He has been awake for an hour, and there is no point pretending he will fall asleep. The air conditioner died after lunch, after a short rattle and a long sigh. He opened the window, and the warm air outside has not moved since. Bochorno, the locals here have been calling it.

He went down to the reception in the afternoon after the unit stopped working. The lift was out of service. A yellow paper sign was taped to the brass plate of the call button, in the handwriting of someone who would rather be doing anything else than taping such signs. He took the stairs.

The man behind the desk was reading a sports newspaper, the back page open to him, the front page facing out across the desk. The front page featured a color photograph of a footballer in shorts at a pre-season training camp in the mountains, with a transfer rumor in red letters underneath. It said the local club was about to sign him on. The local club, he had read in the same paper two days earlier, was not interested in that footballer at all. The man behind the desk did not look up. He cleared his throat. Disculpe. The man finished his paragraph, folded the newspaper, and looked up with no hurry at all.

He told the man about the air conditioner in his slow Spanish. The man listened without interrupting and then said they were aware that the air conditioner was acting up; that Alberto, the handyman, had looked at it, but the problem seemed to be with the entire installation, and Alberto was out of his depth; that they had contacted the company that had installed the unit, and the company had promised to send a team right away. But in August, right away meant something more like sometime in September. The man offered no apology and went back to the newspaper.

He asked if there was anything that could be done. The man at the counter opened the cupboard behind him and took out a small electric table fan, the kind that had been produced sometime in the eighties at best. He accepted it and took it back up the stairs.

He lies naked, his arms and legs splayed in every direction. He kicked the sheet off some time ago. It sits now crumpled at the foot of the bed. The mattress is sticking to him along the backs of his thighs, the small of his back, the soft skin under his shoulder blades. He tried earlier to peel a thigh up and lay it down a few inches over. The new patch was warm in ten seconds.

The table fan rattles anaemically on the bedside table to his left. It pushes hot air onto his body. The fan is doing nothing for him. He keeps it on for the rattle.

He has tried every trick he knows. He wetted a towel and draped it over his chest; the towel was warm in two minutes. He has already taken two showers this evening. He lay still and breathed shallow, as if his body could be fooled into forgetting the heat. His body was not fooled. He turned onto his stomach with one leg outside the sheet.

It is almost two in the morning. Earlier in the evening, the terraces under the arcades had been full, glasses on every table, waiters dashing from one table to the next, people conversing in multiple languages. Now the chairs are stacked, and the plaza is quiet.

He gives up. He sits on the edge of the bed and runs both hands over his face, and the palms come away wet. He stands and walks to the window.

The sandstone arcades of the Plaza Mayor are lit from below by lamps set into the flagstones, the facades golden beneath them, the stone warmer and more orange at this hour than at any other time of day. Above the arches, the medallions of the famous men in their stone roundels: kings, conquistadors, writers, each in low relief between the columns. The plaza is enormous and empty. A man walks a dog along the far colonnade. The dog's nails click on the stone, and the sound carries across the open space. The two of them pass under an arch and disappear.

He leans on the iron railing of the balcony. The iron is warm under his forearms. He is on the second floor; the hotel room is in the west wing, facing east across the plaza, and the apartments on the opposite side are close enough to see into. Wrought-iron balconies, wooden shutters, most of them closed against the heat. A few are open. A blue television glows in one window. A dark shape on a balcony higher up. A plant. Or a chair.

He is about to turn away when a man crosses the window.

A silhouette, backlit by a room behind him. A warm yellow light. A lamp, not the overhead. The man moves from left to right across the window frame, then vanishes. He did not see his face. He did not see his body, not really. Just the shape of a man against the light.

He stays at the railing. The sweat cools on his back.

The man crosses again, right to left. Carrying something. A glass. A cup. He moves at the pace of someone in his own home.

A light turns on to the left of the main window. Brighter, whiter. The bathroom or the kitchen. The light turns off. A pause. The man appears again in the bedroom window, and this time he stops.

The man stands at the window. He is facing the plaza. He is not moving. Broad shoulders, bare arms. He seems to be wearing something white that catches the light from the lamp behind him.

The man stands there for a long time. Or it feels like a long time.

Then the man lifts one hand, runs it slowly through his hair, and then grips the iron railing.

The man goes inside. The yellow light goes off. The apartment sits dark.

He stays at the railing. The sweat has dried on his back, and the air over the plaza is no cooler than the air in the room behind him, but he does not move.

He stands there for a long time, watching the dark windows across the plaza. The man does not come back.

He goes to bed. He lies on his back on the warm mattress with the table fan rattling on the bedside table. The plaza outside is silent. He thinks about the man's shoulders in the lamplight, then about nothing, then about the shoulders again, and the fan rattles and rattles, and at some point he falls asleep.

***

He is at the colloquium until two. He sits in the back row of a too-bright auditorium, his hands flat on his knees, listening to a Belgian historian read a paper on Counter-Reformation pamphleteering he is supposed to have read but has not. The simultaneous translation is being piped through earpieces. His earpiece is in his pocket. He had come down to breakfast with his eyes on the floor of the lobby. He had crossed the plaza without lifting his head once.

