The Neighbor Who Caught Me From Her Window

That summer we rented an apartment in a coastal town, three couples and me, along for the ride. My friend Diego had arranged it so I wouldn’t end up alone in the city, and at first it seemed like a good idea: the beach in the morning, a beach bar at noon, walks along the harbor at dusk. What I didn’t tell anyone was how turned on I’d been since the very first day of the trip.

The two girls in the group, Marina and Patricia, were the kind who take twenty-four hours to lose their inhibitions and another twenty-four to lose them completely. On the second day they announced, very primly, that they were going topless, since we were at the beach and among friends. And they did. I’d never seen them like that, and I had to fake a sudden heatstroke and get into the water to hide what was becoming obvious under my swimsuit.

The sun, my friends’ exposed bodies, the dozens of strangers sunbathing just as scantily clad… by noon I was on edge, nerves taut as a wire. While the others stayed behind for a drink at the beach bar, I said I was heading back early to shower and went up to the apartment.

I went into my room, closed the door out of habit, pulled off my wet swimsuit, and sat on the edge of the bed. That was all it took. I closed my eyes, let my mind drift back to the image from that morning, and started touching myself slowly, unhurriedly, like someone stretching out something he knows will end soon.

The window was wide open because of the heat. I didn’t pay it any mind: the apartment opposite, across the narrow lightwell, had been empty all week. At some point I thought I heard a noise out there, something being dragged around, but I was too absorbed in what I was doing to care.

Then a man’s voice broke the silence.

“Nuria, where have you got to?”

And the answer came from much closer than my mind could process, almost right beside me, straight across, barely three meters away.

“I’m hanging up the towels,” a woman said.

I shot my eyes open. The neighbor had leaned out of the window opposite to hang up the beach laundry, and she had caught me dead to rights. She was about forty-five, with shoulder-length wavy hair, a loose cotton T-shirt, and skin already browned by several days in the sun. There she was, clothespins in hand, staring at me.

I was sitting directly facing the wall mirror, so without meaning to I had a perfect angle: I could see her reaction reflected there without her knowing I was watching. I saw her expression change. Surprise first, her eyebrows lifting. Then something else, harder to name.

Don’t scream. Don’t call her husband. Please.

But she didn’t scream. A half-smile escaped her, she looked down for an instant, and went on hanging the laundry as if nothing was happening, pretending at calm while her sidelong glances toward my window contradicted it every second.

I should have covered myself, closed the window, died of shame. I did exactly the opposite. When she turned to grab another towel, I shifted a little more comfortably on the bed, not removing my hand completely, letting her see. She leaned out again, tossed me another quick look, and this time she lingered a second too long. Just enough to understand what was happening, and to decide it didn’t bother her.

The clothespin she was holding fell from her fingers. I watched her bring a hand to her mouth to hide a laugh, pick up her bucket, and go back inside without hurrying, giving me one last look over her shoulder. I shut the window, my heart still pounding at a hundred miles an hour.

I sat there in the dim light, not knowing whether what had just happened was a catastrophe or the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me. Probably both at once. Until that day I’d believed that apartment was empty. Most likely the couple had arrived that same morning and gone straight to the beach.

***

That afternoon the seven of us went for a walk, had a few beers, and snacked on a terrace along the seafront. Everything seemed perfectly normal, between Diego’s jokes and Patricia’s excursion plans, but I wasn’t really there. I couldn’t get the neighbor out of my head, that little gesture of hers biting her lip while deciding whether to look or not. It gave me the strangest mix of excitement and panic. What if she told her husband? What if the guy showed up asking me for explanations in front of everyone?

We got back to the apartments close to midnight. In the lobby, waiting for the elevator, she was there. My neighbor. With her husband, a big, good-natured man, and another couple who seemed to be friends of theirs. Just like us, they were in high spirits, with that stupid post-dinner buzz from the drinks.

“Damn, I left my cigarettes,” the husband said, patting his pockets. “Come with me for a minute to the tobacconist on the corner?”

He meant his friend, not me, and the two men went back out into the street. The neighbor and the other woman stayed behind waiting for the elevator with our group.

The car arrived. It was tiny, one of those old ones made for four people at most, and it quickly became clear we wouldn’t all fit. My neighbor’s friend looked annoyed.

“Oh, it’s tiny. There’s no way we’ll all fit.”

“It is tiny,” my neighbor replied, holding back a laugh, “but you’ll see how fast it goes up.”

The two of them burst out laughing. I turned red as a tomato, because I understood perfectly what they were laughing about, while my friends carried on without catching on to anything. It was obvious she had told her friend about the window, in every dirty detail.

“Are you coming up with us?” the neighbor asked, holding my gaze with a boldness that left me speechless. “Come on, get in.”

“Sorry… yes,” I stammered.

I got into the elevator between the two of them, mortified and with my pulse racing. The space was so tight I could smell my neighbor’s perfume, a blend of sunscreen and something sweet.

“It’s hot, isn’t it?” the friend said, fanning herself with her hand. “I’ve got all the windows in the apartment open. No one could sleep otherwise.”

“Yes, very hot,” the neighbor replied, and hid a little laugh behind her fingers. “I’ve got all mine open too. Wide open.”

