On any given day in Quito, Ecuador, the sun is apt to rise or fall quite quickly very near the halfway point between noon and midnight. Tuesday, February 9, 1937 was unexceptional in that regard. At 17:42, in the twilight of Ash Wednesday Eve, the city, indeed the whole country, was poised on the brink of solemn austerity as the population prepared for the Lenten Season. But, while their souls were anxious to repent, their hearts and minds remained passionately committed to indulgent hedonism.
Not far from Plaza Mayor, the gloaming darkened outside Cumandá Vásquez' open second floor bedroom's window shutters. In the room's center, she pulled a lightly starched white muslin underdress over her head and then smoothed it down. As the cool cloth slid on her just-bathed body, it clung to her medium-full, wasp-waist, 86-56-86 hourglass figure. She had needed a full hour to scrub away the flour-and-water that parading Carnival players had vigorously and liberally thrown at anyone within their celebratory range, but now she felt fresh again.
With her hands high above her head, the young woman pirouetted like a ballerina on bare feet. Her bodice shifted over her firm upright breasts. She smiled when a zing raced from their pronounced dark nipples straight to her clitoris. Dropping her arms, she pinched the puffed up halo over her heart with her right hand while she pressed her long left middle finger over her slip and hard onto the reactive button between her legs.
"Buenos tardes, El Hombre," Cumandá said softly to the sensitive stub she had first discovered, and then named, one sultry late September night more than seven years earlier after she had to bed following her eleventh birthday party. "Be patient! Maybe we can play much later, but right now I must get ready for the Masked Ball!" She glanced at the clock above the wall calendar hanging over the writing desk in her bedroom, then moved to her wardrobe and retrieved a pair of clean panties from a drawer.
While she stepped into the underwear and pulled them up beneath the cotton sheath, Cumandá continued aloud, "Now, don't pout, El Hombre... Mamá and Papito were very insistent that I be ready by sunset to go to the hotel, and I haven't even brushed my hair, yet!" Distracted by the popped corn sound from a string of exploding firecrackers, she looked outside, over the garden wall at a group of early revelers and three mischievous muchachos who were busily setting off another batch in the street. Grinning, she closed the window, walked to her wardrobe and mulled the dress selection there.
"Mamá likes the pink taffeta with its caped sleeves and discreet neckline," Cumandá thought, as she ran her hands over the candidates. "And Papito had the pastel saffron silk gown made especially for me in Barcelona, for my quinceañera fiesta. But, no one has yet seen this strapless gold lamé, which the dressmaker swears is an exact copy of one the American film star, Libby Holman wears." Decisively pulling the daring new dress from the rod, she declared aloud, "I can be innocent tomorrow!"
Crossing to her antique four-poster canopy bed, Cumandá bent forward at the waist and laid the chosen garment on the the coverlet. Still standing in an 'L' posture, she whisked her muslin back over her head as she muttered, "Of course, I can't also wear this old thing, too... its straps would show!" As she straightened up, she shook her long uncombed jet locks then clamped the muslin slip neatly on the hanger which had held the gown. She did not notice that the hall door behind her was open a crack, or that dark eyes behind the crack were ogling her behind and its dark crack, shadowed within her mother-of-pearl satin tap pants.
Virtually nude, Cumandá stepped casually back to her wardrobe, hung up the slip, then selected a pair of ten denier black silk stockings and a black-and-gold guipure lace garter belt from her dainties drawer. After stepping through the belt and pulling it up nearly to her tummy-button, she sat at her vanity. With her toes pointed to the ajar door, she carefully drew on, then smoothed, the delicate hosiery over her calves and up her thighs. Satisfied that her seams were straight and the silk was unwrinkled, she clipped the spider's web tops into her suspenders' retainers.
Perhaps, if she had been less engrossed in admiring her perfect legs' sheer iridescence, or if the muchachos had been less noisy outside with their fireworks, Cumandá might have heard her unobserved observer inhale a deep breath. Instead, she swiveled on her chair ninety degrees to her right toward the mirror. Thus unaware of the watcher's appreciation, she picked up her tortoiseshell comb and brush to work on arranging her glossy hair. Her bare breasts danced as her fingers flew.
When her coif was perfect, Cumandá rose from her dressing table. No sooner had she tucked herself securely into her evening dress' boned strapless bodice, and buckled her black high-heeled T-bar pumps, than she heard a quiet knock at her door. As she made final adjustments and snugly zipped herself up, she called from across the room, "Si? Quién es?"