Lunch is at the university, inside. The room is cooler than anywhere he has been since the morning shower. He eats half a piece of bread standing up and answers a question from a German woman about the Sunday session. He does not hear his own answers. She drifts to another conversation. He looks at his watch. He looks at it again three minutes later.

By three, the city has emptied. He walks back to the hotel from the university on the shaded side of every street, his shoulder toward the wall. He stops under the colonnade and puts his back against a column. The stone has been in the sun since seven in the morning. He comes off it in half a second. He passes a closed bakery with a sign that says Cerrado por vacaciones. A fountain where a small dog is standing in the water.

The hotel is shuttered against the afternoon; the same man is at reception; over three days, the chin-lift has become almost a nod. He asks about the air conditioner without much hope. Todavía nada, the man says, without looking up from the paper. He stands at the counter a moment longer. ¿Es normal, este calor? The man folds the paper. En agosto siempre hace calor, pero esto no es normal, no. He tells him the nights usually cool down, that by two, three in the morning there is air, there is something. Not this week. Bochorno, he says. He shakes his head once and goes back to the paper. He climbs the stairs.

He lies on the bed in his shirt. The shutters stripe the foot of the bed. He thinks about the paper he should be writing. He loses the thought. He thinks about the man across the plaza. He loses that too. The bars of light move. When he opens his eyes, the bars are on the wall, and it is six.

He drinks two glasses of tap water. His head has been blurring since the walk back. He showers in ice-cold water, and he feels cool for the three minutes it takes the water to dry his skin. He does not bother with a towel. He puts on a clean shirt. By the time the buttons are done, the shirt is dry and warm.

He pours a glass of wine from the bottle on the desk. It has been open since yesterday. The wine is warm. He drinks it anyhow. He stands in the middle of his room with the glass in his hand and faces the foot of the bed. His eyes keep pulling toward the window. He keeps them at the foot of the bed.

Down on the plaza, the city is coming back. Chairs are being unstacked on the terraces, metal legs scraping stone. A child running the wrong way down the colonnade and a mother calling ¡Álvaro, ven aquí! after him. A waiter shouts a drink order across three tables. A moped. In one of the restaurants, a radio set to a pre-season friendly.

He walks to the railing.

The man is on the balcony, in a straight-backed wooden dining chair dragged out through the balcony door. The chair barely fits between the wall and the railing. He is sitting with his feet up on the iron railing, reading. A book on one thigh, a cigarette in his right hand. His hair is dark, combed back from his forehead. The beard is trimmed close. White wife-beater tucked into what looks like linen trousers. Barefoot.

The door to the apartment is open behind him. The room inside is full of the afternoon sun. He can see the edge of a table and a wall, the color of old paper.

He does not move.

He has not moved for some time; when he realizes he has not moved, he is still at the railing, his glass warmer in his hand. His other hand is on the iron, and it's still warm from the day. He can taste salt on his lip. The man has not looked in his direction.

The man turns a page. He runs a hand over the back of his neck and leaves it there for a moment, eyes still on the book.

He thinks about going downstairs. He does not go downstairs.

He drinks the rest of his wine and sets the glass on the railing. The light over the plaza goes from honey to grey. The lamps under the arcades come on all at once.

The man has turned twenty pages, lit a second cigarette, crossed his feet on the railing, and uncrossed them. He has not looked away.

A siren comes into the plaza from the south.

The ambulance comes in through an arch on the south side, the blue light already on, slow on the flagstones. It stops at one of the restaurant terraces. The sandstone goes blue and dark, blue and dark.

The man stops reading. He closes the book on his finger and looks down at the restaurant terrace. He looks down too. Two men in green get out of the back of the ambulance. A chair is on its side on the terrace. A small group of waiters and customers stands in a half-circle around something on the ground. The men in green kneel.

The man gets up from the chair. He walks to the railing, puts both hands on the iron, and leans forward.

The blue light catches the man across the plaza. He sees him, loses him, sees him. The man is watching the restaurant.

The stretcher goes into the ambulance. The doors close.

The ambulance pulls out. The blue light goes with it. The siren fades. The plaza is the plaza again. Someone on the south terrace is laughing. He listens to the siren until it fades, then looks back across the plaza. The man is looking at him.

His hand closes on the iron, and the man is looking at him, and he is looking back.

The corner of the man's mouth moves.

The man turns and walks back through the balcony door. The balcony is empty.

A lamp comes on inside the apartment. A yellow square on the iron floor of the balcony.

The man crosses the ventanal once, left to right. He is pulling the wife-beater off over his head as he goes.

He waits. He does not know how long.

The man crosses the ventanal again, right to left. A towel over one shoulder. Nothing else.

The lamp stays on.

The lamp goes off across the plaza. He does not see it go off.

He goes inside. He lies on his back on the warm mattress with the table fan rattling on the bedside table to his left. He thinks about the corner of the man's mouth. He thinks about the towel over his shoulder. At some point, he falls asleep.

