Memories

I crossed the street convinced she wouldn’t recognize me. She smiled at me, and I knew that afternoon something was going to change forever between us.

In primary school she loved me more than I could love her back. Twenty years later, her voice on the phone sounded the same, and my hands shook.

I never said this out loud. This is one of those things: what my cousin planned with me that January, without my realizing it until it was too late.

I got off the bus with my head full of class and my body full of something else. Twenty minutes later I was in a stranger’s car, learning what I’d never dared to ask.

I climbed the tree behind the dormitory to confirm what I already knew. I never imagined seeing her with him on the balcony would awaken something between rage and desire I’d never felt.

There was an hour left until dinner, the children were watching cartoons in the living room, and I crossed the garden looking for my wife. The laundry-room door was ajar.

I’d known him since high school as the toughest macho in class. Last night he saw me transformed into someone else, and the next day his message left no room for doubt.

The voice on the other end of the headset gave me a simple order: I couldn’t finish until she decided. Then she disappeared, with no warning when she’d return.

I dialed her number when I figured he’d have her down by then. I wanted to hear her moan while another man paid for her, never knowing I was part of the plan.

After a decade of bad sex with men, I met Renata, her drawer full of toys, and a finger where no one had gotten before.

The lover’s initials weren’t written out in full, but they matched the man smoking on my balcony at that very moment.

When she asked me to put sunscreen on her, my hands already knew what my mouth hadn’t dared to say yet.

The rumor raced through the bakery like wildfire: Espiguita was back. And the only man who truly knew her felt the past crash down on him.

I crossed the parking yard, hungry and with a sharp hatred for humanity, and then I saw her hit the pavement. It was my boss.

Under the morgue lights her hands never trembled. But when she closed her eyes, she felt her again against the locker-room tiles, sweaty, biting her neck.