To the middle.
Between us.
Get fucking control of yourself, Brian.
I looked at John.
He was looking at me with a similar face to the one I imagined I'd been wearing.
He looked surprised, and surprise – real surprise – is a hard thing to fake.
He looked really uncomfortable.
He looked like I did.
We looked at each other's faces, and then we both slowly turned. To Anna.
Anna had her chin propped up on her palm, and she tapped her lips with her fingertips. Her mouth was open, and she was smiling.
Anna was unsurprised. Anna was unafraid.
Anna was in control of everything. The realization dripped over me like the hostess's annoyance.
She wasn't looking at either of us, though. She was looking at the hostess.
“Three whiskeys for now,” she said.
The hostess was looking at Anna now with a mixture of fear and admiration. She had no idea what was going on here, but it was plain to see that whatever it was, this one woman had both of the men on either side of her by the balls.
And she was having fun.
The hostess nodded and went away, probably to get someone old enough to actually serve whiskey, and Anna did not take her eyes off her.
The air was thick with tension. Anna tapped her teeth. Without looking at either of us, she said:
“Gentlemen. I've been very, very bad.”
Anna waitedfor the whiskey to come. It seemed to take an unusually long time.
I wonder what John thought about, in those moments. I myself had no idea what Anna was going to say. Why she had brought all of us together, why her single proclamation was that she had been very bad.
I had a few thoughts during that time. The thought that Anna had some perverse desire to see me get angry at John, as part of our game. There were women like that, weren't there? Women who wanted to see men fight over them. Only John would easily kick my ass.
Also, why the elaborate game? Why the tricks, and the lies?
After all, Anna knew that I knew she was “having an affair” with John. I wasn't going to jump across the table and punch him in the face.
I felt myself getting angry at Anna. Now things were going too far.
Anna's face was calm, so whatever she was planning to say didn't trouble her terribly. She had proclaimed to have been bad with a hint of sexy mischief in her eyes, and I was starting to feel all of the excitement and all of the sinking, terrible pain of watching her with John all over again, like it was fresh.
I looked at John. His eyes were already on me. They were moving slightly from side to side, scanning my face for what I imagine were the same things I wanted to know. Namely: what the hell Anna was up to.
John looked as ignorant as I was. He did not have the smug expression on his face of a man who is pulling one over on someone.
Was his face the face of a man who has just been caught fucking another man's wife? I gave this some thought. Did he look scared? Did he believe that Anna was going to tell me, and that it would be the first I heard of it?
I had all these thoughts in the silence that hung over the table while we waited for our drink order. Anna had complete control of the conversation, because neither John nor I wanted to break in and start revealing just how little we knew about what Anna was about to do.
The whiskey came. We all lifted the glasses to our lips.
A comical aside in all of this, is that the sophisticated Anna had forgotten to tell the teenage hostess what kind of whiskey she had wanted, and the girl had evidently served us a nameless well whiskey. The three of us made very minute scowls, but we drank it anyway. Such was the gravitas of the moment.
Anna set her glass down. She twisted it with her fingers.
“The whole thing,” she began, “has gotten a little out of control. And it's my fault.” She raised her hand to her neck and nestled it beneath her hair. She looked up and her eyes were glittering. Not with any true remorse to match her semi-apology, but with an excited, almost sinister glee.
My chest tightened. Now this was a different kind of tightness.
Anna looked down at her drink. She was attempting to look remorseful, but the performance was falling flat on me. Too much of a smile remained on her lips.
“So...” she cleared her throat. “John has been watching us, darling. And John, Brian has been watching us.”
The sentence fell on everyone but Anna like a blanket of lead.
I looked at John, and his mouth seemed to be eternally forming a “w,” as in “what?”
As in, what the fuck.
He sat back, his eyes narrowed, his mouth still making that shape, his gaze flickering from me to Anna.
I was primarily concerned with Anna's confession that we had been watching him. For a moment, self-preservation took precedent as I thought about the legal ramifications, the ways we were going to get sued, the possibility of getting home faster than them and covering up the hole as if it had never happened. Ways to get away from John's fists, which were going to start pummeling me at any moment.
And then the other thing that Anna said sunk in.
John has been watching us, darling.
Now it was my turn to form soundless w's and look from Anna to John.
My heart, I think, had actually stopped in my chest.
Anna turned to her left and dug into her purse.
Her voice was muffled by her hair and the table as she searched for something.
“The problem, I think, is that everyone had gotten a little bit out of control. Everything was fine for a while but...” she left her sentence dangling in the air. She emerged from the depths of her purse with a small video camera, a very expensive piece of equipment, small enough to fit in a purse. “I'm the one,” she said, “who has gotten the most out of control. I can't stop making videos. Neither of you can stop watching them.” She thought for a moment. “But...there would be nothing to watch if I didn't make them,” she added, as though she enjoyed being at fault.
