Humiliation. Paulina Flores
sparse. There was something premeditated about the emptiness, and that—the choice of absence—surprised her all the more. Ultimately, it said as much about him as if the apartment had been full of collectible comic book figurines.
Bruno appeared holding a bowl of Cocoa Puffs floating in milk in one hand, a bottle of red wine and two glasses in the other. He called to the little girl. She came running in from another room, took the bowl, and disappeared again. When Claudia heard a door close she felt the regret return—once again she hadn’t been able to observe the girl’s face closely, decipher her features. Although now it wasn’t the similarity with her father that made her uneasy. She wanted to look for traces of the mother. Because there must be one, she told herself. Somewhere, a woman existed who had that little girl’s features. Where?
Bruno offered her one of the mattresses to sit on. He brought a stool over, put the glasses on it, and poured the wine. When she drank at her house she used cups; she knew nothing about wines, and neither the bottle nor the vineyard gave her any clue as to this one’s quality. She still wouldn’t know after tasting it. He sat down on the other mattress and took one of the glasses, rested his head against the wall, and waited for her to pick the other one up and toast.
“To chance meetings,” said Bruno.
They took the first sips in silence. He asked her for a cigarette. She took out two and they smoked, also without speaking. She could hear a woman’s voice somewhere saying, “Of course, of course, yes, of course.” Her voice was emphatic and she must have been talking on the phone, because there was no reply.
A small, transparent ring appeared on the white wall and slid down over the wooden floor. Claudia knew the circle was inside her eye. She had gone out with a man once who didn’t eat sugar and he told her it was very normal, that those shapes appeared when you were deficient in a certain protein. He’d told her the name of the protein, but she didn’t remember. In any case, she still attributed the phenomenon to a mixture of anxiety and stillness. She got up and walked over to the window. On the outside ledge she found some shells, the first decoration—or the closest thing to a decoration—she had seen there. She toyed with them awhile, wondering what Bruno was doing. Was he looking at her, at her back, or the hem of her dress and her legs? Was he looking down at his fists again? She didn’t want to turn around and find out, and she kept playing with the shells. She felt their rough folds and wished he would come closer, maybe embrace her. But she knew he was not that sort of man, the kind who accompanied you—not to the bathroom or to look out the window.
Suddenly she said, “So . . . that whole deal with the lost little girl . . . Is that how you get women to your apartment?” What a humiliating sentence, another conservative sentiment.
“Sure, that’s our strategy,” he answered, and he winked at her when she turned around.
Claudia walked back over to him and sat down again on the mattress. She took a long sip of wine, set the glass aside, and rested her hands on her bare knees. She looked toward the wall, and she could tell her posture held an air of defeat. He moved closer and laced his fingers with hers, picked up her hand between his, and they turned to face each other. Claudia was uncertain as she looked at him, but he pressed his forehead against hers and smiled.
He took her by the waist and sat her on his knees, facing him. Claudia caressed his shoulders, the dark skin of his arms, following the slight curve of his muscles. He had a lizard tattooed on his forearm. Just the outline in black, but it didn’t seem unfinished. Same as the apartment, it was how it had to be. She traced the line of the drawing with a finger and then tugged on his sparse hairs. They were short and thin, like a child’s.
“Hold on to my neck,” he said.
She did as he told her, and Bruno got up from the mattress. She wrapped her legs around his waist, rested her head on his chest, and felt his hammering heart, his agitated breathing. She wanted him to bring her quickly to his bed, and that’s what happened. Holding on to his body, clutching him, she felt a marvelous vertigo. How entertaining life could be. She was no longer nervous or scared; she was on solid ground. And all because of coincidence, to good luck. To cling like that to a man.
They went to the bedroom. Bruno asked her to push the door closed with her legs, and as she did she remembered the girl. Remembered that they weren’t alone. She was still on top of him as he sat on the bed. He looked at her and clicked his tongue on his slightly sunken teeth. She wanted to ask if they had to be quiet, but before she could say anything, he took her by the throat, squeezed slowly, and then moved his hand to her mouth, covering it, and then squeezed her throat again, hard.
This room was even darker than the other one, and it was totally different. It looked like a conventional master bedroom. Wooden bed frame, double bed, bedside tables on either side with matching lamps. Rugs on either side. A plasma TV over a three-drawer dresser. Embossed copper pictures on the wall with images of horses and bulls running. Flowers in the window, metal blinds, sky blue and old. It was all familiar to Claudia, it was as if she belonged there, with this strange family and their strange way of inhabiting places.
“I didn’t think it would be like this,” she whispered, looking at the furniture.
“Oh no?” he replied, and he caressed her head just as he’d done with the little girl a while before. “I’m sure you did.”
He started to kiss her neck while he held her hair back, making a ponytail and tugging on it a little, and then he stroked her back, following the line of her spine. In spite of his assurance and the strength with which he’d carried her to bed, his hands were trembling.
“You like that?” he asked as he licked her earlobe.
“Yes.”
“It doesn’t matter that it’s going to end?”
“No.”
Bruno lay back on the bed and brought Claudia with him, his hand on the nape of her neck. She kissed him and started to rock back and forth on top of him.
“Do you want to take my clothes off?”
“I’d love to.”
He squeezed Claudia’s thighs with his hand and went down until he reached her sneakers. He took them off carefully, gently, and did the same with her socks. He caressed her bare feet. He lowered the zipper on her dress and pulled it off over her head, eagerly, and always with a tremor in his hands and breathing, as if as if he were suffering somehow.
She’d always enjoyed being naked on top of a clothed man, and she started to take off her underwear. Before she could get rid of it entirely, he took her by the shoulders and turned her and laid her down on her side in front of him. He pulled down the left cup of her bra with a kind of fury, and he pushed in her nipple with his finger. He pressed and massaged, and she was very close to him, yearning, her mouth open, thirsty and generous. She could smell Bruno’s scent, citric. A familiar smell, one she’d smelled on other men, and it made her want to ask him where he worked, how he made a living.
He squeezed her throat hard again, then tenderly caressed her eyebrows. He licked her breasts and felt between her legs to see if she was wet, and when he found that she was, he let out a sigh of pleasure and kept his hand there and he put the fingers of his free hand into her mouth, slowly, waiting for her to lick them, and that’s what she did.
Bruno’s body tensed and he pushed Claudia’s belly with his knee and started to rub against her. The way he touched her and took her acquired a certain violence, but not a dominating one; to her surprise, it was a clumsy, inexpert thrust. She looked at him. He was licking his lips and it seemed like something in him was contracting. He was completely absorbed in himself, his eyes rolling back, half closed in a way that would seem vulgar if another man did it, but not him. She would adore a man like him. She caressed his hair, which was wet by then, and she took off his white shirt, also damp, so she could soak herself in his sweat, because it was something she needed. To absorb the sweat of a man. And she remembered a line from a song that went: “Your sweat is salty / I am why.”
“What are you doing here?” he asked. “Are you still sad?”
Claudia