Neighbors

He was twenty-seven, had a girlfriend, and led an orderly life. Then a neighbor looked at him on the bus as if he knew what Tobías dared not name.

I never told anyone, but the moment he closes the door to leave, one name and one body take over my whole imagination.

“Want to test it before you decide?” he asked, and Mariana understood that neither of them would spend that afternoon talking only about the projector.

Every morning I spied on him from the window without admitting it. That rainy afternoon he showed up at my door soaked, and I knew there was no way to keep pretending nothing was happening.

He didn’t do much for me physically, but the idea of being wanted was intoxicating. When he climbed onto the stool to fix the fan, I knew exactly how I’d pay him back.

That night the dare was simple and insane at the same time: cross the property naked, on all fours, right past the window where anyone could see me.

She knew that every Thursday she hung the laundry at the same time. That morning I decided to step out wearing nothing at all, just to see her face. I didn’t expect her to smile like that.

When she told him she was “hanging in there,” Tino understood that word weighed the same as his own: years of cold sheets. And in the middle of the street, they decided to fix it.

The first time I entered her apartment, I found a thong hanging in the shower—and knew our deal of food for hot water would cost me far more than a few empanadas.

We were two lesbians on holiday looking for one last night together; I never thought a simple kiss would end with everyone tangled up on the same sofa.

A week after the party I was still thinking about them. So I wrote to all of them, put on my shortest dress, and went to the house where I knew nobody would interrupt us.

I was looking for silence and a garden. What I found was an entire family ready to share me, one after another, without any of them knowing about the others.

That swimsuit barely covered them, and each day the pool showed a little more skin. No one suspected how far the neighbors would go when the last garment fell.

Iván and Lucía were the new ones in the building, the youngest, the ones still learning. That night we showed them that in our group, nobody was left wanting.

When she moved into the apartment across from mine, I never imagined that one afternoon, while her son slept, her hand would climb up my thigh and I’d spread my legs without thinking.

I had just moved in and didn’t know anyone. Bruna was the first to talk to me; I never imagined she and her partner had a plan for me that night.

I remember her at the door of her bookstore, with her almost white hair and those impossible eyes. Ten years passed before I had her near me again, and this time I wasn’t going to let her go.

Renata called me to ask for a favor, but the one who left me breathless that afternoon was the woman who finished cleaning and waited for me by the elevator.

When she started crying on my shoulder and confessed that her husband no longer touched her, I knew that afternoon’s massage was going to end very differently.

She had spent months greeting her in the entrance hall, holding back her desire. That afternoon, the shopping bags spilled, and at last I had an excuse to go upstairs.