FiveLucía exhaled a cloud

of smoke. Sitting on the coarse stone steps, she was taking in the scene while she waited for Ximena. On the other side of the quad, the chidos were sunbathing like lizards around the fountain, with their imitation hobo rags, their predilection for ecological beaches with indigenous names, without running toilets or electric power, their cheap slang and three holes in each earlobe. The scholarship kids stuck together like snails on the grass. The self-conscious middle-classers sat on the benches wearing clothes bought in pathetic malls, feeling inferior. The Ibero was starting to suck big time.

On her side of the stairs were the society people who organized trips to Valle de Bravo or Acapulco each weekend, sometimes to Las Vegas or Miami; the ones who spoke in dollars. Here were the hipsters, stoners with baggy parachute pants, guayaberas, suede sneakers and porkpie hats. Here, feeling important, the MBA princes wore suits and ties as if this assured them an executive spot in a brokerage firm. The school insisted on absurd integration classes where everyone sat in a circle to get to know each other as if it were the first day of kindergarten. Everyone had to pretend to be open-minded.

Ximena sat beside her. Sometimes Lucía thought that Ximena was her friend only to see what it felt like to be a regular girl. Ximena was always shadowed by two bodyguards and traveled in a bulletproof car connected to a security tracker. She lived in an immense and very modern house in Bosques de Las Lomas that had a pool with a retractable roof, a gym with a sauna, a steam bath and tennis courts. She was the daughter of a politician.

“Let’s go to the movies tonight,” said Ximena.

“I’m seeing Ricardo. But tomorrow afternoon if you want,” answered Lucía.

“You’re just going to cocktease him and then you’re gonna dump him, I know you. What a waste.”

“Chill the fuck out! You were at the party. Did you talk to him? No. Did you tell me you liked him? No,” answered Lucía. “What do you want from me?”

“Not all of us are so brazen.”

“Oh, come on. You’re no nun. If I were you, I wouldn’t stick with the other squares sitting in a corner. If you like someone, you have to go for it. Besides, didn’t I introduce you to Iván? What happened?”

“I don’t want your used Kleenex, Lucía. Everyone assumes I am as slutty as you and they act like octopuses. Plus, Iván is a terrible lover.”

“I didn’t think he was so bad.”

Sometimes she felt like strangling Ximena. She was increasingly jealous, hostile, and ridiculously prudish, especially since she happily put out whenever she felt like it. With her millions, Ximena could have any man she wanted just by snapping her fingers. Lucía wondered if Iván was bad in bed or if Ximena was impossible to please. Maybe she was frigid. Maybe she was always testing them since she never knew if they loved her because of her dimples or her dollars. Poor little rich girl, she thought. It must be hard to be coveted just for that.

Marifer and Viviana approached billowing smoke like trains in the distance.

“Where were you?” Lucía complained, air-kissing them.

“Juan José wouldn’t let us out,” said Marifer. “He was fifteen minutes late, so he kept the whole class after to make up for it.”

“He is sick in the head,” said Viviana.

“Hey, Vivis, isn’t Juan José the one you like?” asked Ximena.

“No way!” replied Viviana. Juan José is an Indian. You are confusing him with Javier, the History of Philosophy teacher.

“The one who drools over Lucía,” said Marifer.

“Oh and is he not an Indian?” said Ximena.

“What’s Indian about him?” retorted Lucía.

“That he has a lefty goatee, drives a VW, and he is a naco from the National University,” responded Ximena.

“Yes, but honestly, he has a nice face,” said Marifer.

“You’re all crazy,” said Ximena.

“To Ximena if he is not Swiss, he is low class, no matter how handsome,” Lucía announced.

“At least I have finer criteria,” retorted Ximena. “You fuck everything that moves.”

That night, Ricardo waited for her in the living room shuffling out family names with her mother for twenty minutes, while Lucía put her makeup on and acknowledged, if only to herself, that if Ricardo had vanished after their epic make out session and discarded her like a used rag, she would be crazy about him. But he was too solicitous, and the only one of her dates that her dad liked. Although he was thirteen years older than her, he ticked all the boxes: he was handsome, well educated, had a good last name, and was loaded. He had studied at the American School, finished Architecture at the Anáhuac and was perfectly proper. Together they could be a great couple: he, a world-famous architect, and she an ace in Casa Mexicana-style interior design, until he asked for her hand, and they got married within a year at the ex-convent of Churubusco, honeymooned in the Maldives and came back to live in an exclusive development of six ultramodern houses in Bosques de las Lomas designed by him, with Mexican touches inspired by her.

