Eleven Gabriel locked the door

behind him.

“What are you doing?” Lucía whispered. “Get out of my room.”

“Oh, come on.”

“Get out of my room, or I’ll scream.”

Gabriel was amused by her melodramatic threat. Lucía bit her lip in order not to laugh.

“Close the drapes,” ordered Gabriel.

“You close the drapes,” she countered.

“They’ll see me from the window, dummy.”

Lucía obeyed. The room was immediately cast in pink.

“Did anyone see you come up?”

“No one.”

“We can’t be here. They’re going to hear us.”

“Well, here we are,” said Gabriel.

He kissed her, pressing himself against her. His hands slipped under her clothes, opened zippers, unfastened hooks, freed buttons, tried to get her pants off. She slid her palm under his t-shirt and traveled the length of his torso, supple and warm like a baby’s. Gabriel was rubbing himself against her belly as if he were already inside her. She unbuttoned his pants and revealed his white briefs. She held her breath. She had never seen such a benign penis: smooth, pale, flat, and pointy like an electric eel. She took it tenderly in her hands and covered it with kisses.

“Bend over,” he said and placed her on her knees on the pink carpet.

A fresh breeze blew in her wet hole, followed by licks from side to side, as delicate as those of a kitten drinking milk. Her elbows trembled. No one had ever done anything like that to her. He replaced his tongue with his cock and was about to penetrate her.

“Do you have a condom?” she asked. “I don’t do it without a condom.”

“I’ll pull out,” he suggested.

“No way.”

Gabriel pushed her onto the bed. He rummaged his fingers inside her. She shook her head from side to side, and would look at him in amazement, or cover her eyes as if she could not believe what was happening.

“Touch me,” he asked.

He took her hand, lubricated it with his spit, and showed her how to rub him: hard and fast. His seed squirted over their bellies. She was too nervous to come.

He was dazed by the cosmetics, powders, salts, sponges, perfumes, bottles, jars, seashells, and conches gathered in her bathroom. Lucía jumped out of bed and hugged him from behind, covering him with kisses.

“I don’t want you to leave, but I am freaking out about them finding you in my room, you understand?”

She kissed him once more, brushing his cheek with the back of her hand.

“Go on, leave,” she said, kissing him all over.

“How am I going to leave if you won’t let me?”

There was a knock on the door. They looked at each other, alarmed. The doorknob turned, but the door was locked. Gabriel hid in the closet, naked. She hid their clothes and shoes under the bed.

“Who is it?” Lucía called out.

“Me,” said Adolfo.

“I’m studying. What do you want?”

“Open up, please.”

She put on her pajamas and opened the door. He looked at her with curiosity.

“I hate when you interrupt me while I am studying.”

“Do you have an extra bump? I’m dying.”

“No, I don’t. What about yesterday, Fito? I waited for Gabriel for hours. We had a deal. I lend you my car... “

Adolfo covered his ears melodramatically.

“Shh-shh-shh. It’s not that big a deal.”

“You have no respect for anything.”

He took off his sunglasses and surveyed the room.

“And Ricky? I haven’t seen him in a while.”

“He’s around. Why?”

“Just asking.”

“I have to take a shower. Ciao.”

Lucía pushed him out and locked the door. Adolfo remained in the hallway, lost in thought. After a few moments, Gabriel emerged from the closet. Lucía pointed to the shadow of Adolfo’s feet on the other side of the door. They stood motionless until the shadow disappeared.

“I have a feeling he suspects something,” whispered Lucía. “This cannot happen again.”

She peeked into the hallway and signaled to Gabriel to leave.

Gabriel squeezed Lucía’s hands in his and once he was fully dressed, he left in one step and went down the stairs quickly but without running. He had no idea how long he had been in there. It seemed like hours. He went down to the garden, sniffing his fingers over and over, inhaling Lucía’s intimate sweat.

“Where were you?” His dad startled him.

“I went to the median to smoke.”

“Go to the supermarket. Here’s the list. Don’t take long. And don’t leave the car on the street. Park it inside.”

Agustín handed him the list, the keys to the BMW and a purple five-hundred-peso bill. It was the first time he’d been sent shopping by himself with so much money and in that car. That crisp bill would have come in handy at the Parque Hundido.

Sitting behind the wheel, he remembered that only a few weeks ago he had returned to Mexico with his tail between his legs, owning not much more than what he had when he’d left. After the disappointment of meeting his dad and having to go back to the stifling poverty of his neighborhood, he had considered joining the narcos, concluding that in Mexico one could not make a living doing anything else. In the United States he had been able to save, send money to his mom, pay the rent, and buy stuff for himself. The deportation process and the lawyer who scammed him had wiped him out. In Mexico, his salary was an insult. He had looked for a job as a waiter, but as soon as he mentioned he had worked as a busboy at a bistro in New York, instead of hiring him, they shunned him. However, that bright autumn afternoon, under a rare blue sky, he felt that his adventures and misadventures on the other side had somehow borne fruit.

He strolled around the supermarket aisles steering the cart as if he were a rock star buying provisions for a massive party. He stopped at the soap section to buy Lucía a gift. He waited in the long line for the cold cuts. The list in his hands was filled with exotic minutiae, such as the width, brands, and types of ham, and the quantities of sausage, chorizo, cheeses and patés. When it was his turn, the salesgirl did not offer him a slice of anything, nor tell him which ham was on sale, as she had done with the lady in front of him. Behind him, another doña made impatient sounds with her breath and clicked her tongue to express her displeasure with the slowness of the staff. Gabriel sneaked a look at her. She was not much older than Lucía, but she was dressed like a matron. Perhaps she was annoyed at having to stand in line behind a servant.

“May I have a taste of the Manchego cheese?” Gabriel asked the salesgirl, who hesitated before giving him a morsel of cheese.

Gabriel savored it slowly while the snorts of the woman behind him grew louder. This led him to peruse his list with extra care and to pretend to be undecided between buying quince or guava paste, asking the girl if she could kindly give him a taste of each and a bite of the Panela cheese. The salesgirl sliced the paste as if she had been asked to sever her own arm. While Gabriel compared the sweets, he heard a heel slam.

“Hey, are you going to take much longer?” the lady behind him finally said.

No, my lady, see? I’m almost done here, I beg your pardon, but the thing is I have a very big list, and because I’m very stupid, I don’t know how to do this. But if you want, I can get out of the way so you can do your errands in peace.

Gabriel pulled his best thug face, took a menacing step towards the lady, and stared her straight in the eye.

“I’ll take the time I take and if you don’t like it, you can beat it,” he hissed.

“Pelado—riffraff!” said the lady, red with fury. She clutched her handbag as if Gabriel was about to snatch it away.