“I...what?”
“What's your plan, then?” she said, and impatience tinged her voice. “You think it's too much. So what's your plan? To get us out of it?”
“I...I dunno,” I said. In truth, I had sort of been hoping that by some miracle I could go back in time and forget we ever did this at all. But that was the last thing I was going to say to her. “I was thinking maybe we just...you know...stop.”
“Stop.”
I shrugged again. “Yeah. Stop. Or...pause, I guess.”
I could hear myself,. Hear how stupid I sounded. I didn't actually want to commit to stopping, I knew.
I knew that.
She shocked me by laughing lightly. “Yeah,” she said. “Okay.” She picked up her purse and stood up. “Okay,” she said with a shrug, and her voice was the kind of cheerful that is either true or venomous.
She was smiling.
I felt another crimson tide of anger burning over me.
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” I said.
She shrugged, and I was infuriated by the gesture until I realized she was imitating me. “It means what it means. Okay. Okay. Okay...” Her voice was mocking. “We'll...pause.”
There is a helpful voice I get in my in my head when I'm drunk. It began speaking to me then:
You are fucking drunk. You need to stop talking now. This conversation is WAY outside your sobriety grade.
I said her name. “Kathy,” I remember saying, and reaching toward her.
She held up a hand toward me. “If it's what you really want, Paul, I'll stop,” she said icily. She swung her eyes around the room. “But I'm not staying here. And I'm not undoing all the lies I've told people. You just have to deal with that. And don't expect me not to be pissed about it.” She put her hand on the door. “This isn't what we agreed to at all. It's not really fair.”
For a moment she looked like Kathy. Frumpy Kathy, my wife, who wore buns and oversized shirts and could easily be made to feel guilty about all sorts of things.
And then the expression that was like Kathy wife was gone, and Kate was in her place.
And Kate, I have to say, I was not sure about.
“Kathy,” I said. Something inside of me was telling me I had gotten this conversation all wrong, but I could barely understand what had happened, let alone figure out how to fix it. Is this really what I wanted? Now that she was just plainly agreeing to it, it occurred to me how stupid it was as a request. How far away it might have been from what I actually wanted.
But Kathy, or better stated, Kate, was already out the door and striding with complete confidence, and without looking back, toward the exit.
C HAPTER 10
THE NEXT DAY
I forced myself, with an immense hangover and almost no sleep, to attend the business-end of the convention meetings. They began at eight am, which was no problem for me because I passed out after Kate left. I woke up at three am, and wasn't able to get back to sleep.
All through the early hours of the morning, I tossed and turned with all of my thoughts. I got nowhere, really. Just as I had been unable to get anywhere in previous sleepless nights.
The problem was not that complicated, really:
I was a man who had wanted my wife to sleep with another man. So I had asked her to do it, and she had reluctantly agreed. And then she had enthusiastically done it. And then she had kept on doing it. And I loved it. So what was my fucking problem?
I knew what my problem was, deep down inside. I just didn't like admitting that I did. For one thing, it painted a pretty ugly picture of myself. For another, and maybe this was more important: it made finding the perfect solution, the win-win solution, next to impossible.
I liked Kathy sleeping with other men. I liked Kathy with a little frosting of Kate. I liked Kathy getting dressed up, and I liked Kathy being naughty once a year.
There had been a time where I had exactly that. Way back in the beginning.
Kate was another story. Kate was beginning to adhere to Kathy, to take her over. Kathy was turning into another woman, too much Kate. Too hot, too sexual, too...into it. Kate was coming home with me, and I could see her inside of my wife, lurking under the surface.
Kate was too fucking much. Too much cleavage, to much swing in her hips.
Too much.
But what could I do about it?
I was sitting through a marketing presentation and rubbing my forehead when I came around to this question for the umpteenth time in the past twenty-four hours: What was my problem, what was my problem?
I had gotten what I wanted at every turn. And now my wife had agreed to do what I asked, yet again, and stop. Or “pause,” as I had put it.
