The Hobby Job: A Romantic Wife-Watching Novel

by Arnica Butler

  I didn't want to admit it, or talk about it, but I didn't really care.

  I mean, yeah – I wanted to have sex. I knew he did, too.

  But it was all just so tiring. So mundane. It was hard to get excited about things. Before I knew it, a month had passed without us doing much more than kissing goodbye in the morning. A quick kiss, the kind that didn't really even get on the mouth.

  I felt a twist in my stomach. A long-buried longing, to feel Conrad's body next to mine. Not through clothing, not just lying there dormant and sleeping...skin-to-skin, his cock getting hard next to my thigh, or maybe in my hand.

  Something had to change.

  P IED PIPER

  CONRAD

  “Believe me, it's fine. I don't even care where we go.”

  Laura smelled like a citrus bubble bath, and her brown hair was still slightly damp from her bath. She seemed to have emerged from the bathroom a little like a butterfly from a chrysalis, so I was feeling pretty good about myself and my idea. It wasn't just that she had worn her hair down, or put on a nice dress – she was smiling. Vibrant. Completely changed.

  She flipped the sunshade down to look in the small mirror while she applied lipstick.

  I tried to keep my eyes on the road. One of the things I've always liked about Laura, and never really told her about, is that she doesn't make that stupid face that most women do while she puts lipstick on. Instead of shaping her mouth into a creepy “o,” fit for a horror movie, to stretch her lower lip out, she just puts it on. And then she gives herself a little pout. I like to catch it when I can.

  “Oh my god Con, you're halfway in the oncoming traffic.” She didn't look away from the mirror, though, and her voice was calm. Nothing was diffusing her good mood, which was great but mildly disconcerting since she had been close to going to the looney bin this afternoon.

  I steered back into our lane. I heard the light puff of air of her lips pressing together and then popping. She smiled. “This lipstick is so whoreish. Where did I even wear this? To work?”

  “I think it looks good,” I said. I meant it. I let my eyes pass over her legs.

  She swept her straight, full brown hair from her face and sat back in the seat.

  I slowed the car, but hesitated. “Are you sure about this...we can always drive into town -”

  “Meht,” Laura said. “I've always wanted to try this place, and I really don't care what we're doing. I'm going to drink an enormous beer.” She pointed at the sign, which hilariously proclaimed: The Pied Piper. Scottish Music. Enormous Beers. “But plus also, I want to ask them if they'll hire me.”

  I turned into the parking lot. “Fine,” I agreed blithely. I dismissed the part about them hiring her as a half-joke.

  I was a little surprised by how enthusiastically Laura was taking to my idea of getting a hobby job. Usually, Laura shot down any ideas that didn't originate in her own mind with a meteor shower of reasons it wouldn't work. Then, a few days later she would come back and propose what she called a compromise, but which was essentially the same idea with some moderate twist.

  When I called her out on this she laughed at herself and then claimed it had to do with her career leaving a permanent residue on her mind. Which was bullshit. She was just stubborn.

  So it was a little odd that she had not only agreed to my plan, but was now joking about implementing its first stages less than an hour later.

  She moved toward me in the parking lot and linked her arm through mine. I felt a shiver course through her and she pulled herself close to me like she wanted to tighten a knot. She flipped her hair over her shoulder and looked up at me. The night was much chillier than the season, and felt like a late fall evening, like it would bring snow with it by the end. Her cheeks were red already.

  She gave me a smile. Not the wan, tired smile that she gave me nowadays, almost always, but a real smile. An invigorated smile. She was excited about something, and it had energized her.

  I stepped hard on the urge to compliment myself on how wise my idea was. I just wanted to enjoy her buoyant mood.

  The Pied Piper, to which Laura had told me to go, was a divey restaurant on a two-lane highway into the city, as you went in from Kearny. One of those places that stands all by itself in a bunch of hayfields, and you aren't really sure how it got there.

