The Summer I Let the Neighbor Watch Me

Camila was described as a bombshell, and that was the first thing people said about her, even before mentioning that she had graduated with honors as an auditor and that by twenty-seven she was already handling the portfolio of three corporate clients in Buenos Aires. She was dark-haired, tall, with tits that announced themselves a full meter before the rest of her body and an ass that her mother’s friends were still talking about in low voices. The gossip said she had landed the job because of her curves. Anyone who had seen her close out a balance sheet at three in the morning knew it was because she was stubborn.

Until a few months earlier, she also had a boyfriend who seemed like the final piece of the puzzle. Until one afternoon, while going through the guy’s phone for no particular reason, she found the proof: chats, voice notes, photos. Mateo —that was his name— tried to put together the classic speech: that she lived for work, that he felt neglected, that nothing was ever enough. He didn’t get to finish the sentence. Camila threw him out of the apartment that same night, without a shout, without a tear. She did it with the same coldness with which she signed a document.

What came after was worse than anger: silence. Empty offices late into the night, a dim apartment, calls from her mother asking when she was going to go out a little, coworkers with smiles that were too rehearsed. Every now and then one of them would get up the nerve to invite her for a drink, hoping to take advantage of her fresh single status. She answered with a “no, thank you” so polite and so sharp that they left her alone for months.

The HR email arrived on a Tuesday morning. It reminded her that she had vacation days accrued and that the first week of February was blocked off in her calendar. Camila stared at the screen for a long while. She had no plans, no desire, and above all, no one to go with. That same night she mentioned it to her mother on the phone, and Mariana, almost without thinking, tossed out the idea: the family house in Pinamar had been closed since the previous summer, she could take the car and disappear for a week. It wasn’t right on the beach, but by car it was twenty minutes. It was that or staying in the city, putting up with the building’s air conditioning. Before hanging up, she had already decided.

On Friday she left the office with her suitcase already packed in the trunk. She had asked to slip out at five, but things got complicated and she didn’t get going until six-thirty. She arrived a little after nine-thirty at night. The house was the same as always: the front with the overgrown privet hedge, the faded green shutters, the smell of stored damp. Instead of going straight to bed she opened windows, shook out rugs, and wiped down counters. When she finally lay down it was almost three, and the place still smelled like bleach.

She woke around noon, with the white light of the afternoon sun filtering through the curtains. Before she even opened her eyes, the to-do list was already forming: supermarket, bakery, a trip to the beach, back, shower, dinner downtown. Only then do the vacations really start, she thought. And she smiled to herself when she realized Mateo hadn’t been so wrong after all: she was obsessive about order. Maybe that was why, almost without noticing, she let her hand drop between her legs. She didn’t miss Mateo, not even close, but she did miss that warmth from another body, that idea of not being so alone inside her own skin. Her fingertips found her lips and she felt the dampness immediately. She jumped up.

What came next was an old habit, one of those small perversions she carried around without telling anyone. She opened the three bedroom windows wide. They were barely covered by thin white gauze curtains that let light and silhouette through. Two faced the street, the third the house next door. It was a hot noon, peak season, and she figured the neighbors would be sprawled out on the sand. She slipped off her nightgown and opened the drawer of the bedside table. Inside waited a large vibrator, the one she’d brought from the city and left ready the night before, with fresh batteries already in.

She sat on the edge of the bed, naked, facing the street window. Turned the device on. The mere idea of being exposed —even if only in theory, even if no one came— sped up her breathing. She started slowly, brushing the tip over her clit before sliding it in. Then she lost patience. She thrust it in with one movement and let out a long moan, not bothering to hide it. With her free hand she kneaded one breast, tugged at her nipple, bit her lip. She wanted invisible eyes. She wanted people behind the curtains, anonymous men jerking off thinking about her, curious women watching out of the corner of their eye. She closed her eyes and imagined it.

She didn’t know —couldn’t have known from where she was— that on the other side of the curtain facing the neighboring house there was, in fact, a man. His face barely visible at the bathroom window. His hand in his open fly. He bit his tongue so he wouldn’t make a sound.

Camila finished with her body arched back and a short, dry cry. It took her five minutes to breathe normally again. Then she stepped under the shower as if nothing had happened, got dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, and grabbed her keys to go to the supermarket. She was opening the car when a voice over the fence froze her hand on the door handle.

“Good morning!” said the man, around sixty, with a three-day beard and a smile that didn’t quite manage to look entirely clean.

“Morning,” Camila replied, trying to put on the most professional face possible. “I’m Camila, I’m staying here for a few days.”

“Renting?”

“No, it’s the family house.”

“Ah! You’re Mariana’s daughter?”

“That’s me.”

“Well, look at that, you turned out as pretty as your mother,” the man said with a little laugh that sounded like more than a compliment. “I’m Aníbal. Anything you need, just give me a shout, eh?”

Camila thanked him with a tight smile and got into the car. It wasn’t until three blocks from the neighborhood, while she was driving toward the shopping center, that the doubt hit her like a cold stone in her stomach. Did he see something?

***

When the house was built, someone had the brilliant idea of installing a shower in the back patio so half the beach wouldn’t get dragged inside on the way home. Camila had always loved it. It was eight-thirty at night on the second day, and she was just back from the car, still in her string bikini and with the towel hanging from one shoulder. She turned the tap and cold water ran down her back, washing off the sand. It was supposed to be a quick rinse, nothing more, before a proper shower. Until she felt the gaze.