At this point, she turned to me, and her eyes delivered a very sharp warning. It would take a few seconds for the full idea to make its way through my mind: whatever she was confessing to in this confession, she was not telling John about the hole in the wall.
She pushed the video camera into the middle of the table.
“I can't go on like this,” she said. “It's too much sex, too much debauchery. But I had no idea how to stop myself. Or either of you.” She looked from me to John, and back again. She gave a friendly smile, but there was a glint of something else in her eyes. Something devious.
There was a silence at the table. Anna took a sip of her whiskey. She was buoyant, like she was telling us about a shopping trip.
John exhaled, and leaned back against the booth.
The knot in my stomach was threatening to take over my body. I didn't dare reach for my whiskey because I knew my hands were shaking. I looked at Anna.
Who was this woman?
I looked at my whiskey.
John started to move, and I had to resist the urge to flinch. He exhaled again, like he had taken a long drag on a cigarette and was blowing the smoke on everyone. He extended his arms out, over the back of the booth. “Damn,” he said.
Anna fluttered her eyes in my direction.
They were both looking at me.
“What do you mean,” I began, and I realized I was very close to making a scene, so I put myself in check. I repeated the sentence, in a lower voice. “What do you mean, John's been watching us?”
John was shaking his head. He was shaking his head like he was impressed by the way he had just been taken for a ride. I was relieved that his main sentiment seemed to be awed amusement, but he was also pissing me off a little.
“Look,” Anna said, setting her whiskey down. She had a businesslike voice on. The waitress came back, her eyes bright and ready to take our order, but the three of us glared at he
r with enough severity that she pretended she was on her way to something else.
“Look,” Anna repeated. “I've decided to come clean to both of you, here, at the same time, so that we have an exit strategy from what has become...” she waved her hand in the air dismissively. “A big mess.”
She looked at me, and then at John. “This whole thing started because Brian and I had a little game we used to play.”
John's mouth was open, but he didn't seem shocked. “You're swingers,” he said plainly. He seemed to already have this piece of information.
I opened my mouth to say something – I didn't know what it was going to be, but I felt some need to correct that statement. Anna shut me down with a pointed side-eye.
“And then...” she turned to me. “John, it turns out, had a little fantasy of his own. Not unlike yours,” she added sharply, before I could open my mouth.
We all looked at each other.
I was angry at Anna. I felt like this was an extreme violation of the trust we had set up. I was extra-pissed that she had brought it up this way, with all of us together.
As though reading my thoughts, Anna spoke up, her eyes on something distant in the restaurant. “Everyone had a fantasy. I had my own desires. Satisfying the two of your fantasies was what was driving me. At first it was just Brian, of course. But then John told me what he wanted, and I figured I could get double the thrill for the same price.” She picked up her glass. “And I did,” she added.
I leaned on the table. I had lost my composure a little. “So John just said to you, I want to-”
“Look man,” John interrupted. “I wasn't about to have sex with your wife. Not until she told me that you two had an arrangement. That's what she told me. She told me you were cool with it.”
Anna looked at me. “I wanted you to get what you wanted,” she said. “But he wasn't going to do it unless I told him that.” She looked at John and arched her eyebrows, as if to say, right?
“Why didn't you tell me?” I seethed.
Anna looked at me with her triumphant expression, the one where she is about to shut down a discussion with some kind of trump card.
“Let me ask you this? Would you have been so turned on by it, if I had?”
My mouth was open for a moment. And then I snapped it shut.
She had me there. It would not have been as exciting if it had all been arranged.
But this still didn't clear up the rest of the story.
Unsure of what I was even feeling, I shrugged and tilted my head to indicate she should continue. “The rest of the story?” I prompted.
“That's it. John wanted to know what I said, and what I did, when I went back to you. He wanted to hear about how you asked me about him, how we fucked after he fucked me. If you think about this, it's not an unreasonable request. We were using him, in a way, and he was just getting something for himself.”
“Besides getting to fuck my wife?” My voice was angry now.
“You wanted me to fuck your wife,” John said, holding up a finger in his defense. “So be careful, there.”
He turned to Anna. “But what's this about John watching the tapes?”
Tapes. He was too young, this guy, to be saying that word.
Anna shrugged. “He liked to watch. You liked to watch.” She smiled. “I liked to watch.”
She stretched her arms out on the table. “I know you're both mad, which is why I let it go on. I didn't know how to stop it...I didn't really want to. I was about to go through with it again tonight. I changed my mind at the last minute. I know you both also got a little addicted to what we were doing, and so I know you'll understand when I confess to you: I got a little addicted, too.”
John and I looked at each other. Something in his eyes told me this statement was true.
It was true. I had never thought, in all this time, about how Anna might be as obsessed as I was. I never gave twenty seconds of thought to John; I had only seen him as an instrument of my own desires. I had been selfish, thinking only of myself and my own satisfaction.
