Human Interest: A Lead-In To Wife Watching

by Arnica Butler

  Xavier shrugged. “Called in.” He backed out of the parking space and adjusted the mirror afterward. “Call Arthur.”

  Rachel fumbled with the phone grateful to have something to do.

  The awkwardness continued when they arrived at their destination: just outside the steps of City Hall. Rachel should have been thrilled to finally get an assignment that met her criteria of “news.” She should have been curious about why Arthur had suddenly had a change of heart and put her on this story instead of another human interest garbage story.

  But the only thing she could think about was her dirty daydream.

  Xavier seemed to be deliberately ignoring her discomfort. Finally, without taking his eyes off the windshield and the street where the protesters were rumored to plan to travel down, he spoke.

  “Cat has Rachel's tongue. Why's that Rachel?”

  Rachel felt her stomach turn. She needed to think of something quickly, and it couldn't be: “I'm slightly embarrassed that I just spent the morning daydreaming about sucking your cock and then I masturbated in the second-floor bathroom.”

  You need to divert, Rachel.

  There was the blog, and the video. Talk about that.

  Instead, words tumbled out of her mouth in a garble:

  “Can we just...I want to...”

  Rachel felt like she was about to start crying. The feeling gripped her suddenly. Her chest was tight, and her eyes were stinging.

  Fuck, she thought. She never lost her cool. She hadn't felt this feeling for almost fifteen years, since she did her first public speaking. She had gotten over it and now she was a professional.

  Her cheeks felt hot. A hysterical laugh was also building up inside of her, maybe from the pressure building in her chest.

  She had no choice. She covered her face with both hands and doubled over to hide as much of herself as possible in her own lap.

  The sound that came out of her chest was horrible. It was a strangled half-cry, half-laugh, and there was nothing about it that wasn't embarrassing. It was wet, half in her nose and half in her mouth, and she felt her eyes well over in tears.

  Xavier did nothing.

  She was extremely grateful for this. If he had touched her back, or made a joke, it would have made everything worse.

  She sat up. She knew her face was red, and she had probably drooled on herself. She was sweating, even in the air conditioning.

  “I have to talk to you about this,” she said. Her voice came out shaky, and she had to squeeze hard to get it out of her chest. “I'm so...I can't just not not talk to you...” she waved her hands in front of her face, trying to cool herself off.

  Jesus, she was acting like an idiot. A new wave of embarrassment welled up inside of her and she felt like her voice would be choked off if she uttered another word, so she just looked up at the corner of the car roof and waved her hands in front of her face.

  “Look,” Xavier said. “You're a fine-ass white woman, and I'm a fine-ass black man. People on the internet are gonna say all kind of shit about that. What is it? The bbc?”

  Rachel fell into her own lap again.

  Xavier laughed.

  “I can't talk about it.”

  “Are you crying?” He was amused.

  She waved her hand up above her torso and shook her head.

  But she was.

  She was crying, but it wasn't necessarily because she was prude, or embarrassed.

  Or was it?

  What was it?

  Why was she crying?

  It wasn't a sad-cry, or even an unhappy cry.

  She knew what is was.

  It was overwhelmed crying. The memory of her dream was not helping her, and the guilty pleasure she indulged in of bathing in the idea of Xavier's affections, letting the arousal of it flutter around in her stomach, was also not helping.

  There was also the fact she very literally did not want to cause any problems in any marriages. Not for herself, not for Xavier.

  The whole thing made her so wildly uncomfortable she felt like she was going to stop breathing from the sheer weight of it on her chest. And now, she was in the car with Xavier, and her thoughts were swinging back and forth from wild attraction to dark guilt.

  “Ray?” Xavier's voice, low and soothing as always, rippled with concern. It didn't help matters. Rachel felt his words squeezing her heart even more fiercely. “Okay, look. I'm sorry. I didn't realize you were so upset.”

  Rachel sat up and took a deep inhale. She shook her head. She knew her face was crimson red now, and she could feel that her skin was damp without touching it.

