The man to her left watched the whole thing out of the corner of his eye. He was there alone. Whiskey on the rocks. He was waiting for the right moment, I knew it.
The bartender brought Jordan a martini. He had only just set it down when she dove into her purse for something, and pulling it – the white phone – from her purse, she knocked the martini over.
But I have to tell you, it was the most fake-looking “spill” I had ever seen.
I heard her laugh, the unmistakable laugh, from across the room. She covered her mouth, and she reached for napkins across the bar, revealing her long thigh again.
And now, the man had an opening. He helped her with the napkins. She covered her mouth in vapid embarrassment. The bartender mopped it up. The man offered to buy her a drink, I could see. She shook her head, and made gestures like she was just too embarrassed.
I let the menu fall onto the table.
But his was all an act. Jordan was acting, and it was ridiculous. She was a giggly, energetic, silly young girl. What the hell was she doing?
I stared, open-mouthed. I really didn't care who saw me. The bar was starting to fill up. The waitress took my menu and sauntered away. I ordered another drink. I stared at my wife, who had turned her feet toward the good-looking man at the bar, and was leaning just a little closer to him now.
So this was it. My wife was...what? An escort? A nympho? A prostitute?
Was Arest her pimp?
I knew I should go over there, like a man, and grab my wife by the arm. I knew I should drag her out of here, and take her home. Fight with her along the way, find out what the fuck she was doing.
But underneath the table, I had a whole different problem. Inside my boxers my cock was well and alive, hard as a rock. I felt like throwing my wife over the bar and spanking her, and the idea of doing that didn't help get rid of my massive hard-on.
Because it was hot, okay? It was fucking hot sitting there watching my wife flirt like a twenty-year old with this guy in a business suit, in a bar. She was closer to him now, telling him something excitedly. Her fingers were on her neck, making a little swoop over the line of her dress. She was begging him to look at her tits, and he was indulging her.
But they were still just flirting. It could all be stopped.
I watched her ankle make the same little circles I had seen before, at The Mile.
I watched, horrified, as she rested her hand on the man's forearm. She leaned close to him and whispered something in his ear. I watched his face turn to a filthy, sludgy smile at whatever she said.
She reached for her purse.
There it was. The white phone. She tapped on it, and smiled at him.
Taking his picture?
She showed something on the screen to him. Then she shrugged, and placed her hands in her lap, clutching her purse.
Well, her body seemed to be saying, to my ever-deepening confusion, I have to be going.
Then she dropped the phone back into her purse.
The man reached out, and he placed his hand on hers.
I watched Jordan shake her head. Not very convincingly. I watched as she played this game with the man, the very one we all know so well from our twenties. A dance of Jordan trying to leave, batting her eyelashes, teasing the poor man. Of him, making silly excuses about why she should stay, plying her with dinner.
She finally managed to escape. She gave him a kiss on the cheek. She checked her phone again, and shook her head.
I watched her as she bounced away, toward the door. She turned and held her fingers in the shape of a phone, to her ear, a gesture that, had the man cared at all about anything but her juicy cunt, would have told the real story of her age. “Call me,” she mouthed.
Very clearly.
Call. Me. Hands in the shape of a phone.
I stared.
And she was gone.
CU LATER
I was stunned for a few minutes.
Every time I thought I had reached the pinnacle of guilt, when I would know, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Jordan was cheating on me and what she was up to, I reached another strange event like this.
I mean: Jordan was cheating on me. She was nuzzling and cuddling men -
Men. Plural.
- and I had photographic and real-life proof of that.
But something still wasn't adding up.
It's not adding up because you don't want it to add up.
But was that true? Deep down inside I could feel the now-familiar sensation of a pleasantly burning jealousy. One I liked. One that twisted inside of me like new, unfamiliar sex.
I was crossing the room before I knew what I was doing.
I sat next to the guy. I had no idea what my plan was until the words were out of my mouth.
“Whew,” I said, with sort of a low whistle beneath it. I looked in the direction Jordan had gone. “That was a hot little number.”
The guy responded immediately. He turned toward me, and his face was lit up with salacious hunger, the smugness of a coyote, and male pride. “That fucking girl,” he said. “Tits out to here.” He held his hands out a full foot in front of his chest as though Jordan's breasts were basketball-sized.
“I saw,” I said. The guy was already shaking his head.
“Did you see the ass on that? She could break rocks on it.”
He took a swig of his drink.
The guy was such a sleaze, but I couldn't help myself. There was a strange desire brewing inside of me, wanting to draw out more about my wife. More sleazy, lewd descriptions of her ass.
I shook my head as well, mimicking his “blown-away” face. “Legs, too.”
“Jesus, fuck,” he said. “I could see almost all the way to her snatch from here. She's fucking ready to go.” He leaned closer to me, and cast a look back at the bartender. “Just between you and me, she's only twenty. Still in college.” He made a face and began to speak louder again. “Those girls will do the craziest shit. The younger they are, the better. Been watching porn their whole life.”
Jordan, for the record, was thirty-four.
