I Saw Your Mom With the Neighbor and Couldn’t Keep Quiet

Mendoza has streets that at night turn into dark tunnels, especially in La Estanzuela, where the houses pressed against the hill have long backyards and old windows that don’t close properly. I lived in one of those houses, three doors down from Tomás’s, my best friend since first grade.

That March night I went down to the kiosk on the avenue to buy cigarettes. I came back through the alley that separates our blocks, a narrow ditch between walls, because I cut across. When I passed by the back of Tomás’s house, I heard something I shouldn’t have heard.

A woman’s muffled voice, repeating a word I couldn’t make out. Then a dull thud against the wall. Another. And a long, hoarse moan that cut off as if someone had covered her mouth.

I froze.

Tomás’s mother was named Carla. She was thirty-seven, a nurse at the provincial hospital, and I’d known her for as long as I could remember. She had always welcomed me with a smile, with fried pastries or mate. She was the kind of pretty neighborhood woman: wide hips, big breasts, black hair to her shoulders, that way of walking women have who know they’re being looked at and to whom it already matters a little less.

But the voice I was hearing in there wasn’t the neighborhood Carla. It was another Carla.

I crept up to the bedroom window. The curtain was badly drawn, leaving a strip about ten centimeters wide. I crouched, braced my shoulder against the wall, and looked.

Carla was kneeling on the mattress, with her back to the window. She was naked, her skin shining with sweat under the yellow light of the lamp. Her tits hung heavy, with dark, hard nipples like olives, moving every time she breathed. Her ass, resting on her heels, was big and white, marked with the red prints of two fresh hands on her cheeks. In front of her, standing at the edge of the bed, was Hugo, the baker from the next block. I saw him every morning when I went by to buy pastries. A man in his fifties, hard belly, bald, with that easy laugh of guys who have been baking bread since they were fourteen.

He wasn’t laughing now.

“Come here,” he told her in a low voice, and put his hand on the back of her neck.

Carla obeyed without speaking. She unzipped his pants, pulled down his underwear, and paused for a second, staring before leaning in. What I saw made me understand why Carla, a woman who could choose, had chosen the baker. Hugo wasn’t handsome. But he had a cock that didn’t fit the rest of his body, thick and dark, with a wide, shiny head and a swollen vein running underneath, and heavy balls hanging below like two dark plums. She grabbed it with both hands, one above the other, and there was still cock left sticking up above her hands.

“Slowly,” he said.

“I know.”

And she took it into her mouth. Slowly, just like he’d asked, wetting it with her tongue from the balls to the tip, leaving a strand of saliva hanging from her chin. She dragged her tongue flat over the head, wrapped it with her lips, and started going down. She looked up from below with an expression I didn’t know. A mix of hunger and patience. When she reached the base, she choked for a second, coughed without taking it out, and stayed there with her nose pressed against his belly, her eyes watering with mascara. Then she came back up, sucking hard, cheeks hollowed, and went down again. And again. And again. Hugo’s cock went in and out, shining, covered in spit, and every time she took it all the way out she kissed the tip wetly before swallowing it again.

Without thinking, I lowered the zipper on my jeans. I’d been hard since the first moan. It wasn’t a decision. It just happened. I took it out, gripped it with my right hand, and started stroking slowly, my face pressed against the wall so I wouldn’t miss a single detail. The tip was already leaking, and I used that to slide better.

***

Hugo was stroking her hair. He wasn’t smashing her head down or asking for weird things. He was almost tender, if that word can be used for what I was seeing. Carla went up and down at the pace she chose, and every so often she’d take him all the way out and lick his balls, one by one, sucking them into her mouth. She kissed his thigh, bit his groin, and took him back to the hilt. You could hear the wet, obscene sound of throat against cock. Every so often she pulled away to breathe and said something I couldn’t hear, but he laughed under his breath and answered, “beautiful whore,” then put her head back against the tip.

At one point Carla pulled away, ran her tongue from the base to the tip like someone licking an ice cream, and said out loud:

“Fuck me already, Hugo. I can’t take it anymore.”

“Come here,” he said after a moment. “Turn around.”

She got herself on all fours, knees apart, hands on the bedframe, ass lifted toward him. Her face showed in profile. Her lips were swollen, shiny with spit, and a lock of hair was stuck to her temple. Between her legs everything was visible: her cunt open, wet, with thick red lips, and higher up the tight, dark hole of her ass. Hugo ran two fingers through her pussy, from bottom to top, and held them up to the light. He showed her. They were dripping.