  The name was a corny play on words. They served five kinds of Shepard’s Pie and had a live bagpipe show on Tuesdays, apparently for the large numbers of Scottish retirees who had holed up in one of the suburban tracts down the road.

  It was Wednesday, thank God, and the live music seemed to be all quiet guitars without too much amp. The place was, in spite of the weekday hour, pretty busy.

  Laura surprised me by passing over the hostess podium and heading straight for the bar. She was quicker than me, as though she knew where she wanted to go all along. I watched her knee-length skirt swing back and forth over her ass, and noticed that her bare legs were dimpled with gooseflesh from outside. Her calves were strong and shapely, and they ended in a pair of black shoes that looked a little like a ballerina slipper. From behind she looked almost girlish, with a thin black sweater clinging to her shape. She she shed the light sweater from her shoulders as she walked, and revealed her smooth arms, toned by many years of hauling children around. The dress, which I had seen before but all but forgotten, was a pretty black number, just barely casual enough to be at The Pied Piper. Her shoulders were almost completely bare, because the collar of the dress swept low and wide. Looking at her smooth skin, I felt a little pang of longing and excitement.

  It seemed like Laura was already transforming. She sat down with a flourish and placed her elbow on the table, reaching behind her to run her fingers through her shoulder-length hair. She watched me approach the table, and gave me an impish smile. She bit her lip. “This place is perfect,” she said, and I knew she didn't mean for dinner. Rather, for the plan I had made.

  I know I should have just been thrilled that Laura was in a good mood. That she seemed to be recovering from the near breakdown she seemed to be having in the kitchen. That she was listening to my advice for once, and trying to make the situation at home – which honestly had been spiraling out of control for months now – better.

  But it irked me a little that she was so...excited about it. Embracing it so much.

  I had this uneasy feeling as I sat down at the small bar table with her. She stretched her arm across the table to me, but instead of feeling, as I should have, a simple pleasure that she was squeezing my forearm affectionately, I surveyed her gesture critically. She was draping herself over the table, swinging one bare leg over the other, playing with her hair. Her movements were more those of a younger Laura. A flirtatious Laura. The kind of Laura who I had crossed the room to talk to so many years ago.

  I should be happy about this, I thought.

  Instead, I felt something nagging at me. I looked around the room, and saw one of the waiters, in passing, run his eyes up and down Laura's body.

  The bartender popped out from behind the bar and set down two napkins. He was one of those hardened characters, who had been a bartender for too long, in too many half-dives like this one. His face was grainy and yellowed by too much smoking, and his boyish features were crumpled into what appeared to be a permanent, no-nonsense frown.

  But the guy's features softened slightly when he looked at Laura, who was really laying her limbs everywhere on the table and flipping her shiny hair around quite a bit. I watched his eyes do a skillful scan of her body, and then his downturned mouth softened. Just a little. But it did. “What can I get for you lovely people?” he asked. “A glass of wine? Martini?”

  The “lovely” was clearly intended for Laura.

  “A giant beer,” Laura said. Her enthusiasm gave him a kick, and the pleasure registered on his face as his smile grew a little. He was turning in tiny increments more and more toward Laura, and away from me.

  “We only have enormous beers,” he said wryly.<
br />
  “Oh. I had really hoped for giant one.”

  Laura's eyes were sparkling and she gave her hair a little fluff from behind her neck.

  She was. She was flirting.

  “One giant beer for a lovely lady,” he said, warmly. I could hear the flirt building up in his voice. His like for Laura was evident, and he wasn't doing much to hide it.

  It was just a little too long, a matter of seconds really, between the end of this proclamation and when he turned to me. During which time I saw his eyes make another, professional sweep over Laura's body – the man had skills, it went completely unnoticed by Laura – before he looked at me. His face began to harden as soon as it was out of Laura's sunny glow.

  “And for you?”

  I wanted a wine, to be honest, but I ordered a “giant beer” to not look fruity next to my wife.

