My Mother’s Best Friend Put Me in My Place

I was twenty-two and had a routine that suited me just fine. I studied in the mornings and spent my afternoons running my parents’ shop, that neighborhood grocery store they had opened before I was even born. My favorite part was putting together the orders once the sign already said “closed”: the shop silent, the radio low, the shelves reaching all the way to the ceiling, and me alone, with no one to answer to.

My parents made the most of those afternoons to go to the city’s central market, strike deals with suppliers and, while they were at it, take the rest of the day off. I was grateful for that. It was a lot of work for one person, but I liked that orderly solitude of boxes and lists.

That Tuesday, however, I wasn’t alone. Raquel came by.

Raquel had been my mother’s best friend for as long as I could remember. Whenever work piled up too much, she would come by to lend a hand, as she always had. Before, she helped Mom; now she helped me. She was nearly fifty, carried with an elegance that commanded a certain respect: black curly hair worn half up, dark eyes, a body of full, generous curves that seemed not to have noticed the passage of time.

“Mateo, give me a hand with the jars up top,” she said that afternoon, standing in front of the back shelf.

You had to climb a step ladder, one of those old wooden ones that creaked with every rung. Raquel was afraid of heights, or so she said.

“Hold it steady for me, I don’t want to fall,” she asked, already putting one foot on the first step.

And of course I went. How could I not hold it? I stood behind her, grabbed the rails with both hands, and looked up to keep an eye on things. That was my mistake. Or my luck. I still don’t know.

She was wearing a loose summer dress, and when I lifted my head I found myself face to face with the fact that she was wearing absolutely nothing underneath. There she was, just like that, a hand’s breadth from my face. I didn’t know where to look and, at the same time, I couldn’t look anywhere else.

I felt the heat rise up my neck to my ears. And, above all, I felt myself harden all at once, from zero to a hundred, without transition, almost with a painful jolt.

“Do you like the view?” she called from up top, without turning around.

“Huh? What view? You can’t see anything…” I lied, my voice cracking in half.

Like hell you couldn’t see anything.

I didn’t fool her. She climbed down at once, step by step, an annoyed expression forming on her face. When her feet hit the floor, she turned and stood in front of me, very close, much closer than two people who had done nothing should have been.

“Right, there’s nothing to see,” she said with a sneer. “What a liar you are.”

She pushed my chest with two fingers, not hard, barely a touch. But I stepped back and there was a chair right behind me that I didn’t remember leaving there. I tripped over it and fell back into it, with the good fortune—or not—of ending up exactly at her height.

“Nothing to see, he says, the clever one,” she muttered, coming closer. “Well, now you’re going to see it. Oh, you’re definitely going to see it.”

I moved my hands instinctively, not quite knowing why, and she slapped them away sharply.

“Hands off. You just look and keep quiet.”

She approached with a slowness that was pure intent. Every step had been decided long ago. When she was half a meter away, she gathered up her dress with both hands, slowly, lifting it from her thighs to her waist, and stayed there, exposed from the navel down, holding my gaze.

“Can you see it now?” she asked.

Yes, I could see it all right. She had a smooth stomach, firm, sculpted legs, the kind a woman has when she takes care of herself. And I swallowed hard like a kid caught red-handed, because that was exactly what I was at that moment.

“I asked if you can see it. Or are you not only a liar but deaf too?”

“Yes… I can see it,” I admitted. There was no point denying the obvious any longer.

“And? Do you like it?” she insisted, taking another step.

I didn’t have time to answer. She pressed herself against the chair, planted her hands on the backrest on either side of my head, and stood so close I could feel her heat on my face. I lifted my eyes. Hers were already there, waiting for me, as if they knew the exact moment when I was going to give in.

“Stick out your tongue,” she ordered, with a smile that was anything but kind.

I didn’t move. I knew perfectly well what she wanted, even though I had never done it before. I’m not ashamed to admit that back then I was a virgin. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to; it was that I didn’t know how. I had no idea what to do or how to begin, and the fear of making a fool of myself had me pinned to the chair.

“Stick out your tongue,” she repeated, lower and firmer. “You owe me for staring.”

She took my head in both hands, her fingers tangled in my hair, and pulled me toward her without asking permission. It wasn’t rough, but it didn’t leave me any choice either. I closed my eyes.

“Out. Now.”

And I did, between the shock and the wanting I hadn’t known I had until that instant.

“Mmm…” she breathed out, and that was the only comment she made.

***

I’m not going to drag out what came after, because there wasn’t that much to tell the first time either. Raquel started moving and guiding me with the patience of a strict teacher. More tongue. Less. Move your head like this, as if saying yes. Now like saying no. I obeyed every instruction like someone learning a trade who hadn’t read even the first page.

