She said, “Oh, how lucky you are! Do you live alone?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Would you let me spend the night at your place?”
“Sure.”
We said goodbye to the others, and Antonio said, “Till next time — at work in two hours!” Then he added, with a smile that was meant to be suggestive, “Try to get some sleep, even if it’s only one hour ….”
We had only turned into the next street when Pilar slipped her arm under mine, clinging to me as she walked. The streets were empty except for people like us, coming out of the clubs, or loitering drunks, who snored in the recessed entryways of banks. From time to time, a car sped past.
Pilar said, “It’s lucky that my work is in the evening. This way I’ll be able to sleep. What about you?”
“Me?” I said. “I start work at six. So I usually take a nap when I get home. From noon until three, and sometimes until six in the evening.”
I could feel her soft breasts against my arm, and her breath on my shoulder when she spoke. She said, “We have clubs in my neighborhood too, of course, but ever since I was fourteen years old I’ve loved the ones here in the center. I’ve gotten to know lots of friends in them. How old are you?”
“Thirty. And you?”
“Twenty-six,” she said.
We reached the door of the apartment building where I lived and found a cat sleeping there. It got up and moved off when I stopped and took out the key. Pilar said, “Oh, how cute! I have a cat too. Her name is Clara. My friend Laura gave her to me for my birthday two years ago.”
I opened the door and turned on the lights in the stairway while she continued to talk about her cat without waiting for an answer, perhaps to fill the silence or to further our acquaintance. “I love her very much, and she always sleeps in my arms. That is, if I don’t have another person in bed with me, of course!” She laughed. “Imagine, she gets jealous too!”
We got tired climbing the stairs. Since the stairs were old, like the building, they were made of wood and had high steps that were all the more uncomfortable due to how narrow the stairwell was.
“It’s true, she gets jealous of me! Unfortunately, Laura and I quarreled nine months ago. She got jealous over her boyfriend on account of me. How much do we have left?”
“Two floors,” I said. “I live on the top floor, the fifth.”
Panting, she continued, “Uff! Well, no problem. We’re young, and they say that climbing stairs is good for the heart.”
She grabbed my arm for help and took off with a jump, moving two steps ahead of me, such that her butt was just in front of my face. It was round and luscious. Her tight black pants revealed its details, and the pants seam sank deep between the two cheeks. The outline of her underwear was visible as a bulge, higher on one side than the other. I knew they were white because I could see the tops of them coming out above her pants. She was bending over as she climbed, causing her shirt to rise a little.
She was breathing hard, but she didn’t stop talking: “I live on the third floor, and we have an elevator because the building is new. I own my apartment, which I bought with a mortgage from the bank on the basis of my salary. I’ve worked in the post office for five years.” She stopped at the top of the stairs. “Uff! We made it! Which of the two is it?”
“The door on the right,” I said.
She went toward it and stopped, dropping her black purse from her shoulder and leaving me space to open the door. I inserted the key, saying, “It’s a small, humble abode. But it is enough for me. I’m comfortable in it. After you.”
I turned on the light for her and she pressed ahead down the hallway toward the living room. She gazed at walls covered in the hundreds of pictures that I had cut out of the newspapers. She said, “Oh! It’s a museum! Very cozy. Are these pictures from your country? Didn’t you tell me you were from Iran?”
“No,” I said. “I’m from Iraq.”
She said, “My aunt’s husband is Egyptian. His name is Mansour. He’s a nice guy.”
She threw her purse on the couch and took off her purple shirt, revealing skin that was as white as the shoulder straps of her camisole. Her breasts looked large, twice as big as Aliya’s. The tops of them were bare, and they pushed up the light, silken shirt. I could tell she was not wearing a bra because the nipples were protruding clearly on either side of the deep cleavage, where a small gold cross hung down between the two domes. She began exploring the apartment, sticking her head out the living room door to look it over.
“One bedroom — it’s full of pictures too! And this is the bathroom. So, where is the kitchen? Oh, there it is, off the hall.”
She headed toward it. I turned on the television, lowering its sound. Then I sat on the chair to take off my shoes. I heard her voice from the kitchen saying, “I feel just a little bit hungry. How about you? Do you want me to prepare a little spaghetti with cheese and milk? An Italian friend taught me that. It’s a delicious dish.”
“No,” I said. “For me, I’ll be fine with a couple of dates and a small cup of yogurt.”
I joined her in the kitchen. I took down the bag of spaghetti for her, got out a small cooking pot, and lit the stove. She took a glass and used it to carry water from the sink to the pot. Then she came back to break the spaghetti sticks.
She didn’t stop chatting and repeatedly passed behind me, brushing her breasts against my back on the pretext of how narrow the space was. Or she’d put her hand gently on my back. She opened the door of the refrigerator and bent over, gazing inside, and half of her back appeared, white under the light, white shirt, while her black pants slid further down with the movement of her buttocks. Even more of her underwear’s diaphanous lace was visible, and I could see the fuzz where the line that separated the two cheeks began. Their tops were showing, two round forms extending back and sloping down from her waist on both sides.
She said, “Here’s the cheese: yes, it’ll work well. And here’s a carton of milk.” She stretched out her arm with each, setting them on the edge of the stove without taking her head out of the refrigerator. “I don’t see that you have any wine. It’s true we drank a lot, but I’m dying for one last glass.”
“I don’t drink alcohol,” I told her. “But there is some nonalcoholic beer, if you’d like.”
“Where?” she asked, not changing her position.
So I bent over behind her, resting my hand on the bare spot of her back, my face close to hers. I pulled out a can for her from behind the bag of pita bread, and she turned her face and kissed me on the cheek.
“Thanks! Why don’t you drink alcohol? Mansour drinks. Are you very religious?”
“No,” I said. “Yes. To a certain degree. But I’m not a fanatic.”
She said, “I don’t believe in the existence of God. But I respect the views of others.”
I didn’t want to talk more about that subject, which I knew backwards and forwards. Otherwise, I would have asked her about the cross that she wore. I already knew the answer would be along the lines of “It doesn’t mean anything. It’s a universal, traditional symbol.” Or that it was a gift from her mother or her friend. Or because it is beautiful and simple. And further justifications like that, which didn’t point to the secret truth of the person’s religiosity. At the same time, I had no desire for her to ask me, like everyone else did, about the superficialities of Islam which were the extent of her knowledge: marriage to four women, the veil, the beards, and all those other topics that I had grown tired of debating and explaining, especially when someone you’ve explained everything to comes back two days later with the very same questions.
“I believe in God,” I said, “and I respect the views of others.”