***

The morning at the colloquium features a Dutch scholar on Erasmus, followed by an Italian scholar on Teresa of Ávila. He hears none of it. The German woman finds him during the coffee break and talks at him for several minutes about an idea she had while reading the Italian's paper. He nods at intervals he hopes are correct.

He leaves before lunch.

The streets between the university and the hotel are shuttered and dead. Every shopkeeper has pulled the grate down and gone home for lunch, every apartment dark behind drawn blinds. The only sound comes from the restaurants he passes, where the lunch crowd pours noise out through propped-open doors onto the dead street, sudden and loud and gone again a few meters on. A pharmacy clock blinks forty-one degrees in red digits above a locked door.

The stone of the facades and sidewalks holds the morning heat, making the air above the sidewalks ripple.

He moves from shade to shade, pressing close to buildings, half-running across the open stretches. By the time he reaches the colonnade near the hotel, his shirt is soaked through.

Under the colonnade, a man is shutting a souvenir shop, the metal runners shrieking, and the sound goes through his teeth. He passes it and finds a wine shop two doors down still open. Ya cerramos, says the woman inside as he walks in, untying her apron. He picks a bottle off the shelf without reading the label and leaves the money on the counter.

When he reaches the hotel, he finds that the lobby is completely empty, and no one is at the reception either. He climbs the stairs to the second floor, opens the bottle, and puts it to his mouth. When he stops, a third of the bottle is gone.

He walks to the window and pulls the curtain aside.

The man is already looking at him.

The man is on the balcony in a smaller chair, tilted toward his side of the plaza. His feet are in a plastic bucket of water that must have been cold at some point, a book in his lap, and a sweating bottle of beer beside him.

There is no one else on the balconies. The plaza is empty. The only sound comes from under the colonnades, where the restaurants are still loud with lunch.

He raises his hand. He does not wave. He lowers it.

The man stands, lifts his hand without hurry, and takes two fingers to his lips. He holds them there, drops his hand, and goes back into his apartment.

He stands there watching and drinking and does not stop until he tips the bottle, and nothing comes.

He turns from the window and finds that the room is a blur. He bounces off the desk and the corner of the dresser on his way to the bed. He tries to put the bottle on the bedside table, but misses; it drops to the floor with a thud and rolls to the other side of the room. He lets himself fall on the bed face-first, shoes on.

He is sweating before his breathing slows. The pillow is hot against his face; he turns it around, and the new side is warm within seconds. He rolls onto his back and kicks his shoes off the end of the bed.

The mattress sticks to his thighs and his spine. He turns over. He turns over again. The table fan rattles next to him.

At some point, the shutters are bright slats on the wall, and he is sure he has not slept, but the slats have moved to the left, and his tongue is stuck to the roof of his mouth. He gropes for the water bottle he is sure he left on the bedside table the night before. His hand finds the fan instead and knocks it off the edge. He opens his eyes halfway, unplugs the fan, not bothering to pick it up, and finds the bottle. The water is warm and tastes like plastic. He falls asleep again, and now the man is on the balcony with two fingers on his lips, and the sun is on his shoulders, and he is watching from somewhere that is not this room, some angle that does not exist, and he can see the man's face, every line of it.

He hears a motorbike in the plaza, a long whine that climbs and cuts out. He opens his eyes, not sure whether he heard it or dreamed it. He closes his eyes, and the man is there again, the fingers at his lips, the chair tilted toward him.

When he opens his eyes, the light in the room has changed, and his mouth is dry, and he cannot move his lips without the skin cracking. He sits up, and the room swings, and he puts a hand on the bedside table for it to stop. He makes it to the bathroom. He fills a glass from the tap, drinks it, then fills it again and drinks it, then fills it again and drinks it again. He lets the water run and cups handfuls of it onto the back of his neck, his face, his armpits. He finds an aspirin in his washbag and swallows it with a last glass. He stands with both hands on the edge of the sink, his head hanging, and does not move for a while.

He picks up the phone and calls reception for an Aquarius. Cinco euros con servicio de habitación. Whatever, bring it up. He drinks the bottle standing in the bathroom doorway as soon as the porter hands it to him, and it is gone before the porter reaches the stairs. He gets in the shower and stands in the cold water until his head clears.

He does not use a towel. He pushes the bathroom door open, and the hot air of the bedroom hits his skin, the water already drying on his shoulders and the tops of his arms as he walks through the bedroom to the balcony door.

The man is on the balcony.

The sun is lower now but still on the man's side of the plaza. He is sitting in his chair, in linen trousers and nothing above them, a cigarette between two fingers, and sunglasses. The man turns toward him as he appears at the balcony door, removing his sunglasses.

Eighty meters of empty stone between them. He is standing in the ventanal naked and dripping from the shower, and the man is staring at him.

The man lifts his hand and puts two fingers to his lips, opens his mouth, slides them into the second knuckle, and draws them out wet.

His cock stiffens. He feels the blood fill him, but he cannot stop looking. The man's hand is on the iron railing. The man has leaned forward.

