Almost eight years later, as he got out of the car in the Calle Altamirano at the entrance to his Aunt Carmen’s building, Juan Olmedo barely recognized himself in that boy who had suffered so much, that gauche, withdrawn child who had a strong sense of duty but was too proud, helpful and unsociable at the same time, quiet and a little distracted, excelling only at his studies, sitting glued to his books for hours on end. And yet he retained a memory of the passion too, the violence and desire that had never ceased to torment him over the years. He had never desired Charo more than he did now, when he could imagine with absolute precision the echo of the voice in her ear, the feel and size of the body pressing against hers, the familiar amalgam of words and stock phrases, of movements and gestures, habits and quirks. He knew his brother well, he’d known him all his life, so he could see him even when he didn’t want to, his profile against a pillow, his hand on the small waist that Juan could still feel in his own fingers, or sinking into the sex of a satisfied girl who would happily return his every caress. And he was stuck in the middle, caught between them, tied to their bed, unable to shake off the daily torture of their company. Occasionally, he tried to object, to tear himself away from this mysteriously indispensable pain that enslaved him. He tried, but he didn’t succeed, and every morning he felt he desired Charo a little more than the day before, and that the hatred he had begun to feel for his brother grew by the same amount.And yet, life continued. Much later, Juan Olmedo would understand that this was the most important lesson of those years—learning to live at any cost and despite everything. He would never forget the taste of fury, nor the mute screams with which he rebuked God during all those agonizing years of sleepless nights:“Give her back to me, God, give her back.”While Damián slept in the next bed, Juan writhed, facing the wall, making no sound: “Give her back to me and I’ll do whatever you want, I’ll be whatever you want, I’ll give you whatever you ask if you give her back to me.” He hadn’t spoken to God since then, but when Charo sat beside him in the passenger seat, and the split in her skirt parted, and she did nothing to rearrange it, he wondered whether the Devil wasn’t a little hard of hearing.
“Wait, don’t drive off yet,” she said, lowering the sun visor and examining herself in the mirror.“I need to touch up my make-up.”
“No, you don’t,” he said, abandoning himself to his fascination as she re-applied her lipstick with less resistance than he would have liked.“You look beautiful.”
“Really?”
“Damn you, you bitch,” he thought, but didn’t say so. He just turned the key in the ignition and stared straight ahead, as if he hadn’t noticed the poisonous sweetness of her last question. It was four in the afternoon on a Sunday and the Gran Vía was almost deserted, but the red lights gave him an opportunity to think.“Nothing’s going to happen,” he told himself.What could happen? She’s just teasing me. It’s too late—for me, for her, for everything.And yet he was nervous, as if hordes of ants were swarming under his skin. It wasn’t the first time his sister-in-law had played this game, but she’d never gone beyond playful teasing and he, too aware of his own scars, hadn’t even gone that far. But that afternoon, there was something new and it worried him. It was the first time that he and Charo had been alone since that spring evening, long ago, when he’d persuaded Damián to lend him money so he could take her to the most expensive disco in Madrid. And all of it had happened purely by chance. He’d rung the bell at his mother’s house at two on the dot and found Charo there. She’d looked to his left, then his right, checking that no one was with him, before leaning calmly against the door, blocking his path.
“Where’s Elena?” she asked.
“She can’t make it, she’s on duty.”
“That’s a shame, isn’t it?” she said, and smiled, as if nothing could have made her happier. “Poor thing, working on a Sunday and missing your mother’s paella. It’s always so delicious.”
Only then did she let him in, and he followed her down the corridor to the dining room, where Damián was bragging to his in-laws that his friend Nicanor had managed to get two tickets for the royal box at the Calderón Stadium.
“Apparently, you get a drink beforehand,” he was explaining in his booming voice as Juan came in,“and a cocktail after the match, so I hope we’ll be having lunch soon—I’ve got to shoot off early.”
After he left, without waiting for dessert, Charo moved stealthily to her husband’s chair so that she was sitting next to Juan.
“They’ve left us on our own, Juanito,” she whispered in his ear.
“So it seems.”
“We could go to the cinema,” she said and looked round.The television was on but nobody was nearby.“Like the old days.”
Those words caressed the bruised spine of the desperate boy that Juan had once been, but the man he had become still felt them as keenly as the edge of a knife. He kept his composure so admirably that he felt she must have been offended, and he forced himself to believe that nothing was going to happen, that nothing could happen, nothing at all. On reaching Callao, Charo’s skirt revealing a tantalizing glimpse of her glossy left thigh and her mouth curved in a private smile that didn’t change as he parked the car, he still couldn’t accept the possibility that something might happen, that he had been kidding himself, trying to hide from his own irresistible predisposition towards flinging himself into the abyss.
“OK, so where are we going?” he asked, looking at her, and she reacted somewhat strangely. “You said the cinema you wanted to go to was in Callao, didn’t you?”
“Yes, of course,” she said and leaned forward so that her skirt slid open even further.“Let’s see.This one will do,” she said pointing at the building to their right.“Yes, this one’s fine.”
“What do you mean, it’s fine?” he asked, laughing openly to hide the effects of the spasm that had just gripped his entrails. “Do you want to see this film or not?”
“Of course I do! What are you talking about?”
Then they both laughed. She stopped and tried to behave casually as if there really was nothing going on as they walked to the entrance of the cinema.When they reached the ticket office, Juan Olmedo finally understood what was at stake. He suddenly felt weak, as vulnerable as when he saw her for the first time, dancing in front of the mirror.
