A Conventional Hotwife

by Arnica Butler

  Another cool shudder went through me. Only about 36 hours had gone by and my wife had already been fingered, sucked cock, and fucked Kyle again. And she had her eyes set on someone else, and she was going after that someone else tonight.

  She was out of control.

  Wasn't she?

  And I needed to do something about it.

  Didn't I?

  And that was the real question. Because as much as my stomach turned violently at the thought of her fucking Kyle again, I knew that deep down inside there was another feeling.

  I was disappointed that I didn't get to see it.

  And the knife-like feeling that raked through me was just as good as it was awful.

  I stayed up, alternating between pacing and sitting on the bed, then sitting at the desk, waiting for Kathy's call.

  Kate's call.

  Waiting to watch my wife with her new “guy.” The one she really wanted.

  Or maybe she would end up with Kyle again, which was fine by me.

  But nothing came.

  *

  I looked down at the phone. It was still in my hand, right where it had been when I passed out, waiting for Kathy's call, either on Skype or the phone.

  I had typed a text message to her about fifty times and deleted it each time. All variations of: “What are you doing?”

  Are you fucking Kyle? Are you a cheating bitch? Sweetie, where the fuck are you?

  Kathy was calling.

  I sat up, went through several emotions – angry, disaffected, jealous, elated – and then I answered the phone.

  “Hello?” I said, and my voice was wild with all of those emotions. It also sounded incredibly stupid, and I winced.

  Kathy paused, a little too long. A little too long for comfort. I felt certain that I heard some amusement in her voice when she said, “Oh hi, Paul Banks. It's me. Kathy.”

  I also paused.

  “What happened to you last night?” I said, finally. I tried to sound casual, like I didn't care much. My stomach lurched again. This was starting to feel like we were dating again, or we were in high school or something.

  What the fuck was wrong with me?

  “Oh God, that,” she sighed. “I couldn't really work it out.”

  My whole body went cold again.

  “So did you...did you...”

  Was she smiling on the other end of the line? Was she enjoying my fumbling jealousy?

  She laughed a little. “No. It was actually a really tame evening.”

  I felt relief for a moment, but then my mind went immediately to suspicion.

  She could always be lying.

  “I find that hard to believe.”

  I found it hard to believe I found myself saying that.

  “Mmm,” she purred, noncommittally. “Well, you'll be here soon enough to see for yourself. I just called to say hi. See what time your plane gets in.”

  This buoyed my spirits for a moment, but my paranoia brought them sinking down fast. “Yeah. Uh...five,” I said.

  “Oh good,” she said brightly.

  “Good?” I asked.

  And through the phone, I really felt I could hear her wry smile. Very un-Kathy-like, to smile and say nothing. To be coy. To tease.

  Of course, it was very un-Kathy-like to fuck another man, and yet here we were.

  Very un-Kathy-like to get on her knees and suck black cock in a bathroom.

  And yet...

  “There's some cocktail thing,” she said, her voice silken. “It's so much more fun for me if you're here.”

  Here to watch me be a sexy slut.

  Another long pause, while I considered all the delicious and awful possibilities, and another wave of cool fear went through me, fear that my wife had transformed irreversibly into a woman I didn't know and couldn't control. And then a ripple of delight. For the same reason.

  “Okay,” she said, almost as if she knew what was in my mind. “I love you. See you soon.”

  “I love you, too,” I was saying, but she was already smacking a kiss against the microphone, and I doubt she heard me.

  C HAPTER 9

  So there I was. Paul Banks. Late to the convention. Without my wife.

  Sweating next to a catered bar.

  When John got up and excused himself, Kate Orel moved, her hips swaying delightfully, over to the bar. She plunged a plastic sword into a stray olive at the bottom of her drink, and sucked it off the tip of the blade. She made a very big, very sexy show of it. I was annoyed that I found myself turned on by it.

  “So?” she chirped, handing the martini glass to the bartender and winking at him. “One more of those please,” she said, and her voice sounded like it was gushing out of a cunt as she did. Sticky, honey-sweet, overtly sexual.

  “What do you think about John?” she said to me, when she got her new martini. She turned and looked back at the table.

  “Asshat,” I said, without hesitation.

  She was bringing another olive to her lips, and she pressed them around it without biting into it. Just sucking on the fucking olive like she was giving head, right there in front of everyone.

  She popped it into her mouth and smiled. “I know that,” she said. “You can see that across the room. But is he any good for a 'little adventure'?” She was playing with the plastic sword between her teeth, rattling it between the lower and upper ridges.

  The cool and unsettled feeling I'd been having stretched out inside of me. I could feel it in my abdomen, and my limbs.

  I knew I should say something to her now. Just like I had probably known I should say something to her at another hundred points in the past. But this time, I really felt like I knew for sure: I didn't want her fucking John.

  I took a swig of whiskey. “Not John,” I said coolly. I looked down at my drink.

  Kate made a noise. I saw, in the corner of my eye, that she leaned on one elbow and turned toward me. Her face had an expression of mild disbelief.

  “What? Not really.” she said.

