The Strongbox

. . . As their eyes met he took her in. This woman, only several years younger than his mamá and more than a decade older than he, was both simple and supple. The hem of her dress hung modestly above her knees, exposing only a hint of her cinnamon thighs. Her stomach was flat and her breasts pert, virginal. He could not imagine her betraying an indiscretion, this servile housekeeper. He pursed his lips and furrowed his brow. The thought of taking her like he would any other woman was incestuous to him. She had been part of his childhood. But then, it was so taboo it was arousing.
Nodi grew uncomfortable, feeling as if he was looking directly through her dress. She clasped her hands in front of her pelvis and took a step backwards, dropping her gaze to the tiny crucifix hanging from his neck, realizing she had actually been looking into his eyes. “I should not enter the office, Don Marcos, with the safe open,” she said humbly.
He glanced from Nodi to the safe, back to the hem of her dress fluttering in the insistent breeze invading The Strongbox, then locked onto her eyes. “Ay mami,” he said quietly, “do not worry, it is nothing, a silly tradition. Come,” he commanded again, beckoning with his hand full of pesos.
Her eyes danced across the floor to the safe and back to his polished black shoes. Uncertain, she stepped across the threshold, her hands rubbing each other like anxious animals. Marcos Aurelio stood his ground, allowing the magnetism of the safe to draw her near. Casually, he flopped her pesos on the desk, so that she would have to walk past him. Nodi pursed her lips, sensing a trap: after all, he had not pinched her yet and he had grinned twice. She stopped in front of him, stalling, aligning herself with the opening of the safe, which was no more than a vertical shadow beyond which she could discern nothing. Marcos grinned again, her fascination with the safe obvious – his one gold tooth brilliant behind his unkempt mustache. Unsure of what to do or where to rest her eyes, she began to retreat, shuffling in her low gray sneakers. It was then that Marcos Aurelio draped his hand over the door of the safe and swung it open, intoxicating her with the actualization of her wish. She blinked, the wind whistling through the jalousies, then blinked again, dumfounded country girl, her mouth agape. Oblivious of the stacks of pesos and bundles of U.S. dollars on the top shelf, she stared only at the hundreds of carefully folded parchments tied with string and shelved like bars of gold bullion: the wealth of Las Terrenas.
A deep magenta rose in her olive-tan cheeks, strands of her hair blowing about her face. The deeds were so close, nearly within her reach, yet so distant and impossible. Her first thought flew to her home with Papito. To slip out of The Strongbox with the deeds meant, she believed, to own Las Terrenas.
Marcos Aurelio quietly walked over to the office door and gently swung it to, leaving it ajar. He did not want the sound of it slamming shut to jolt Nodi out of her reverie, staring into the open safe. He clicked the knob on the radio in the bookshelves by the door. It spluttered to life with the voice of a broadcaster babbling on about tourism and the poor condition of the republic’s economy. Satisfied with the noise he believed would camouflage her complaints, he eyed the delicate cavities behind her knees, the curve of her thighs at the hem of her pale yellow dress. He approached her from behind, wrapping his arm around her waist and belly, his fingers searching, finding her hip and embracing it, pressing her back to him. His other hand fondled her breasts as he nuzzled his nose into her neck.
“¡Don Marcos!” Nodi exclaimed, trying to push his hands away, as the broadcaster took on an urgent tone reporting on the hurricane that unexpectedly curled around the southwestern tip of Puerto Rico, gaining strength in the unusually warm waters of El Canal de la Mona.