My Big, Hard New Medicine novel · Chapter 1 of 12
Chapter 1: Everyone Will Hear
I'd been burning for three days, and by that afternoon I didn't have a single pill left.
I call it the fever.
My doctor calls it a high cycle, and she explains it with very nice words and a pity smile.
Three or four times a year, my body lights up and won't turn off.
It doesn't matter if I'm at the office, at the grocery store, or in front of the TV in a pair of bear-print pajamas.
All it takes is a deep voice, or a wrinkled shirt, and I'm already wet with my thighs pressed together.
I'd gone two years without a bad flare-up, thanks to the pills.
And I was supposed to refill the prescription on Monday, right after the company retreat.
It was the worst possible time to run out.
After the September holidays, Transportes Sierra Norte loaded all of us onto a bus headed for the hot springs of San Isidro, in the Sierra Gorda.
It was my first retreat with the office.
Brenda had dragged me along, and I'd said yes because I needed to sleep somewhere that wasn't my own bed.
At five in the evening, the organizer grabbed the microphone in the dining hall.
"Folks, bad news."
A landslide had closed the only road back.
Last week's rains had washed out the hillside, and the machinery wouldn't arrive until Sunday.
We were all staying the night, in the wooden cabins.
A chorus of complaints and laughter went up, and someone shouted, "Let the mezcal flow!"
I froze, my glass of water halfway to my mouth.
A whole night.
With the office.
With wooden walls so thin, according to Brenda, you could hear someone change positions.
I left the dining hall without a word.
I crossed the stone path under the pines, through the clouds of steam rising from the pools.
I wanted water, but not from the pool.
I wanted cold, and solitude, and ten minutes to turn myself off however I could.
I found the steam room door at the back of the bathhouse.
It was empty, with stone benches and a hot mist that clung to your skin.
I closed the wooden door, though I didn't throw the latch.
That was my mistake.
I took off my towel and sat on the darkest bench, my back against the damp wall.
I closed my eyes.
I slid my hand between my thighs, and the relief was so sudden that a moan escaped me.
I was so wet it took me a second to realize it wasn't just the steam.
I touched myself slowly, two fingers on my clit, my head thrown back.
I thought of a deep voice.
I thought of big hands.
I thought of no one in particular, and of everyone.
I was about to come when I heard the door open.
I opened my eyes.
A blond silhouette was outlined against the hallway light.
Esteban Lugo, the account executive who'd been presenting my analyses as his own for two years, stood in the doorway.
With a towel over his shoulder and a toothpaste-commercial smile.
"Oops," he said. "Don't stop on my account."
I snapped my legs shut and covered myself with the towel.
"Get out of here."
"I'm going, I'm going." He raised his hands, laughing. "How interesting, Dalia. Everyone thinks you're the little saint of accounting."
"Don't say anything."
"Me? I'm a vault."
He winked, and closed the door.
I sat there in the dark, trembling with shame and with something much dirtier.
Because I was still burning.
More than before.
I left the steam room with the towel knotted around my chest and my hair plastered to my forehead.
No one was in the hallway.
I ran toward the cabins, not knowing where I was going.
At the end of the path, on the porch of the last cabin, sat Gael Montemayor, the operations manager, with a book on his lap.
He was the only one who hadn't made a sound in the dining hall.
Thirty-six years old, thin-rimmed glasses, broad shoulders, and enormous hands that turned the pages with an infuriating calm.
He looked up when he heard me approach.
His gaze traveled over my towel, my wet hair, and my face.
He closed the book with a finger inside to mark the page.
"Dalia," he said. "Are you okay?"
I should have said yes.
But I couldn't stop trembling, and Esteban knew, and tomorrow everyone would know.
"No," I said.
I stopped in front of him, my fists clenched.
"I need help, Gael. And no one can find out."
He stood up slowly, and suddenly his whole shadow covered me.
He took my wrist with two fingers, like a doctor.
His fingertips found my pulse and stayed there.
"You're burning," he murmured.
Then he placed his open palm on my stomach, over the towel, and I felt it all the way to my knees.
"What kind of help?"
"The kind you know."
His dark eyes stopped on my mouth.
He opened the door to his cabin with his other hand.
"Come in," he said. "Lock the door. And take off the towel."
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