The Night I Spied on My Neighbor from the Terrace

What had happened that afternoon simply hadn’t happened. That was what the two of them had promised each other when they said goodbye in the hallway, while Bruno closed the door to his apartment with a smile that said exactly the opposite. But there’s a long way between what’s said and what’s done, and Lucía had remembered it all week every time the burn crept up her lower back and she walked with that stupid stiffness that forced her to sit carefully in her office chair. Fuck that Brazilian bastard, she thought, because of him I’m going to walk like a penguin until Friday.

The week went by fast. She had too much work and, on top of that, she had to decide what to do about Diego, who had gotten clingy and called her every day to reconcile. Lucía was a good person, maybe too good, and in the end she gave in. It wasn’t a textbook relationship: they had a good time, went out to dinner, she laughed at his bad jokes, and that, for a while, had been enough. What she hadn’t calculated was how hard it was going to be to go back to routine sex with Diego after the erotic storm of the previous weekend.

On Saturday she got ready patiently. She showered twice, shaved everything, dug a fitted yellow dress and some very high black heels out from the back of the closet, the kind she saved for serious occasions. She looked at herself in the mirror and liked what she saw. She thought that maybe, seeing her like that, Diego would be inspired to step outside the repertoire of three moves he knew by heart. She came out of the bathroom with her heart beating a little faster, ready to give that relationship, which was already leaking from every seam, one last chance.

—You look pretty —Diego told her from the couch, without looking up from his phone.

—Thanks.

That was all. Not a long kiss, not a hand under the dress, not a word in her ear. Nothing.

When they finally went upstairs to the bedroom, Lucía tried. She knelt on the bed still wearing her heels and started unfastening his belt with her teeth, slowly, looking up at him from below like she’d read somewhere was foolproof. Diego sat up and told her to take off her shoes.

—You’re going to tear the sheets —he said.

—Diego, they’re sheets.

—Take them off, come on.

She took them off. She pulled down his briefs and lowered her head to suck him, and he stopped her with his hand on her forehead, like someone shooing away a well-behaved dog.

—You know I don’t like that. It’s unhygienic.

Lucía stayed still for a few seconds, her mouth still near his cock, feeling something inside her go out. She got up, took off her panties, climbed on top of him, and let him do what he wanted. Diego thrust three, four, five times, growled something like her name, and came. Fifteen minutes later he was snoring on his back with his mouth open.

This cannot be my life, Lucía thought, staring at the ceiling.

***

She went out onto the terrace in shorts and a tank top, a glass of cold water in her hand. She needed air, she needed to stop listening to Diego’s snores, she needed to stop thinking. The night was warm and she sat on the edge of the lounge chair, looking toward the buildings across the way without really looking at anything in particular.

Then she noticed Bruno’s apartment.

The lights were on, but not the living room ones: the bedroom lights, which faced her same terrace just across the inner courtyard. Voices could be heard, a woman laughing, soft music. Bruno wasn’t alone, that was obvious, and they were clearly not watching a documentary about bats. Lucía first felt a stab of something that wasn’t exactly jealousy, more a mix of annoyance and curiosity, and she stood up to go back inside.

She didn’t go back.

She stayed standing in the middle of the terrace, pretending to look at the sky, until she heard the first moan. It was a woman’s, sharp, clear, shameless. Lucía felt the glass slip a little between her fingers.

She walked to the darkest corner of the terrace, the one behind the big fern planter, and from there she looked. Bruno’s bedroom curtain was half drawn. She saw first a woman’s foot on the mattress, a long leg, a taut calf. Then the girl all at once: redhead, young, small breasts and an ass that looked drawn with a ruler. She was on her back, knees bent and heels dug into the mattress, and Bruno was kneeling between her legs, licking her, holding her thighs with both hands.

—Camila, look at me —he said—. Look at me while I eat you.

Camila looked at him and insulted him affectionately and grabbed his hair and let out those long moans that reached Lucía’s terrace as if he were right next to her ear.

Lucía felt heat rising from her thighs. Exactly one week earlier she had been in that same bed, with that same mouth on her, with those same fingers opening her. The thought gave her a sting of something between jealousy and rage, and another sting below her navel that was outright desire.

She leaned against the terrace wall without thinking too much and brought her left hand to the edge of her shorts. She was only going to touch herself a little, she told herself. Just to check.

She was soaked.