He grips his cock and strokes, slow, hard, staring across the plaza. The man watches him. Bits from the dream keep reappearing in his mind. A mouth on his neck. Teeth on his earlobe. A voice telling him to keep going, not to stop. He strokes faster and faster. Across the plaza, the man has not moved, but he can feel fingers pinching his nipple, teeth on his neck. He is staring across the plaza, and the man is staring back, and his hand is speeding up and tightening violently.

He can see the man's face across the plaza, his bare chest, the line where the trousers begin, the cigarette forgotten between the fingers, the smoke going up in a line that does not waver.

The man brings his right hand to his throat. Slow. His palm presses against the skin under his jaw, his fingers close around the side of his neck. His grip tightens. He does not look away.

He mirrors him. His left hand closes around his own throat, and his fingers find his carotid arteries, and his pulse kicks against his fingertips, and his vision sharpens, narrows to a corridor with the man at the end of it. His right hand speeds up on his cock. The blood in his head thickens, and the wet sound of his fist fills the quiet room. He squeezes harder, both grips, the cock harder. He can feel his face change color. His hand does not move off his throat.

Across the plaza, the man has not moved. He is watching, his hand still on his throat.

He is breathing through a fist, and each breath is shallower than the last, and his cock is slick with precome, and his hand is on his own throat, and he is gasping for air that will not come, and his vision is going.

Under the colonnade, a waiter drops a tray. Glass breaks on stone. ¡Joder! A moment of voices, a laugh, then the plaza is quiet again. He does not take his eyes off the man. The man does not move.

His toes are curling against the tile, and the muscles in his thighs are shaking. His sounds fill the room. He can feel the orgasm building.

He comes, and he is bliss, violent, aching bliss, and his thighs lock, his stomach contracts, and the come shoots from his cock onto the tile. He keeps stroking even harder than before, hunched forward, trying to hold the feeling a second longer, and his knees give, and he catches the doorframe with his shoulder. His vision narrows and returns. He sees cum on his left foot and dots the tiles in front of him. His body shakes sporadically.

He drops his hand from his throat. The air floods back into his lungs in a rush, and he stands there gasping, leaning against the doorframe.

He looks across the plaza.

The man takes two fingers to his lips and goes inside.

***

The colloquium has its last morning. He does not bother going.

He wakes when the sun crosses the bed and lands on his face. It is somewhere after ten. He gets up and walks to the window without putting anything on.

The shutters across the plaza are closed.

In three days, he has not seen them closed. They are the same green wood as every other set on the facade.

He pours a glass from the bottle on the desk. He drinks it standing. He pours another. The shutters do not open. Maybe they are always closed in the morning. Maybe the man has gone to work or to run errands. Maybe he has not even woken up yet. He decides to go down for breakfast.

He dresses, takes the stairs, and crosses the lobby. The woman behind the desk lifts her chin. He asks where to have breakfast. She names three places without looking up from the paper. He thanks her and walks along the colonnade to the last one. The name had an interesting ring to it.

The third place is on the corner where the colonnade meets the side street. He goes in.

He stands at the bar. Un café, por favor. The coffee is fine. The room is doing more for him than the cup. He looks up at the panels of the ceiling, and the colors are too saturated, the lines too even, for the room to be from before the war. He turns on the stool and looks for the green shutters across the plaza. The arches block them. He asks if he can sit outside.

Solo si pide algo para comer, the bartender says.

He asks for a recommendation.

Una tosta de jamón, un zumo de naranja y un carajillo para entonarse.

He has no idea what a carajillo is or what entonarse might mean. He says yes to all of it. The bartender writes nothing down and points him to a table on the terrace.

He sits at a table at the edge of the terrace. He angles the chair toward the apartment opposite. The shutters are still closed. He fixes his eyes on them while his mind goes somewhere else.

Aquí tiene.

The voice startles him. The waiter is already lowering the plate onto the table. He had not seen him cross the terrace.

He eats. The bread is still warm, and the tomato is fresh. He drinks the juice. The carajillo is coffee with brandy in it; he understands what entonarse means.

He pays in cash. He walks back along the colonnade to the hotel.

In the room, the air has not moved. He lies on the bed and tells himself he is not going to sleep.

He sleeps.

He wakes up having no idea of where he is. Not his room. Hotel. Salamanca. The light through the curtain is deep gold. He gets up. He sits up. The sweat between his back and the sheet pulls at his skin. He walks to the window and opens the curtains.

The shutters across the plaza are still closed. He glances at his watch. Quarter past five. Every other day, the windows were open by now. Is he truly gone?

He cannot stand at the window all afternoon. He turns and looks for something to do.

The papers are on the desk where he had piled them the day prior. He picks up the top one. It is the Italian's, on Teresa of Ávila. He reads the abstract. He reads it again. He cannot tell what the paper is about. He puts it back on the pile.

He picks up the paperback on the bedside table instead. A bumbling Spanish detective in a port city he has never been to. He has been reading the series for two summers. The books are not good, but they are a breeze to read and a great pastime; today they are neither. He sets the book back down.

He puts on shoes and goes downstairs, past the man at reception reading about the football transfer market, through the colonnade, and back to the shop where he bought the wine the other day. This time he reads the labels. He picks a Ribera del Duero from a producer he knows.

