K.Esquivel-LWFC

and she decided to leave with her husband
before things went too far.
When she left, the party started to break up.
All the other guests
quickly made their excuses, coming up with
one pretext or another,
throwing heated looks at each other; they too
left.
The newlyweds were secretly delighted since
this left them free to grab
their suitcases and get away as soon as
possible. They needed to get
to the hotel.
Before Tita and Pedro knew it, along with
John and Chencha, they were
the only ones left on the ranch.
Everyone else, including the ranch hands,
was making mad passionate
love, wherever they had happened to end up.
Some, under the bridge
between Piedras Negros and Eagle Pass.
The more conservative, in their
cars, hastily pulled over to the side of the
road. The rest, wherever
they could. Any spot would do: in the river,
on the stairs, under the
washtub, in the fireplace, in the oven of the
stove, under the counter
in the drugstore, in the clothes closet, on a
treetop.
Necessity is the mother of invention, and of
every position.
That day it led to some of the greatest
creativity in the history of
the human race.
For their part, Tita and Pedro were making a
powerful effort to keep
their sexual impulses under control, but they
were so strong that they
went right through their skin and came out in
the form of heat and a
distinctive smell. John noticed and, seeing
that he was the third
wheel, said good-bye and left. It hurt Tita to
see him go off alone.
John should have found someone else when
she refused him, but he never
had.
After John left, Chencha asked permission to
go to her village: it had
been several days since her husband left to
build a house there, and
she had suddenly gotten a strong urge to
visit him.
For the first time in their lives, Tita and Pedro
could make love
freely. For years they had had to take all
sorts of precautions so
that no one would see them, so that no one
would suspect them, so that
Tita would not become pregnant, so that she
wouldn't cry out with
pleasure when they were inside each other.
But all that was over
now.
With no need for words, they took each
other's hands and went into the
dark room. Before entering, Pedro took her
in his arms, slowly opened
the door, and before his eyes the dark room
was completely
transformed.
All the furniture had disappeared. There was
just the brass bed
standing royally in the middle of the room.
The silk sheets and bedspread were white,
like the floral rug that
covered the floor and the 250 candles that lit
up the now