***

She pulled the fabric of her panties to one side and found her clit with the pad of her middle finger. One slight rub and she was already letting air escape through her mouth. Across the courtyard, Bruno had moved from Camila’s sex up to her breasts, biting one nipple while he fingered her with two fingers and looked her in the eyes as if he were reading her.

—You’re a slut —he told her—. Say it.

—I’m a slut.

—Louder.

—I’m your slut!

Lucía closed her eyes for a second. When she opened them, her hand was moving on its own in slow circles over her clit and the other had pulled her tank top up under the clasp of her bra. She pinched one nipple with the same rhythm Bruno was using when he pushed his fingers into Camila. Her legs were spread wider than she had intended them to be. It was hard to breathe without making noise.

Bruno changed positions. He put Camila face down, with her hips at the edge of the bed, and stood behind her. Lucía saw her neighbor’s silhouette in profile against the warm light of the lamp, ready. She remembered exactly how that had felt seven days ago. She remembered the burn, the air leaving her chest when he had thrust for the first time.

Bruno entered Camila slowly, sinking all the way in, and Camila howled into the sheet. Lucía bit the wall with her forehead so she wouldn’t howl too.

And then it happened.

Bruno lifted his gaze from Camila’s body and looked exactly toward the dark corner of Lucía’s terrace. It was no accident. Lucía knew, by the way his jaw tightened and by the slow smile that spread across his face afterward, that Bruno was seeing her. Not clearly, perhaps, but he was seeing her. He saw the outline of a body pressed against the wall, he saw the movement of a hand between two legs, he saw it perfectly.

He didn’t change position. He kept driving into Camila at the same pace, gripping her hips with both hands, but he wasn’t talking to her anymore. He was talking to Lucía.

—Look how I push into you —he said, his voice deep and low and reaching the terrace like a whisper in her ear—. Look how I open you.

Camila answered something that was lost against the pillow. Lucía didn’t care. Lucía was listening to him, looking at him, feeling how every word settled exactly where she needed it.

—You’re mine, slut —Bruno said, and he was looking at her—. Tell me whose you are.

Lucía opened her mouth and formed the words without sound, her jaw slack. Yours. She felt her body start to stiffen little by little, from her toes upward, like a rope tightening. She increased the pace on her clit, two fingers now, drawing a short, quick figure eight.

Across the courtyard, Bruno quickened his thrusts. Camila screamed something in a higher note than the previous ones. The bedside lamp trembled when Bruno leaned forward, grabbing her hair, and bit the back of her neck without taking his eyes off the terrace.

—Come with me —he said, and Lucía knew perfectly well who he was saying it to.

***

The orgasm hit her like a wave she hadn’t seen coming. It rose up from her heels, shook her knees, exploded in her lower belly, and came out of her mouth in the form of a moan she didn’t quite manage to hold back. She pressed her forehead against the wall, bit the back of her other hand, and let her body finish doing its thing, jerking against the fingers she could no longer stop.

Across the way, almost at the same time, Bruno threw his head back, pressed his hips against Camila with a force that made her scream again, and came inside her with a long growl. But his eyes, until the very last second, were fixed on Lucía’s terrace.

Lucía slid slowly down the wall until she was sitting on the cold floor. Her legs wouldn’t answer. Her heart pounded in her ears, in her neck, in the tips of her fingers. She felt her panties stuck to her body, sweat between her breasts, the night air cooling her skin.

Inside, Diego was still snoring. He hadn’t even noticed.

Lucía lifted her head carefully. Bruno had gotten out of bed and was walking toward the window, still naked, with the natural ease of someone who fears nothing. Camila had remained face down, exhausted, laughing into the pillow. Bruno leaned out over the courtyard. Lucía knew she should hide and she didn’t hide.

He looked at her. He looked at her for a long second, without smiling. Then he raised his hand slowly and made a gesture that was at once a greeting and a promise: two fingers to his temple, like a soldier, before flicking them toward her in slow motion.

Lucía didn’t return the gesture. She held his gaze, though, until he closed the curtain.

She stayed sitting on the terrace floor a little longer. She thought about Diego, about the yellow dress still hanging on the chair, about the fifteen minutes on the clock, about the hand moving her head away. She thought about Bruno, about the deep voice saying “slut,” about the eyes fixed on her across the courtyard.

She stood up when she started getting cold. Before going inside, she looked one last time at the closed window of the apartment across from hers and realized that she had already made a decision, even if she still didn’t know what words she was going to use to tell Diego the next morning.