But something about Ricardo bored her stiff. He was not like Joel, whom she had picked up at the Jupiter simply because he looked like Sting when he was young. Two crowns of thorns in black ink surrounded his biceps and he used an imported pomade to dirty his blond hair. He was always in the company of teenagers. The classic dealer: undernourished and over-partied, but blond and ultra-sexy. Lucía had approached him and said:

“I know you.”

“Well, I don’t know you.”

“Want to dance?” she asked.

His teen friends laughed at her directness. But Joel danced with her, his eyes closed, without touching her. She ended up snorting lines of cheap coke with the groupies in his apartment. A skinny girl with blue hair, who could not have been over sixteen, sank into the sofa next to her. Lucía noted with horror the metal stud protruding from her tongue. She had another stud in her chin, a ring hung from her nose, and her earlobes looked like a spiral notebook. Lucía wondered what kind of degenerate parents let this perforated creature loose in Mexico City at those hours. Lucía asked her age, and she said eighteen, which provoked giggles. “Fifteen is more like it,” someone said.

When she was fifteen, her dad had set her curfew at eleven o’clock at night. She was just fifteen when she was kissed for the first time by Gerardo Alanís, an event that unleashed a long chain of fleeting and unhinged crushes.

Joel lied sprawled on the love seat, petting one of three black puppies that had chewed the furniture and peed and pooped all over the place. I could have gone home instead of doing drugs with a bunch of snot-faced punks from Lomas Verdes in a grungy apartment, she thought. She considered getting an Uber, since the more she surveyed her surroundings, the ickier she felt, but she didn’t want to miss out on Joel. She needed to take the edge off the countless bumps that she had snorted in the Jupiter’s restroom, thanks to her brother, and the ones she’d just done here.

Joel lit a blunt and offered it to her. She took a deep drag. He extended his hand and finally led her to his bedroom, stepping around the bodies of the lost children lying on the rug sprinkled with mysterious particles.

The carpet in his room was black, the walls were black, the satin sheets, covered in dog hair, black. Lucía could hear the puppies whimpering and scratching at the door. She was entranced by the dense blue spheres floating in the syrup of Joel’s lava lamp. Joel stared at her from the wall-to-wall mirror across the bed.

He wore camo pants, a black t-shirt with torn sleeves, and combat boots, like a remnant from the 80s, but from up close he looked ravaged. His hair was beating a retreat, leaving two wide bald patches that he tried to cover up with tousled hair. His eyes were two reddened slits, blue as swimming pools, and his sallow skin was cracked by cigarettes and sleepless nights.

From up close, he seemed a tad sinister to her. But that’s what she was attracted to.

“That’s how you pick everyone up?” he asked, holding her tight.

“Not everyone, only the men I like.”

“Oh. So, you’re easy, then?”

“If I like you, why shouldn’t I flirt with you? Why can’t I ask you to dance? Do I have to wait for you to make the first move?”

Joel stood her in front of the mirror, undressing her as if screening a film just for her. Lucía helped him pull down her jeans and panties, and she admired her own exalted nipples, her black triangle that seemed to fuse into the darkness. She could hear the laughter of the kids in the living room. She figured they could hear them, too, and were laughing at her moans.

Joel threw her on the bed and got on top of her. She tried to kiss him, but he fended her off.

“I don’t like kissing.”

“Why not?”

“It’s too intimate,” responded Joel, penetrating her.

When they were that weird, a part of her receded and stopped arguing.

Despite all the substances that he had drunk, ingested, and inhaled, Joel had exceptional stamina: he was on top of her, then below her, on the side, sitting down, standing up. Lucía melted with delight as she watched scene after scene of her shamelessness in the mirror. A sweaty Lucía kneels on the mattress. Joel takes her from behind, pulls her hair, squeezes her breasts, licks her ear, rubs himself against her like a beast in heat. At some point, he turns her on her belly, facing the mirror, and takes a jar of Vaseline from his drawer.

“What are you doing?” asked Lucía.

“You’re gonna like it.”

“Not there.”

Lucía felt the tip of his penis caress her anus and she became very still. She felt like when she was a little girl, and she had a fever, and the doctor ordered her mother who then ordered her nanny Zenaida to give her a suppository.

It hurt so much she couldn’t even scream. She only implored. “No, please get out, get out, please!” She tried to turn around, wanting to kick him, but he held her wrists, immobilizing her under his weight. What would Sister Márgara think? For the love of God, fucking during your period was the height of innocence compared to this.

“Please stop,” begged Lucía. “It hurts!”

“This is what my uncle did to me when I was little,” Joel blew in her ear.

He pulled her hair and lifted her head so she could watch herself in the mirror. Lucía saw her own reddened face, the veins popping in her neck, her hair dripping with sweat. Joel was rocking on top of her, mesmerized by his own porn movie in the mirror.