“You’re built like a cow,” he said.

“Shut up and stick it in me.”

Hugo climbed on behind her, grabbed his cock with his hand, pressed the head to the entrance of her pussy, and drove in in one shot. To the balls.

Carla let out a sound that wasn’t human. It was the first time I’d heard a woman do that. As if all the air had been pulled out of her and still hadn’t come back in. A guttural snort, a mix of pain and glory, coming out of the bottom of her belly.

“Slowly,” she asked, laughing through her teeth. “Slowly, because then you won’t be able to stop.”

He laughed too, softly.

“You know I won’t.”

He started moving. Slowly at first, like she’d said, pulling almost all the way out and plunging back in to the hilt, with that patience of a grown man who isn’t in a hurry anymore. I could see Hugo’s cock going in and out covered in white slick, shining, and how Carla’s cunt clung to the flesh when he pulled out, as if it didn’t want to let go. After two minutes the rhythm was different. The bed creaked against the wall with every thrust. Carla’s ass trembled and his red handprints showed on her white skin. Hugo grabbed her hips and started fucking her hard, his balls slapping against her cunt, the sticky sound of flesh on flesh filling the room.

“Like that, daddy, like that, break me all up,” she murmured, biting the pillow so the neighbor wouldn’t hear her.

Hugo gave her ass a sharp slap. A crack that echoed. Carla moaned louder and arched her back.

“More,” she gasped.

Another slap. And another. Her cheek turned red. He grabbed her hair with his other hand, yanked her head back, and kept fucking her like that, with her neck arched, her mouth open, strings of saliva falling onto the mattress. I watched through the curtain gap and moved my hand faster and faster, hidden, with my knees sinking into the damp grass of the alley. I was so hard it hurt.

Hugo pushed her until her face had to rest on the mattress, ass up high, and shoved his thumb into her hole while still fucking her from below. Carla gave a muffled squeal and started moving on her own, rocking her hips back, impaling herself on his cock and on his finger.

When she came, she shook all over, trembling, gripping the sheets with her fists. She said things to Hugo in a low voice that I don’t want to repeat. Not out of modesty. Out of respect for Tomás. But she asked him to finish inside her, and he did, with a rough grunt, burying himself to the hilt and staying there, still, as he emptied his balls into her belly. I came almost at the same time, teeth clenched, biting my lip until it bled, my load shooting in streams against the wall.

When Hugo pulled out, a thick thread of semen ran down Carla’s inner thigh to her knee.

***

I left the alley before they finished settling themselves. I walked the three blocks home with weak legs and my head spinning. It took me two hours to fall asleep.

The next day, Tomás texted me at three in the afternoon to come over. He was bored, his mother had gone to work a long hospital shift, and we could play on the console.

He opened the door himself, in shorts and a T-shirt, eating cookies. I sat down on the couch opposite his. The scene from the night before had left a weight inside me that wouldn’t let me look him in the face.

“What’s wrong with you?” Tomás said. “You’re acting weird.”

“Nothing.”

“How nothing? You look like you’re at a wake.”

I swallowed. He was my best friend. We’d spent seventeen years telling each other everything. If I didn’t tell him, who would I tell?

“Yesterday I passed by the back of your house.”

“And?”

“I saw something I shouldn’t have seen.”

Tomás put the cookie down on the table. He raised his eyebrows and lowered the TV volume.

“Tell me.”

I told him. Not the dirtiest details, but I told him. Hugo, the window, the bed noise, the way she talked to him. I told him his mother was with the baker and that, the way they were talking, it wasn’t the first time. Tomás listened without speaking, without moving, without touching the Coke beside him. When I finished, he stayed for a long while staring at the black screen.

“Are you sure it was her?”

“It was her, Tomi.”

Another silence. Then he laughed, a laugh that wasn’t a laugh.

“Holy shit, my mom,” he said under his breath, almost to himself. “I always thought something was going on. I sometimes hear her at night in the bathroom. I thought she was masturbating alone. But this…”

“Can you handle hearing the rest?”

“I want you to tell me. Everything.”

And then he did something I hadn’t expected. He looked me straight in the eye and said:

“Tonight we’re both going.”

