Moisture of the stones at the same time

Moisture of the stones at the same time

The first time Sofía Valdés looked at him for real was not at the construction meeting or in the mail with copies to the bishopric. It was on a Tuesday, at eleven and twenty at night, when Andrés Mora appeared at the threshold of the side chapel with the raincoat still dripping and a folder under his arm, and she, kneeling on the low scaffold, raised the head lamp and found it there, still, looking at it as one who looks at a crack that was not in the plane.

"Excuse me," he said, without raising his voice. "They told me you were following.

"He kept going," answered Sofia, and took off a glove with his teeth. "Until someone decided to open the door at once and change the temperature of the air.

Andres smiled barely, just enough to be noticed in the corner. He was thirty-six years old, his dark hair combed back in an imperfect hurry and the hands of those who signed too many parts of incidence. Sofía counted thirty-two, the work monkey stained with lime and a grey T-shirt collar that discovered his clavicle when he bowed. They were not entirely unknown: they had been sharing minutes, photos of moisture and messages at the same time. But until that night they had not been left alone with the stones.

The chapel of the former convent of St. Lazarus smelled of wet plaster, old wood and the rain that struck the stained glass windows covered with plastics. The cultural conversion project demanded that the frescoes of the apse be stabilized before the visit on Thursday. Sofia had insisted on working at night: during the day the scaffolding was filled with masons and she lost her concentration. Andres had promised not to disturb. And yet, there she was.

"Water has entered through the northern cornice," he explained, approaching carefully, without stepping on the tarpaulins. "If we do not document it now, tomorrow they will say we do not warn.

"Document," she said. "I am not coming down yet."

He nodded. He opened the folder, took out the tablet and began to take notes at the foot of the scaffold. Sofia returned to the wall. Under the yellow light of her front, the old pigment revealed a blessing hand, barely visible, and a fold of tunic that she was consolidating with surgeon’s patience. Each time she felt Andrew’s look on her back. It was not a lascivious look, or not only: it was that of someone who calculated distances and, at the same time, was distracted by calculating them.

They spent twenty minutes in a silence full of tools and rain. When Sofia finally went down, she pulled her front and left it hanging from her neck. The sweat had stuck her hair to her temple.

"Hot coffee," he offered, and he gave him a glass of metal. "It's not good, but it's hot.

She drank. The liquid burned her tongue in a pleasant way. They looked closely for the first time: he, with that fine scar on his eyebrow; she, with a sine on the upper lip that the light underlined.

"The last one has been arriving for days," said Sofia.

• And you're keeping the last one.

"I like it when the building breathes without witnesses.

"I too," said Andrew, "although I tend to hide it better.

The phrase remained between the two as a lying rope. Sofia cleaned her hands in a rag and sat on an improvised bench. He sat at no less than a metre. They talked about the wall, the salitre, of an earlier contract in Toledo where they almost fought over a mismeasured vain. They laughed low. At some point, Sofia’s laughter broke in her throat because Andrew looked at her without dissimulation, and she felt the heat rising through her chest with almost offensive clarity.

"You shouldn't look at me like that," he whispered, bluntly.

"I know," he replied. "Give me permission to stop and I will try."

She didn't give it to him. Instead, he leaned the empty glass aside and passed the back of his hand through his mouth.

"There is a new leak behind the altarpiece," he said, standing. "If you really want to be useful, take the big flashlight."

They went together as they moved. The space was narrow, it smelled of old incense and dust. Sofia crouched down to point out the dark spot on the stone; Andrew bowed at her side. Her shoulders were rubbed. No one turned away. The flashlight trembled a second in his hand when she turned her face and her mouths were left at a span.

-Andres.

• Tell me.

"If you're going to kiss me, let it be because you thought about it. Not because the night is tight and we're alone.

He turned off the flashlight. The relative darkness of the chapel enveloped them; there was only the distant glow of the scaffolding spotlight and the blinking of lightning behind the plastics.

"I've thought about it since the post of the 12th," he confessed. "The one with the macro photographs. You wrote "look at the detail of the yolk" and I read that phrase ten times as an idiot.

Sofia let go of a low, incredulous and lit laugh.

Then look at me now, and ask me clearly.