“He did this to me when I was twelve.”

“How is that my fault?”

And you were afraid that some dark-skinned, pockmarked judicial police officer would rape you in a hovel where he would slice off your ear and send it to your parents for ransom. But it was you who came on to Joel, it was you who walked into this revolting room. Even though you were having the time of your life until ten minutes ago, this guy is raping you, Lucía! He is raping you because you said no and he didn’t give a shit, even though you let him do everything else to you. And once you say no, they need to respect you. But you deserve this for being a skank, and a horny, dirty whore.

Lucía confirmed in the mirror that Joel kept pushing inside her, but the pain had subsided miraculously. Now Joel was pumping rhythmically inside her, filling her with a disturbing, brutal, inexplicable pleasure which made her shake her hips to get more of that feeling. Joel’s fingers were moving inside the folds of her pubis. She felt his convulsed spasms seconds later.

“Sorry, I couldn’t hold it in,” he said.

She was semi catatonic. His withdrawal hurt like when you haven’t been to the bathroom in three days. Of course, she thought, that hole is designed for things to come out of, not to go in.

Joel gave her little kisses and stroked her hair. As he detached himself from her, Lucía sniffed a familiar sour smell, like when you step on shit on the street.

“Take me home,” she said.

“You can shower here if you want. I’ll give you a towel.”

Showering, of course, was the prudent thing to do. Joel opened the door, and the puppies dashed in, climbing onto the bed and licking Lucía’s face, her legs, and breasts with their tiny, orphaned breaths. Lucía thought she was going to have a panic attack.

“Get them off me!” she screamed.

Joel laughed. She had to pull them off her by herself.

Joel is a fag and he has just given me AIDS.

The hospital-green bathroom tiles were framed with mold. Joel had already showered and was drying himself. He pointed to a linty black towel hanging next to the shower door. Lucía wanted to pee and clean herself off, but she was embarrassed with Joel there, so she turned on the shower, adjusted the temperature and slid into the jet of steaming water. Her knees were trembling. She wanted the water to drag down the drain the dirt, the panic, the memory of that frightening pleasure still sticking to her pores. She used Joel’s Ma Evans shampoo, disgusted by the cracked little sliver of Nórdico soap. She rinsed her mouth and lathered her head shutting her eyes, still fearing that the soap would make her eyes burn like when she was a child. She didn’t know what to do with her anus. She didn’t know if she needed to clean it or how. She let the stream of water from the showerhead do it for her.

She wrapped herself in the damp towel and admonished the Lucía that was looking back at her from the other side of the mirror. Look at your hair, your souvenir bruises. He fucked you in the ass! How did you let him do this without a condom? You will die of AIDS.

Wrapped in the towel, she walked barefoot on the dirty carpet and picked up her clothes strewn all over the bedroom. Joel looked at her from the bed, smoking a cigarette. His penis was curled on top of him, unrecognizable, gentle, and harmless, like a sleeping kitten.

She came down to meet Ricardo with little enthusiasm, pondering why she never felt like doing the crazy things with her official boyfriends that she did with the perfect strangers she picked up at bars or parties.

“Look at these gorgeous flowers! I already asked Zenaida to put them in a vase,” said her mother.

“So pretty, thank you,” said Lucía glancing at the gigantic bouquet of tulips, roses, tuberose, and baby’s breath.

She greeted Ricardo with a peck on the cheek.

“Sorry it took me so long, but I am not feeling too well.”

“No worries, your mom and I had a really nice chat,” he replied.

“Lucía, don’t give poor Ricky a hard time,” said her mom.

If she could, Lucía thought, her mom would bring a priest out from the armoire to marry them on the spot.

“Ay hija, you are in a rotten mood. If you want, I can ask Zenaida to bring you some aspirin.”

“Thanks Mom. We’re leaving.”

“To a party?

“I don’t think so,” said Lucía. “If you don’t mind, Ricardo, I’d rather do something quiet.”

“This girl is so boring,” said Natalia, too eagerly.

Ricardo took her out to dinner to a minimalist place in the Roma neighborhood and then took her to the terrace of the Hotel Downtown where he informed her that he was a close friend of the owner.

“It’s a cool hotel, right? It was featured in Wallpaper,” said Ricardo.

“What is that?”

“You study graphic design, and you don’t know Wallpaper magazine?”

Ricardo held her by the waist and smiled triumphantly as if she was his longtime girlfriend, effusively greeting acquaintances he barely knew. He kissed her conspicuously by the fluorescent glow of the pool. Lucía savored the scent of gin on his breath. While he told her about his life and work, dropping names he thought she should recognize, she inspected the people in the terrace.

