Ela's Performance: A Romantic Wife-Watching Novel

by Arnica Butler

  I may have told myself that's what I wanted to do.

  But it isn't what I did.

  Not at first.

  It's hard to know, now, if what happened was merely opportunistic, or if it is what I had planned all along. There's a great need for distinction between premeditation and opportunism in the law, and so it's a thing I ponder when I look back on what happened in Copenhagen. Did I plan to do what I did, all along? Or was it just chance?

  Like most things, I suspect it was a combination of both.

  I arrived on an early-morning flight. I was bleary-eyed and probably still drunk. It had been very easy to try and keep a lid on my agitation by slamming drink after drink on the plane.

  I took a train from the airport downtown, after stashing my luggage. The place was dreadful, dreary. Gray skies barely mustered light when the sun came up, and the harbor looked like a slick of oil.

  I arrived at her apartment after giving up on figuring out the public transportation system in my semi-drunk state, and hailing a cab. The building was a large apartment complex, boring and typical of Europe. Bland stucco covered a large rectangle with hundreds of big, rectangular eyes and no window coverings.

  I realized, as I stood in front of the building, that I had no plan. No key, no idea if Ela would even be there.

  The door to the building was, as most things are in Denmark, wide open. I found the apartment and stood in front of the door, my hand in the air, ready to knock.

  But something stopped me.

  I backed away from the door.

  Here is where I realized: I wasn’t just here to see Ela. If I had been, I would have knocked on the door. But I didn't.

  I stepped backward, and then I turned quickly on the stairs, nearly running by the time I got to the bottom of them, in case she came to the door and opened it.

  Outside, I squinted into the gray but strangely bright day. I started formulating my plan. Where I could hide. Where I could keep watch on Ela's apartment.

  My stomach snarled at me.

  I struggled to remember her schedule. She had class at ten in the morning. I had plenty of time to look for something to eat, and be back here, waiting, sitting on a bench in the small park across the street.

  I even bought some bread, and tore it into pieces to feed the pigeons. It was a great disguise, because that's the last thing I would have done in real life. I hate pigeons.

  And so I ate a weird pastry from a convenience store a block away, drank a weak and tasteless coffee from a coffee shop next door, and sat, wrapped in my trench coat and shivering, feeding pigeons in the park. My eyes on the door of Ela's apartment. My next move completely unknown. Would I stalk my own girlfriend all day? And why? To find out what? What I already knew?

  While I sat on the bench I imagined the pain I would feel if she emerged with her Danish soccer player. If they came out and her pulled her close to him with his big, athletic hand wrapped around her slender neck, his tongue filling her mouth and devouring her lips. If he whispered something in her ear, something about her hot cunt and how it was filled with his seed...

  While I thought these thoughts, my cock got harder and harder, and it was difficult to explain, even to myself, why that was so. Why I wanted to imagine it over and over, and why my mind went off to a fantasy where I crossed the street after the two of them parted ways, and grabbed Ela in a passionate embrace, so that I could slide my hand between her jeans and her skin and find the warm, wet evidence of her full betrayal, dripping between her thighs.

  But Ela emerged alone, about an hour later, and my heart leaped in my chest. It was a leap of relief and disappointment, and the joy of seeing her. Her hair was loose, already longer, hanging from a red wool cap and blowing in the wind. She had her violin case strung over one shoulder. Her cheeks were pink, her lips were red like her cap, and she wore a tight-fitting, short jacket that showed off her dancer-like figure. She skipped down the steps.

  I followed her.

  She walked all the way to school, quite a long way. She never turned around. Sometimes I had a scare, when she stopped to pet a dog, or to look at some flowers, or to buy a croissant. It burned me that she was so chipper, so content, so far away from me.

  When she disappeared into the conservatory, I stood outside, my hands in the pockets of my trench coat. I needed a plan.

  And so I actually followed her all day. From the conservatory to another building, where she stayed for a very long time. She emerged with several people, and they stood on the steps a while, chatting.