"I want to kiss you," he said, passing to you with a naturalness that shook his voice a little. "If you want to, if we stop when you say. If this is not a construction accident.

"It is not an accident," she replied, "and it was Sofia who closed the distance.

The first kiss was slow, with lips closed at first, testing the temperature of the other. Andrew’s mouth tasted like coffee and rain; Sofia’s mouth tasted like a bottle mint and sweet tiredness. When she opened her lips, he responded with a contrite deepness, a hand on her neck, careful fingers with his hair picked up. Sofia felt her chest against her chest, the cold raincoat even against her warm monkey, and a chill that did not come from the water.

They split up just enough to breathe.

"Not here," she murmured. "The stones deserve respect. And I want to see you without fear of a watchman coming in."

"I have the building floor three blocks away," said Andrew. "It is small. It is almost empty. But it has heating and a bed that is not a scaffold.

• Take me.

They went out in the small rain. Sofia covered herself with her hunter; Andrew offered her the arm of the raincoat and she accepted it without theater. The streets of the old town shone. They didn’t talk much on the way: they looked at each other with a glance, rubbed their knuckles, and each brush was a promise signed in silence. On the portal, he typed the code with a hand that finally shook a little; she noticed it and held his wrist for a second, asserting it.

The floor smelled of new wood and cardboard box. There was a table with plans, two chairs, a half-lined plastic sofa and, at the bottom, the bedroom door ajar. Andrew lit only the lamp standing. The light was low, golden, like that of the chapel but without dust for centuries.

• Would you like some water?

"I want you to look at me like in the back of my body," said Sofia, taking off her boots. "And ask me what I want, every time you don't know.

• Okay.

She approached him. She slowly lowered her jacket’s zipper, waiting for her to agree on every inch. Sofia nodded. Then she unbuttoned her wet shirt, discovering her chest with dark hair and the mark of an ancient sun on her shoulders. She touched it with her fingertips, just as she touched the frescoes: attentively, without haste. Andres closed his eyes for an instant.

"I like the way you touch me," he admitted.

"I like the way you stop," she replied.

They kissed on their feet, deeper. His tongue looked for his with respect and hunger in equal parts. Sofia felt the desire to concentrate between her legs, hot, inevitable. When Andrew’s hands went down to her waist, she led one of them under the monkey, to the shirt, to the naked skin of the belly. He asked with his eyes. She said yes in a whisper.

They went to the bedroom without letting go at all. The bed was half made; Sofia laughed at it and Andrew shrugged his shoulders, blushing in a way that made him more desirable. She took off the monkey; she was left in a shirt and simple black panties. He got rid of his pants. They looked at each other in underwear and underwear like the one who looks at a new plane: wanting to understand before possessing.

"Can I take this off?" he asked, gently pulling the edge of the shirt.

And I want to take that from you.

They were naked from the waist to the top first. Sofia’s breasts weighed with a firm softness; Andrew held them as something valuable is held up, and he put his mouth down to a nipple with a slowness that tore off a low moan. She gripped her hair, not to hurry, but to feel. The humidity of the rain in their bodies was mixed with the heat of the room. When Sofia lowered his shorts, her sex was free, hard, serious; she surrounded him with her hand and felt him beating against the palm.

"Tell me if it slows down," he asked.

"Thus," answered Andrew, with a snoring voice. "That is perfect."

They lay down, and he went through the neck, the hollow of the clavicle, the belly, with his mouth; and before he came down at all, he looked up.

• Can I kiss you there?

"Yes," said Sofia, and spread her legs with a clear decision, without cheap flirtation. "I want to feel you. I want you to look at me while you do."

Andres stood between her thighs and kissed her first on the inside of her leg, then on the thin hair, then on the damp center where she was already burning. The tongue was precise, not mechanical: he sought Sofia's reactions, stopped when she arched, insisted when the air broke. Sofía grabbed on the sheet and at his head, letting out groans contents that filled the room better than any scream. The pleasure went up to her in slow waves; he thought of the wall, in the hand that blessed her, how sometimes to restore was also to surrender to what the piece asked. So he ran, with Andrew's mouth over her, with a long tremor and a choked laugh of relief.

He went up to kiss her. She tasted her own taste on those lips and wrapped her back with her legs.

"I want you to come in," he said. "Slow down, and look at me.

• Condom?