He steps out, and the smell of ripe peaches reaches him from somewhere to his left.

He turns to see a fruit shop with trays of peaches stacked in the front. Melocotón de viña, the cardboard says in green marker. They are larger than the supermarket peach he is used to, plump and yellow-gold with red flushes. The shopkeeper picks four for him and hands them to him in a paper bag.

Back in the room, he uncorks the wine and puts the peaches on the desk. He has no knife and no plate, and after a second of trying to work out what to do, he picks one up and bites into it, skin and all.

The skin is furred and a little bitter. He had not expected to like it, but he does.

The peach is sweeter than any peach he has eaten in years, and ends with a small acidity that catches the back of his tongue. He drinks the wine to clear it. He eats the second and third peaches at the desk, standing.

Every minute or so, he looks across the plaza. Every minute or so, the shutters are closed.

Half the bottle is gone by the time he finishes the fourth peach.

His hands are sticky from the peaches. So are the corner of his mouth and his chin. He goes for a cold shower.

He runs the shower as cold as the tap will go. He stands under it until his feet start turning purple. He gets out, wraps the towel around his waist, and walks back to the window.

The shutters are open.

He did not see them open. He had been in the bathroom for no more than ten minutes. The shutters are open, and the wicker chair is back on the balcony. The room beyond is dimly lit. The room is too dim to tell whether anyone is inside.

He opens his own balcony door and steps out. The August heat rises off the stone in a wave. He stands there looking across at the open shutters and the empty chair, watching the dim room behind for the smallest movement.

The first knock is so faint he is not sure he heard it. He stays at the railing. There is a second knock, a little firmer. By the third, he begrudgingly turns away from the railing.

He grits his teeth. The hotel man, wanting to know about the bill or some other triviality. He could not have come up at a worse time.

He opens the door.

The man across the plaza is standing in front of him. He has a trimmed beard. His hair is combed back. He is wearing a white polo shirt and dark green trousers. He must be in his late thirties or early forties. He smells faintly of soap, and something else underneath: tobacco, and the smell of old buildings.

"Hola."

A pause. He is still looking at him.

"¿Qué tal?"

He had not expected the casualness. He had not expected the man to use the same opening you would use with a man at the bakery.

"Sorry. I... yes. Hola."

The man considers him. "We can stay in English, if it is easier."

"Yes. Please."

"Are you okay? Or did I come at a bad moment?"

The man's eyes go from his face, down his torso, to the towel, and back up.

"How did you..." he starts, and stops, because the question has too many parts. He gathers himself. "How did you know where I was?"

The man tilts his head toward the plaza. "I live in front. I know which windows are the hotel windows."

"And the door?"

The man shrugs. "The man at reception was reading Marca. I just walked past him and up the stairs. I knocked on the doors of the second floor until you opened one."

A pause.

"Are you going to invite me in?" The man's tone is patient and amused. "Or do you prefer to stay in the corridor?"

He startles. He steps back. "Yes. Sorry. Yes. Do come in, please."

The man steps inside and closes the door behind him. He looks around. The unmade bed. The damp shirt over the back of the chair. The wine is on the desk. The empty paper bag.

"Why are you in Salamanca?"

"There is a colloquium at the university about the counter-reformation. I work on..."

"Good taste," the man says. He has picked up the bottle from the desk. He turns it in his hand and reads the label. "Very good taste."

"It won't be any good now; it has been open since lunch."

The man shrugs. "It is the same. Do you have any glasses I can pour us some into? Unless you want to keep it to yourself, of course," he says with a half-smile.

He almost laughs. "No. No, of course." He goes into the bathroom and takes the two water glasses from beside the sink. He comes out, and the man is sitting on the armchair unlacing his loafers. The socks underneath are thin and white.

"I hope this is okay," he says, holding the glasses up. "They are bathroom glasses. I do not have..."

"More than okay." The second loafer comes off.

He pours half a glass into each and hands the man his glass as he gets up.

"Cheers."

"Salud."

The man holds out his hand. "Pablo."

"Tom."

"Tom," Pablo repeats, the t a little softer.

"How long have you lived there? Across the plaza."

Pablo is quiet for a beat. "It was my grandmother's flat. She passed away this last December."

"I am sorry."

Pablo shakes his head. "Do not be. She was ninety-three. She had a long and full life. She passed away asleep on her bed, just a couple of days after Christmas Eve. It was a good Christmas; everyone came that year: her children, her grandchildren, even her first great-grandchild, no more than a baby, was also there. She was happy. She went to sleep and did not wake up." He is looking down at the glass of wine. "It's the death I want."

Neither of them speaks. The fan rattles.

Pablo lifts his eyes from the glass. "Sorry. I did not mean to bring the mood down."

"Anyhow, there are quite a few of us between children and grandchildren, but we all live in Madrid, so we were going to sell. I asked them to wait for the summer." He turns the glass in his hand. "I am between jobs. En el paro. The last place was not great; the last year was not great. I wanted to be out of Madrid for a while. So I asked the family if I could stay here. The deal is, I clean the flat, get it ready for the sale, and fix the small things that are wrong with it: the kitchen door that does not close, a tile in the bathroom, the shutters that stick. That kind of thing.

