Chapter 2: El taller de carpintería
The air in the woodshop was thick with the scent of pine resin and old dust. Martín focused on the rasp of sandpaper against oak, the rhythmic scratch-scratch-scratch a feeble attempt to drown out everything else. The memory of yesterday’s hallway—the feel of her heartbeat, the warmth through the cotton—kept inserting itself between him and the grain of the wood.
He heard her before he saw her. The distinct slap of her sneakers on the concrete floor, a step too quick, too purposeful. He didn’t look up.
A stool screeched next to him. The leg of her jeans brushed against his. “Qué suerte,” Marta said, dumping her bag. “Sitio libre junto al artesano.”
Martín kept sanding. A small cloud of dust lifted towards his face. “Todos los sitios están libres, Marta.”
“Pero este está al lado tuyo.” She settled in, resting her chin in her hand, watching him. He could feel her gaze like a physical weight on the side of his face. The teacher droned on at the front about mortise and tenon joints. No one was listening.
After a few minutes of silence—a silence Marta never could abide—she shifted. “Eso lo estás haciendo fatal, tío. Deja.”
“Déjame en paz.”
“No.” Her hand shot out, not to touch him, but to the toolbox between them. “Necesitas la lija de grano fino. Está aquí.”
She leaned over. Not a little. She laid her torso fully across the workbench, reaching for the far side of the metal box. Her thin sweater, a deep V-neck, gaped open. From his peripheral vision, it was an unavoidable tunnel of shadow and soft, pale skin. The edge of the workbench pressed into her, flattening the curve of her breasts against the scarred wood. She made a show of rummaging, a slight, deliberate wiggle that made the wood creak.
She was taking too long. He stopped sanding, his knuckles white on the block.
“Aquí está,” she announced softly, pulling out a strip of fine-grit paper. Instead of sitting back, she stayed leaning, propped on her elbows now, her face suddenly close to his. The smell of her shampoo cut through the sawdust. “¿Te ayudo con eso? Se me da bien manejar cosas duras.”
The double meaning hung in the air, thicker than the dust. His jaw tightened. Before he could form a retort, she pushed off the bench as if to sit back. It was a calculated move. The full, soft side of her breast brushed firmly along his bicep, from elbow to shoulder, a slow, friction-filled sweep through two layers of fabric.
He jerked away. The stool legs yelped against the floor.
“Tranquilo,” she murmured, a smirk playing on her lips. She finally sat back, but then immediately leaned in again, this time toward his pocket. “Oye, ¿me prestas ese lápiz?”
“No lo tengo.”
“Sí lo tienes, lo vi.” Her hand dove into the pocket of his jeans. Her fingers, nimble and warm, groped past the pencil, brushing against his thigh. He froze, a statue of panic and outrage. She didn’t retrieve it. She let her hand linger, her forearm now resting snug against his hip, the back of her hand a bold, intimate pressure. Her face was tilted up to his, her expression one of pure, fake innocence.
“Marta,” he hissed, the word strained.
“¿Sí?” Her fingers twitched inside his pocket.
“Saca. La. Mano.”
She did, slowly, extracting the pencil with a theatrical flourish. “Gracias.” She twirled it. “No hace falta ponerse así. Solo era un lápiz.”
He couldn’t speak. A hot, confused anger simmered in his gut, mingled with a humiliation that was all the more intense because a part of him had registered the warmth, the shape of her. He hated that part of himself. He hated her for exposing it.
The rest of the hour passed in a tense, silent standoff. He sanded the wood until it was dangerously thin. She pretended to work on a meaningless block, humming softly. When the bell rang, he was the first to move, shoving his things into his bag.
She was quicker. She stepped into his path as he turned to leave. She didn’t say anything. She just reached out and, with a single finger, brushed a fine layer of sawdust from the front of his shirt. The touch was light, proprietary. Her finger traced from his collarbone down to his sternum.
“Te has manchado,” she said, her voice low. Her eyes held his, challenging, enjoying the flinch he couldn’t suppress. Then she turned and walked out, leaving him standing there in the noisy, emptying workshop, the ghost of her touch burning a trail down his chest, a brand he couldn’t scrub off with any sandpaper.