  I shook my head.

  She brought her martini to her lips. “O-kay,” she said. “I wish you would have told me that sooner, though. I've wasted a lot of time on him.”

  I took another sip of my whiskey. Every single word coming out of her mouth felt like a hot poker through my gut. At the same time, I couldn't deny that something was stirring up arousal inside of me as well. Maybe a different, angrier kind. But arousal nonetheless.

  “Fine,” she said, after a minute.

  When she turned and ordered another drink from the bartender, I could feel that she was furious. Something about the way she was moving conveyed the sort of furious she could have for weeks on end and keep just below the surface. If you didn't know her well – and very few people did – you wouldn't know the anger was there.

  I turned to her. Her eyes were wild. She clenched her jaw so tight I could see a muscle of her cheek pulse just above her cheekbone.

  She took her drink from the bartender.

  She smiled sweetly.

  She gave him a five dollar tip.

  Then she flashed her angry eyes at me, gave me a superficial smile, said: “Cheers,” and sauntered away.

  She kept right on flirting with John anyway, and she left the party early, and John left after her about five minutes later.

  I filled with rage as I watched him disappearing through the doors to the cocktail area.

  I was pretty drunk by then. Adrenaline pulsed through me and I followed him, noting with some satisfaction that he was drunk as well. He seemed to have no idea I was behind him.

  Every step that took him closer to the elevators filled me with increased rage. Yes, it was all beyond denial now. That little slut of a wife of mine had gone right ahead and done exactly what I told her not to. Here was John, calling it an early night just moments after Kate Orel disappeared from the party.

  I stood near the entranceway to the elevator lobby, ready to start walking if John looked back and saw me. He was rocking s
lightly unsteadily as he waited, though, so I figured he was more drunk than I was and unlikely to be paying attention to fuck all.

  The elevators opened and I realized, with a surge of panic, that the plan I'd been hatching while standing there like an idiot wasn't going to work.

  I didn't know Kate's room number.

  I ran toward the closing door, and stuck my hand in at the last moment, The heavy doors smashed into my wrist painfully (or at least, it would have been painful if I had been sober), before opening back up.

  John lifted his eyes and smiled drunkenly at me. “Oh, hey Banks. Didn't see you.”

  I looked at the wall of buttons. John hadn't pressed one. Or – and I shuddered to think – the button just wasn't lighting up.

  “What floor, man?” I said.

  John reached out and stabbed his thumb at “9,” hitting ten at the same time.

  I pressed eleven. I had some kind of kooky plan in the back of my mind to ride the elevator back down and make it look like it was really on its way.

  John exited on level nine. The futility of riding back down the elevator was clear to me at that point: there was an elevator lobby in front of the elevators. Once he walked out of it and around the wall, I would have no idea which way he had gone without stepping into the hall myself. John disappeared to the right as he left the lobby, but after that, it was anyone's guess.

  I got out on ten, and ran to the left, my eyes searching wildly and almost blindly for the signs of stairs and an exit.

  I found the stairs finally, and desperately ran down them.

  On the ninth floor I ran around wildly. Well..I walked quickly. Like a crazy man. The skipping, hip-swinging walk of a desperate man who does not want to be seen running, but really needs to. Nothing. Every hall was empty, as though no one had ever opened a door there in the lifetime of the hotel. The air seemed stale as I turned around corner after corner.

  I kept going, hoping that as I passed a door I would hear my wife's laugh.

  And then what?

  Then what was I going to do?

  I don't know how long I went in circles before I finally went into the stairwell again and clutched the railing. I was panting. What the fuck was I doing?

  The thought of my wife, at that very moment probably getting closer and closer to John's big, loud mouth, simmered inside of my mind. I gripped the banister until my knuckles went white.

  “Fuck,” I whispered.

  Then I went down the stairs.

  I was staying at a cheaper hotel about ten blocks away. After Kathy's spending spree on dresses, we had decided that it was for the best. Since we were already in pretty deep on this whole crazy lie, it had seemed like just one more thing to be done. Whatever.

  I walked the whole way, hands in pockets, feeling defeat. Thinking of Kate and alternating between wanting to throttle her neck with my bare hands, and wanting to have some kind of magical vision into the room where she was fucking John.

  It was all so out of control.

  It had been getting that way for a while, I thought. But this, this was...beyond the pale. This was too far.

  And what had I been expecting? That we would play these games, taking things further every time, and then the moment I wanted her to stop, she would?

  Of course this had happened, and of course it was my own fucking fault.

  I put both of my hands to my face and pushed the sweat from my face through my hair.

  I barely remembered going through the “lobby” of the hotel. I turned corners blindly, my mind filled with images of John and Kathy – Kate. All of her new, dirty, tricks. Maybe she would do something even more daring than she had ever done. And then she would come over here and tell me about it.

  Or worse yet, she wouldn't.

  I threw the door to my hotel room open.

  I yelled when I saw her.

  “Jesus, fuck! Fuck...Kate, fucking Christ.”

  She was sitting on the edge of the bed, her legs crossed. In total possession of herself. Her green dress, I noted, seemed properly in place. And her hair was still coiffed perfectly.

