The Stranger Who Watched Us on the Beach

Of everything Carla and I have shared over the years, there is one afternoon we keep telling each other about every summer, in low voices, when no one can hear us anymore. It happened a long time ago, in a coastal town where we knew no one and no one knew us. Maybe that’s why we dared. Anonymity does strange things to desire.

We arrived at the beach after noon, when the sun was already beating down hard and the sand burned under our feet. It was Thursday, a workday, and the little cove was almost empty. A family with two kids on the shore, an older woman reading under a yellow parasol, and a little farther on, a lone man lying beside a camper van. We spread our towels near the water, lay down, and let the heat soften us.

Carla has always had the habit of looking for me with her feet when she’s relaxed. She began brushing my leg with her toes, slowly, drawing circles over my knee. I closed my eyes and let her do it. It’s our game, a way of saying things without speaking.

—Look —she whispered suddenly.

I opened my eyes. She had sat up a little, looked around with that caution she gets when she’s about to do something she shouldn’t, and with one finger she barely pushed the fabric of her bikini aside.

—That’s outrageous —I said under my breath—. You’re going to get us kicked out.

What she was really doing was getting me hard as a rock.

I bent down for a second, pretending to straighten her towel, and gave her a quick kiss on the inner part of her thigh. She let out a nervous laugh, too loud, and the woman under the parasol turned her head toward us. We acted innocent, held back our laughter like two teenagers, and went into the water to cool off.

When we went back to our towels it was four o’clock. The sun was slanting low and most of the people had already left. That was when I realized the man from the camper van had been staring at us for quite a while. Not in a rude way. More with patient attention, like someone watching something he was truly interested in and had no need to rush.

—He’s watching us —I told Carla in her ear.

—I know —she answered without turning around—. For a while now.

And instead of making us uncomfortable, it lit us up. We kept touching each other over the towels, aware of being watched, feeding off the thrill of having an audience. Until the man got up, walked over at an unhurried pace, and stopped a couple of meters away, a towel over his shoulder and a cordial smile on his face.

—Good afternoon —he said—. Sorry to bother you.

—Hello —we both answered at once.

He introduced himself as Octavio. He must have been in his late sixties, broad-shouldered, gray-haired, with the manners of another time. He told us he’d been traveling alone in the camper van since his wife died, that he wandered the coast with no fixed destination, and that he’d been parked in that town for two nights. We invited him to sit down. While he talked, his eyes kept returning to Carla’s legs, her feet, the curve of her waist. She noticed, of course. And she very slowly crossed her legs, giving him a look he could not miss.

—I’m going to confess something to you —he said after a while, lowering his voice—. I hope you won’t take it badly.

—Go on —I said, though my heart was already beating differently.

—I’ve been watching you since you arrived this morning. And your wife seems to me one of the most beautiful women I’ve seen in a long time. When you were playing in the sand earlier... well. It stirred something in me in a way nothing has for years.

Carla and I looked at each other. We knew something was coming, and even so I was surprised by how frank he was.

—I’m not quite sure what to say —she murmured, biting her lip.

—I’m not asking for anything you don’t want —Octavio went on—. I’d be content just to be able to look at her. See her for a while, without the swimsuit, and maybe kiss her feet. Nothing more than that, and always with your husband right there so you can see I’m a man of my word. I’d make it worth your while for the inconvenience, of course. At my age, only the small pleasures are left.

***

What was strange was not the proposition. What was strange was how easily the idea got inside us. The fact that a stranger was saying out loud exactly what I liked most —looking at Carla, showing her off, sharing the desire she stirred in me— hit me straight in the gut. She reached for my hand behind the towel and squeezed it. That was her way of saying she wanted it too.

—Just looking and the feet —Carla said, weighing each word—. And Damián stays with me the whole time.

—The whole time —Octavio repeated, pressing a hand to his chest—. You have my word. If at any point you want to stop, we stop. The camper is right there, we’ll be more comfortable there than here.

We got up. The dirt parking lot was now full of cars and people were outside, chatting, shaking out towels. We crossed among them holding our breath, as if what we were about to do were written on our foreheads. No one looked at us. And yet I felt every step like a small abyss.

