The Unknown Couple Who Asked Me to Watch Them on the Metro

When Adrián opened the email that Thursday morning, he had almost forgotten that three days earlier he had posted a story on a well-known erotic literature site. He had uploaded it as a release, expecting nothing more than the satisfaction of seeing it on screen. The subject line didn’t say much: “For VALENCIANO.” That was enough to make his heart lurch before he opened it.

“Hello VALENCIANO, we’re a couple from Burjassot who really enjoy the thrill of exhibitionism. We usually enjoy our hobby in mountain areas or on small coves, in front of strangers whom we allow to watch us. We liked your story about the train carriage very much and wanted to propose something similar to you. We’re not looking to interact with you, only for your presence as a voyeur. If you’re interested, write to us.”

Adrián read the message three times in a row before starting to type his reply. His hands were sweating. He accepted every one of the conditions without arguing over a single comma: no physical contact, no dirty talk, no photographs. Just looking. That was the only thing he was allowed to do. He hit “send” and stayed for a long while staring at the screen, as if the answer were going to arrive immediately.

It took two days. When the email appeared in his inbox, the plan had been laid out in detail. They would meet on Sunday at nine in the morning on the platform at Colón station, bound for Massamagrell. It was a dead hour on a weekend, and that was exactly what the couple wanted. No prior photos; no physical descriptions. A blind date on the Valencia metro. If it worked, they would improvise the rest.

***

He barely slept Saturday night. He chose some ordinary clothes —dark jeans, a blue shirt washed a hundred times— so as not to draw anyone’s attention. He left home early and walked through the center with his hands in his pockets. The city was waking at Sunday pace, with empty terraces and waiters stacking chairs from the night before. He went down the station stairs at ten to nine. His knees were shaking a little.

The platform was practically deserted. Only a woman of about fifty was pacing with a handbag tucked under her arm, glancing at the clock every few seconds. Adrián watched her sideways, trying to recognize some conspiratorial gesture in her. Nothing. He passed her and kept walking to the opposite end. He was looking for the missing male companion, a second silhouette, a complete couple that would make sense of the meeting. There was no one else.

There were four minutes left before the next metro. Adrián clasped his hands behind his back and began pacing from one end of the platform to the other, pretending to be interested in the advertising posters. The woman with the handbag still wasn’t looking at him. He began to think the couple might have changed their minds. That maybe they were upstairs, out in the street, watching him from a distance to make sure he wasn’t a lunatic before coming down. That maybe they would never appear.

The loudspeaker announced the metro in its metallic voice. The tunnel lights came first, then the noise, then the rush of air pushing loose platform posters backward. When the train stopped, the doors opened almost at once in every carriage. The last one —the farthest away, where he had instinctively positioned himself— seemed empty for an instant.

Then he saw him. A man of about sixty, with graying hair brushed back, appeared in the doorway. He said nothing. He lifted one hand, barely two fingers, a small gesture, almost imperceptible to anyone not expecting exactly that. Adrián felt the buzz under his ribs and walked toward the door with a steady stride, as if he had been rehearsing this moment his whole life. He stepped into the carriage before the closing signal sounded.

The rear compartment was occupied by a single person. A woman, also close to sixty, sitting by the window, watching him calmly from the other end of the aisle. She wore a straight skirt to mid-calf and a thin cotton blouse buttoned to the neck. Her ash-blond hair fell to her shoulders. She wasn’t smiling, but her gaze wasn’t hostile either. It was the look of someone assessing the newcomer and deciding, within seconds, whether to approve him or not.

The metro pulled out. The man sat beside her and let Adrián settle onto the bench opposite them. The four seats formed a small square, with their knees almost touching. For what was about to happen, the distance was ridiculous.

“Vicente,” the man said, offering his hand. “My wife, Mercedes.”

“Adrián.”

That was all they gave him. His name. Neither asked for anything more. That had been the agreement: no surnames, no professions, no explanations.

Before the metro reached the next station, Mercedes slipped both hands under her skirt and, with two small hip movements, pushed her panties down. They were black, cotton, with no frills. She lowered them over her thighs unhurriedly, let them fall to her calves, took one foot out and then the other. She bent slightly to pick them up and tucked them into her handbag, folding the fabric with the calm of someone putting away an ordinary handkerchief. Then she crossed her legs and held Adrián’s gaze.

He didn’t look away. It wasn’t the time to pretend to be discreet. He knew he had looked at her and she knew he had looked at her, and that was exactly the contract.

“Have you been writing long?” Vicente asked, as if they were in a café.