  Kate laughed. “Jesus fuck is right. Are you expecting a hit man or something?”

  She stood up and crossed the room to the mini bar – a sad little fridge stocked with all the worst kinds of bottles. She closed it again and turned to me. “This place is awful,” she said. “I don't think you need to go this far.” She looked around the room. She was referring to our mirage, the facade we had constructed to hide that we were a married couple while we were at conventions.

  I was still reeling from the fright she'd given me. Still trying to reconcile all the thoughts I'd let run away in my brain with the fact that she was not with John. Not at all. She was right here in front of me.

  After walking angry for ten minutes, it was hard to let go of right away. Especially after she scared the shit out of me.

  “What's the matter?” I said, in that annoying sing-song voice that mostly children use to tease younger children. “Didn't work out with drunk John?”

  I didn't even know what I was saying. Obviously, she had never done anything with John.

  And if she had, it was not against the rules at all. I felt like a shit, and I felt a red flush of heat across my cheeks, but I didn't take it back.

  Instead, I crossed over to the mini-bar, almost pushed her out of the way, and poured a Smirnoff vodka down my throat.

  “What the matter with you, if I may ask?”she said, crossing her arms over each other and flopping down on the bed.

  I wiped the vodka from my mouth.

  That was a good question, and I didn't have an answer to it. I had spent the whole walk fuming, thinking about her with John Wilder, and I had just not taken any time at all to think about this contingency.

  The anger that I had seen in her face back at the cocktail party seemed to have vanished. This fueled my own frustration. I was angry that she could get over her feelings so quickly. I was angry that she was so...cavalier with her feelings.

  I resorted to passive aggression to buy myself some time.

  “Huh? Oh nothing,” I said sweetly. “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, cut the shit, Paul.”

  I looked down at the vodka bottle in my hand. That was a bad plan, little buddy, I told it. It never worked on Kate to be passive-aggressive.

  “I just didn't want you to sleep with that fucking asshole,” I said. My sentence ended quietly.

  There. That was a partial truth.

  “Yeah. Okay. And I'm here, aren't I?” Kate's voice was hostile. “Anyway you never said anything about John.”

  I looked over at her. Her arms were folded over her chest defensively.

  Shit, I thought. This conversation wasn't going the way I wanted it to at all.

  I was very drunk. I may have hiccuped, I don't even know.

  “I think,” I said, and I swayed a little as I said it. I was overtaken by a sudden, drunken urge to just be honest. “I think we need to put the brakes on this,” I spat out.

  Kate's face remained completely calm, though at the same time I could see that behind it, a thermonuclear reaction was taking place. Her mouth twitched, and eyelids narrowed to fine slits.

  “Put the brakes on this,” she repeated.

  I nodded.

  There was a very tense silence. She gave her hair a little toss and pressed her lips together. Her eyes settled on the wall in front of her.

  “And why's that?”

  There were a lot of things I wanted to say to this. But my mind was muddled and I was having a hard time putting it all together. Thoughts bubbled up like in a boiling pot. Deep down inside maybe I knew that it was her oversexed appearance. That she had become too powerful, too seductive, and it made me feel out of control. I loved her, and I felt like we had gone too far. But I just shook my head and said:

  “I just want to take a break is all.”

  She still had her arms crossed. She looked up at the ceiling and blew her hair
out of her face.

  “I know,” I said, compelled by something inside myself to start talking in order to fill the silence. “I know...” What did I know? “I just...” I waved around in the air. “Don't you think this is maybe, I don't know...a little too far? Maybe we've gone too far?”

  I'm pretty sure that I thought Kate would blow up at me. I think I was hoping for that. Hoping that the things I was saying would compel her to understand what I was feeling, and make her feel...I don't know. Bad or something. Anything but what she seemed to be feeling – or not feeling – right at that moment. I was hoping that the evening was going to be some kind of sob fest, in which I reassured her that she hadn't done anything wrong and I just wanted to stop taking everything to such extremes in our relationship.

  I was all set for it. The crying, the reassuring, the whole nine yards. I was set for it because I actually wanted it.

  Instead of any of that happening, Kate sat there, her arms folded, staring at me, for a good long while.

  Then she gave a flick of her head again, to get her bangs out of her eyes.

  She moved her hands down to clasp her knee. She moved her ankle in one long, slow circle.

  She pressed her lips together, and looked down at her purse.

  “Okay,” she said. Or rather, she threw it at me like a knife. “What's your plan, then?”

  All the emotions I had been feeling before were started trickling out of me, because a cold fear was growing inside of me, edging everything else out.

  My wife was freaking me the fuck out.

  She never acted like this.

  Or, better stated, she never had before. She was not the cool, collected, calculating type. She was not the one to calmly take the reins of a conversation and direct it where she wanted it to go. She was not the one to speak rationally about matters of the heart.

  Yet here she was, hands folded neatly over her knees, the features of her face neatly aligned into a cold and businesslike expression. Waiting for me to speak.

  I gaped at her for a second. Her question was lost on me.