My name is Theo. Well, I was born Teodoro Juarez, but everyone calls me Theo. I'm a bricklayer.
And I'm married. Recently married, in fact. I married Sofia three years ago, long enough to get comfortable with married life, but we're still in the honeymoon phase. We have a son. He's not quite two. I keep telling myself this: I have a son and a wife and I love them both.
I remind myself all the time because I recently betrayed her and it's really bothering me. The woman I'm seeing is toying with me. She's a dangerous goddamn whore. She gets under my skin in ways that - oh! I can't put it to words. I never thought a woman could turn me inside-out like she does.
I don't love her. But she's intoxicating, like some motherfucking bad-ass drug. And I met her in church of all places! Yeah.
I'm from simple country folk. A Mexican cowboy in Texas, really more of a Tejano. I was raised in a protestant, Spanish-speaking church in Houston. That's where I learned my trade.
But the company I used to work for had a lot of work in Austin and I really liked the town. And that's where I met my wife. Crazy me, I asked Sofia to marry me. I quit my job and started my own business. Yep, independent contractor. But I needed contacts for business and that was another advantage to marrying Sofia.
I married into her church, another protestant, Spanish-language church. This one was in the suburbs south of Austin.
When we married, I was 26 and Sofia was 22. I'll let you do the math.
From the start, I noticed a woman there. She was so beautiful, but mature. I would have guessed in her mid-30s. I learned later that she was 33 yrs old at the time of our first meeting. She had two young daughters.
I didn't know her name, but I'm like any guy in that I like to look at a pretty woman. And that she was, and is. And not in a slutty way, at least not in public. But in private, oh my god.
She has a beautiful face, a strong jawed, broad-nosed, noble face with high round cheekbones and a symmetrical forehead. Great symmetry throughout the face. You can see she comes from Mexican-Native Indian stock. Thick, wavy, long black hair.
Tall for a Mexican woman, about 5 feet 8 inches. I would've estimated her weight at 175 pounds. Curvy and athletic figure. Muscle-toned arms and legs. Hairy arms, and I would imagine her shaving her legs. I guess that's how she made my cock twinge the first time.
Measurements of 42D-32-44. Dark brown eyes and clean, fine-line eyebrows. Heavy eyeshadow with colors that always matched the dress she wore. And she wore dresses and skirts, never saw her in slacks.
High-heels and nylon stockings with rose petal embroidered seams up the back of her sturdy legs. Her dresses were always knee-length but well cut. They hugged her thighs and hips.
She wore sleeveless blouses and buttoned up the front and she always showed cleavage with a gold cross pendant resting - when it wasn't jiggling - on her chest.
This woman had a gait to her walk that was mesmerizing. She strided by as if she were gliding. There was a steady, purposeful balance to her walk. Confident, like a big cat. Predatory once you got caught in her eyes. She seemed to always be taking the measure of people around her - men, women.
She had no female friends from what I could tell. She came in every Sunday and sat with her two young daughters. No man sat with her and the women didn't talk to her. But she was involved
in church.
During the music program, she would go up with the band and strum the electric bass guitar. The other musicians were young men, boys really, all of them in their late teens or very early twenties. They seemed to look up to her and whenever I happened to see them rehearse there was an easy-going banter between them.
Friendly, but innocent.
I was curious about her, but not enough to ask my new wife or anyone else. I watched her from afar.
But there was something odd about the dynamic in that church. Some of the men leered at her, I thought, a bit too obviously. And the woman always
acted like she wasn't there. Looking away from her, keeping their children away from her daughters. Sometimes I'd even hear disapproving whispers.
I chalked it up to jealousy - she was younger and beautiful. They were fat, or old, or old and fat, prudish, long past their prime, and poorly dressed in clothes that exaggerated the covering of the body to the point of baggy and altogether sexless.
The woman alone had breasts that were unbearably heavy with delicious chocolate milky sweetness and her ruby painted lips were full of tantalizing promise. She had an endearing way of pouting with her lips as if she were trying to smirk and kiss at the same time.
There were other women in church that were pretty, but they were plain next to her. Even my sweet little Sofia.
This church is a working man's church. Most of the men are in the construction trades. Concrete formers, tilers, roofers, carpet layers, mechanics, air condition repairmen, sheet metal fabricators, landscapers, a couple of truckers and some farm hands.
They're simple men who for the most part are sincerely trying to be men of good character and do right by their families.
I made friend with a carpet layer. Manuel Palacios. He was my age and also recently married. We'd go bowling together and his family had been in this area for years.
He always struck me as a nice guy, so it came as a shock to me one day when we were sitting next to each other in the social hall, breaking bread as they say - having a communal lunch after morning service.
The beautiful woman walked by and my curiosity got to me. I nudged Manuel and asked him, 'What's her name?'
He looked at me quizzically, like he was looking at me for the first time.
"What?" I asked. And feeling defensive, adding, "It's just a question."
He looked around us, as if to make sure no one was listening, the leaned into me and whispered, "Her name is Isabel Manchaca, and if you know what's good for you, you'll stay the fuck away from her."
My eyebrows did a bounce off his warning and I said, "Hey, sorry. I just see her here all the time and I don't know anything about her. Everyone seems to steer clear of her. What's the deal?"
"She's a whore man, she's a fucking whore."
"What? Come on! Really, why you talking like that?" I was stunned at his harshness. It was such an un-Christian remark. "How do you know what she is?"
He kept whispering, "Because my dad bangs her, and so do a lot of other men around here. She's bad news man. She's like the dirty secret in our
church family. Look, it's your business what you do, but you've got a really sweet wife. Don't mess it up, stay away from the fucking whore."
"Okay, yea. Hey, if you say she's a ... that way, good enough for me." And I let it go. But that piece of news just opened up a lot of questions.
Like, if she's really that bad, why is she in church? And why do the women put up with her? And is it really true that a lot of the men here bang her? Wow! Such a wicked, immoral undercurrent of that in a place like this?
Isabel - now I had a name - had a slight pot belly. It was not enough to make her look fat. It was a motherly, mature stomach. Not flat, but full, the stomach of a woman who had born children and had recovered enough of her form to make her look voluptuous.