  And then, one by one, they dribbled away, hands raised in goodbyes. I was about a hundred yards away on the veranda of another building.

  Then it was just Ela, her hands in her pockets, her foot against a banister on the steps. She tossed her hair flirtatiously.

  Ela, and a tall, young man, with dirty-blonde hair and a square jaw. An athletic build underneath a thin Nordic jacket. They were smiling at each other, moving closer to each other. Teasing each other.

  And then Ela reached out and took his hand. He jerked her close to him, and I heard her peal of laughter all the way across the courtyard.

  It cut through me like a knife.

  He put his hand up to her face, pushing strands of her brown hair from her eyes. His mouth was moving.

  Saying the things men say when they want a pretty girl like Ela to go home with them, and open her legs up so he can get inside of her sweet flesh.

  He grabbed her, and dipped her, holding her body easily with one strong arm as he pushed more hair from her face. His fingers ran over her skin, over her cheekbones and her lips.

  And then he picked her up, while she screamed and laughed. Picked her up with incredible ease, and threw her over his shoulder.

  Ela made a show of kicking, but not for real. She squealed delightfully, and across the courtyard her voice screamed, “Christian!”

  Cris-ti-ahn.

  I closed my eyes. The sensation that went through me was so intense I couldn't tell what it was, like water that is either superheated or supercooled, and you don't know which it is because it burns either way.

  He set her down about three hundred yards later, and they held hands and bounced against each other, all the way to Ela's apartment.

  What I did next is the part that is most easily defined as opportunistic. There is no way I could have planned for it, you see. For all of it to fall in line the way it did.

  I skipped up the steps behind them, and paused at the bottom of the building while they flirted, talked about someone in Ela's classes, laughed, kissed, and Ela fumbled with the keys.

  And then, with no idea what would await me inside the apartment, I ran up the steps as the door began to swing closed.

  Anything could have happened here. It could have been an open-concept floor plan, and I might have stepped right into a big room where there was no place to hide. How would I have explained myself then, I often wonder?

  I could have walked right into them. Or Ela could have noticed that the door did not click shut. She could have seen my fingers around the frame. Christian could have seen the same thing and smashed my hand in.

  The apartment could have lacked all of the labyrinthine halls that were actually inside of it. It could have had squeaky floors.

  All of these things could have happened, but none of them did. I placed my hand on the door and let it close almost completely, but not fully. I listened as their voices lowered, and disappeared into the apartment. I opened the door and found myself in a narrow hallway, with Ela's stuff, including a bicycle and several violin cases, crowding the floor.

  There was a closet at the end of the hallway, and several rooms leading off the hall. One was a kitchen, I could tell, and the other a bathroom, and then there appeared to be two rooms. My mind raced. They were in one of the two rooms, and they were laughing and whispering.

  My eyes scanned my options, which weren't many. In the hallway I had no place to hide. The bathroom was almost surely a very smal
l, continental affair with the shower hanging next to the toilet and the whole place serving as a shower stall.

  In the next room, things were getting heated, and I wanted to see them. I wanted desperately to see what for now I could only hear: their lips meeting and smacking as they pulled apart and met again. The rustling of clothing being removed, of hands on smooth, dry skin that would soon become sticky and sweaty.

  Fuck.

  I moved a few steps forward. My heart was pounding, because if anyone came out of that room – say Ela, too pee, as she often did – then I would just be a crazed man, in the middle of a hallway, and there was nothing, nothing at all I could possibly say to cover it up. I was standing there like burglar, stiff like a guilty thief. With an erection that was pressing my trousers out like a circus tent.

  Their bodies seemed to come closer to the hall. In both a blind panic and very tunnel-vision moment, I stepped in two gigantic, careful steps, toward the closet, turned the handle, and opened it. Praying silently that it didn't simply end in shelves.