That was good. Great. We could put an end to all of this and everyone would be happy.
I felt sick, and I knew it wasn't just the awful hangover. I was uneasy.
There was the way Kate had left my room – and it had been Kate, not Kathy. The smirk on her face. The way she had said: “if that's what you want.” Like she knew something I didn't know.
I rubbed my eyes.
It was right here in front of me, and I recoiled from it every time I touched upon it. It was a red-hot coal.
I no longer completely trusted my wife. I didn't even feel like the woman I was here with was my wife.
I didn't believe her when she said she would stop.
My head was pounding. I rubbed my temples.
Very suddenly, everyone in the room was standing up. The presentation was over, and I hadn't caught a word of it. I scanned the room, as I had when I had come in. I was looking for Kate. Looking for my wife. I wasn't even sure what I thought I was going to say to her if I saw her. I wasn't even sure if I'd have the balls to walk up to her and talk to her.
Pete Olsen plopped into a seat next to me. “Makin' the early rounds, huh? You are a fucking mess, man.” He handed me a coffee. “Me too, man. Me too. But you really look like shit. Hey did you catch that last bit about ROs going through the main office first? I like how they just sneak that in at the last minute, like it's not going to fuck us all up the ass. It's fine if they've got a quick turnaround...”
I tuned Pete out and took the paper cup of coffee he handed to me. Kate was nowhere in the room.
I wondered what she had done the night before. All night long, while I had tossed and turned, it hadn't even occurred to me that she might very well have gone back to the hotel and found John, or someone else. Just to spite me.
Why hadn't I thought of that?
I interrupted Pete in mid-sentence. “Hey what'd you end up doing last night?”
Pete, unflappable to the end, weathered my interruption like a pro. “I uh...hey, you took off all the sudden,” he aid, the coy “guys'” voice creeping into his sentence. “What's that about?”
“Sick,” I said, much too quickly.
Pete squinted for a second. Then he took a sip of his coffee. “Whatever,” he said. “It was a pretty lame evening. Sometimes they really fuck it up, you know? Tonight should be better.”
I nodded, making a mental note to find out what the fuck was happening tonight.
“You didn't see that Kate Orel chick again, did you?”
I was trying desperately to sound casual, but my voice came out half-strangled and crazy-sounding. I regretted the question as soon as I asked it.
“Oh, Katie? Yeah. She came to my room and fucked my brains out.”
Rage fell over me like a curtain for few seconds, before I realized he was making a crude joke. He looked at me over the rim of his coffee cup. His eyes were kind but a little confused.
No, wait.
It was a look of pity.
How humiliating. I looked away.
“John didn't score with her last night,” Pete said helpfully. “At least, I don't think.” Then he looked at his watch and clapped me on the back.
“Gotta run,” he said.
Pete was a classy guy, all right. I turned and left in the opposite
direction, anxious to hide somewhere until I could get myself under control.
*
I ended up going back to my own hotel. Such an insult: baking in the heat, cast out of the palace, all of it my own doing.
When I got there, though, to my surprise, Kate Orel was sitting on my bed.
In spite of all the thoughts that had plagued me all day, I felt my whole body react to her presence. My cock most of all. She was in a form-fitting white, gauzy dress that only just managed to obscure her light-colored nipples. Still, the contours of her breasts were shadowily visible through the material.
“I was just writing you a note,” she said, running her finger along the spine of a crease in a paper with a crisp sound. She stood up.
My skin prickled as she neared me. Her skin looked a little dark under the white gauze. The dress slouched over her breasts, clung to her waist, barely hid her nakedness. I objected to it strongly. I wanted to tear it off of her. I wanted her to wear it all over the hotel grounds and let men pry her open with their eyes.
“You need to come by,” she said, “and get your tux for tonight.”
She reached forward, a little grin on her face, and I felt her hand slip into my pocket. My cock pulsed against her thigh and she smiled. “Here's my room key,” she said. Her lips grazed my neck. “Come and get it after four.”