  Laura guzzled down her beers, plural. Three, in fact. She was fascinated by the menu, scanning it for fifteen minutes and excitedly pointing out the menu items to me that made her squeamish (“Haggis egg rolls” and “Haggis and Bashed Neeps” made her particularly squeaky.) “What is even in haggis, really? Oh god...you don't think they make it here do you?” She was whispering, a little drunk, leaning over the table with the large menu spread open in her hands.

  Most notably, she had kicked off her shoes. Her foot was busy between my calves, stroking me, very sexually. Her hands occasionally went for my knees and my inner thighs in the same sexy manner.

  I almost wanted to look under the table, though, to make sure it was her, because above the table she was simply reading the menu as if it were the most interesting thing in the world.

  The mixture of nonchalance and heady sexuality was driving me wild.

  Also, it had been ages since I had seen Laura like this. Animated. Flirty. Sexual.

  All of a sudden, she was blinking at me, as if she expected an answer. My own thoughts were entirely on her exposed collarbone, her wandering foot, and the occasional view I could glimpse of her breasts, when she leaned forward.

  “No way, though, right?” she said, saving me from having to explain that she was distracting me too much. “Oh look! They also have fried pickles...pickled eggs...Jesus! Look at this: Scotch Egg.”

  She pointed to the menu, and I pretended to read the description as her foot tickled the back of my calf. I ended up just looking at her lips.

  “You're not reading,” she told me, matter-of-factly, but cheerfully. “We'll just get one. Let's get one.” She waved the bartender over.

  Laura preceded to eat a Scotch Egg (a deep-fried, meat-wrapped, hard-boiled egg that was delicious and would ordinarily have prompted Laura to tell me how she would need to run for an hour a day for a week because of it), fried pickles, and, after two and half “giant” beers, the Haggis egg rolls.

  “I have to work here,” she said. “I have to work here, it's like, it's fated.” She tossed a half-eaten haggis egg roll into the basket. “I will not, however, be eating that again. Oh, god.”

  In a series of flirtatious exchanges between Laura and him, we had learned the bartender's name was Mac. Mac appeared out of thin air and took the basket. “I could have warned you about that.”

  Again, he spoke only to Laura. Edging his body toward her, cutting me, metaphorically anyway, out of the picture.

  His voice was warm.

  Laura laughed. A little over-the-top laugh, as if he had just told some very clever joke she would never forget. She reached out and placed her hand on his arm.

  I watched her hand with a mixture of dread and delight.

  It was just a friendly, drunken pat, I told myself.

  “Hey,” Laura said (and was it my imagination or did her voice seem sultry?) Her foot was still against my calf, her little shoes had been kicked off and her bare foot was worked up under my pant leg. She rubbed her toes against my leg, but she batted her glistening eyes at Mac with her hand on his arm.

  The scene sent a new, savory thrill through me.

  “You don't have any job openings here, do you?” Laura sang.

  Mac looked perplexed, his game having taken a very confusing turn. “Uh…is it like, for...”

  “It's for me,” Laura said. “I just need something to get out of the house, so like one night a week.” She had her hand in her chin and her hand was still on Mac's forearm. She had propped her hand up on her fingertips, and she gave them a tiny walk on his arm before she seemed to realize what she was doing, right in front of her husband. She quickly pulled her hand away. Her eyes gave me a quick, apologetic glance.

  “Uh...yeah, I mean, you could stop by tomorrow, Lorraine'll be here. It don't really know what she's got planned.” I could see his mind churning. Thinking of how nice it would be to “share a shift” with Laura.

  He even brought back a card with a phone number and the hours Lorraine would be there printed on the back of it with his block handwriting. Laura took the card in her slender fingers and somehow manged to move it in her hand in a flirtatious way, rubbing along the edges and tapping lightly at the corners.

  Oh god, I was going fucking crazy. I realized I was drunk.

  “You don't really want to work here?” I said to Laura, who's eyes were still locked Mac and smiling at him as he retreated.

  She snapped her look back down to me suddenly, and it was at that moment that I saw she had been mostly putting on an act. The entranced, drunken flirt was gone, and the expression she wore when she was cooking up a plan for work or writing had taken over her face.