  The scent of Ela's clothes wafted past my nose, and they swung slightly in front of me on their hangers. The bodies were coming closer to the door behind me, closer to the hall. “I have to pee,” I heard Ela say.

  I dove into the clothing and pulled the door shut behind me with my hand behind my back.

  For a moment I was suffocating on the clothes, and my arm began to ache immediately from the way it was twisted behind me, but I had to hold it to keep my balance and to keep the door closed. I waited with my breath still in my chest and pain shooting down my arm, trying to assess where I was and whether there was a wall.

  But after a moment it became clear that in front of me, between the many shirts and jackets of Ela's, there was a cool blue light. I blinked.

  A curtain.

  My arm screamed at me. I used my right arm to feel ahead of me, seeking a wall to support myself so I could let the handle slowly twist back into place. I heard Ela through the wall to my right, sitting on the toilet, a trickle of pee hitting the bowl.

  A pang of jealousy hit me again. She always did this before having sex with me, too.

  My right hand found a wall and I pushed on it gingerly, fearing it would be a false wall or part of a closet organizer. But no, it was solid. With just enough lateral pressure I could relieve the support that was hanging on the handle entirely. I moved slowly, pain racking every moved, my hand going numb behind me, my right arm getting sore from supporting myself. Until, finally, I was freed from the handle behind me. I sat down on my knees.

  One below the shirts, I could see through to the other side of the closet. It ended with a curtain, and suddenly I both understood and could not believe my good fortune. The curtain led to another room, where maybe I could sneak around and see them.

  But then, suddenly, I heard the voice of Christian. So close it almost shocked me.

  “Come here.”

  His voice had lost all of the cheerful, flirtatious pretense it had until that moment. No it was commanding, and assured. The kind of voice that people only have when they know that they will get what they want. That they will say things like come here and people will.

  A small explosion took place inside of me, and cold, delicious fear and lust spread out through me and slammed into my balls.

  I was right here.

  I was going to get to see them, together.

  My heart seemed to travel around my body, feeling like a block of ice. My cock was getting hard, I could feel that. And with it, then, had to come the recognition that I wanted to see this. The fact that I stayed on the floor, trying to slow my breath and not give myself away was proof of my desire. My skin tingled with excitement, there in the semi-darkness, only a curtain between me and the two people who had gone silent and were now perhaps touching each other, or looking at each other in those moments just before animal lust takes over.

  My girlfriend, sweet Ela, and this Danish hunk.

  I shivered and reached toward the curtain.

  How could I move it without it being noticed? I was afraid to shift my weight, afraid I might fall or knock over one of the many precariously perched items Ela had crammed into the closet. The closet smelled like her: her perfume, her clothes, all of her most plain and innocent smells.

  I leaned forward and used my fingertips to move the curtain just a hair.

  Right before me, bare now, but unmistakable, was Ela's calf.

  Only a flash of it, as she moved toward wherever she had been beckoned. I could hear them breathing, I heard the dull thump of clothing falling to the floor.

  I heard Ela murmur, and I imagined her taking in the soccer player's full physique, her eyes lighting up in pleasure.

  Brazenly, I pulled on the curtain to crane my neck and get a better view.

  It was fine. No one in the room was paying any more attention to curtains or windows or anything but each other.

  The Dane was naked, standing in front of Ela, who had stripped to just her underwear. He had a golden tan that ended at his waist and began again at his knees, and the wiry, muscled thinness of an athlete who runs. His arms were sculpted like his thighs. And between his legs, his cock – uncircumcised, fat, and long, was pointing directly at Ela.

  She reached out and ran her hand, her palm open, over the smooth knob at the end, pushed out from his foreskin by his incredible hardness. His cock twitched as she made a circle over him with her palm. I heard her giggle.

  He reached out and began to slide her panties down her hips. They were a black, silky pair, a pair she had obviously chosen deliberately, with he intent of having him see them first. They clung to her hips just below the sweet curves of her hip bones, and plunged in a v-shape inward, barely covering in lace and satin the sweet place where her body opened up into pink, hot delights.