"But it's not just that. I am living where she lived. It belongs to her parents, you know. A full life in between those walls.

I see what she saw every morning. Every afternoon. I sit on her chair, cook in her kitchen. I knew her well, but I did not know her like this."

He stops. "I am boring you."

"No. You are not."

Pablo rolls the wine in his glass. "And you? What have you seen of Salamanca?"

"I went to see the cathedrals this morning. I liked them more than I expected to. The old one especially."

"And have you been eating well?"

"Not really. Honestly, it's been so hot that I haven't even been that hungry. I got some excellent peaches yesterday, though."

"Yes, peaches are in season now. But you need to try some specialties before you leave. Try to hit up Mesón de Gonzalo; get the cochinillo and the manitas. In English, cochinillo is suckling pig, I think. Manitas I do not know."

"Pig's trotters."

"Someone did their homework." Pablo half-smiles.

Pablo finishes his wine and sets the glass on the table.

"About yesterday... I wanted to ask you about the thing on the balcony, between us. You were okay with it, right?"

"Yes." A swallow. "More than okay."

Pablo smiles.

"Good," he says. "Then I have a thing to ask you."

"Anything."

Pablo leans back in the armchair.

"My feet are tired." He stretches one out. The skin of his ankle is dark from the sun. "Sit on the floor and give me a massage."

He puts the glass on the desk and gets on his knees. He takes Pablo's left foot in his hands and starts to press his thumbs into the arch through the sock. The cotton is thin and warm. Pablo exhales and settles back into the armchair.

"Take the socks off."

He slides the sock off.

"Now put them in your mouth."

He looks up.

"The socks. In your mouth. Now."

The cotton is warm and damp and salty.

He cannot say he likes the taste, but he cannot ignore that his cock is hard against the towel.

"Good. Now go fetch the wine bottle."

He gets to his feet, the socks still in his mouth, goes to the desk and back with the bottle. He hands it over to Pablo.

Pablo pours himself another glass. "Now do my feet again."

When Pablo finishes the second glass of wine, he reaches down and pulls the socks out of Tom's mouth. He slides his feet off Tom's lap and onto the carpet. "Now kiss my feet. Gently."

He puts his lips against the top of the foot. The skin tastes of leather and the August day. He kisses down the inside of the arch, slowly, and back up the other side.

"Good." Pablo lets the moment sit.

Then he reaches down. Belt. Zip.

Pablo brings his cock out. It is not fully hard yet. It is heavier than soft, fuller, and thicker, but not yet erect, fallen against his thigh on the dark green of the trousers.

He sits up. His mouth is wet. He does not wait for Pablo to say anything. He takes the cock in his hand and into his mouth. The cock fills his mouth as it stiffens. He takes it further. The towel he came out of the bathroom in comes off.

He sets to work. He takes the cock as deep as he can. He brings his hand up, twists, comes back down, the saliva working as a glide. He looks up. Pablo is watching him.

He gags. Saliva runs down his chin onto the dark green of the trousers.

Pablo puts a hand on Tom's head and pushes him back.

"Espera, espera." A short laugh. "You are going to ruin the trousers."

Pablo stands up out of the armchair. He undoes his belt and pushes the trousers and the underwear past his hips. They fall the rest of the way to his ankles.

Before he sits back down, he puts his hand on the side of Tom's face. His thumb finds the corner of Tom's mouth and wipes a string of saliva off it.

The hand stays there longer than it has to.

Then it is gone.

Pablo sits back in the armchair.

"Now you can continue."

Tom puts his mouth back on the cock. The pause has softened it. He licks it along the underside from the bottom to the top, then runs his tongue around the tip until it thickens up again. He takes the cock back into his mouth and goes back down on it, deeper this time, his lips tight along the shaft.

Pablo exhales above him and puts his hand on Tom's hair.

Pablo's grip on Tom's hair changes. It is heavier now. He pulls Tom's mouth down to the base of the cock and holds him there.

Tom's face is against Pablo's lower belly. He can see every vein on the cock from this close. The skin of the groin is smooth (waxed or shaved), but short hairs are coming back through, dark and stubborn against the lighter skin.

Pablo pulls him up by the hair and pushes him back down. He sets a quick pace. Tom's hands are flat on Pablo's thighs.

Tom's eyes start watering. Pablo does not slow down.

Tom gags. He pulls off the cock, and a long line of saliva runs from his lip to his chest. He coughs. His nose is blocked, and he cannot breathe through it.

Pablo lifts his hand off Tom's hair.

"Are you okay?"

Tom nods. He coughs again. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

"Do you want to continue?"

"Yes."

"Good," says Pablo with a smile, and puts his hand back on Tom's hair.

Pablo brings him back down. The pace returns. Tom takes him deeper than before; he tells himself he can take it. He cannot. He gags again.

This time, Pablo does not ask. He keeps his hand on Tom's head and waits for Tom to clear his throat. When Tom can breathe again, Pablo pulls his mouth back.

