Josefa’s chest caved in and she blushed, and the sun sank along with her chest. All of her sank.

Naked in front of Fede, Josefa felt ashamed again, but it was a different shame from what she felt when she saw the badly drawn star on the classroom chalkboard. It was more like the emotion that came over her when they’d given vaccinations at school. She’d moved along in the line of children, shyly, because she knew that everyone would see her half naked when she took off her uniform blouse, but she was also eager to do it. It was a disappointment when her turn with the nurse came and she only unbuttoned the sleeve and rolled it up above her elbow.

“That little belly is mine,” said Fede, stroking Josefa’s prominent stomach. He kissed her belly button and again farther up. A kiss with tongue on her nipple, and when his mouth separated from her skin, Josefa saw a little thread of shining saliva that joined her body and Fede’s lips like a spider’s silk. A shiver ran over her body, like when her mother was braiding her hair and accidentally pulled a few solitary hairs.

Fede pulled her to him and hugged her very tightly and licked her neck like it was a stamp. “You taste like sunscreen,” he said, “beach flavor.”

He took off his pants, his jacket, shirt, and underwear, quickly. And Josefa looked at the parts of his body that weren’t so tanned, and his erect penis that pointed toward the ocean like the needle of a compass. She had never seen one before and she was fascinated. From then on, that would be her image of penises. Not fallen and flaccid like her father’s, which she would see one day when she opened the bathroom door and surprised him coming out of the shower, but rather straight and firm. Implacable, like the broomstick her mother used to clear the plums off the porch. Perpetual like the hands of the watches she drew on her left wrist when she was bored in class.

They walked to the water hand in hand. And Josefa thought that they were like Adam and Eve in her children’s Bible, which she read from every night. Her favorite story was Samson and Delilah, because it was the most romantic.