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I swallow. The I love you. It goes down with air, a trace of champagne and saliva. Both, the I love you and the saliva, belong to my lover. I choke. And I try to wrench my mouth from his, turning my face to the left, pushing against his chest with my hands. My red nails on grey chest hair, his open shirt.
“Wait,” I say.
It’s hard to pull my body away; his, pressed tight against me, doesn’t allow it. It’s not that he uses force, he doesn’t need to.
“Let me turn around.”
He backs away just enough for me to turn on my heels. He smiles. I feel a twinge in my ankle as I turn my back to him. We are on the balcony of our room on the thirteenth floor of the hotel. Always the same room, in the same hotel, the same man for five years now. I’m his mistress. Pinned between his chest and the railing, I see the city below. Trapped as if I’m in a nightmare where I know I’m dreaming but can’t wake up, I calculate: each floor is about three metres high; three times thirteen, thirty-nine. I hear a whisper—“breathe!”—the sound comes from my own mouth.
“We need to talk,” I say.
I feel a hand splayed across my back, the other on the nape of my neck, his penis—hard between my buttocks. His torso firm against mine, which leans further and further out over the railing at the height of my navel. Thirteen floors times five years, sex in the car, in bathrooms, in the hotel, my hope, euphories, and disappointments. My ultimatums were met with evasive answers, unkept promises, pleas for a truce, threats, and always, always: the I love you. I want to announce my retreat from the battlefield, my surrender. I swallow, I calculate.
“Speak.”
His hot breath right by my ear.
“It’s just that…”
His teeth on my earlobe, a little bite, my nipples harden.
“Ow…”
His large, skilled hand, a hand that knows me inside out, slides down and cups my breast, feels it.
“How about more champagne?”
“Why not?” I say. I need to breathe. He lets me go, finally, and goes to order the drink. I hear him on the phone, asking for the most expensive brand. The chambermaid arrives quickly. He calls her by the name on her badge, looking her in the eye, thank you very much, please keep the change, Suely. A kind and charming man. I watch him open the bottle. He lets the cork fly, laughs loudly, pours the drink into two glasses and walks towards me, his gait leaning slightly forward, shoulders swaying, his steps firm. That was how I saw him for the first time, walking towards me. It was at the company where I work as a receptionist. We were expecting you, I’d said. He went in, took his time with my boss, and came back out with his constant smile. He started showing up frequently, and smiling. He spoke softly, and if he looked at my body, he did so discreetly, but in such a way that I noticed that he was doing it discreetly. Then, his business card in my hand, his private mobile number hand-written on the back. I gave him mine in return. A phone call, and an invitation to dinner. I worked out that he lived alone. He was handsome, successful, polite. Why not? That was five years ago.
I was mistaken, however. He was married. Even so, the night was pleasant.
“So, you want to talk,” he leaves the glasses on the table.
“I do.”
“I love you,” and he presses his body against mine. I thought it was a matter of time, of patience. It’s not that he doesn’t treat me well, quite the contrary. But a time comes.
“I can’t do this anymore.”
The man holds my head against his chest, muffling my words.
“Don’t say that,” he whispers. He never raises his voice.
“Just be still.”
“I love you.”
He never acts rashly. Perhaps he doesn’t know his own strength.
“I love you.”
His own weight when he lays his whole body on top of mine.
“It’s going to be alright.”
“I can’t wait any longer.”
“Please, why not?”
His voice even lower now, tender, almost like a final wave over the railing, how beautiful the city lights are down there, he murmurs.
“I love you.”
His hips lock between my legs. I feel the bar of the railing against my back, a cold material, probably steel or iron. His hairy, muscular arms, his wise arms, planted firmly on either side of my body, at my waist, almost lifting me.
“You’re… you’re…”
He apologizes, was that an apology?, but keeps pushing me, did I say “pushing”?
One day his wife called me, asking if we could meet. I thought things would finally make some sense. I braced myself for anything. Anything, apart from the fact that she was so elegant. She clearly wasn’t feeling great, but she didn’t let it show. She invited me for a drink at an expensive restaurant; her nails were red, though a slightly softer shade than mine. The ease with which she reeled off cocktail names from the menu, her head tilted ever so slightly to the waiter, her demure. She didn’t insult me, didn’t demand anything, didn’t offer anything either, it was precisely that air of superiority that made me feel humiliated in a strange kind of way. It became extremely clear to me that I could never, ever take her place.
My body is now hanging more than halfway out of the balcony. I gasp for air with my mouth wide open, I choke. I feel his hand slide up my skirt and I see a leg already halfway into the air. Is that my leg?
“I’m not interested in sex anymore,” she told me, sensually sipping her drink. “Not with men, anyway.” Her gaze rested on me, gentle, steely. uninhibited.
And so, that’s what it was all about, sex.
My other leg tries to hook itself into my lover’s, but can’t find them. One of my feet brushes against the metal bar, my red designer stiletto—a gift from him—slips and flies in an arc, but I don’t hear the thud because I am flying too. Just as I can’t hear his voice, but I know he is repeating, will repeat forever, I love you. I read his lips as they pull away from mine, the last thing I see: those lips, half-open, forming those three words.
I always thought I would think of my daughter at the moment of my death. That I’d worry about leaving her alone, feel sad for her. But no. Instead, I think of a physics teacher from high school; I was the age she is now. I was infatuated with him, with his wavy hair, his hushed voice. I like men who speak softly. We had sex in a hotel in the city centre, rather like this one, actually, that was my first time. Galileo proved that when two bodies drop from the same height they reach the ground at the same instant, I hear the teacher’s voice whispering in my ear. The time it takes for a body to fall is the same. Despite their different masses, all bodies experience acceleration due to gravity.
So my landing on the pavement will occur at the same time as my shoe, I figure.
My lover told me once that he skydives. It’s impossible to describe what you feel the moment you are in free fall, he told me. Your head soars, your thoughts spin, you feel a profound fear and a sublime satisfaction.
It really is wonderful.
Translated by Elton Uliana
Originally published as “A amante” in Todas Umas (Rio de janeiro: Confraria dos Ventos, 2022)
