MEXICO CITY. — Hold on tight, my friends, because the gossip I’m bringing you today is hotter than a forgotten iron! Not even the best telenovelas on Televisa have a drama of this magnitude. Get ready to be shocked, because what happened yesterday in an apartment in a middle-class neighborhood of this great metropolis will leave you wide-eyed and speechless. A story of betrayal, tears, a pregnancy, and a love triangle that no one saw coming, worthy of the best “good telenovela” (as the logo, curiously, appears in the photographic evidence of the brawl, says).
It all started like any other Tuesday afternoon/evening. Good old “Beto” (we’ll call the husband that to protect his already battered dignity), a typical office worker who clocks in and lives for the weekend, was returning to his love nest after a marathon day at the office. With his empty lunchbox in his backpack, his tie loosened like a hangman’s noose, and dreaming of some tacos al pastor and watching TV for a while with his beloved wife, “Lupita,” who is expecting their first child.
He walked down the hallway, guided by an instinct that told him something wasn’t right. When he reached the master bedroom, the door was ajar. He pushed the wood and… BAM! The scene he encountered froze his blood and crushed his spirit.
There, in the marital bed, the sanctuary of their love and promises, was his Lupita. But she wasn’t alone, nor was she watching Netflix. She was kneeling on the bed, her prominent seven-month baby bump encased in a white nightgown, sobbing uncontrollably. One hand covered her mouth, stifling a scream of terror or guilt, and her eyes, those eyes Beto loved so much, were bloodshot and filled with panic, fixed on the door where he stood like a pillar of salt.
But the worst part wasn’t seeing his wife crying. The worst part was WHO was with her. Behind Lupita, with a familiarity that made Beto nauseous, stood a man who looked like he’d stepped out of a low-budget sex comedy film or a catalog of retired “bad boys.” A real “puppet,” my friends. An elderly gentleman with thick, snow-white hair and beard, giving him an air of an intellectual “sugar daddy,” reinforced by the small glasses he was wearing.
But don’t let his age fool you, because the guy was more ripped than a prison gate! He was wearing a military green tank top that revealed arms that many twenty-year-olds would envy. And the most striking thing: his left arm was covered, from shoulder to wrist, with tribal tattoos and intricate designs, the kind that scream “I’ve lived fast and dangerous.”
And there it was, the detail that sent Beto’s blood pressure soaring: the tattooed hand of the “old fox” rested, with astonishing confidence, on Lupita’s hip, just below her belly. It wasn’t a violent touch, but neither was it the touch of a friend or a distant uncle. It was a touch of possession, of intimacy.
The image was shocking. The contrast between the office-worker husband, with his pressed shirt and his bewildered expression, and the mature, muscular, and rugged “lover,” was worthy of a tabloid cover. Beto was speechless, gasping like a fish out of water. His brain couldn’t process the information: his pregnant wife, a retired, indigenous-looking stranger in his bed, the tears, the hand on his hip… it was all madness!
“Guadalupe! What… what the hell does this mean?” Beto finally managed to articulate, his voice breaking and his hands trembling uncontrollably.
The tattooed man, far from being frightened or trying to escape through the window like in the jokes, looked up with a chilling calm. He glanced at Beto over the top of his glasses, like someone looking at a child throwing a tantrum, and didn’t move his hand from Lupita’s hip an inch. His expression was unreadable: defiance? pity? boredom?
Lupita, for her part, could only let out a stifled moan. She was trapped between a rock and a hard place, or rather, between her provider husband and the murky past (or present?) that had crept into the house.
Of course, the commotion started immediately. Doña Chona, the downstairs neighbor with the hearing of a consumptive, told us exclusively: “Oh, son! I was watching my soap opera when we heard screams upstairs, like, Holy Virgin! I thought someone was being killed. I could hear the young man, Beto, yelling obscenities and yelling, and the young woman was crying her eyes out. And then a hoarse voice, a big man’s voice, saying things like, ‘Calm down, kid, it’s not what you think,’ and ‘She needs me.’ It was awful! I almost called the police, but I got carried away with the gossip and stayed glued to the door.”
The commotion lasted several minutes. There were slamming doors, hysterical crying, and threats of divorce. Finally, the tattooed man was seen leaving the building, walking with astonishing composure, as if nothing had happened, getting on a Harley-Davidson motorcycle parked outside, and disappearing into the night with the roar of its engine.
Beto stayed in the apartment, a sea of doubt and pain. Who was that man? A lover from the past who had returned? An unwelcome relative who had gotten out of jail? The real father of the baby Lupita was expecting? Speculation was running rampant in the neighborhood. Some said he was an ex-boyfriend of Lupita’s from when she was involved in criminal activity, a local “boss” who had come to collect a debt. Others, more malicious, suggested that Lupita had peculiar tastes and had found herself a rough “sugar daddy” to fulfill certain fantasies while poor Beto worked himself to the bone.
The truth is, the image of that bedroom, with the pregnant woman weeping between her office-worker husband and the tattooed old wolf, has been seared into the minds of all the neighbors. A scene worthy of one of those stories you read on “good novel” apps, where drama, passion, and dark secrets are the order of the day. What will happen to this marriage? Will Beto be able to forgive? Who is the tattooed man, really? We’ll keep you posted, folks, because this is just the beginning!