  “You're a mess,” Xavier laughed. “Look...it's the post?”

  Rachel shook her head.

  “Josh?”

  She shook her head again. What was it?

  “It's everything!” she said. She felt ridiculous. “I just...it's all really awkward and I feel like...I don't know...I feel...” She was very close to the right answer, she sensed.

  “Guilty? Like it's your fault for being Rachel Elliot, KRTV's most adorable reporter?” Xavier offered. He used an announcer-voice to say “KRTV's most adorable reporter.”

  Rachel felt as though he had pricked her with a pin and the tension was draining out of her. She nodded.

  “Maybe it's my fault. For being black.” Xavier had a sarcastic tone as he said this.

  She gave him an uncomfortable smile.

  It was all so stupid, when he put it like that.

  “Just forget about it,” Xavier said.

  Rachel frowned.

  “Don't you worry about your wife seeing something and thinking...I don't know.”

  “Nope.”

  Xavier said it so quickly, and with so much confidence, that Rachel felt a flicker of annoyance pass through her. She looked at him skeptically.

  “Tell you what,” Xavier said, to her incredulity. “Let's have you all over for dinner. Okay? Clear the air. You'll see, Tyra doesn't care about this, Josh will see we don't care about this, we'll have some of Tyra's food, drink some wine, have an orgy, and it will all be fine.”

  He winked at her.

  “Stop it.”

  “No but seriously, come over for dinner. It'll be...oh shit, here they come. Look alive, Rachel Elliot.”

  And then he reached over with a tissue he had seemingly produced from nowhere, and dabbed at a droplet of sweat on her temple.

  She shivered with the touch, but there was no time to think about anything that had just transpired between them, or the way an electric ripple of pleasure was traveling down her neck. The protesters were arriving, and this was the first real news story Rachel had been sent to in months. She gave herself a quick glance in the mirror, hastily repaired her make-up, and followed Xavier out of the van.

  8: INVITE

  Rachel was fidgeting. It was clear to Josh that she had something to say. Rachel had an inability to keep secrets, or even lie well, really. Whatever she had in her head seemed to almost move around beneath her skin like a liquid, shifting every time she moved, until she just let it boil over.

  He could feel his pulse quicken a little, as a drop of his fantasy entered his blood. He didn't really want her to tell him she was having an affair, or that what had happened with Xavier had been just a little more than what had happened on the screen. But he found it scorching hot that some guilty pleasure might be crawling under Rachel's skin right now. He felt the heavy, queasy ache of excitement in his chest.

  He decided to just enjoy it. “Do you want a different salad dressing?” he asked her. “I can make some fresh.”

  Rachel was staring at her fork. She shook her head. “No, that's okay.”

  She was distracted, he noted. Her mind was miles away.

  Was it on her cameraman? Had she done some naughty thing with him? Did they sneak into closets at the station, and press their bodies up against each other, briefly but with longing snaking through both of their bodies? They would look so beautiful together: her pale skin, her li
ght hair; his dark wiriness wrapping around her like a snake...

  Josh exhaled. He could feel an erection building.

  He looked at Rachel. She was still thinking of something else.

  Someone else?

  She twisted her fork and spun her salad, as though it were spaghetti. She brought it halfway to her mouth, and then set it down.

  “So...” she dragged out the vowel.

  Here it was, Josh thought. He could feel arousal and fear fighting each other inside his abdomen. He almost felt sick as he waited for her to finish her sentence.

  Because he wanted her to say: “I fucked Xavier.”

  And he did not.

  “Listen, I was talking to Xavier today...he's my cameraman...”

  She was looking at her salad. As soon as the word “Xavier” left her lips, it sliced through Josh, either so cold it felt hot, or the reverse. He placed his hand on his stomach. His pulse was so fast now it concerned him.

  “And, he thought maybe it would be a good idea to like...smooth things over...not that there's really anything to smooth over, but you know, like, de-awkwardify the situation.”