  He pushed her onto the bed suddenly, looking down at her with intense lust. There was nothing silly in this encounter: he was going to have his way with her, and that could be seen on his face.

  Ela's hair swung behind her shoulders – she had evidently expected to be tossed around like a toy, and had caught herself on her elbows. What did her face look like right now, I wondered? Probably inviting. Surly, a little. Challenging him to do his worst, because she liked it.

  My heart plunged to the floor.

  Painfully, I rose to my feet. My calves were going numb, and I wanted to see better. I had to move slowly to avoid an accident, or making any noise. My thighs burned as I did so, but I was so hooked on what I was seeing that I just carried on, rising up until I could see Ela, naked except for her bra, stretching like a feline on the bed.

  “Spread your legs for me.” Christian moved around the bed, so that his back was to me now. Ela followed him, scooting her legs to his end of the bed.

  His accent was strong now. His eyes were glued to Ela's body on the bed.

  I watched, with a blend of betrayal, anger, confusion, and horror, as Ela did exactly as she was told. She placed her hands on her thighs and pulled her legs apart and up, spreading them wide and revealing…

  I squinted.

  Revealing...her bare, fully smooth pussy. Completely shaved, nothing hiding the pink, wet slit of her cunt from view. I hadn't seen this before.

  I could almost feel her soft pussy on my palm, nothing but smoothness as I dipped into her.

  Except it wouldn't be me who would do that.

  I stared at the firm buttocks of the man in front of me.

  It would be Christian.

  Even worse than her hands pulling her thighs apart was this: Ela's mouth was open in a wide, inviting smile. She opened her mouth opened wider and her lips formed a knowing grin.

  She knew what he was going to do to her, whatever it was: and she liked it.

  Ela, the girl I loved. The girl with whom I had loving, sweet sex with the occasional naughty moment.

  Spreading her legs like a whore in a porno. Letting this guy talk to her like a five-dollar whore.

  An
d smiling about it.

  My mind was reeling. I stopped breathing, as jealousy and disbelief spread out in my abdomen like liquid nitrogen.

  Ela stroked her thighs, inviting him closer.

  “Spread them very wider,” he said, in his ever-cruder English.

  Ela's legs spread open she held herself now by the ankles. I could see her bare cunt, and the petals glistening between the folds of her labia. All of it spread open and waiting for him.

  Christian climbed on to the bed. He jerked her bra up, sliding it up her arms to her wrists. She released her ankles and her legs floundered a little in the air. He slapped her on the thigh, near her ass, and a crack reverberated in the room. “Keep your feet up,” he snarled.

  And Ela, sweet Ela, obeyed. Her legs rose in the air to where they had been suspended. Spread open wide and high, just like he liked it. A pink mark was deepening in color on her thigh where he had smacked her.

  He twisted her bra around her wrists and bound her hands.

  I watched Ela's face as he hung her twisted hands on the bedpost. She smiled.

  Christian moved his wiry hands to either side of Ela's ribcage, his thumbs turned inward to stroke her long nipples into hard little balls. She moaned and her body writhed beneath him.

  My eyes were stinging. My heart was being shredded into a million pieces.

  But my cock was hard, dripping precum. I couldn't tear my eyes away from Ela as her body was prodded and touched by another man, and I couldn't wait for what came next, when he would stretch her and pull her apart, splatter her with cum, fill her up and make her wet and dirty.

  He didn't waste any time. He moved down her body with his mouth, leaving a glistening trail of his wet spit on her skin. He sat back on his heels and surveyed her spread legs and the bare cunt between them.

  He reached down and fingered her labia, rubbing his finger over the baby-smooth skin. He pulled her lip away from the pink, engorged flesh it covered, almost as though showing her to me. I could see the bright, wet pink of her pussy, already wet and craving his touch.