The camper van was spacious inside: a bedroom in the back, a tiny kitchen, and a minute bathroom. Octavio drew the curtains and the interior fell into a golden half-light, crossed by slits of brightness. He took out a wallet and left some bills on the table without counting them, as if settling an awkward formality so he could move on to what mattered.

—The bathroom’s there, if you want to get the sand off —he said—. No rush.

Carla went in for a quick rinse. She came out with wet hair stuck to her shoulders and her bikini dripping, and while Octavio washed up in turn, she and I were left alone in that enclosed space, kissing like the rest of the world had gone dark. The situation had us both on edge. I was biting her neck, she was digging her nails into my back, and neither of us did anything to cool the fire.

When we broke apart, Octavio was watching us from the hallway.

—You can tell you love each other —he said, without a trace of mockery—. That kind of complicity can’t be faked.

—We do what we can —Carla replied, laughing, and that laugh shattered the last tension that remained.

—Where do you want me? —he asked.

—On the bed, if you like. Don’t take your sandals off yet. And please, do it slowly. I’m in no hurry.

***

Carla climbed onto the bed and began untying her bikini with a slowness I didn’t know in her. She moved her hips just barely, setting a rhythm only she could hear, as if she were dancing to an inner song. Octavio sat on a stool a couple of steps away, not coming closer yet, hands still on his knees and his gaze absorbed. I leaned against the wall, right where she could see me, and let her see what she did to me.

The top came off first. Carla took her time, playing with the fabric before letting it go completely. Then she lowered herself until her back was to him, arching her waist, offering the curve of her back and her buttocks while she slipped out of the last piece. Only then did Octavio move closer. He brushed her ankle with his fingertips, slipped off one sandal and then the other, and placed a slow kiss on the top of her foot.

—I’ve been imagining this all day —he murmured against her skin.

She looked for me with her eyes and made me a sign. I came closer. Without saying anything, she pulled my trunks down and started sucking me right there, slowly, while Octavio ran his lips over her feet, moving from one ankle to the other, pausing on each toe with a devotion that was almost tender. Watching her give herself to both of us —to my pleasure and to the desire of that stranger— had me completely out of my mind.

—I saw you earlier in the sand —Octavio said in a rough voice—. I’d like to... could I kiss her a little more? The rest of her, I mean. If you’re okay with it.

Carla pulled her mouth away for a second, looked at me, and nodded.

—Now that’s another thing entirely —I said, and the line made the three of us laugh, because we both knew the boundary was moving on its own.

She lay on her side and turned toward me to keep doing what she was doing, while Octavio slowly brought his lips up her leg, centimeter by centimeter, losing himself between her thighs. I heard her moan against me, a deep sound coming from very far inside her. I ran my fingers through her wet hair and felt her trembling.

—No one has ever treated me with this much calm —she gasped at one point—. As if you had all the time in the world.

—We do —Octavio replied.

I couldn’t take it anymore. Watching her enjoy herself, hearing her, knowing I was being watched by that man who in turn was watching me watch my wife, was a circle of lust I did not want to leave. Carla came looking for me again with her mouth and, not long after, she shuddered all over, clutching the sheets, biting her lip so she wouldn’t cry out in that town where no one knew her. Octavio then pulled away and finished on his own, in silence, his face buried in her foot, like someone receiving the prize he had been waiting for all afternoon.

***

Afterward there was a strange silence, that moment when arousal suddenly cools and you realize where you are and with whom. But Octavio handled it with disarming elegance. He offered us the shower, cold water, something to drink. We gathered our things without a fuss. At the door he shook both our hands.

—Thank you —he said, and he meant it—. Not for what you think. For letting an old man into something so much yours.

We went home with hardly a word, our hands entwined over the gearshift. That night we remembered it in a thousand ways, whispering every detail to each other until we were breathless. The next day we returned to the cove under the pretense of going for a swim, discreetly looking for the camper van. But the spot where it had been parked was empty, with two tire tracks marked in the dirt. Octavio had gone, just as he had arrived, leaving no trace beyond that afternoon.

Years have passed and we never did anything like that again. We didn’t need to. Having seen each other just once through the eyes of a stranger was enough to feed our desire for a very long time. Sometimes, when we’re in bed and want to get turned on, it’s enough for one of us to say, “Do you remember that summer?” And everything comes back, intact, as if the curtain of that camper had just closed again.