’t know them, didn’t know their names or their faces, and precisely because of that I didn’t care what they thought. All that mattered was Lola’s mouth, her patient tongue, the way she read my body as if she’d been doing it for years.

***

She kept it up for a long while, teasing, stopping just before I got there only to start over from the beginning, until I begged her not to stop anymore. Then she didn’t stop. She held my hips with both hands, anchored her mouth exactly where it needed to be, and didn’t let up. I came with a cry that bounced off the courtyard walls and spilled out through the balcony toward all those open windows, and I didn’t care in the slightest.

I was still trembling when she sat up, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and settled beside me with a satisfied-cat smile.

“Now you,” I said, once I’d caught my breath.

I pushed her back onto the cushions. I wanted to give every second back. I kissed her neck, her breasts, her stomach, then moved lower with deliberate calm while she writhed and spat curses in that Andalusian accent of hers, getting more closed-off the more control she lost. When I finally found her with my tongue, her hips lifted off the sofa, seeking me.

“Don’t stop, don’t stop,” she kept saying, gripping my hair. “For God’s sake, don’t stop.”

I didn’t stop. I felt her whole body tense, felt her breathing break into shorter and shorter gasps, and when she came she did it with her whole body, her thighs closing around my head, her stomach shuddering under my hands. Afterward she went slack, laughing to herself, her chest rising and falling.

I kissed my way up her body slowly until I lay on top of her. We stayed like that, forehead to forehead, sharing the same hot air, and for the first time all afternoon the open balcony no longer mattered. I wasn’t thinking about who was looking anymore. Only about her, her breathless laugh against my neck and the way she squeezed my waist with her legs so I wouldn’t move.

***

We lay sprawled on the sofa for a good while, sticky with sweat, touching only with the tips of our feet. Through the balcony came the murmur of the afternoon as if nothing had happened, though we both knew the whole courtyard had witnessed it.

Lola finally got up, still naked, and leaned out over the balcony railing with a shamelessness that left me speechless. She stretched her arms like someone greeting the neighborhood.

“You’re my best summer afternoon, babe,” she said, turning to me. “Better than any of the boyfriends I’ve had.”

“They’re going to report you if you stay out there,” I laughed, half covering myself with my crumpled dress.

“Let them report me.” She shrugged and came back inside, finally closing the balcony doors, but not before she felt like it, not before she was done with them. “You staying for another beer?”

I stayed. And for the next one too. Lola had that way of looking at you that made you feel as if behind every gesture of hers there were three more secrets, and that only if you stayed long enough would she let you know one.

“I’ve got too many stories, girl,” she told me that night, already in the dim light, stroking my hair. “Don’t want to know them all at once.”

I didn’t want to know them all at once. I discovered them one by one, afternoon after afternoon, with the balcony open and the geraniums dripping onto my terrace, while across the way the windows kept slowly cracking open every time she took off her blouse.