"In my jacket pocket. Right side. I've been carrying them since I started dreaming about you, which is a ridiculous and true confession.

Andrew smiled at his mouth, went to look for him, opened him with firm hands. Sofia watched him cover himself and felt an absurd tenderness for that daily and careful gesture. When he returned to place himself between his legs, he asked permission again with his gaze. She nodded and guided him with her hand.

The entrance was slow, deliberate. Sofia noticed every inch, the pressure, the heat, the way her body gave way and embraced. Andrew stopped in the middle, the forehead leaning on hers, breathing.

"You are..." he didn't finish the sentence.

"Go on," she asked. "Found me with the same attention you look at the walls with.

He obeyed the tone and not the gratuitous vulgarity: he rammed with a slow, deep rhythm, looking for the angle that a new sound would rip out of Sofia. They kissed each other in between. Sometimes he went out almost completely and went back in whole, and she groaned against her neck. The sweat joined their chest. The bed creaked with a discreet sound, of good wood. Sofia went from feeling pleasure to feeling crossed by something wider: the certainty of having chosen, of being chosen, that the desire had not stolen their speech.

"More," he whispered. "No faster. Closer."

Andrew sank to the bottom and stayed there for a second, beating, looking at her. Then he resumed with a containment that was in itself a gift. His hand went down between the two and grazed his clitoris with his thumb, coordinated, attentive. Sofia felt the second orgasm grow from deeper, less sharp, longer. She ran by pressing him inside, nailing him in the shoulder blades, telling him his name as the one who signs an act.

He followed her shortly afterwards, with a severe groaning, the body stiff and then loosed over hers, careful not to crush it. They remained so, united, breathing the same air. Outside, the rain had subsided.

"Are you all right?" he asked after a while, kissing his temple.

"I am... inhabited," answered Sofia, and he laughed low. "What a strange thing to say. But it is true.

They separated gently. Andres got rid of the condom and lay down again by his side. Sofía toured his chest with the yolk, drawing paths without a map. They spoke in the dark: why he had accepted this project away from his usual study; why she preferred the nights; of a brief marriage that he had closed years ago without drama and of a long relationship that she had left because the other one could not stand his silence when working. It was not a confession of divan; it was the adult way of saying: here there is a person, not just a body.

After an hour, the desire returned as a discrete tide. This time it was Sofia who strung around, who came down to kiss her sex hard again, who took it in her mouth with a tasty slowness, looking at it from below. Andrew held her hair without forcing, thanking her quietly for each movement. When she joined, she opened another condom, placed it herself and impaled with a sigh that came out of her chest center.

He rode slowly, his hands on his chest, his breasts swinging with the swing. Andres held his hips, guided her without stealing his command. The friction was exactly what Sofia wanted: dense, wet, full of looks. He bowed to kiss him and the angle changed; the groan ran higher. He bit his lip softly and told him that she was beautiful without ornaments, sweaty, with the rimel of the day barely present and the front mark still drawn on his forehead. Sofia ran like this, sitting on him, trembling, and he kept holding her ass with both hands, lost and present at the same time.

Then the silence was sweet. They were cleaned with a clean towel that Andrew found in a box. They drank tap water in the same glass. Sofia put on her shirt; he, the underpants. They lay down again, face to face.

"Tomorrow there is a visit," he said.

"Tomorrow I will be at the scaffolding at eight o'clock," she said. "And you will sign minutes with a face that you have not slept.

• What's this?

Sofia thought of the leak, of the thermos coffee, of the phrase of the mail of the twelfth day.

"This goes on if we both want it to go on," he replied. "Without hiding it in the play, without turning it into a dirty secret. I like you. I like the way you ask me for permission. I like that you haven't tried to win over me in two hours.

"I like you," said Andrew. "And I like your way of looking at the cracks as if they were paths.

They kissed again, without haste to get to anything. The kiss was a point and followed. Through the window without curtains the damp glow of the ancient city was seen. Sofia leaned her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes, not to sleep at all, but to keep the weight of that body next to hers.

After a while, Andrés's voice vibrated against his hair:

"Next time I'll invite you to dinner first, as a civilized person.

"Next time," she accepted, smiling in the dark. "Although I warn you that if it rains again and there is a chapel in the middle, I prefer stones again at the same time.