I told him that wasn’t right. He told me he wasn’t asking permission. She was his mother, it was his house, it was his decision. I was just the guide.

***

At eleven-thirty the two of us were crouched behind the big planters in the back yard. We’d told Carla we were going to Cacheuta to fish at night with some guys. She kissed us goodbye on the cheek and told us to be careful on the road.

That night it wasn’t Hugo.

The one who climbed over the wall this time was Diego, El Tano Battaglia. Mechanic, shop on the corner, forty-two, arms covered in old tattoos, hard belly, that way of walking guys have who aren’t afraid of anything. Tomás opened his eyes wide when he saw him. So did I.

“The Tano…” Tomás whispered, not taking his eyes off the window. “He fixed my mom’s car in March.”

“Looks like he fixed other things too.”

Inside, Carla was already waiting for him. She was wearing a short black nightgown I didn’t know, so short that when she bent over you could see her whole ass. Underneath she had nothing on. Diego came in through the back door as if he knew the way by heart. She threw herself at him without saying a word. They kissed standing up, tongue to tongue, a deep, dirty kiss visible from outside, her hand going inside his pants, grabbing him, squeezing. He yanked her shirt off—no, he took it off; she wasn’t wearing a shirt, she had the nightgown—pulled the straps down off the nightgown and her tits jumped out, heavy, nipples standing up. He bent down, sucked one and then the other, biting them, tugging with his teeth until she let out a cry. Then he put a hand on her shoulder and yanked her head downward.

Carla knelt on the rug. Diego opened his pants with one hand and pulled out his cock. It was different from Hugo’s. Shorter, but thicker, with an upward curve, and shaved balls. She took it all in without ceremony, to the bell, and started blowing him hard, loudly, holding her tits with both hands, rubbing her nipples while she sucked. Diego grabbed her head with both hands and started fucking her mouth. Without care, without the baker’s patience. He shoved her head against his belly, made her swallow until she coughed and saliva dripped onto her tits, then did it again. Carla looked up at him with watery eyes, taking it, nose red, and didn’t pull off his cock even when it looked like she was choking.

“You’re a top-shelf whore,” the Tano told her.

She pulled off and answered him, voice rough:

“Yours.”

Then he lifted her up bodily, threw her onto the bed on her back, spread her legs with one shove, and went between them with his mouth before anything else. He ate her pussy with his whole face. I could see the Tano’s shaved head moving between her white thighs, hear the wet sound of tongue, and see Carla clutching the sheets with her fists, biting the pillow, pulling his hair, shoving his face into her cunt. He spread her legs even wider, put her heels on his shoulders, and kept licking her pussy while sliding two fingers inside and moving them around. With the other hand he ran his thumb over her asshole, wet with her own spit.

“Ah, Tano, like that, like that, don’t stop…” she panted.

When Diego came up, his face was already wet to the chin, gleaming under the light.

“Turn around,” the Tano said.

“No, like this. I want to see you.”

I looked at Tomás. He had his hand inside his joggers, not looking at me. His breathing was cut off, his jaw slack, and he didn’t take his eyes off the window. I didn’t talk to him. It wasn’t necessary. I lowered myself too and we started both at the same pace, crouched behind the planter, looking through the curtain gap as if it were a movie screen.

Diego grabbed his cock with his hand, set it at the entrance of her open cunt, and shoved in at once. His cock went in all the way and Carla screamed, a scream that cut off when he covered her mouth with his hand. He started fucking her hard, looking her in the eyes, the other hand braced beside her head. The bed creaked. His shaved balls bounced against her ass. Carla didn’t lower her gaze from him. He took his hand off her mouth with one motion and started talking to her softly, close to her face.

“You’re a man’s woman. Break me. Fuck me like I’m a street whore. Use me whenever you want, Tano, whenever you want you can come and use me.”

Diego didn’t answer with words. He clenched his teeth and drove harder. At one point he straightened up, grabbed her legs by the ankles, brought them together, rested them against her chest, and kept fucking her like that, with her legs closed and up. Her cunt tightened so much around his cock that you could see each vein standing out when he pulled out. Then he spread her legs again, crosswise, and slid into her slowly, to the bottom, staying inside, grinding his hips against her clit.