At some point she lifted one leg and rested her foot on the edge of the chair, between my thighs, opening herself wider, pressing closer. I heard her breathing change. I heard her sigh first and then gasp, let out a word my mother would never have forgiven her for. She was shaking against me faster and faster, and I let myself go, trying to keep up with her rhythm without having the slightest idea whether I was doing it right.

She came, pressing herself against me until it reached the point where it started to hurt, her fingers buried in my hair, her whole body tense for a few seconds that felt endless. Then she suddenly went slack, like a rope finally let go.

She pulled away slowly, pulled her dress back down, fixed her hair with two quick gestures, and in an instant she was once again my mother’s friend who had stopped by to help. She gave me a dry kiss on the forehead.

“Why did you resist for so long?” she asked, amused.

“I don’t know,” I answered, and it was the truth.

She smiled, turned around, and went back to finishing the order we had left half-done, as if nothing at all had happened. I stayed seated a while longer, heart racing and head spinning, trying to understand what the hell had just happened in my own stockroom.

***

The following week she came back. And this time she didn’t wait for the ladder excuse. As soon as she walked in and saw we were alone, she pointed at the chair with her chin.

“Sit down.”

I sat. She came closer, gathered up her skirt with the same calm as always, and revealed that afternoon she had changed the rules: she had shaved completely.

“Do you like it better like this?” she asked with a half smile, already lifting her leg to rest her foot on the chair. “If that was the whole problem, there’s no problem now. No excuse left.”

She didn’t have to ask me twice. This time she didn’t have to hold my head so tightly. This time I was the one who leaned in.

That became our ritual, Tuesday after Tuesday, for months I wouldn’t know how to count. At first I felt like her toy, something she used and put back where it belonged when she was done. And I didn’t mind. I got the hang of it, learned to read her breathing, to know when to press harder and when to ease off, to recognize the shiver that announced the end. There came a point when I looked forward to Tuesdays with an impatience I could barely hide from my parents.

But with time that started to feel too small. I wanted more. I wanted her, at least once, to remember me too. I didn’t dare tell her, because in that game she made the rules and I just followed them. Until one good day, a Tuesday like any other, when I finished my part of the work and she was fixing her clothes, I took the plunge.

“Raquel…” I stammered.

“Yes, handsome?” she answered, a little surprised to hear me speak.

“And what about me? I’m always left wanting more. I…”

“Don’t tell me my little voyeur doesn’t take care of himself later,” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Yeah, sure he does. But I thought maybe you could… help me. Please.”

She held my gaze for a long moment, as if weighing it, and in the end she smiled in a different way, almost tenderly.

“Of course, sweetheart. I thought you were never going to ask.”

She came closer, hauled me up from the chair by my hands until I was standing, and began unbuttoning my pants with a skill that left no doubt about her experience. She knelt in front of me, unhurried, and pulled down the waistband of my underwear.

I could barely breathe. I had the whole sky within reach and I couldn’t believe it.

Then she stopped. She looked up at me and clicked her tongue.

“Well.”

“What?” I asked, a knot in my throat, sensing that something was going wrong.

“Nothing, Mateo. I’m not putting anything with that much hair in my mouth,” she said, and as she stood she pulled my clothes back up, covering me with almost cruel delicacy. “Sorry.”

She gave me another kiss on the forehead, this one more mocking than the first, and stayed five more minutes finishing one of the half-done orders before heading home as if nothing had happened.

***

The following week I already knew what I had to do, and I did it. I shaved everything off, with obsessive care, thinking about her face when she found out. I got the shop ready, left the orders almost done to make time, and waited for Tuesday with my stomach tight with pure anticipation.

But Raquel didn’t come.

Not that Tuesday, nor the next, nor the one after that. The stockroom went back to being silent, with its low radio and high shelves, and me alone again, with no one to answer to. It took me almost a month to understand what had happened, and I found out in the worst way: by accidentally overhearing a conversation between my parents in the kitchen. Raquel had found a full-time job somewhere else in the city and wouldn’t be stopping by the shop anymore. We’d have to find someone to replace her in her duties.

I stood there in the doorway, spoon halfway to my plate, feeling like the stupidest guy in the world. So many Tuesdays, so much ritual, so much learned instruction, and I had failed the final exam by a week’s delay.

A few weeks later we found the person who replaced her. But who it was, and what happened to me when she arrived, that’s a different story altogether. As is the only time, long afterward, when I ran into Raquel again in the street, her arm linked through a man’s and me already having become someone who knew perfectly well what he was doing.

But those, as I said, are stories for another day.