"Don't come inside of me," said María.
"I'll try not to," I said.
"What do you mean you'll try, you jerk? Don't come inside!"
I looked to either side of the bed as María's legs laced and unlaced across my back (I would've been happy to keep going like that until I died). In the distance I glimpsed the shadow of Angélica's bed and the curve of Angélica's hips, like an island observed from another island. Suddenly I felt María's lips sucking my left nipple, almost as if she were biting my heart. I jumped, and pushed in all the way in one thrust, wanting to pin her to the bed (the springs of which began to squeak hideously so that I paused), while at the same time I kissed her hair and forehead with great delicacy and still managed to find the time to wonder how it was possible that the noise we were making hadn't woken Angélica. I didn't even notice when I came. Of course, I pulled out in time; I've always had good reflexes.
"You didn't come inside, did you?" said María.
I swore into her ear that I hadn't. For a few seconds we were busy breathing. I asked her whether she'd had an orgasm and her answer was perplexing:
"I came twice, García Madero, didn't you notice?" she asked in utter seriousness.
I was honest and told her no, I hadn't noticed anything.
"You're still hard," said María.
"I guess I am," I said. "Can we do it again?"
"All right," she said.
I don't know how much time went by. I pulled out and came again. This time I couldn't keep from crying out.
"Now do me," said María.
"You didn't have an orgasm?"
"No, not this time, but it was good." She took my hand, selected my index finger, and guided it around her clitoris. "Kiss my nipples. You can bite them too, but very gently at first," she said. "Then bite them a little harder. And put your hand around my neck. Stroke my face. Put your fingers in my mouth."
"Wouldn't you rather that I… suck your clitoris?" I said, vainly trying to find an elegant way to put it.
"No, not right now, your finger is enough. But kiss my tits."
"You have gorgeous breasts." I was unable to repeat the word tits.
I got undressed without getting out from under the sheets (suddenly I had begun to sweat) and immediately began to carry out María's instructions. First her sighs and then her moans got me hard again. She noticed and with one hand she stroked my cock until she couldn't anymore.
"What's wrong, María?" I whispered in her ear, afraid that I'd hurt her throat (squeeze, she kept whispering, squeeze) or bitten one of her nipples too hard.
"Keep going, García Madero," said María, smiling in the dark, and she kissed me.
When we were done she told me that she had come more than five times. To be honest, I had a hard time accepting that such an outrageous thing was possible, but when she gave me her word I had to believe her.
"What are you thinking about?" said María.
"About you," I lied; actually, I was thinking about my uncle and the law school and the magazine that Belano and Lima were going to publish. "What about you?"
"I'm thinking about the pictures," she said.
"What pictures?"
"Ernesto's."
"The pornographic pictures?"
"Yes."
The two of us shuddered in unison. Our faces were glued together. We could talk, vocalize, thanks to the space made by our noses, but even so I could feel her lips move against mine.
"Do you want to do it again?"
"Yes," said María.
"Well," I said, a little queasy, "if you change your mind at the last minute, let me know."
"Change my mind about what?" said María.
The insides of her thighs were drenched in my semen. I felt cold and I couldn't help sighing deeply at the moment I penetrated her again.
María whimpered and I started to move with increasing enthusiasm.
"Try not to make too much noise, I don't want Angélica to hear us."
"You try not to make noise," I said, and I added: "What did you give Angélica to make her sleep like that?"
The two of us laughed quietly, me against her neck and her burying her face in the pillows. When I finished, I didn't even have the energy to ask her if she'd enjoyed herself, and the only thing I wanted was to gradually drift off to sleep with María in my arms. But she got up and made me get dressed and follow her to the bathroom in the big house. When we went out into the courtyard I realized that the sun was already coming up. For the first time that night I could see my lover a little more clearly. María was wearing a white nightgown with red embroidery on the sleeves, and her hair was pulled back with a ribbon or a piece of braided leather.
After we dried ourselves I thought about calling home, but María said that my aunt and uncle would surely be asleep and I could do it later.
"And now what?" I said.
"Now let's sleep a little," said María, putting her arm around my waist.
But the night or day held a last surprise for me. Huddled in a corner of the little house, I discovered Barrios and his American friend. The two of them were snoring. I would've liked to wake them with a kiss.
NOVEMBER 19
We all had breakfast together: Quim Font, Mrs. Font, María and Angélica, Jorgito Font, Barrios, Barbara Patterson, and me. Breakfast was scrambled eggs, slices of fried ham, bread, mango jam, strawberry jam, butter, salmon pâté, and coffee. Jorgito drank a glass of milk. Mrs. Font (she kissed me on the cheek when she saw me!) made something that she called crèpes but that were nothing like crèpes. The rest of breakfast was prepared by the servant (whose name I don't know or can't remember, which is inexcusable). Barrios and I washed the dishes.
Afterward, when Quim went off to work and Mrs. Font began to plan her day (she works, so she told me, as a writer for a new Mexican family magazine), I finally decided to call home. My aunt Martita was the only one there, and when she heard my voice she started to scream like a crazy woman, then cry. After an uninterrupted series of prayers to the Virgin, appeals to duty, fragmented accounts of the night I had "put my uncle through," warnings in a tone more complicitous than recriminatory about the impending punishment that my uncle was surely pondering that very morning, I finally broke in and assured her that I was fine, that I'd spent the night with some friends and I wouldn't be home until "after dark" since I planned to head straight for the university. My aunt promised that she would call my uncle at work herself, and she made me swear that as long as I lived I would call home when I decided to spend the night out. For a few seconds I considered whether it might be a good idea to call my uncle myself, but in the end I decided that it wasn't necessary.
I fell into an armchair with no idea what to do. I had the rest of the morning and day at my disposal, which is to say, I was conscious that they were at my disposal and in that sense they struck me as different from other mornings and other days (when I was a lost soul, wandering around the university or in the grips of my virginity), but here at the first sign of change I didn't know what to do. I had so many possibilities to choose from.
The consumption of food-I ate like a wolf while Mrs. Font and Barbara Patterson talked about museums and Mexican families-had made me slightly sleepy and at the same time had reawakened my desire to have sex with María (whom I had avoided looking at during breakfast, trying when I did to adapt my gaze to the notions of brotherly love or disinterested camaraderie that I imagined were harbored by her father, who incidentally didn't seem the least bit surprised to see me at his table at such an early hour), but María was getting ready to go out, Angélica was getting ready to go out, Jorgito Font had already left, Barbara Patterson was in the shower, and only Barrios and the maid were wandering around the big library of the main house like the last survivors of a terrible shipwreck, so to stay out of their way and in a faint desire for symmetry, I crossed the courtyard for the millionth time and made myself comfortable in the sisters' little house, where the beds were still unmade (which was a clear sign that it was the maid or servant or cleaning lady-or the naca of steel, as Jorgito called her-who did the work, a detail that increased my attraction to María rather than lessening it, tainting her pleasantly with frivolousness and indifference), contemplating the still-damp scene of my gateway to glory, and even though I ought to have wept or prayed, what I did was lie down on one of the unmade beds (Angélica's, as I found out later, not María's) and fall asleep.