When Carla came, she screamed. She screamed for real, without muffling herself, not caring about the neighborhood, not caring about anything. “I’m coming, I’m coming, I’m coming,” repeating faster and faster, and then a long animal howl while her belly shook and her tits bounced at her sides. Luckily the house next door belonged to an old guy who was a little deaf in his right ear. I came at the same time, biting my fist so I wouldn’t make noise, feeling my load spurt hot in streams against the planter soil. Tomás held out a little longer, until the Tano turned her face down, lifted her ass with one arm, spread one leg out to the side, and fucked her from the side, looking at her as if she were the last thing he was going to see in his life. He grabbed her tits from behind, squeezed them, tugged on the nipples, and at one point bit her shoulder. Carla writhed underneath him, purring.

“Come inside,” she asked him. “Come inside, I want to feel you.”

Diego sank in one last time, to the balls, and stayed there. The muscles in his neck stood out. He let out a low snort and filled her pussy with cum. I saw it. When he pulled out, the load spilled thick from her lips, dripping onto the sheet. I heard Tomás let out a muffled groan beside me. He’d come again too.

After the second load, Diego got dressed, gave her a long kiss on the mouth—with her mouth still full of spit and other things—and left the way he’d come in.

***

Two minutes later, Carla got up.

She walked to the window. I told myself, “She’s going to close the curtain and that’s it.” But she didn’t close it. She opened it.

Tomás and I went rigid behind the planter, pants down to our knees, our hands where they shouldn’t have been, with cum dripping between our fingers.

Carla looked at us. She didn’t yell. She didn’t cover herself. Her hair was tousled, her neck red, her lips swollen, a fresh bruise on her shoulder, and a thick drop of semen running slowly down the inside of her thigh. She lit a cigarette and held it up while looking at us.

“How long have you been there, you sons of bitches,” she said, without raising her voice.

Tomás opened his mouth and nothing came out.

“I…” I started.

“You shut up.” Then she looked at her son. “You, Tomi, look at me.”

Tomás slowly lifted his face. He wasn’t crying, but anyone who knew him the way I did could tell he was a millimeter away.

“Tomorrow, after work, we’ll talk. Both of you. Now go to sleep.”

She wasn’t angry. That was the strangest thing of all. She wasn’t angry, she didn’t throw us out, she didn’t threaten to tell my parents. She drew the curtain closed slowly and turned off the light.

Tomás and I left through the back gate without saying a word to each other. On the sidewalk, before crossing over to his side, he looked at me.

“You’re coming tomorrow,” he said. “I want to be there.”

I nodded.

***

I didn’t sleep that night. I thought about a thousand things: that our friendship was ruined, that I was going to have to move, that Carla was going to hate me forever. I also thought, from time to time, about how her neck had trembled when she came with the Tano, about her tits bouncing, about the thread of cum running down her thigh.

The next day, at seven in the evening, I rang the bell.

Carla opened. She was in jeans, an old T-shirt, no makeup. She let me in and took me to the kitchen, where Tomás was already seated, with a Coke in front of him and his head down.

“Sit down,” she said.

I sat down.

She lit a cigarette. Took a slow drag. Then she spoke, staring at a fixed point on the countertop.

“What you saw is mine and that’s not up for discussion. I fuck whoever I feel like. Hugo, Diego, others who don’t even know they exist. Your father left four years ago, Tomás, and I’m not going to stay dry waiting for him to come back. I’m a woman, not a piece of furniture. I have a cunt that works and I use it, and I’m not going to ask anyone for permission.”

Tomás didn’t lift his head.

“But,” she went on, looking at me now, “what you two did isn’t done. You don’t spy on your mother through the window. You don’t do a filthy thing with your best friend’s head. Clear?”

I nodded. Tomás too, without looking up.

“Good. Then listen. What happened last night doesn’t happen again. If you want to know something about my life, Tomi, you ask me. As for you, Mateo, I want you here next week for lunch like always, and I don’t want this changing the way you look at me. Deal?”

I told her yes. I also believed she wasn’t threatening us. She was a tired woman, speaking like mothers speak when they no longer have patience for lies.

Before I stood up, I said only one thing.

“I’m sorry.”

Carla stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray. She looked at me a second longer than necessary.

“I know.”

***

I walked home slowly, looking down at the tiles. When I passed Hugo’s bakery, I looked up. He was arranging pastries behind the counter, his white apron covered in flour. He saw me. He didn’t greet me. I didn’t greet him either.

That night I promised myself I’d never go back to the alley again.

We don’t always keep the promises we make.