Don Aurelio Woke My Friend That Afternoon

Sara always laughed at Don Aurelio when we drove back from the winery dinners. She used to say that old man, nearly seventy, with his old-fashioned waistcoat and white mustache, looked at her as if he could strip her bare with his eyes alone. She found it funny. I didn’t so much, because I’d seen the way she held his gaze an extra second every time.

—He’s an old gentleman, don’t read into it —she’d tell me, biting her lip so she wouldn’t smile.

—An old gentleman who calls you “girl” and makes your face go red —I’d answer.

She’d look out the window and not answer.

Don Aurelio wasn’t just any old man. He owned a vineyard estate on the edge of town, had huge hands and a deep voice that seemed to come from the bottom of a barrel. He was heavy, yes, and he walked slowly, but when he walked into a room everyone fell silent without knowing why. I’d known him for years, done some bookkeeping work for the winery, and that October afternoon he’d invited Sara and me to taste the new wine.

***

The cellar smelled of damp wood and fermenting grapes. We went down a stone staircase to the room where the barrels rested, and there, with three glasses and an unlabeled bottle, Don Aurelio was waiting for us, seated in a worn leather armchair.

—Sara —he said, stretching out her name as if savoring it—. I thought you weren’t coming.

—I told Marcos I was curious about your famous wine —she replied, and sat on the edge of a stool, far too upright.

He poured the glasses himself. When he handed Sara hers, his fingers brushed hers a moment longer than necessary, and I saw my friend catch her breath. We drank. We talked about unimportant things, about the harvest, about the village, about the cold that was already starting to creep in at night. But all the while there was another conversation going on underneath, one nobody said out loud.

—Marcos —Don Aurelio said to me at some point—, why don’t you go up and get the other bottle? The one I left in the study. Your friend and I will keep talking.

I looked at him. He held my gaze without blinking, with absolute calm. And then I understood that this wasn’t a request about a bottle.

—Of course —I said.

I went up slowly. I took my time finding the damned bottle on purpose, giving them time, giving her time especially, because I knew Sara could come up behind me at any moment and she didn’t. When I came back down, I stopped on the last step, in the shadows, where they couldn’t see me.

Don Aurelio had stood up. He was a mountain of a man in front of her, and yet he touched her with a tenderness I hadn’t expected. He had let her hair down, the hair Sara always wore up, and was moving it away from her face with those thick fingers.

—All night pretending you didn’t want this —he said softly—. And look at you now.

Sara didn’t answer. She only closed her eyes when he lowered his mouth to her neck.

***

I should have gone up. I should have left. But I stayed there on the step, my heart hammering against my ribs, watching that man, who was three times her age, claim her body centimeter by centimeter.

He sat her on the oak table where the glasses were resting. He spread her knees apart without hurry, as if he had all the time in the world, and positioned himself between them. Sara clung to his broad shoulders. When he finally kissed her mouth, she responded with an urgency I didn’t know she possessed, as if she’d been waiting months for exactly that.

—Easy, girl —Don Aurelio told her, chuckling under his breath—. I’m in no rush with you.

And he wasn’t. He undressed her from the waist up without taking his eyes off hers, barely touching her, speaking to her the whole time in that deep tone that filled the entire cellar. He told her she was beautiful. He told her he’d been thinking about her for weeks. He told her rougher things too, in her ear, things that made Sara throw her head back and let out a sound she had never made in front of me.

When he undid his belt, she reached down herself to help him, trembling. And what came next was a lesson. There’s no other way to put it. That huge, calm old man took her on the table with a confidence no one our age would ever have, knowing exactly when to go slow and when not to, reading her body like someone who’d spent fifty years learning how to do it.

Sara clung to the edge of the table. The glasses wobbled. One fell to the floor and shattered, and neither of them paid the slightest attention.

I should leave, I thought. I didn’t leave.

***

I don’t know how long I watched. Long enough to see her change. Sara had gone into that cellar as a woman laughing at an old man, and before my eyes she turned into something else, someone surrendered, given over, asking for more with a broken voice and digging her nails into Don Aurelio’s back while he held her whole with a single arm.

—That’s it —he told her against her hair—. Like that. You’re mine now, aren’t you?

—Yes —she gasped—. Yes.

It was that “yes” that pulled me out of the shadows. I didn’t choose to. My feet carried me down the steps, into the room, and when Sara opened her eyes and saw me standing there, watching them, she didn’t cover herself or pull away. She held my gaze the same way she’d held his in the car. As if she’d wanted me to see it all night long.

Don Aurelio slowly turned his head toward me. He wasn’t surprised. I think he’d planned it from the start, from the moment he sent me to get the bottle.

—Well now —he said, without stopping his motion against her—. It seems your friend was curious too. Come here, boy. Don’t just stand there like a fool.

I looked at Sara. She nodded, almost imperceptibly, biting her lip the same way she did when we talked about him in the car.

I went over.

***

I positioned myself behind her. I put my hands on her waist, that waist I’d seen a thousand times and had never dared to touch, and I helped her keep the rhythm Don Aurelio was setting from below. Sara threw her head back and rested it on my shoulder. She smelled of her usual perfume and something new, of sweat and spilled wine.

—Marcos —she whispered, and that was the only thing she said.

We stayed like that a long while, all three of us, in that cold stone room where our breath misted in the air. Don Aurelio led without effort, doling us both out with the calm authority of someone who knows exactly what he’s doing. He guided her with short phrases. I only needed to look at him to understand where to put my hands, when to squeeze, when to ease off.

Sara came first. I felt her tense completely against my chest, clinging to the old man’s neck, biting the back of her hand so she wouldn’t scream, and even so a long moan escaped and echoed off the barrels. Don Aurelio held her through the whole trembling spell, speaking softly to her, until she went slack between the two of us, laughing and crying at the same time, not quite knowing why.

—That girl —he said, satisfied, stroking her back—. That girl had too much bottled up inside.

***

Afterward, he took his time with himself too. He gently moved Sara aside, leaving her seated in the leather armchair wrapped in her half-put-on clothes, and finished as he had done everything that afternoon: without hurry, looking her in the eyes, while I stayed off to the side, not quite knowing what to do with my hands. When he came, he let out a deep growl that seemed to shake the walls, and sank back into the chair, huge and satisfied, his white hair stuck to his forehead.

No one said anything for a good while. The only sounds were the distant drip of some pipe and our breathing slowly returning to normal.

—The new wine is very good —Don Aurelio said then, completely serious, and the three of us burst out laughing.

***

We got into the car when it was already full night. Sara sat beside me with her hair still loose and her gaze lost on the dark road. She wouldn’t look me in the eye, the same way she hadn’t that first time I suspected what was going on between her and the old man. But this time I knew. I’d seen everything.

—Don’t say anything —she murmured after a while.

—I wasn’t going to say anything.

—I mean it, Marcos. Not a word. To anyone.

—Relax —I said.

We drove in silence for a couple of kilometers. The town lights appeared in the distance, small and yellow among the vineyards.

—You know what the worst part is? —she said then, without turning around, with a half-smile I saw reflected in the car window.

—What?

—He’s inviting us again on Saturday.

I didn’t answer. There was no need. We both knew perfectly well that on Saturday we were going, and that that afternoon in the cellar hadn’t been an ending, only the beginning of something neither of us ever intended to tell.

Don Aurelio had taught us, in a single afternoon, everything we thought we knew about desire and didn’t know at all. And from the look on Sara’s face reflected in the glass, I knew she was already counting the days.