Summary

The scene continues with David and Consuela in bed, she on top, him staring at her breasts, which he calls “the most beautiful breasts I’ve ever seen” (29). David details their sexual misadventures, how she is perhaps too eager and untrained, how David needs to slow her down, tell her what he wants. One night, David tries his own version of oral sex, and Consuela responds by (after he finishes) biting the air, as if to suggest “That’s what I could have done, that’s what I wanted to do, and that’s what I didn’t do” (31).

David figures she is drawn to his refinement because it represents a link to her high-society Cuban past, a way to show her own cultural sophistication; however, in that moment, when a certain sexual line of comfort had been crossed, her true self came...