Aníbal was peering over the dividing wall. He wasn’t even pretending not to. He had his elbows resting on top of the wall, his chin in his hands, like someone watching TV. Her mother had warned her once over the phone: “be careful with Don Aníbal, he’s a peeper.” But something —maybe the weeks of an empty bed, maybe the fixed idea from that morning of invisible eyes— lit up inside her. If he wants to look, I’ll give him something to look at, she thought.

She tipped her head back to wet her hair, and as she did her breasts pushed forward, the tits nearly spilling out of the tiny triangles. Then she turned around and, with her back to him, slowly bent down, pretending to brush sand off her calves. The bikini bottoms tightened over her ass and she held that pose for three seconds before straightening up. She turned again, not all the way, just enough for him to see her in profile, and untied the top with two fingers. The fabric fell away. Her tits sprang into the cold air like two living things. She didn’t glance at the wall even once. She massaged her breasts slowly, with the care of someone applying lotion. When she got bored with the game, she turned off the tap, wrapped herself in the towel, and walked to the kitchen door without a single gesture in Aníbal’s direction. Inside the house she laughed to herself, leaning against the wall.

After the real shower she got dressed to go out. A short black dress, no bra underneath, a thin thong, low sandals. Soft makeup. The mirror gave her back a woman she hadn’t seen in a long time. She drove into town and went into the restaurant with that strange feeling of knowing she was being watched by everyone crossing the back door. She got a table by the window. Ordered a glass of Malbec. Then another, which the owner insisted on giving her. And a third, which a man sitting three tables away sent over with the waiter and a wink from across the room. She smiled back, no more than that, but warmth rose to her cheeks.

She left around one-thirty, slightly dizzy. Before getting into the car, it occurred to her to go down to the beach for a few minutes to clear her head. The sand was almost empty. A few groups of kids with beer sitting in circles, a couple lost in the darkness. She passed near one of those couples almost without meaning to and saw them: him with his hand under her dress, his mouth pressed to her neck; her with her eyes closed and her head thrown back. Camila quickened her pace. She felt something old, something familiar, that same heat that had gotten her out of bed that morning. She got back to the car thinking she wished she were the one in the dress. That she wished someone would stop her halfway through a walk, lower her straps in front of everyone, whisper in her ear what he was going to do to her.

She put the address into the GPS and started off. She was driving with one finger on the wheel and the other against her temple. She thought about the couple, about Aníbal, about the empty bed in the apartment. When she lifted her eyes from the dashboard, the road was no longer asphalt. It was a dirt road, straight, dark, with the lights of Pinamar a distant glow against the horizon. The GPS had sent her down the shortcut. It wasn’t a big deal either: if she kept going straight, according to the map, in ten minutes she’d be back on the provincial highway. She pulled over and switched off the engine for a moment.

She was alone in the dark. Open field, not a house nearby, not a light. She was a little afraid. She also had something else. An idea that had been growing from her waist up. She shifted in the seat, hiked up the skirt of her dress, and pulled off her thong. She tossed it onto the passenger seat. Then she opened the door and got out.

The night air was warm and smelled of dry grass. She leaned her hip against the hood of the car, still hot from the drive, and let the metal rise against her thighs. She lowered the straps of her dress and the fabric fell to her waist. The stars were too many, nothing like the city’s. She slipped her hand between her legs and started playing with her clit, slowly, looking toward the road. Let someone pass by, she thought. Let a truck pass, a pickup, anything. Let them catch me like this. The fantasy ran away on its own, she didn’t need to force it. She pictured a man getting out of a car, not saying a word, turning her around against the hood. Then there were two. Then many. An entire group, like the boys on the beach, circling her and passing her around between them without asking her name.

She took the dress off completely and let it fall over the hood. She was left naked against the car, the dawn wind raising goosebumps on her skin. She slid two fingers inside all at once and a loud moan escaped her, with nobody nearby to hear it, and for that very reason even louder. Her hips began to move against her own hand, seeking more depth, more pressure. Her fingers sank in and came out slick with wetness, sliding against the tense, hot little mound; with her other hand she clutched the hood’s metal, feeling the cold sheet in her palm while her legs opened on their own, obedient, as if her body remembered what it wanted. She touched herself hungrily, without delicacy, pumping her fingers in and out in a filthy rhythm that left her panting. It didn’t take long. It hit fast, with her legs trembling and her pelvis thrusting against her hand, and a cry slipped out of her that bounced into the void while the orgasm jolted her belly, clenched her ass, made her breasts tremble and left her breathless for several long seconds.

It took her a long while to pull herself together. When she opened her eyes again it was nearly three in the morning, according to the dashboard clock. She grabbed the dress. She was about to pull it back over her head when she stopped with the garment hanging from her arm, looking at it. She imagined it on. She imagined it off. She thought that if not now, it would never happen. She got into the car naked, left the dress and thong on the passenger seat, and started the engine.

She drove slowly, unhurried, with the window down and her elbow out. The moon fell across her collarbones, across her breasts, across her stomach. The air came in whole through the window. She didn’t cross paths with anyone the whole way, and at the same time it felt like everything was watching her: the road, the trees, the stars, someone hidden behind some fence. When she entered the neighborhood, Aníbal’s house lights were on. She passed in front of it slowly. Without hurrying. She thought that if the man was still awake that night, if he was peering out from some window, he would see her get out of the car exactly like that, naked with the dress over her shoulder. And for the first time in many months, it seemed to her that the vacation was only just beginning.