What the fuck was she doing, dressing up like a college-aged hussy and telling men she was twenty?
And that could not have been what she told that guy at The Mile. She had looked her age then. Hot as hell, but no one would have mistaken her for twenty.
Things were making even less sense now, and my head was whirling again.
It was time for the question. I looked back at the door, and then at my empty glass. “You hit that yet?” I said. My mouth was dry.
Did I really want the answer?
“Man,” he said. “That girl just came in and poured a martini on me. Then I am telling you, she laid it on thick, gave me her number, she wants me to call her tonight.”
My eyes fell on his wedding ring. We exchanged a look, a knowing look. “You gonna do it?”
He twisted the ring, maybe to show me he knew what I was talking about. Chuckling grotesquely, he shrugged. “There's a reason these things come off, right?” He leaned on the bar, looking at where Jordan had disappeared as though she were still there. “Fuck man. It's hard. That girl is fucking hot as balls. I bet she sucks cock like a whore.”
I imagined Jordan's mouth around this guy's cock, on her knees in that skimpy red party dress, while he called her a whore, and my cock almost exploded right there under the bar. He was the kind of guy who would grab her by the back of the head, and push her up and down the length of his cock while she gagged on his meat.
And my wife, apparently, was the kind of gal who would let him.
My waitress, glowering, appeared next to me. “You leavin' that table?” she snarled.
“Sorry,” I said. “Yeah.”
She said something in a guttural language to the bartender, and her face told me it was full of slurs, as she tossed my tab onto the bar.
The bartender glowered at me. “Another one?”
I shook my head. “Better get going.” I clapped the grotesq
ue man next to me on the back. “Good luck with that.”
As if by divine intervention, his phone began to hop around on the bar top. The bartender slapped my tab on the table and advised me to give the waitress a good tip. I started to fish through my wallet for enough cash.
The guy elbowed me. “Speaking of,” he said, practically licking his lips. “Check this.”
He turned his phone to me and I was faced with an image of what appeared to be Jordan's breasts, tucked into a red lace bra, overflowing with their bounty. Beneath the photo, the text: CU later.
I grimaced involuntarily, but the man was too delighted with his image of Jordan's breasts to notice. I left too much money on the bar, and walked out without saying goodbye. I was dazed.
TRUTH
I barely remember driving home. I was too drunk to drive, I knew that, but I did it anyway.
My world seemed to be falling apart, and now especially, I could make no sense of it.
Was my wife some kind of nympho? A prostitute? And escort? Did she have some kind of mental illness that made her go out and pretend to be someone else? And what was with Arest? The cars, the intrigue, the clothes-changing and phones?
When I arrived home, Jordan was sitting in bed, under white sheets, looking angelic. Her hair was in a bun, her face was cleaned of makeup.
But now this sight, instead of comforting me, filled me with rage. It was all lies, daggers in my heart.
Jordan looked up from her book. “You're home late,” she said. Sweetly, as if she were merely a wife home from work, waiting up for her husband. “This book is such shit.” She tossed it on the nightstand. “I needed to talk to you about something. Is it a good time?”
She said this to me. What on earth could she be wanting to talk about with me?
So casual.
She had taken a bottle of nail polish from the nightstand and pulled her feet out on the covers to paint her toenails.
How could this possibly be my wife?
And how could this possibly be the same woman - “girl” - I had seen at the hotel this evening?
She was duplicitous in every imaginable way.
My insides felt like someone was wringing them like laundry.
I plunged.
“I saw you!” I blurted. I was shaking. I felt deranged. As soon as I said it, my insides began to turn to liquid.
I wasn't sure what reaction I wanted, or what reaction I would get.
I knew I looked like a madman.
The brush for the polish hovered over her toe, frozen by my words. She pressed her lips together, and placed it into the container.
There was still a part of me that had hoped I was, somehow, completely wrong. That Jordan would be confused, and demand to know what I was talking about. But it was being crushed by every passing nanosecond.
She looked up, and I hoped against hope for confusion. Wetness in her eyes. Anything to indicate this was all a mistake.
Instead her eyes went dark with instant recognition, and at the same time my heart tore open. A horrible pain, that was mysteriously delicious, turned and turned inside of me.
She shook her head. “Oh god.”
But her tone, rather than being remorseful or afraid, had a tone of exasperation to it. “I knew this was going to happen.” Her eyes met mine, and she was almost amused. “It was at The Mile, wasn't it? God, I knew I would run into you there.”
It was impossible to account for the number of feelings running amok in my torso at that moment. This was the last reaction I had expected.
Jordan had assumed her eye-rolling, haughty attitude. The one she got when she was proven right about something.
Which made no sense in this situation. No sense whatsoever.
She was caught.
There is a small set of reactions people have when they are caught, and I was well-versed in all of them in in my line of work. I saw nothing of the sort on Jordan's face: no false tears, no anger, no relief, no cocktail of fear.
Were we not talking about the same thing? Was that it?
“I saw you,” I repeated. “I saw you with another man.”
She sighed. The sound clawed at my chest.
