Chapter 5 Five

That night Vera waited for me as if nothing had happened, as if she hadn't slept with another guy. Fifteen years, I don't know what kind of anniversary. Beautiful, gorgeous, with silky hair, painted lips, in black lingerie. I got hard despite everything. I hated her for that. For still being beautiful. For still turning me on. For being there as if none of that shit had happened.

"Happy anniversary," she said in a sultry voice. "Do you like it?"

My soul and my member were exploding.

"Is this how you dress for him too?" I asked her.

Her face changed in an instant, incredible.

"How did you know?"

That made me even angrier, she didn't even bother to deny it, to cry, to lie to me. She admitted it just like that.

"Lucas saw you going into the hotel."

"Oh, and that bothers you?" She came closer and unzipped my pants. "Imagining me with someone else?"

She reached in and caressed me. I got even harder. Vera looked at me with shining eyes, savoring, playing, testing. I didn't know she was so cold-blooded, or that she thought I was an idiot.

I pulled her hand away and zipped up my pants.

"I'm not going to fuck you anymore," I said. She didn't believe me, wrapped her arms around my neck, and kissed me.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. I made love to my wife, I didn't fuck a whore," I spat. Slut.

At that moment, I didn't know what disgusted me more: knowing that she spread her legs for another man or that she thought masturbating like that would solve things.

"What do you want me to say if you already know?"

"Tell me how you met him, as an anniversary gift."

And she told me. The guy had gone to her dental clinic. Of course. She had been seeing him for six months. Five of those months they had been meeting in the same place. I asked her if she knew he had a girlfriend, and she said yes. But she didn't know he was engaged.

That hurt her. She bit her lip when she didn't like something, when something didn't add up or made her angry.

"Engaged? How do you know?"

"Because I went looking for him and I found her. She told me."

"Why did you go looking for him? To beat him up?"

"No. I wanted to see the face of the man who's fucking my wife. Maybe he knew what the hell I had to do."

We didn't even have that left, not even the desire to fight, to scream, to yell at each other. Easy and simple, like a formality. Nothing remained of what we once were together. And I never realized it.

"Did you fall in love?" I asked him.

"What? I'm too old for that, Spencer."

"What is it then? A younger dick? Does he fuck you harder?"

She looked at me before answering.

"It's attention. It's three hours where I'm the center of the universe and not some fucking senator or congressman."

"So you fuck him because I don't pay attention to you. I don't take you wherever the hell you want to go, I don't buy you all the shit you can think of, I'm not there when your fucking mother drives you crazy."

They say women cheat when they don't feel loved, when they're not listened to, when they're pushed into the background. While we do it just to get laid wherever we can. Maybe I didn't know how to show her that she was my whole world, that all those hours of work, meetings, and last-minute rushes were to give her what she needed.

I had a thousand opportunities to fuck one of those interns who came and went, a thousand more to get a blowjob under the desk from some bored wife of one of those fourth-rate politicians. The new secretary who kept bending over the desk, almost putting her ass in my face. But no, the only one I ever wanted was her.

Apparently, it wasn't enough.

"What do we do now?" I asked her because I didn't know what to do, or didn't want to. And it seemed like she had a clearer idea, that she didn't care as much.

"I'm leaving tomorrow," she said, and that was that.

I didn't beg her or ask her to think it over. My marriage disappeared just like that. Like a whisper.

I slept in the guest house, another stupid whim of hers that I indulged. No one came to the house, we had plenty of rooms, but she wanted to do it anyway.

And maybe the guy was running the cables and putting in the plugs. Maybe he fucked her there too, among the bricks and bags of cement.

For building that house, I got a blowjob in the kitchen after dinner. She sucked me like an expert, salivating, licking, swallowing it all. How did she do it? How the hell did she manage to keep sleeping with me when she was already with the other guy? And I came in her throat, squeezing her head a little so she would swallow it all, because she had a habit of spitting. It disgusted her, she said. I opened a bottle of wine and sat down to drink it straight from it. I remembered her, my wife's lover's girlfriend. Well, she wasn't my wife anymore. How she cried and her voice trembled. And I felt like the biggest son of a bitch in the world again.

I figured she was also wondering how he could have the nerve to ask her to marry him while he was fucking someone else. Maybe she'd be luckier than me, if he told her it was just fucking with nothing else involved.

The bottle ended up empty on the floor and I passed out in my suit on the couch. When I woke up, it was around ten in the morning and Vera was gone.

The part of the closet with her clothes was empty, as was the dressing room. The drawers, the jewelry, even the bathroom products had disappeared. The car wasn't in the garage.

She just left as if she had never lived with me.

And I carried on as usual. As if nothing had happened. So much so that a week later there was a fundraising dinner. So I got my suit ready, prepared the lies I would tell when they asked me about her, shaved, looked in the mirror, and left. What was I supposed to do? How was I supposed to react? Beat my chest for being a cuckold, kick the house apart, get drunk for a week straight and cry?

The most bizarre thing about the whole situation: my wife had cheated on me, she had left without even saying goodbye, and I was driving to a fundraiser dinner full of hypocrites, thinking about that guy's girlfriend.