The Little Treasure of Youth novel · Chapter 1 of 12
Chapter 1: The Padlock
"Uncle, please, I'm begging you... help me get this thing off."
It was ten o'clock on a Thursday night, and I was in the garage sanding a table leg when the doorbell rang.
I opened the door with my hands full of sawdust.
At the door stood Fiorella, my daughter's best friend since she was twelve.
Her black hair was a mess and her cheeks were red, and she was looking at me like she was about to ask me for a kidney.
"Fiorella. What happened? Is Ingrid okay?"
"Ingrid's in Arequipa, Uncle. It's about me."
She crossed her arms over her chest and looked both ways down the street.
"Can I come in?"
She came in before I could answer.
She dropped her bag on the couch and stood in the middle of the living room, twisting her fingers.
She was wearing a yellow cotton dress that came to mid-thigh.
Fiorella was twenty-two, and I'd watched her grow up between my kitchen and my daughter's room.
In a very low voice, she asked:
"Uncle, do you know how to use bolt cutters?"
"It's my workshop. Of course I do."
"Then I need you to do me a favor and not ask any questions."
"That depends on the favor."
She took a breath.
She closed her eyes.
And she lifted her dress up to her waist.
I thought I was having a heart attack.
Around her hips was a band of polished steel, as wide as a hand.
A fine mesh ran down between her legs and came up the back.
A chastity belt.
One of the old ones, the museum kind, with a bronze padlock the size of a walnut hanging by her left hip.
"What is that?" I said, my voice hoarse.
"A bet."
"What bet?"
"With my friends, on a video call. I got too cocky, Uncle."
"I said I could wear it for seven days. If I lasted, they'd pay me five thousand soles for my tuition."
"Today's the fourth day."
"And the key?"
"The one who won the bet has it. She sent the key by courier to Arequipa so we couldn't cheat."
She dropped her face, red all the way to her ears.
"And it rubs me. It hurts. I can't even shower properly."
"Last night Tatiana tried with scissors and kitchen tongs, and nothing."
"At the hardware store they said you need a man with strength and tools."
"Fiorella..."
"Please. You're the only man I trust."
There was a long silence, the kind where you can hear the refrigerator.
I was forty-seven years old, had a workshop in the garage, and a daughter a thousand kilometers away.
And I had a twenty-two-year-old girl, practically a niece, standing in my living room with her dress lifted.
And the only thing I thought was: don't you move now, Lorenzo.
"Come to the workshop," I said.
We went down the three steps to the garage.
I turned on the light.
The benches, the saws, the nails in jars, the smell of varnish and cut wood.
I moved a stack of boards aside and pointed to the workbench.
"Sit there, sideways."
She sat down, knees together and the dress gathered in her lap.
I grabbed the small bolt cutters and a cold chisel.
I knelt in front of her.
This was wrong, and I knew it.
But my eyes were level with her hips and her warm skin was ten centimeters from my hands.
"I'm going to have to hold the belt," I said. "So I don't cut you."
"Okay."
"If it hurts, tell me."
"Yes, Uncle."
I rested my left hand on the steel.
The metal was warm from her skin.
With my fingers I felt the pulse of her hip.
I put the edge of the bolt cutters into the loop of the padlock and squeezed.
Nothing.
I tried the cold chisel and a small hammer.
Fiorella held her breath with every strike.
Her hands were gripping the edge of the bench, and her knees started to fall open on their own, a centimeter, two.
I tried not to look.
I looked.
Between the steel and her pale skin, a red line marked where the mesh had chafed her.
"It's irritated," I murmured.
"I know."
"I'll be careful."
"I trust you."
I slid a finger under the edge of the band to lift it away from her skin.
Her belly trembled.
She let out a low sound, barely a sigh, and I knew it wasn't from pain.
"Fiorella."
"Don't stop."
"Don't play..."
"I'm not playing anything, Uncle."
She looked me in the eyes.
They were huge, dark, bright.
"Don't stop," she repeated.
I gave one last sharp blow, and the bronze padlock snapped with a crack.
The band loosened.
I fell back onto my heels, breathing hard.
With both hands, I pulled the mesh.
It slid down her thighs and fell to the floor with a metallic clatter.
She sat on my workbench, her dress bunched at her waist, and naked underneath.
A red line ran down from her hip bone.
I should have stood up.
I should have given her a towel, told her to get dressed.
I didn't move.
"Thank you," she whispered.
"You're welcome."
"Can I ask you for something else?"
I couldn't speak.
She got off the bench, barefoot, and stood in front of me.
She took my face in both hands.
She smelled like almond soap.
"I'm twenty-two, Uncle," she said, very softly. "And since Ingrid's nineteenth birthday party, three years ago, I've wondered how you kiss."
And she kissed me.
It was a short, clumsy kiss, with closed lips, that ran through my whole body.
When she pulled away, she looked at me, scared, waiting.
I took her by the nape and kissed her back, mouth open, with all the years of silence.
She let out a moan and hung onto my neck.
The doorbell rang, long and insistent.
We pulled apart abruptly.
"It's Ingrid," she whispered, pale.
"Ingrid is in Arequipa."
The doorbell rang again, and a woman's voice shouted from the street:
"Fiorella! I know you're in there!"
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