Mature

All her life they’d looked at her like an object. That afternoon, in the stone house at the end of the street, she decided to look first.

For years no man had looked at me the way he did from the next balcony, and that afternoon I discovered I didn’t want to stop being watched either.

Sonia was waiting for me at the restaurant door in a dress so short that every time she breathed it told a secret. And I had come ready to tell mine.

For years she had written orgasms for faceless strangers. That dawn, for the first time, someone on the other side of the screen wanted to know her real name.

He arrived without warning, with that smile of someone who always gets what he wants, and in one week he turned my mother’s life, mine, and the whole neighborhood upside down.

The door was barely shut and inside someone kept saying yes, yes. I shouldn’t have looked, but I stayed frozen in the hallway, holding my breath.

I was twenty-two and had a final project worth the entire course. What wasn’t in any plan was the offer that man made me on the way home.

For years I’d wanted to go to a nude beach, but none of my partners would come with me. That morning I went alone, not knowing how it would end.

I went down for coffee with the woman from the fifth floor and came back stunned: she told me, in vivid detail, what she did with the married man from the eighth floor.

She unhooked her bikini top with the natural ease of someone who has already decided everything. “You told me to feel free,” she said. And I could barely breathe.

When I locked the door, he turned around and reproached me for kissing another man. I couldn’t tell whether it was rage or desire burning in his eyes.

I ran back at my grandfather’s request, and halfway up the stairs, a half-open window showed me what I never imagined seeing my mother do.

Everyone hated her before she returned to the neighborhood. I only drew her tattoos from my side of the wall—until she decided to make me pay for being her muse.

I’d been watching her at the traffic light for weeks, with those denim shorts and that tired smile. That afternoon I dared to speak to her, never imagining where we’d end up.

For weeks he watched her from his window; the night he climbed the fence, he understood that she would decide everything that happened between them.

I left home in an ordinary dress, but underneath I was wearing something only he would see. I knew what he was going to ask for, and I had already decided to say yes.

The auditorium was almost empty when his hand settled on the armrest. I was forty-two and thought I knew everything about desire. That night I learned I didn’t.

When Marisa caught me breathing hard and staring at her legs, she didn’t get offended: she smiled, leaned close to my ear, and told me it wouldn’t end there.

I promised Marcos I’d look after his mother while he was away. What I didn’t tell him was what happened the afternoon she offered to cook at my place.

When he got out of the van with that smile, I knew the broken boiler would be the best excuse fate had given me in years.