Read Online When Tito Loved Clara by Jon Michaud - Free Book Online

way, Tito was seized by a queasy sense of doubt as he realized how little he really knew her, this beautiful girl he had fantasized about for years. In all, they'd spent a dozen afternoons together. The weight of what they were doing frightened him. Suddenly, he wanted to be donewith it, to rush through the act and have it finished, to move on to the next stage of things, but she would not let him. She pushed him onto his back and slowly unbuttoned his shirt, kissing his chest after each button was unfastened.
    The buzzer sounded.
    â€œWho's that?” Clara whispered.
    â€œGet under,” he said, ridiculously, and lifted the sheet and the blanket for her. Maybe one of the tenants had tracked him down here. Or maybe his parents had come back early. He ran to the intercom. “
¿Si?
” he said. He was still dressed and had to adjust himself.
    â€œYolanda?” said the voice through the speaker.
    â€œNo.” said Tito.
    â€œYolanda? Marta?”
    â€œThey moved,” said Tito. “They don't live here anymore.”
    The buzzer sounded again, but he was already on his way back to the bedroom.
    â€œWho was that, your other girlfriend?” Clara asked.
    Tito said nothing. He took his clothes off and got into the make-shift bed with her. As he lifted the blanket and the sheet, he caught sight of her naked body again, but this time it unnerved him less. Instead, he took pleasure in it, the lovely geometry of her limbs and joints arranging themselves, her breasts swaying, gravity-tugged, and her skin puckering in tiny circles of brown gooseflesh. He felt momentarily that he had created her, willed her into being.
    Clara turned and looked at him with a direct and open tenderness that he had not seen from her that afternoon. She kissed him softly, long and drawing with the mouth he had wounded in the playground many years before. Tito felt himself becoming erect again. She continued to kiss him. His tongue went into her mouth and searched for the scars on the inside of her lip. The disruption had settled them and stopped their anxious playing. Tito was not afraid now and he felt calm and watched her and saw that there was none of the nervous, flirty behavior of before. She withdrewunder the blankets, kissed him, and turned him so that he lay on his back. Then she straddled him, her body substantial and warm. Tito watched her fingers take hold of him and he felt the firm, bristly pressure as his cock was guided up inside her.
    A FEW DAYS after the move, he returned to the apartment on Sherman Avenue. Ms. Almonte opened the door. She did not look surprised to see him.
    â€œI've brought the key for your storage unit,” he said. “And, if you don't mind, perhaps you have time to fill out a customer satisfaction survey for me?”
    She regarded him for a long moment, a gentle, condescending smile curling one side of her mouth, and then nodded. “Come in,” she said. “But you must be quiet. My mother is sleeping.” It was six-thirty in the evening. She led him into the kitchen. En route, they passed the mother, who was sitting in a recliner with her eyes closed and her mouth slightly agape, a blanket draped across her.
    â€œWould you like something to eat? My mother made
sancocho,
” said Ms. Almonte.
    â€œ
Sancocho
? In this heat?” said Tito.
    â€œShe's always cold—it doesn't matter what the season. The
sanco-cho
helps her feel warm. It's just about all she eats these days. Would you like some?”
    â€œSure,” said Tito, sitting at the white, plastic-topped table. Since moving out of his parents' apartment, he'd subsisted on pizza and Chinese takeout. He could smell the
sancocho
as Ms. Almonte ladled it into the bowl. The starchy thickness of it stung his salivary glands to life.
    â€œSchool opens soon, right?” he asked.
    â€œI'm not teaching this year,” she said, bringing the two bowls to the table and sitting down opposite