• Then I'll pray for rain.

They laughed quietly. No more promise was needed. The bow of the night was closed in its fair form: a look, a question, a yes, the body speaking in the slow language that both understood, and a morning that was no longer just scaffolding and parts of incidence.

Sofia, half asleep, thought of the incomplete fresco: the hand that blessed still without recovered fingers. She smiled. Some restorations, it was said, are not made with scalpel or consolidation. They are made by staying. They ask. They are made looking forward when the other one says your name on the bed of an almost empty floor, while outside the city drains the rain through the gutters and inside two adults decide, without grandiloquence, not to let go yet.

Andres turned off the lamp with care not to wake it up at all. Before sleeping, he put his sheet on his bare shoulder and left his hand there, still, as if holding a plane that finally fits. The chapel would wait. Thursday too. What he didn’t expect was that night, and that’s exactly why he deserved to be kept without haste and noise, in the exact place where desire stops being absconded and becomes a presence.

When Sofia woke up at the edge of the dawn, the rain had stopped at all. Andrew slept face up, an arm still towards her. She watched him for a minute, rose barefoot, went to the bathroom, washed his face and returned. He got back into bed. He opened his eyes.

"Hello," he said, snoring.

"Hello," she replied. "I still want this.

• Me too.

They kissed with pleasure tomorrow, knowing that in two hours they would have to be professionals in front of third parties. It did not frighten them. There was a simple pact between the two: the work would continue to stand, and they too, if they chose the words and the silences well. Sofia settled on her chest and heard Andrew’s heart go slowly, surely, like a well calibrated meter.

"Tell me something that is not in the curriculum," she asked.

"As a child I stole colored chalk from the drawing class to paint cracks on the walls of my room," he confessed. "I wanted the room to look old.

Sofia let go of a clean laugh.

"We are doomed," he said. "In the best way.

They got up together. They shared the narrow shower with laughter and some touch that promised another night. They dried up, dressed, looked in the mirror of the hallway like two people who just signed an invisible deal. Before leaving, Andrew held his hand in the quicio.

• Tonight, when we finish the visit, shall we have dinner?

"Yes," said Sofia. "And if there is no chapel, just one table and look at me the same."

They went down the stairs. The morning smelled of wet stone and nearby baked bread. On the corner they separated with a discreet gesture, accomplices, adults, whole. Sofia went to the chapel with the clean monkey in the bag and the still sensitive body, inhabited by recent memory. Upon crossing the threshold, she looked at the scaffolding and smiled for her insides.

The stones were still wet. She too. And for the first time in a long time, moisture was not just a work problem: it was the sensitive proof that something alive had gone through the night and remained, chosen, on the skin.

He worked concentrated all morning. When Andrew entered with the commission, they crossed a brief, professional and hot look at each other at a time. No one else read it. She went back to the cool. The hand that blessed, under her consolidation brush, seemed safer. In the middle of the afternoon, a message on the phone vibrated in his pocket: “I keep praying for rain. I also reserve a table. You choose time.” Sofia took off a glove, replied: “At ten o’clock. And come with that raincoat. I like how it drips when you lie that you only come for the leak.”

He kept his mobile phone. The echo of the chapel gave him back his own breath. Outside, the sky did not promise a storm, but she no longer needed it. I had the memory of the transfer, the taste of bad coffee, the voice asking permission, the exact weight of a man who looked at her without turning her into a trophy. I had, above all, the certainty of having started something with beginning, knot and an end of night that, in fact, was a beginning.

At the close of the day, he touched the wall with his palm open, an intimate gesture, almost of daily farewell.

"Until tomorrow," he murmured to the stone, and by extension to all that the stone had witnessed.

He went out into the street with a steady pace. The air of the afternoon struck his face. He smiled without anyone seeing it. Red Moon would have said that long nights always start at a threshold, with a look that does not run away and a question that does not embarrass itself. Sofia, who did not think of pseudonyms, only thought of the ten o’clock table, of Andrew’s mouth and of the elegant, slow and explicit way in which two adult bodies can tell the truth without breaking what they touch.

And he walked about that hour as he walked into an enlightened room: without haste, with hunger, knowing that desire, when sustained in consent and conversation, does not burn the house. He inhabits it.