  She looked up at him. He was staring at her, and he knew it. He wondered what his expression looked like, and if it betrayed the excitement she would probably find perverse.

  Smooth things over, how? he wondered.

  Rachel shrugged, almost as if he had said something, and for a moment he felt naked, as if his thoughts had been revealed to her. “If you don't feel like it, that's cool, but...I don’t know, I feel...really weird about the whole thing, and Xavier said maybe we should just have a dinner or something.” She looked up at the ceiling. “Sort of like, if we're all just together, there won't be anything weird.”

  Josh felt another convulsion inside of him. What did Rachel think was weird? Sparks of arousal flickered through him. She wouldn't think things were weird unless there was, in fact, some kind of “weird” thing going on. Could it be that she was attracted to Xavier?

  He watched his wife. She had directed her gaze back to her salad.

  She felt guilty. It was a profound guilt, he could see. Not the guilt of having done something inappropriate, but a low-grade guilt. The beginning of a fever.

  Josh was starting to think quickly. It wasn't his forte. He was an analyst. He thought slowly and deliberately and made long-term recommendations after considering piles of research.

  He scrambled around in his own mind, knowing he needed to steer “things” in the direction he wanted them to go, that he had an opportunity here. But he didn't know for sure what he wanted.

  “Uh...” he said, if only to buy himself some more time. If he said nothing, Rachel would keep talking and she might talk herself right out of whatever she was considering.

  She shrugged again, again as if he had said something. Rachel was a fast mover, a fast-thinker. Her job required her to move quickly and think quickly, and she could hold up both ends of a conversation by herself, in her own mind, if he let her. In fact, she did it often enough that they had almost begun communicating this way.

  Josh urged himself to take control.

  “I think dinner is a great idea. I mean...if that's what you want to do,” he heard himself saying. Not even he was sure where this was leading. “I just don't want...”

  He realized he had no idea what he wanted to say.

  “I know,” Rachel said, and her reporter-mind was clearly activated. Josh felt a sense of defeat. She was now going to steamroll ahead, finishing his sentence because she didn't have the patience to wait for him. “It to seem like anything weird has actually happened, which was my thought, too. Ever since...you know...it's just been weird, and there isn't anything weird, so it's silly, but...”

  She scrunched her nose up again. Her sweetness slammed down on everything Josh was thinking, and brought him back to the reality of the situation: his wife had been the subject of wild internet speculation, and she felt bad about it. His own feelings, his own newly awakened and strange feelings about wanting to watch his wife have sex with another man, had nothing to do with any of this. He had no business even thinking about it.

  He reached out and out his hand on Rachel's hand. “Honey,” he said. “It's fine. I think it's a good idea. I think we should do whatever you think is a good idea, so you can feel okay about everything.”

  Rachel's torso deflated a little as she let out a sigh of relief. She relaxed; he could see that tension had been building up inside of her. He had a pang of guilt when he saw this. She was really stressed out by whatever she was feeling.

  And he was feeding off of it like a vulture.

  She brightened. “Okay, good. That's good. I really think it will help. So...I'll just tell him that's okay. Apparently his wife is a really great cook so they asked if we could go over there. Will that work?”

  Josh summoned his diplomatic, meeting-level smile. He pasted across his face and nodded. “It's perfect,” he willed his mouth to say.

  Inside, he felt like someone was throwing his mind around like a basketball. Wife. It had never occurred to him that Xavier had a wife, though why wouldn't it? The man was almost forty, of course he was married.

  He could feel the pleasure his fantasy had been giving him slipping away from his grasp. He probably never would have had the guts to ask Rachel to do it, and she probably would never have agreed to do it, and she was too good of a wife, he knew, to ever cheat on him. Those were all the sharp corners of reality it had been easy to push aside as he savored his fantasy.

  But now, hearing that Xavier had a wife, reality came back into focus. This was all just ludicrous fantasy.