Pablo's grip eases. Tom comes off the cock and sits back on his heels. His chin and his chest are wet. The towel around his waist has come loose at some point and is in a pile on the carpet next to him.

He looks up at Pablo through the saliva on his eyelashes. He wipes his eyes with the back of his wrist.

Pablo studies him. He smiles. "Get up."

Tom gets up. His legs are stiff from the floor. He goes to bed and lies down on his back, his hips at the very edge of the mattress, his legs hanging out over the side.

Pablo stands and walks the two steps over. He pushes the trousers off his ankles as he goes; one foot, then the other, kicking them aside.

Pablo kneels between Tom's legs. He puts his hand on Tom's cock, slow, considering, and looks at it like it is a thing that is now his.

He starts working it, slowly, running his hand up and down the shaft.

Pablo bends down and bites the inside of Tom's left thigh, hard enough that Tom inhales. Then he kisses the same spot, slowly, three times.

He switches hands on Tom's cock — left hand now, the same slow pace. The right inner thigh next: he bites it. Tom inhales again. He licks and kisses his way down toward Tom's knee, then back up toward the cock.

As his mouth gets close, he moves his hand up to the head and starts rubbing the tip, slow but firm. Tom moans.

Pablo kisses the base of Tom's cock, then up the shaft, close to the tip. He moves the hand and takes Tom's cock in his mouth.

Pablo does not rush. He takes Tom's cock in his mouth, takes it out, drags his tongue up the underside, takes it back in. Tom is breathing through his teeth. He grips the sheet.

Pablo presses down on Tom's hip with his free hand.

He works the cock with his lips and tongue. He hums once around it. Tom feels it through the cock. Tom's hips try to come up off the bed; Pablo holds them down. Tom moans.

Pablo eases off the cock and sits back on his heels. He runs the back of his hand across his mouth.

"Do you have lube?"

Tom finds the lube where he had buried it three layers deep in the suitcase. He undoes a zip. A pouch. A second zip. He hands the bottle to Pablo, who is now standing at the foot of the bed with a condom from his wallet in his other hand.

Pablo smiles at the layered packaging but says nothing.

Pablo pulls his shirt off over his head and drops it on the floor.

His chest is broader than it had seemed when clothed. Dark hair across the breastbone, narrowing to a line down the middle of the belly to the navel. His stomach is not the tableta de chocolate — Tom can see the upper abs and the strong muscles below them moving through a thin layer of fat.

He tears the condom wrapper with his teeth. The forearms are dark brown; the arms above the old sleeve line are a softer golden tan. His clavicles are sharp.

He pours lube into his palm.

Pablo gets up onto the bed between Tom's legs.

He takes Tom's ankles and brings them up to his shoulders. Tom is folded under him, his knees at Pablo's chest.

"Is this okay?"

"Yes."

Pablo lines up. He slides the head of his cock in and pushes a little, then back out, then in again. He does this two or three times before he pushes all the way in.

Tom inhales hard.

Pablo is fully inside him. He starts to fuck him. Slow.

Tom is folded under him. His knees are at his ears. Pablo's forearms are on either side of his shoulders, holding him down. Their faces are close. Pablo's chest hair is against Tom's calves. Pablo's belly is against the back of Tom's thighs. Sweat between them.

Pablo says something in Spanish, low, into Tom's ear. Tom does not catch it.

Tom cannot speak. He is folded under a man he met an hour ago, and the man is inside him, and Tom has nothing to put into words. Pablo pulls out and pushes in. The fan rattles next to his head. The peach stones are on the desk in his peripheral vision. The August heat through the open balcony has not gone anywhere.

Pablo is looking at Tom.

He keeps it slow.

Tom makes a sound he has never made before. Pablo hears it. He smiles.

"You okay?"

"Yes."

"Yes?"

"Yes."

Pablo's pace does not change. He smiles. "Mírame."

Tom fixes his eyes on Pablo's.

Tom does not know how long they have been like this.

Pablo pulls out of him and sits back on his heels. He runs a hand down Tom's stomach.

"Get up. Bend over the desk."

Tom gets out of bed and walks to the desk. He pushes the bathroom glass and the empty paper bag of peaches to the corner. He puts his hands on the wood and looks out the window, waiting.

Pablo comes up behind him. He puts a hand on Tom's lower back and presses down to angle him. He takes his cock in his hand and pushes it back in.

Tom moans into the open window.

Pablo reaches forward over Tom's back and picks up the wine bottle from the desk. He has to stretch to reach it, still inside Tom, and sets the bottle down on the floor next to the desk.

He fucks Tom hard. The desk shifts on the tiles.

Tom is loud. Very loud.

Pablo leans down. His mouth is at Tom's ear. "They can hear you."

Pablo is grinning. He fucks him harder.

Pablo grips Tom's hair and pulls his head back.

His pace slows. He drives the cock all the way in and draws it back almost to the point of leaving and drives it in again. Two, three, four times.

Tom moans on each one.

Pablo does not let go. He pulls Tom upright by the hair, his cock still in him, and walks him out of the room to the entry hall. There is a tall mirror on the wall, head-to-toe.

