Memories

Marisol was sitting on the edge of the bed with the baby at her breast, completely naked, when I pushed the door open. Milk was dripping from her and she didn’t ask me to leave.

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 return. Twenty years later, her voice on the phone was the same, and my hands trembled.

There are things I never said out loud. This is one of them: what my cousin planned with me that January, before I realized 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.

An hour before dinner, the kids 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. And then she logged off without saying when she’d be back.

I dialed her number when I figured he already had her beneath him. I wanted to hear her moan while another man paid for her, never knowing I was in on it.

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.

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

The rumor swept through the bakery: Espiguita was back. And the only man who truly knew her felt the past crashing down on him.

I crossed the parking lot, hungry and harboring a refined hatred of humanity, and then I saw her fall to the pavement from a punch. She was my boss.

Under the morgue lights her hands did not tremble. But when she closed her eyes, she felt her again against the locker-room tiles, sweaty, biting her neck.

I lay down naked thinking I only wanted to sleep. Three hours later, I was still discovering how much pleasure I could give myself.

That morning I opened the curtains intending to watch the maids. I never imagined a stranger in the opposite window would be the one unable to take her eyes off me.

We had grown up sleeping in adjoining rooms, until one night a sound on the other side of the wall made me understand I no longer looked at her like a sister.

I never liked stuffed animals as gifts. Until the weekend I was home alone and realized what the one my ex left me was really for.