  And so much the better.

  Rachel gathered energy again, suddenly, and began to talk about Xavier's wife and her cooking. With every word, it became clearer to Josh that Rachel had no desire to have sex with her cameraman. Not secretly, not at Josh's behest, not at all.

  He felt a little foolish.

  So he nodded, and agreed it would be fine idea if they cleared the air, had a nice dinner together, yes he would probably like Xavier, and Tyra as well.

  And he filed his fantasy under “private thoughts for jerking off when Rachel is out of town.”

  That was that.

  9: DINNER

  Xavier, in person, was a great, masculine specimen, and there was no denying it. He opened the door and seemed like a character in a movie, towering above Josh and Rachel, dark and foreboding. He had to be at least six and a half feet tall. Lean muscle peeked out from a short-sleeved dress shirt, and pressed against his jeans. The man was chiseled.

  Josh felt a number of feelings as Xavier looked down at them, and none of them were particularly easy for him to define, even to himself.

  Principally, he felt his desire rekindled, to see this dark man with his wife skewered by his cock. It was as though someone had tossed gasoline on the idea.

  Josh shifted from one foot to another. He extended his hand and Xavier took it. His hand was large and warm, and Josh stared at it, forgetting completely to say anything to him.

  “Josh,” Xavier said, just in time to save the moment from an awkwardly long pause. “Xavier.”

  Xavier nodded at Rachel, and Josh watched the interaction like a hawk, not sure whether or not to be relieved or disappointed yet again. He hoped for a kiss on the cheek, or a hug, but then wasn't he also relieved that the relationship between his wife and this giant of a man was more professional than that? Mere camaraderie between partners.

  “Nice to meet you,” Josh said, and he was impressed with how warm he managed to make his own voice.

  This was all going to be fine.

  He was going to have a nice evening and not act like a fucking idiot.

  He was going to have a nice evening and not spend the whole time thinking about Xavier fucking his wife.

  It was going to be difficult.

  Just as he was pondering how he would keep his mind under control, in spite of the fact that it was already bu
bbling with erotic images of Rachel and Xavier, a woman appeared behind Xavier and made Josh's mind stop dead in its tracks.

  The woman who materialized behind Xavier appeared to be seven feet tall. She wasn't, it was evident, because she was shorter by at least a foot than Xavier, but she appeared that way. Her skin was an impossible color, darker than Xavier's, but also like oil: it captured something in the light that made it seem like hundreds of colors it was not. Her lips were carved into her face like the petals of a lily: full but with sharp edges at the corners. They were painted blood-orange, and they seemed to occupy all of the space in the world for a moment.

  Her face was so stunning it was hard not to stare at her. Her hair was a tremendous afro of wild curls, a tinge lighter than her skin. The twists of her exotic beauty, in her strange nose, her high cheekbones, her big, round eyes, held both Josh and Rachel enthralled for a moment.

  She seemed to know, probably after a lifetime of looking like she did, that people needed a moment to take her in. Like Xavier, she paused for a moment, expressionless, ethereal, and looked down at the two of them.

  Then, with an easy-going warmth, she smiled, and reached for Rachel's hand. “I'm Tyra,” she said. “It's so nice to finally meet you.” She pulled Rachel up the stairs and, much as Xavier had done to Rachel, gave Josh a nod. As though they saw each other all the time.

  The effect was, surprisingly, quite calming. Josh was surprised to find himself put at ease by the presence of Tyra, after the initial shock of seeing someone so beautiful wore away.

  Rachel was adorable, and stunning in her own way, but Tyra was a goddess. Obviously, a man with a wife like that wouldn't be overtly putting the moves on a woman from work. He could dismiss his fantasies now, and try to just have a nice time.

  A table had been set up in an elegant dining room, and Tyra invited them to sit while Xavier slid behind a small bar in the corner and offered them drinks. “We have wine,” he said, “because Tyra insisted on it. But she's made Cajun food and so I am personally having a beer.”