Pablo turns him to face it and eases out. Tom rests his forehead on the cool glass.

Pablo pushes back in and pulls Tom by the hair. Tom can see his reflection in the mirror — his face red, his mouth open, a line of drool from the corner of his mouth.

Pablo brings his right hand around Tom's waist and takes Tom's cock. He starts stroking, tight and fast.

"Look at me."

Tom raises his eyes. Pablo's are waiting in the glass.

Pablo keeps fucking him, and he keeps stroking the cock. His hand is fast. His hips are slow and deep. Tom is held between them.

Tom's knees almost buckle. Pablo does not slow down.

Tom comes hard, and the cum hits the glass in a long line and runs, and Pablo strokes through it and a stroke past until Tom flinches and Pablo stops.

Tom rests his forehead against the glass. His breath fogs it.

Pablo pulls out slowly. He puts both hands on Tom's shoulders and turns him from the mirror.

Pablo kisses him. Slow, on the mouth. Tom kisses him back.

"Come.”

They walk back to the bed. Pablo lies down first. Tom lies next to him. Their shoulders touch. The fan rattles. Outside, somewhere over the plaza, a church bell starts and goes for eight and stops.

Tom props himself on an elbow. Pablo is on his back, an arm behind his head, looking at the ceiling. "You haven't come."

"No."

"I want you to."

Pablo props himself on an elbow. "I want to use you. However, I like." Tom's mouth goes dry.

"Yes, please."

Pablo turns onto his hands and knees. The balcony is open; the plaza fills the doorway. He does not look at Tom. He reaches back, grips Tom by the hair, and pulls his mouth to his ass. His free hand goes to his cock.

Tom has his mouth on Pablo's ass. There is no soap there anymore. Only sweat, sour, and close. Human.

Tom licks Pablo's asshole. He opens his mouth wider and pushes his tongue inside him, as far as Pablo's grip on his hair lets him. He does not want to disappoint this man. Above him, Pablo strokes his cock in a rhythm Tom cannot see.

Pablo moans above him, full-voiced now. His hand on his cock speeds up. He rocks his hips back against Tom's face, again and again, making Tom follow him with his mouth.

Pablo lets him breathe when Pablo feels like it. Tom takes the air he gets and puts his mouth back. He is not going to be the one who stops. After a stretch, Pablo's hand on his cock stills. He lifts his hips off Tom's face, turns on the bed, and kneels over him.

Pablo puts a hand flat on Tom's chest and pushes him onto his back. He catches both wrists in one hand and presses them to the mattress above Tom's head.

Pablo crawls up his body. He plants his knees under Tom's shoulders and lays his shins along the biceps, and his full weight comes down on Tom's chest. Pablo's cock hangs just above Tom's face.

Tom's neck strains up, mouth open. He gets close. Pablo moves back, just enough. Tom stretches further. Pablo watches him try, then puts a hand on his forehead and presses his head into the pillow.

"Don't move," says Pabloa as he spits into his free hand and takes hold of his cock.

Tom watches Pablo masturbate from below, his fist moving slowly from the base of the shaft all the way to the tip, again and again. He opens his mouth and stretches his neck upwards as much as he can, trying to reach Pablo's cock, but Pablo presses his knees on him and with his free hand he grabs Tom by the hair and pushes him back onto the pillow.

Pablo's strokes shorten and increase in speed, faster and shorter, faster and shorter, and then he comes; it hits Tom across the mouth and the cheek; some of it reaches Tom's left eye. Pablo keeps his hand on Tom's forehead, holding his face down.

Pablo's hand keeps moving, slower, milking the last of it onto Tom's face. When he finishes stroking, he cleans his half-erect cock off his cum by dragging it across Tom's cheek.

Pablo lifts his weight off Tom and lies on his back beside him.

Tom does not move; the cum on his face is starting to dry.

After a while, Pablo says, "Hey, Tom, are you okay?"

"Yeah."

"Was this fine?"

"Yes. More than fine."

Tom gets out of bed and goes to the bathroom on legs that are not wholly his

In the mirror is a man with cum on his face, at eight on an August evening in Salamanca.

He looks at himself in the mirror. He sees a man with a not insignificant amount of cum on his face, on a random evening in August in Salamanca. He smiles and lets out a chuckle.

Tom comes back to bed; Pablo is still lying on his back, one arm folded under his head and looking through the window. He turns his head when Tom comes in.

"You look better.

"I feel better. Lighter, even."

Tom climbs onto the bed and lies on Pablo's side.

"Your Spanish," Pablo says, "is worse than your blowjob."

"My Spanish is pretty bad."

"It's terrible."

They both laugh.

After a bit Pablo turns onto his side and curls around Tom.

Neither of them says anything. The fan rattles. The mattress gives off the day's heat. Outside, the plaza has gone almost dark; a chair scrapes under the colonnade as a waiter calls someone.

Tom listens to Pablo's breathing as it slows down and thinks of these last four days. He thinks about the man's shoulders in the lamplight, and then about nothing, and then about the shoulders again, and the man is here, in bed with him, and the fan rattles and rattles, and at some point he falls asleep.