  Again, I felt a wave of mixed feelings slap me in the face.

  Was I disappointed that she hadn't been flirting?

  “Are you kidding?” she whispered. “This place is perfect. So many sad stories,” she said, and her eyes went quickly to Mac, “so much strange, Scottish angst, haggis, walking distance to the house, and like...what is this place, out in the middle of the country, but not? There's a Staples like a mile from here and then a dairy farm out back, you know? I will definitely find something to write about here.”

  She took her beer in one hand, but the glass was so large and the momentum of the beer made it slip down and away from her, sloshing around. She laughed at herself and set it down. “Oh god. I'm hammered. Let's go home.”

  And her foot resumed making its way up my leg. Now she was looking at me with a look that it had been a long, long time since I saw.

  My spirits lifted.

  I waved my hand in the universal sign for “check.”

  Laura tipped her head back in the car and laughed. “Oh, my god, I really hope I get a job there. That place is a gas.”

  She turned her head and looked at me. She was slouching a little in her seat, and she had placed her feet on the dashboard. Her conservative-lengthed dress had slid down her thighs, almost to the round curve of her ass.

  I noticed that whatever it was Laura had been doing in the basement of the house as a workout had definitely paid off: her ass was tight, and kept its round shape even there on the seat.

  “Hmmm,” I said. “Are you sure you aren't just trying to get some 'gas'...going with….Mac...”

  Laura was laughing by the time I got to the end of my sentence. “Is that your idea of a play on words, Con?” she said. But she was entertained.

  “Yeah,” I admitted. We laughed together.

  “Put your seat belt on,” I advised her.

  Laura leaned forward, leaving her feet on the dashboard. Her skirt slid even further down her legs. “'Get my gas stove lit by Mac,'” she teased. “Gonna gas it up with Mac.” She lost it again, and I chuckled. God, it was so good to see her in a great mood, even if she had to have three beers to get there. It had been a long time.

  She was peering into the darkness, and making no move to put her seat belt on.

  “Laura,” I said. “Buckle up. Seriously.”

  She leaned on her thighs, pressing her cheek against hem and blinking at me. “You could just go that way,” she said. Her arm extended toward
the windshield.

  I looked into the darkness. “It's a field...” My statement began matter-of-factly, but I keyed in on what she was suggesting halfway through it. “Ohhhh,” I sang, enlightened.

  Was Laura seriously suggesting we go have sex in the field in our car?

  “Really?” I said.

  Laura laughed. “Do it. Do it quick so we get home in time for the babysitter.”

  The parking lot of the Pied Piper, in the middle of semi-nowhere as it was, ran up against a field that had no fence and appeared to belong to no one. It was a hayfield, and twice a year we had seen someone bale the hay, but a lot of trucks and tractors evidently used it as a shortcut between sideroads, which were spaced nearly a mile from each other in the Greenbelt.

  I drove forward. The solitary sodium-orange light that barely lit the Pied Piper parking lot quickly faded away.

  “Turn out your headlights,” Laura said.

  Laura, when I had first met her, had been a surprisingly daring girl. You would never have guessed that about her, from the looks of her – her plain face, her plain attire, her Midwestern suburban glow – but she was quite crazy at times. That had all ended, of course, with the kids. I was enjoying the little flicker of it in her now.

  I turned off the lights.

  The hay was long, and it slapped against the car while I tried to put all of the bad things that might happen to the undercarriage of my vehicle out of my mind. What it is it that happens to us as we age? I had sworn I would never be this way: a hot girl was in my car and she wanted to fuck, and I was thinking about hay getting stuck in my engine compartment.

  The car lurched with a loud pop as we hit a serious hole. I stopped and turned off the engine. “Okay,” I said. “I think that's far enough.”

  Laura leaned back against the seat and laughed. She reached a hand between her legs, and I watched her silhouette, barely visible in the moonlight and weak street lights that barely reached us.