She said it looking at me sidelong, and my mouth went dry. The elevator reached the floor. We stepped out with the rest of the group.

“The first thing I’m going to do when I get in is take all this clothes off,” she added while looking for her keys. “Good night, Carmen. Good night, neighbor.”

“Good night,” I managed to say.

Her friend Carmen went off toward the end of the corridor. My apartment door was right next to hers. Each of us went inside our own, and it took me three tries to get the key into the lock because my hand was shaking so badly.

***

I didn’t think twice. I left my friends sorting out the rooms and went straight to mine. I closed the door, stripped naked, and sat on the bed in the same position as that morning, facing the window. My body was already responding on its own, anticipating whatever might happen. I could feel that strange mix of shame and desire that had followed me all day.

The window opposite was slightly open, with a thin curtain covering the inside. I waited in the dim light, not really knowing what I was waiting for. Then a lamp switched on on the other side. A hand appeared through the fabric and drew the curtain aside. It was her.

She looked toward my room for three or four seconds until she found me in the darkness. She saw me seated there, waiting, not hiding anything anymore. She lit a cigarette, rested her elbow on the frame, and settled in to watch, calm, like someone getting comfortable to see a film. I had never experienced anything like it, that sensation of being looked at on purpose, of someone liking you for doing exactly what you weren’t supposed to do.

Up close, and with the lamp light on her face, she was a very beautiful woman. Mature, self-assured, with the serene beauty of someone who has nothing left to prove. I began to touch myself slowly while she took long drags without taking her eyes off me.

I saw her bite her lip. She exhaled the smoke into the lightwell and, with her free hand, unbuttoned her blouse one button at a time, unhurriedly. She wasn’t wearing anything underneath, but the fabric stayed closed just enough for me only to guess what was behind it. It was a delicious torture. I sped up a little. She took another drag and, with two fingers, parted the blouse just an inch or so, enough to show me the curve of a perfect breast in the lamp’s yellow light.

I was just about to finish when, all at once, the big light in the living room switched on on the other side. Her husband had come back. She hurriedly covered herself with the blouse, turned around, and drew the curtain closed, though she left a narrow gap on purpose so I could keep seeing.

I stood frozen, not daring to move. I watched her greet her husband, who gave her a perfunctory, half-hearted kiss and dropped onto the sofa in front of the television. She sat beside him with her blouse still open. A few minutes passed like that, him staring at the screen, her glancing sideways toward my window.

Then she did something I hadn’t expected. She began stroking her husband’s thigh, searching over his trousers, offering herself. He barely reacted. She kept at it, leaned toward him, whispered something in his ear. The man shrugged and looked at his watch. After a couple of minutes he got up from the sofa, said something I couldn’t hear, and went into the bathroom, leaving her alone.

I watched her sit still on the sofa, gaze lost, frustration so obvious I could feel it from my side of the patio. As if she already knew in advance that the night was going to end like that. She turned her head toward the window, toward me, for a very long moment. Then she got up and disappeared toward the back of the apartment too.

Several minutes passed that felt endless. I thought she wasn’t coming back, that it was all over. I started getting dressed, half resigned, half relieved. And then, just then, she appeared at the window again.

She was wrapped in a towel, wet hair stuck to her face, fresh out of the shower. She came up to the frame, lit another cigarette, and stood looking out at the patio with a melancholy air. Her blouse was forgotten somewhere and the whole night lay ahead of us.

I switched on the lamp on my nightstand so she’d know I was still there. She looked up, found me seated there again, waiting, and a slow smile changed her face. That smile was enough to make my body respond instantly, without even touching myself. She noticed it, and bit her lip in pure satisfaction, as if that reaction from me was exactly what she needed after her husband’s brush-off.

With a mischievous gesture, she let the towel drop.

She stood there naked before me, unashamed, outlined against the warm glow of the lamp. She had a magnificent body, that of a fully formed woman, with curves that were soft and firm at the same time. She caressed one breast with her free hand, slowly, never taking her eyes off me, and I began to touch myself to the same rhythm, the two of us three meters apart with a patio between us, joined by nothing more than our gazes.

I didn’t last long. The orgasm caught me after only a few seconds, intense, impossible to stop. She let out a laugh and quickly hid it behind her hand, amused and complicit. When she regained her composure, she took one last drag on her cigarette, blew me a kiss with her fingers, and went back inside, drawing the curtain fully closed.

***

For the next two days the group went on a trip we had planned before the vacation. I spent the hours up in the mountains thinking of only one thing: whether my window muse would still be there when we got back, whether there would be a third night, whether I’d dare do more than just look.

We got back to the apartment at dusk. I dropped off my things, peered into the room, and looked across, holding my breath.

The window was closed, the towels were no longer hanging on the line, the curtain pulled back over an empty room. They had gone. I stood there for a long time staring at that dark opening, with an absurd sense of loss for a woman whose name I only knew because her husband had said it out loud one summer afternoon.

I never saw her again. But every time I spend a summer near the sea and feel the heat pouring in through an open window, I think of Nuria again, of her cigarette, of her laugh hidden behind her hand, and of that night when two strangers wanted each other from afar without ever touching.