“We were all selfish,” Anna said, and I jerked my head to her, because she had done her creepy thing of reading my mind. “But we have to put a stop to it before it gets out of control. This is why I met with you guys here. Someplace neutral, someplace public where nothing could get out of hand.”
John and I were staring at each other now.
He grinned, a kind of beaten and annoyed grin, and took his whiskey in his hand. He looked out into the restaurant while he took a sip of it.
My head was reeling. I had to straighten the facts out a little, before I could even imagine how I felt about them.
Anna seemed ready for this. She turned slightly toward me, and took my hand in hers. “Look, honey, I started this whole thing for you. And no offense John, but I was never dishonest with you about it being all physical. The only shady thing I did, and it was pretty shady, was filming you,” and here she cut into the word filming with her voice, looking at me with her intense eyes, letting me know what I needed to know, and that I needed to shut up about the hole in the wall, “without you knowing. I did that for myself. John, truth be told, was sort of uncomfortable with it.”
“At first,” he said quickly. Then he smiled at me. “I can see what the appeal is,” he said. “Never understood it before.”
I could feel my face flushing. I didn't know with what exactly. I tried to go back over what I had done with Anna, how I had done it, whether or not it was deeply embarrassing.
Anna placed her hands flat on the table. “Now,” she said. “I think everybody needs some time to think about all of this. I'm going to destroy the camera and all of the..” she looked at John with amusement, “tapes. What year are you in? And then I'm going upstairs.” She pointed above her, and I realized for the first time that the restaurant was on the first floor of a hotel.
She leaned in toward both of us. “I, personally, want closure. I still have everything ready for tonight.”
She let that sink in on both of us.
“So whoever comes up there, we'll have our final...” she waved her hand in the air in a circular motion, unsure of what to call whatever it was between the three of us. She placed her purse in her lap and began digging again. “John, as I understand it, you've given your notice?”
It was a completely random question, and it took me a second to realize what 'notice' she was talking about.
John looked surprised, and then a wry smile came over his face. He nodded and brought his whiskey to his lips by bending his elbow and swinging it to his mouth.
Anna slid two key-cards across the table, one to John, and one to me.
Then she turned to me, and kissed me on the cheek, scooting herself across the leather to get out. I let her out, and she waved her hand over the table. “I expect you guys will sort this out,” she said. And she turned, and disappeared, waving goodbye with her one-handed flutter of fingers.
I stood watching her, and then, not knowing what else to do, I collapsed in the booth.
A little timidly, I looked at John. He was still watching Anna over his shoulder.
“That's some wife you got there,” he said finally, as he turned to me.
I had no idea what to say.
“Man. Let me buy you a drink.”
What else could I do? The truth about John, and I have no idea how to explain it or convey it, is that he wasn't a bad guy. He was somehow putting me at ease. The full implications of what Anna had done - how carefully she had balanced everything so that she had committed multiple betrayals, but no one could legitimately be angry about them, because everyone else had committed a dubiously loyal act themselves – was sinking in.
It was actually very brilliant.
Very deftly handled.
I also couldn't argue with her that the whole thing had gotten out of control, and needed to end.
I was mostly interested in how blind I'd been, how obsessed with myself and my desires, that I hadn't even
considered the idea that John might want something, or that Anna could be playing her own game.
John held up two fingers for our waitress, and the whiskey came quickly.
We slammed it.
“Damn,” John said, wiping his mouth. “I forgot to change the brand.”
“It's bad,” I agreed.
An awkward silence.
“You goin' up?” I finally said.
John raised his eyebrow. “Man, that is up to you.”
I had so little time to think about it.
But I had known the answer all along. I slid my own key-card across the table, and left John's car by him.
“Give me five minutes,” I said.
In a daze, I walked through the restaurant, and into the lobby of the hotel. To the elevator. And up to the room where my wife was waiting for the final act of this crazy adventure.
16: THE FINAL ACT
“Is John coming?”
Anna was standing by the window with her gorgeous backside to me. The curtain was open and overlooked a patch of the skyline, as well as the uglier side of a building next to the hotel. I had no idea how she'd managed to change in such a short time, but she had: her pale skin was encased in the sexiest nightie I had ever seen her wear. It was a form-fitting, short skirt that almost looked like a dress, except that it was made entirely of a delicate black lace. Where her ass pushed the fabric out to form a perfect, round shape, I see the shadow of her ass-crack through the material, and her bare skin glowed through the endless holes in the fabric: she was wearing nothing at all underneath it. It ended just below her full bottom, and her long legs seemed to dangle from it. She was still wearing her heels, very expensive and fashionable black heels that wrapped and criss-crossed around her foot, evoking the idea of bondage just slightly.
I marveled at Anna. At her appearance, as I always had: it was incredible to me that this gorgeous creature was my wife.
But also at her sexual confidence, her cleverness, her mischief. She made me uneasy, but at the end of the day, I still loved Anna. And I think she she still loved me.
“I don't know,” I said. I loosened the tie I had worn.
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