“Look. I have my reasons for not telling you about this, so hear me out.” She looked into the wall, as though her explanation would be there.
And this is what she told me as I stood there, racked with pain:
“One of the things Arest Greene does, as I'm sure you know, is...uh....domestic investigations. You know, spouse-spying, that kind of shit.”
I knew. I was shaking with rage and my head was about to explode, but I knew. Every word Jordan said was adding rage and confusion to an overflowing pot.
“So, there's also another thing he does. And I mean, it is really....underhanded. I think it's underhanded. A little bit. But it's....okay maybe I should start with this other issue.” She waved her hands over the air, like she was erasing the conversation.
God. Jordan was one of the least linear story-tellers in my life and it drove me fucking crazy.
I must have sighed because she suddenly looked annoyed. “Do you want to hear this, or not?” she snapped.
“I do. I'm sorry.” My voice sounded like it came from another planet.
What in the actual fuck was going on?
She narrowed her eyes, confused by me and annoyed, and then continued.
“So, I needed...wanted...some money. And Arest was doing this thing, where he was sending out girls to...you know...'entice' married men into having an affair.”
Puzzles solve themselves this way. This particular piece landed in place, and in my mind everything else began immediately to find a place in the picture. I didn't quite get it yet, but I could feel it all pulling together now...
“Honey trapping.” I stated. “Really?”
I had heard of this but I didn't think it actually existed to the extent that someone was making money off of it regularly.
Jordan nodded.
Now a cold fear was spreading through my abdomen, as all of the piece began to form the big picture.
I really, really hoped this wasn't going where I thought it was.
At the same time, I really, really hoped this was going where I thought it was.
“The thing is, everyone rich has a prenup now. So, like...this is big business. Wives wanting to get out of gold-digger marriages with some of the money, I don't know. Rich people. Can't talk to each other.”
I knew.
Even as the cold fear spread through me, and choked off my voice, the hot fingers of lust were grabbing hold of my cock, and bringing it to life.
“So...” Jordan cleared her throat. “Yeah, it all happened by accident. He had these girls he hired. I mean, 'girls.' They were obviously over eighteen. Most of them were like twenty-five. And they were supposed to, you know...find the subject and flirt and take things to the point of agreement to have sex, and then skedaddle and write the whole thing up in a report for the wife. 'Your husband took my room key, he went to the room...'”
Here my stomach twisted and my cock went hard as a rock.
Jordan sighed. “And Arest was, like...he started with one girl, but she didn't always work out. Flaky. And then he started getting all these referrals, because he also referred everyone to a divorce lawyer and vice versa, a real racket, right? And he had to hire more girls, and the problem was, some of them, you know...they weren't too bright.”
This story, I knew now, was going exactly where I thought it was. Even along Jordan's convoluted route.
“So one day,” Jordan sighed, and I could feel that she was nervous but also excited. It vibrated in her breath. “This girl Lydia, she didn't show up, and he had this client who was like, really lighting a fire under his ass. Super-connected, really demanding, and he needed to get it done. I mean, and here's the thing: this is my bonus, too, you know? And she was like, able to refer us, we were sure, to all these other women, she would, and she could, and...her husband was hard to catch,
and it just, had to get done.” She was getting flustered, not really finishing her sentences. She was terrible about telling stories this way, but I was still getting it, every word of it, and the whole picture was sharpening into horrifying, sexy focus.
I pressed my fingertips to my lips.
So Arest is in his office, wondering what to do, I thought. I could see the scene now. He's been looking at Jordan all this time. Jordan in her jeans. Jordan in her loose, high-necked shirts that can never really hide her big, bouncing breasts. He wonders what's under there, what that rack is concealing. A flat stomach or a round belly? He's been watching Jordan, with her hair clipped up in a french twist, dark red and promising. Jordan with almost no makeup but those porcelain-doll features. Jordan with her firm ass, her tight thighs.
Yes, Arest thinks to himself: Jordan would of course, if we shoved her into a hot little dress, be the perfect honey trap for rich old men.
“So...Arest was like, 'you have to do it,' and he offered me like $1K for the job-”
“One thousand dollars,” I repeated.
“Yes.” Jordan was impatient. “Because he knew I didn't want to do it, and he was in a bind. There was no way I could say no to that.”
I threw my hands up in the air. “No way? 'No.' There. You say, 'Arest, I'm married, and my husband works for the DA, and this is right along the fuzzy gray line of prostitution, entrapment -”
Jordan surprised me by interrupting. Not only that, she was confident as hell when she did. Not tentative, not unsure. “I am not a police officer, so take that 'entrapment' bullshit and shove it up your ass -”
“Extortion -”
“No one was being extorted, unless the wife did it, but you know as well as I do that this isn't our problem.”
I did not like how she was saying “our.”
I did not like how much thought she had put into this.
I did not like that she was making perfectly valid points.
I did not like – or did I? - that she was absolutely confident as she made them.
“And as far as 'prostitution' goes, there is absolutely no exchange of money for sex, and...like I just told you! There's no sex.”
A Well-Laid Trap: The Story Of A Professional Hotwife Page 10