“Did I tell you I was in Japan?” he asked.

“Cool.”

“It’s an amazing country, but it’s so expensive. A melon costs forty dollars and a Coke, fifteen.”

“Too many old farts in suits and ties here, right?” said Lucía. “Too many desperate divorcées over forty, too many mid-level executives who think they are first class and are sorely mistaken.”

“It’s the time of day,” said Ricardo. “It gets better later. One of my houses in Malinalco is going to be in Architectural Digest.”

“How cool.”

“The photos are spectacular.”

“Whose house?”

“Álvaro and Cecilia Betancourt’s. Do you know them?”

“Sounds familiar.”

“They are loaded. I have been seducing them with the idea of opening a boutique hotel in Coyoacán.”

“Who’s going to want to stay at a hotel in Coyoacán? It’s so far.”

“But it’s so cool.”

“Well, the last time I was there, I felt nauseous with all the sandal-wearing hippies selling beaded earrings and tie dyes and disgusted by all the elote cobs people throw on the sidewalks.

“You are unbelievably square, but I love you, my love,” laughed Ricardo.

“I am not as square as you think.”

Just as it had happened with all of her official boyfriends, sometimes she lusted after Ricardo and sometimes he gave her the willies, but it was interesting to date someone more mature, serious and sophisticated, someone who didn’t just want to do molly every night, or asked her to split the bill because they were short on cash, or took her to parties to snort one line after another, or all they wanted was to fuck. Ricardo introduced her to “it” people, talked to her about books and movies, and they looked great together. But sometimes she felt she was too stupid for him. He had already given her three books that she had no intention of reading and incomprehensible music records. She found Ricardo’s friends insufferable. She supposed Ricardo felt like the cat’s pajamas going out with someone dumber than him.

After the bar, he proposed taking her to his apartment, but she said she was tired. Ricardo, who had displayed the patience of a saint since that happy night when he met her, duly took her home, parked the car at the door and left the music on. He kissed her long and passionately.

“I don’t like doing this in the car. Then the police come around and say we’re committing faltas a la moral,” said Lucía.

“We could go inside,” said Ricardo.

“My parents are home.”

Ricardo snuggled next to her and fondled her breast. She turned away.

“What’s wrong, Lucía?”

“Nothing. I don’t feel comfortable making out in the car. Take it easy, ok?”

“I don’t get it. You were all over me.”

“Women can get horny too! You think you are the only ones who have the right. Anyway, that day we were drunk, so I was a little out of control. I’m really much more chill, believe it or not.”

“I don’t understand why you like playing hard to get so much. If you think it turns me on, you are mistaken.”

The words “turn me on” vibrated in her like a tuning fork.

“You don’t like it when I’m prim and proper?”

“No.”

“You don’t like it when I’m a little nun?”

“No.”

Lucía unzipped him and placed him in her mouth. She filled with tenderness listening to his helpless moans and feeling his hands sweetly stroke her back and her hair. Ricardo did not fully understand this creature’s contradictions, but her mix of primness and impudence drove him crazy. Red and blue lights silently approached.

“Careful, there’s a police car coming,” said Ricardo, zipping up quickly. “Come on, let’s go inside.”

The patrol car went by very slowly and the policeman at the wheel stared at Lucía, but he didn’t stop. Lucía and Ricardo exchanged relieved glances.

“I have to go. Gotta wake up early for school.”

“Don’t be cruel, Lucía, don’t leave me like this.”

She smiled, gave him a quick kiss on the lips and got out of the car without waiting for him to open the door. Inside the house, she could hear the TV in her parents’ room. She took off her heels and walked through the dark without making a sound. Her mother intercepted her in the hallway, wearing a robe, no makeup, and a turban on her head. Lucía jumped.

“How was it? Did you have a nice time?”

“Very nice, mamá.”

“That young man is a treasure. He’s charming, comes from a good family, and he’s crazy about you. Do not screw it up, I beg you.”

“How am I going to screw it up? Good night, mamá.”

Lucía went to her room and looked out the window, pressing her nose against the cold damp glass. The garden was as black as the sea in a moonless night. When she was a little girl, she would fog up the glass with her breath, creating a canvas to silhouette hearts, smiley faces, or bad words, or she wrote the secret names of the boys she pined for. Her finger wrote the word Ricardo on the frosted glass. She erased it with a breath and wrote: Joel Joel Joel Joel. The images of her apocalyptic sex with him paraded through her mind; their memory still tore a wound in her chest. She never saw him again. She went looking for him (she didn’t have his number) and heard him hiding inside his apartment. She stalked him on Facebook, but he acted as if she didn’t exist.