Isabella Vásquez swung open the door then entered as she answered, "Tú madre, hija. Listo?" Tall, dark and beautiful, with her thirty-sixth birthday and twenty-first wedding anniversary only nine days away, she seem too young to have borne an eighteen-and-a-half-year-old daughter, let alone a twenty-year-old son as well. Her 91-68-94 figure and her exquisite unlined face were certainly not tattle-tales.
Like her forty-five-year-old husband, Germán, Isabella came from pureblood Castilian stock with family roots in Ecuador which traced back to the earliest conquistadors. Her quinceañera was also the occasion of her pre-arranged wedding. Alejandro was born to her at home that same year on November 30th, and twenty-two months later, in hospital, she delivered Cumandá, the Christmas gift Germán had given her in 1917. As a strong Catholic, who was equally committed to minimizing her maternity, she had afterward carefully abstained from all lovemaking except on the very safest days when she was sure that another conception was impossible.
Now, as she looked at Cumandá so fancily decked out in her risqué gold-and-black themed ball attire, Isabella was momentarily asea. She wondered, "How did my child suddenly grow to womanhood unnoticed?" Recovering quickly, she stepped forward and lightly held her daughter's bare biceps while saying, sincerely, "¡Que sensacional! You are stunning, my dear... but you were naughty to get this dress made in secret! You might have told me." She laughed gently, then added, "Maybe you were afraid I would say 'no', but I can tell you, I more likely would have gotten a similar dress made for myself!"
Cumandá breathed a sigh of relief. She had not realized quite how anxious she was that her mother would disapprove, or even prohibit her wearing such a revealing dress. She smiled into warmly affectionate eyes and assured, "You will, I think, always be more lovely than me, Mamá."
Isabella snorted dismissively, "You may well say that, hija, but be warned: You must take special care. Men, young and old, will be hungry to know more about you as they eat up all that they can see."
"Oh, Mamá," Cumandá said softly. "I'm sure none of the men at the dance will even notice me." She lifted her mother's sapphire-and-diamond pendant from its resting resting place and grinned, "They will be too fascinated by this sparkling enchantment... Y el escote profundo de tu vestido."
Isabella blushed at the compliment, but was secretly proud. Her bias-cut chiffon-and-satin sheath's deep V-neckline and ass-hugging backless drop was ultra-modern. She had hoped she would stir thing up among Quito's conservative high society clique. She looked again at her daughter's displayed femininity and thought, "And now, it seems, I have an ally. Everyone will remember the Vásquez women's impact at this Carnival Ball!"
Just then, Germán and Alejandro poked their heads through the bedroom door. Germán urged, "¡De prisa por favor! The taxi is waiting!" Happily anxious to show off his young wife's good looks and watch the fuddy-duddies at the dance fume with jealousy, he overlooked Cumandá's manifest nubility. Nor did Alejandro comment, but, behind his father's back, he licked his lips thoughtfully and gazed at two temptresses to whom he had never before paid any attention.
At the Hotel Plaza Grande, Germán gave the cabbie a gold condor for the twelve-and-a-half-centavo fare and said magnanimously, "Keep it all. Buy something nice for your wife!"
While Cumandá and Alejandro exited the car oblivious to their father's largesse, Isabella frowned. As the taxi drove off, she said to her husband, "That was a ridiculous overtip. What were you trying to prove by it?"
Germán replied blandly, "Only that I am a man who can afford to be generous to a poor soul who must work for a living on the last night of Carnival. Our first bottle of champagne will cost twice as much." He smiled then side-hugged his beautiful bride as he reminded her, "We are celebrating, tonight. Yes?" Her unfettered breast squashed deliciously soft through his tuxedo jacket and against his ribs.
Isabella cared deeply for Germán and thrilled inside whenever he squeezed her close. Tonight, however, she prayed he would not be too amorous, as her last period had concluded not quite two weeks ago, and she was nothing, if not regular in her cycle. She flushed at the thought that she could be ovulating at any moment over the next few days. "Be cautious, 'Bella," she said to herself. Smiling sweetly at Germán, she answered simply, "Yes. You are right. Tonight we are celebrating."
As the Vásquez family trooped to the hotel, live music from the terrace between the rooftop bars carried to them on the night air. When the Plaza Grande was built six years earlier, no building in the city had more than two stories and its five floors seemed an amazing accomplishment. Germán, of course, had traveled to the capitals of Europe and was less impressed than the more provincial citizenry. He famously once said to the bragging alcalde of Quito, "Of course it had to be at least that tall, else its baroque columns would just look silly."