“Kathy-”
She stood back. “I have to go,” she said. “See you at the gala. It's supposed to be good.”
I turned to watch her leave, disappointment wringing out my insides.
“Don't forget your tux,” her voice called out, as the door closed behind her.
*
I followed her. I followed my own wife.
Sure, it probably would have been easier just to talk to her. But that wasn't really what I was interested in. I was chasing the feeling it gave me to follow her. Knowing she might look back any minute and see me there. Or that she might not. Thinking about where she was going, in that white gauze dress that let most of the sun through it, the white gauze dress that barely concealed all the very pink and very bare parts of her.
As I walked behind her, I could see that she wasn't wearing any underwear. I stared at her ass as she moved along, gliding along, really, and the longer I stared the more clear it became: the pale, full globe of her asscheeks was halved not by the material of a slightly less pale thing, but by the tone of her own flesh, and nothing more.
Maybe she wanted me to follow her. Maybe she wanted me to follow her right to her room, and I could fuck some of this paranoia-fueled energy out and into her.
Maybe she wanted me to follow her so I could see her plop her gauzy ass right into Kyle's lap, and put her lips to his. So I could watch my wife's breasts get fondled in the hotel lobby, right before she disappeared to a different room, for something entirely different.
She strolled along, her head high and shoulders back, every man she passed rippling with noticeable interest. Most turned to watch her walking, and quite a few of them gave me a silent nod. You have a great view, buddy, they all seemed to say.
Kate glided into the hotel, and through the lobby. I got caught in the doors, because the doorman lost his cool when she walked by and almost slammed the door on an exiting guest. Amid his profuse apologies, my wife stepped into an elevator, and the doors closed as I scurried along the far side of the lobby so she wouldn't see me.
My heart sank. I watched the elevator floor number – it stopped on five floors before returning. Any one of them could have been her stop.
And none, I noticed, were level 4. Her floor.
I went up anyway. Up to twelve, the highest floor the elevator had stopped on.
But the halls were empty. A door clicked and an elderly man stepped out of it. My heart was pounding with some impatient desire to catch her at something.
And yet it was futile, wasn't it?
I went down to four and stood outside her door. I leaned in and pressed my ear to it, like I already had before. Nothing. I looked around the hall, embarrassed suddenly to be the man who was stalking a woman, twice in twenty-four hours – a woman he already possessed.
Fuck it.
I inserted the card, quietly, secretly hoping there was something on the inside of the room I could disturb and sneak up upon, if only I was quiet enough.
But the room was empty.
Fuck. Fuck, where had she gone?
I went into the room and spun around, maniacally.
Her suitcase open. I rifled through it. Incriminating things were there. So many things, but all things I had known about. Panties, fancy lingerie. All the things I had already seen.
I threw open the closet door. Dresses. All things I knew about. Kate's sexy dresses.
I inhaled the scent of them.
Where the fuck was my wife? I looked at the clock. 3:37. No tux here. And also...
I whirled around.
No dress here. Not one for the gala, anyway.
I sat down on the bed.
I could wait. If I waited she had to come back.
Probably she was getting something for her dress for the evening.
Or a hair appointment.
I lay back on the bed.
I could wait.
I dozed off. A rap at the door woke me with a start.
I looked out the peephole. A bored-looking porter was holding a suit bag over the shoulder.
I leaned backward to see the clock.
4:05 pm.
I opened the door and took the tux. At that point, I realized I had no phone, no wallet...I had left my hotel room in a trance and with nothing.
The porter frowned in disapproval when I didn't tip him. “Sorry,” I said. “I...forgot my wallet.” He frowned even more deeply and huffed away.
I set the tux on the bed.
What to do?
“Okay,” I said to myself, actually wringing my hands a little.
Kate had to come back, right?
She had to get changed. Right?
I sat down.
No sense getting dressed up if I just had to get undressed again.