“A couple of years. As a hobby. I haven’t shown anything to anyone I know.”

“Better that way,” Mercedes said. “What everyone knows loses force.”

The conversation wound around desire, fantasies, the nuances that separate the exhibitionist from the mere provocateur and the voyeur from the dirty peeping Tom. Mercedes spoke with the ease of someone who had been telling it for years. Vicente added small details, places in the hills, a cove they knew near Cullera, the first time they dared to look for witnesses. Adrián listened with his back straight, trying not to look at Mercedes’ knees and not quite succeeding.

By Alameda, Vicente rested his left hand on his wife’s thigh. He did it without drama, like someone placing a hand on the back of a chair. Mercedes didn’t move. She went on talking, answering a question about the first time she published a story, while Vicente’s fingers moved a couple of centimeters higher beneath the skirt. Adrián swallowed.

“Go on,” Vicente said, without looking at him.

It wasn’t clear whether he meant for him to continue the conversation or for his wife to keep opening her legs. Probably both.

The metro entered each station with a small jolt. The occasional passenger got on, almost always in the front carriages. The rear carriage remained empty except for the three of them. Mercedes had stopped crossing her legs. Her skirt had ridden up just enough for Adrián to see, when the carriage tilted with the track changes, a strip of pale skin between the fabric and her husband’s hand. Vicente took his time. He stroked slowly, with an open palm, never quite going in. Mercedes breathed a little deeper, but her face didn’t move.

“Does it make you uncomfortable?” she asked Adrián, somewhere between Empalme and Machado.

“No.”

“Does it turn you on?”

Adrián nodded, wordless. For quite a while he had been feeling the fabric tighten beneath his belt and there was no elegant way to hide it. Mercedes smiled for the first time, a brief smile, almost maternal, that reached the corner of her mouth and vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

“Good,” she said. “That’s the only thing we ask. That it be real.”

By Almàssera, Mercedes took her hands to her neck and unfastened two buttons of her blouse. She did it slowly, without breaking the conversation, as if it were some ordinary gesture. Adrián saw the edge of an ivory-colored bra and a fuller cleavage than the clothing buttoned all the way up had let him suspect.

“Better like this?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“I knew it.”

Vicente slipped his hand up the inside of her thigh, this time with more resolve. Mercedes opened her legs a little wider, enough for the skirt to stop protecting anything. Adrián was openly watching her now; there was no longer any way to pretend he was reading an ad or looking out the window. Vicente wasn’t trying to hide what he was doing either. It was an agreement among the three of them, without any new words: one watches, another lets himself be watched, the third drives.

This isn’t happening to me, Adrián thought, and at the same time he knew it was the most authentic thing that had happened to him in years.

The loudspeaker announced Massamagrell, two stops away. Mercedes reassembled her blouse with the same calm with which she had opened it. Button by button. Vicente withdrew his hand and let it drop naturally onto the seat back. The skirt settled back into place. When the metro entered the station, the three of them stood at once, without needing to coordinate.

***

They emerged onto the platform like any three passengers. They went up the stairs to the street, where the air smelled of orange blossom and fresh bread. They walked a few meters and stopped almost without discussing it in front of an open café.

“Let’s have breakfast,” Vicente suggested. “Then you’ll have to decide.”

“Decide what?”

“We’ve got a flat nearby, in the old town. If you want to keep watching, you’re welcome. Same rules. Not a single out-of-place word. Not a single finger on anyone.”

“And if I don’t want to?”

“You take the metro back and the three of us forget this ever happened. No hard feelings.”

Adrián ordered a black coffee and a croissant he never touched. Mercedes had toast with tomato, unhurriedly. Vicente skimmed a newspaper someone had left on the next table. They talked about football, the heat expected that summer, apartment prices in the neighborhood. About anything except the morning they had ahead of them. When Vicente drained the last of his coffee, he looked at Adrián over the rim of the cup.

“Well?”

Adrián took two seconds to answer. Maybe three. Just enough to pretend he was still considering it, when in reality he had made up his mind even before getting on the train.

“I’ll come with you.”

Mercedes nodded slowly, not smiling this time. She picked up her handbag, slung it over her shoulder, and left the bar first. Vicente paid for the three drinks at the counter and joined them in the street. The house was five minutes away on foot, on a narrow little lane with flowerpots on the balconies and half-lowered shutters. They walked in silence, the three of them at the same pace, the three of them knowing that this morning had only just truly begun and that what was still waiting inside those walls no one would tell afterward.