“Get seats upstairs,” she said quickly, as if she could read his mind.
“Upstairs?”
“Of course. I like to watch films from high up,” she said, lying coolly.
“Since when?”
“Since always,” she said with an impatient pout.“You’ve got such a bad memory, Juan.”
“The auditorium’s almost empty,” said the woman at the ticket office. “There are good seats downstairs.”
Juan turned to look at his sister-in-law, and she moved closer until she was pressing her body against his.
“Do as I say,” she whispered.“Don’t be silly.”
“OK, two seats upstairs then.”
A few minutes later, when the lights went down, they were the only people sitting in the gallery.The advertisements were playing, just as they used to when he flung himself towards her, feeling for her with his mouth, his hands, blindly, and she would angrily protest. This was why he couldn’t help leaning towards Charo and closing his eyes, brushing his face against her hair and smelling the air around her. But then he sat up straight in his seat once more and looked ahead at the screen, where a quick sequence of shots introduced the characters in an inane romantic comedy.
“The film’s terrible, isn’t it?” whispered Charo after a while.
He nodded, and waited.
“It’s so boring,” she insisted a moment later.“And I think I’ve seen it before. Yes, I saw it about a week ago. I’m such an idiot, aren’t I? Unbelievable!”
“Do you want to leave?” he asked, stifling a nervous laugh.
“No, it’s all right. Let’s stay.”
For a few minutes the only action was limited to the screen. Then Charo moved, turning towards him, and very smoothly and very calmly she undid the top button of his jeans.
“What are you doing, Charo?”
“Well, I’m opening your fly.”
“Right, I got that.” He looked at his sister-in-law and saw her, mouth open, eyes focused on what her hand was doing.“Why?”
“Because I want to get your prick out. See?”
Juan Olmedo, who had never been less and never more himself than at that moment, did as she suggested and saw his prick, erect in his sister-in-law’s hand.
“Stop it, Charo,” he said with little conviction, his voice choking on the last syllable.
“I don’t think so,” she answered.“I’ve treated you badly, Juanito. It’s time I started being nice to you. And I was dying of curiosity. I mean, I’ve never seen your prick before, or touched it—you were such a good boy back then. And anyway, it seems to like it.”
“But I don’t.”
“I don’t believe you.”
She began moving her hand slowly, up and down, the scattered first caresses acquiring a precise, unequivocal rhythm. He began to feel good, and his eyes went from his sister-in-law’s face—tense, focused like a little girl determined to complete a difficult task—to the response of his pampered, privileged prick. It almost seemed to be smiling at him.
“We’re a bit old for this, aren’t we?” he protested feebly, trying to make his voice sound firm, even a little contemptuous.
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” she said. Her voice was muffled, as if her tongue was swollen, the voice of a woman who was aroused and didn’t mind showing it.“I’ll make it better in a minute. But first I’d like you to kiss me. Come on, kiss me, you haven’t kissed me in almost eight years.”
As he leaned in towards her, he kept his eyes open. His heart clenched at such a callous blow—the exact time they’d been apart, the duration of his pain. Charo parted her lips and welcomed him, but didn’t allow her hand to pause even slightly. Her mouth still tasted of caramel but they were on the threshold of a new, savage hunger so different from the gentle delicacy of the first time they kissed, and Juan realized how much he’d changed and just how much he’d lost. Between the hesitant, slow waves of a pleasure that he could still control, he felt the memory of his anger grow, the old dark despair, and, surrendering to Charo’s open mouth, he put his arm around her and took hold of her breast, the object of that distant, coarse display, and kneaded and pressed, squeezed and pinched it. In his head, meanwhile, the voice of a gauche, luckless boy who talked to God and said “I love you” without moving his lips to his brother’s girlfriend, struggled with the mature, self-satisfied sarcasm of a man who no longer needed anything from anyone and gritted his teeth as he yelled,“Screw you now, bitch, screw you.” She didn’t complain, didn’t say anything, but maybe his pincer-like grip on her nipple prompted her next move, and Juan anticipated it, easily interpreting her intentions when Charo decided to change objective, pulling her head away from him and lunging at his belly.The lips that had looked so smug earlier in the day now ran up and down his prick, causing a familiar, increasing pleasure, and it was good, he could still control it, but at a certain point, near the end, he remembered to open his eyes. In the deceptive gloom of the darkened cinema, he saw her glossy black hair, smooth as a freshly ironed sheet, spilling over his jeans, and then he knew with certainty who he was, who she was, and he spoke to God again without even realizing it.
“Now you owe me,” she whispered afterwards, leaning her head on his shoulder and pressing her forehead against his neck with a sudden, helpless urgency.
“Yes,” he admitted, shuddering to his bones. He held her tightly and kissed her on the lips, carefully, as he used to.
Neither of them moved again, or said anything, until the end of the film. Then, it was she who stood up first. She descended the stairs without looking back and she didn’t look at him again until they were outside. When she smiled, after glancing at her watch, he realized that he had been waiting for that smile.
“It’s only six thirty,” she announced, her voice gentle, neutral. “We could go for a drink?”
“Of course,” he said, and his heart leapt in his chest with amazing, inappropriate glee.“Do you still like Vips cafés?”
“Yes, I love them.” She smiled again, and took his arm. “So you remember that, do you?”
“I remember everything, Charo. Everything.”