Minutes ticked by. They turned into an hour. I paced. Without my phone I couldn't even see where she was.
I left the room and walked through the hotel. No Kate at the pool. No Kate in the hotel bars, rooftop or lobby. No Kate in the exercise room. No Kate. No Kate anywhere, inexplicably.
My spirits lifted as I approached the door upon my return – I had made the rounds hastily, and returned hoping she would be there. It looked like the “Do Not Disturb” sign was hanging on the handle.
But when I got there, it was only a handwritten note, crammed into the handle.
Sorry I missed you. Come by my room if you want an aperitif
Unsigned. Not Kate's handwriting. The stocky block letters of a man's writing.
Whose? Kyle's? Or some other guy? Some other guy who didn't even feel like he needed to sign his note?
My heart fluttered with rage.
I opened the door with flourish.
Nothing. No Kate.
Nothing changed.
The clock winked. 4:36.
I sat down and waited another heart-wrenching 14 minutes. And then ten more, because the deadline I set for myself came and went so quickly.
Then, furious and confused, I grabbed my tux and stomped out the door. I needed my phone. I needed my wallet.
I needed...to not be sitting in this room like a little puppy dog if my wife did return from wherever she was.
C HAPTER 11
I decided, and perhaps it was silly, to sink into a few drinks and show up good and late (8:30, after the dinner, but only just) to the festivities. If Kate could play some kind of game like this – a game of never being where I expected her to be – then so could I. I paced in that crap hotel room and downed everything I could get my hands on, which wasn't much because they hadn't stocked the mini-bar.
Then, nostrils flaring and heart nearly exploding, I went to the party.
I got a cab, so I didn’t sweat through my fucking tux. The cabbie looked at me like I was insane and refused a tip.
The party, being the tradition, was the spectacular, glamorous finale (a day before the end) to the convention. Sometimes the final party was a huge fail, and ended up having the feel and decor of a high school prom. (This is because the planning committee insisted on having themes for all of the parties, instead of just throwing a fucking gala like normal people would do).
Sometimes, like tonight, they succeeded splendidly. I vaguely remembered, as I surveyed the scene, that the theme was Monaco Nights, or something like that. The receptionist handed me a pile of gambling chips when I handed her my invitation, and she explained something to me that I didn't listen to at all.
My mind was already on other things.
Like Kate.
The ballroom of the hotel had been transformed into an expense of rich reds and greens, and deep, expensive wood. The room was filled with roulette and craps and blackjack tables. Tuxedos and glittering dresses were scattered among them. Because everyone was spending fake money at the tables, they were betting big and getting a rush out of winning. There was a heightened, excited vibe in the room. Roulette balls clattered into the wheels, the soft thumps of rolling die whispered beneath the shrieks of victory and the hushed laughter. I swept my eyes over the room.
I was only looking for one thing.
It took only a millisecond to find it.
The woman who was occupying my wife's body.
Kate.
She had really gone all out. Not at all fucking around. She was clad in a spectacular dress. Spectacular, in the rawest sense of the world. She was actually creating a spectacle.
The dress was a dull silver, dotted by sequins or beads to give it just the right amount of glittery shine (not enough to make her look like a disco ball, as one woman near her did). The shape was pretty standard: long, flowing a little at the bottom, clinging to her middle.
But the top of the dress cut deep between her breasts, and parted more than usually out toward her shoulders. In fact it looked at every moment like it would slide over the rounds of her shoulders and down her arms, unwrapping the whole glorious package of her tits right there in front of everyone. There was actually no better display for her finest feature: they were huge and firm and looked unreal, wrapped like white chocolate Kisses in their foil, half-peeled. When the dress started up again it clung to her pretty curves, stretched across her hourglass hips to delightfully balance heavy top. Her hair was swept up into an elegant pile on her head. Her lips were painted a bright red, and her eyes were dark. She looked too glamorous to even be real, and for a second I had the feeling I was dreaming.
A Conventional Hotwife Page 15