He squeezed Claudia’s thighs with his hand and went down until he reached her sneakers. He took them off carefully, gently, and did the same with her socks. He caressed her bare feet. He lowered the zipper on her dress and pulled it off over her head, eagerly, and always with a tremor in his hands and breathing, as if as if he were suffering somehow.

She’d always enjoyed being naked on top of a clothed man, and she started to take off her underwear. Before she could get rid of it entirely, he took her by the shoulders and turned her and laid her down on her side in front of him. He pulled down the left cup of her bra with a kind of fury, and he pushed in her nipple with his finger. He pressed and massaged, and she was very close to him, yearning, her mouth open, thirsty and generous. She could smell Bruno’s scent, citric. A familiar smell, one she’d smelled on other men, and it made her want to ask him where he worked, how he made a living.

He squeezed her throat hard again, then tenderly caressed her eyebrows. He licked her breasts and felt between her legs to see if she was wet, and when he found that she was, he let out a sigh of pleasure and kept his hand there and he put the fingers of his free hand into her mouth, slowly, waiting for her to lick them, and that’s what she did.

Bruno’s body tensed and he pushed Claudia’s belly with his knee and started to rub against her. The way he touched her and took her acquired a certain violence, but not a dominating one; to her surprise, it was a clumsy, inexpert thrust. She looked at him. He was licking his lips and it seemed like something in him was contracting. He was completely absorbed in himself, his eyes rolling back, half closed in a way that would seem vulgar if another man did it, but not him. She would adore a man like him. She caressed his hair, which was wet by then, and she took off his white shirt, also damp, so she could soak herself in his sweat, because it was something she needed. To absorb the sweat of a man. And she remembered a line from a song that went: “Your sweat is salty / I am why.”

“What are you doing here?” he asked. “Are you still sad?”

Claudia took a very deep breath and let out the air slowly. She opened her fingers, dug her nails into Bruno’s back, rose up.

“It doesn’t matter how many times you come back, Teresa. It doesn’t matter that you’re sad, because I’m sad too. We’re all sad . . .”

And then she started to laugh.

Her laughter, quiet at first, then louder. “It’s too late to talk about this.”