She barely looked up at me as I arrived. “That's incredible,” she was saying.
Sandro looked up, his white-toothed grin still swimming around on his face. Something about him gave him the appearance of a Cheshire Cat.
“You look pale,” he said.
I placed my hand over my stomach. “Some kind of...” I began lamely, but Sandro interrupted me and leaned across the table, tapping his finger on Summer's outstretched hand, as though they were the lovers and I was the friend. “He's seen a ghost, is why,” he said. “God. Benny Brooks. How long has it been? Twenty years, almost.” His eyes quickly flickered up and down my physique. I was still standing, like an idiot. Sandro placed his hands on the back of his head, his elbows splayed out. In his neat silk shirt and his expensive jeans, he looked like a European playboy, but his gestures were those of an American stockbroker.
Good fuck, I said to myself inwardly.
“You look good,” he said, and his tone was laced with acid.
I did not look good, his tone said. Not good enough for Summer.
Almost as if he were reading my thoughts, or accepting the narration I was providing in my own mind, he leaned again toward Summer and lifted her hand. He moved elegantly to the edge of his chair to kiss the back of her hand, as though she were a princess. “However did you attract such a gorgeous creature?” His voice was dripping with honey, and Summer was batting her eyelashes and smiling.
“Ben, sit down,” he said, almost as part of the same sentence. “You've been standing there like a goon for five minutes.” He brought his hands together in a hearty clap. “Now!” he yelled, and the energy of the room changed – it was a noticeable thing; the waitstaff seemed to stiffen into shape and turn their attention to us, without moving - “Let's eat!”
I sank into the chair in an awkward movement. My knees gave out on me halfway down.
Summer looked at me, and she was smiling. She seemed to notice nothing about me at all, and I wondered if she was just taking everything to the same conclusion we had planned on. I tried to catch her eye, but she was too busy flirting with Sandro, laughing at his jokes, opening her eyes in surprise as he spoon-fed her an appetizer.
Sandro leaned over and poured something from a bottle.
“Aperitif,” he said. “It's for your stomach.” Then, with little pause, he turned on me with his intense, dominating eyes. “It's a good thing you came, mate. I was just telling Summer, the rest of the class has canceled.”
How convenient.
My eyes moved like overcooked eggs from Sandro to my wife, searching for the truth. Had Sandro planned it all along, and if he did, had he known it was my wife, specifically, he was planning to seduce and fuck? Had Summer known? Had they planned this little bit of theater together?
I looked at Summer.
I needed to know if she was in on it, this grotesque plot of Sandro's.
For surely, that's what this was. Even if he hadn't known all along that Summer was my wife, he was seizing her like a hawk now. His eyes would not leave her. He was eating her alive, undressing her right in front of me. Slapping me on the back and telling me what a great catch she was, while his eyes stripped her clothing down to her moist panties and he sucked her inside of his mouth like a plume of smoke.
He would then turn to me, and I could have sworn his eyes said: I am going to fill your wife so full of cum she splits open.
Sandro leaned back in his chair. “Maybe they didn't hear me when I said I would pay for dinner,” he quipped. It took me a moment to realize he was talking about the class.
I watched Summer. She was just playing the game we had agreed upon, I reminded myself. This is what we had planned to do before I saw that it was Sandro she had chosen. Sandro of my past, who I had never told her about.
Sandro. The smug fuck. Thinking, maybe, that he had plucked my wife right out from under my nose. I couldn't stand him not knowing that this was the plan all along. This was my plan, this is what I wanted.
Or was it?
Surely Summer had caught on, by now, to the fact that I needed to change the game plan? Surely she would consult me, and ask if everything was still on like it was before? Now that the person was someone I knew?
I had a chilling thought: Maybe she assumed that I had known all along that her mystery chef was Sandro.
And what about me? What about you, Ben? I screamed inside my own head. Do something!
I was impotent. Powerless. I wasn't moving from where I was sitting, to snatch my wife away from Sandro's encircling grasp. I thought about it. So many times. Leaning over and telling her I needed to speak to her, whispering the story of Sabrina to her quickly, running away in the streets.
Sandro drank wine, and water, and more wine. I waited for him to need to go to the bathroom. I waited for him to begin a conversation with the waiter, or anything at all that would allow me one small second to say something to my wife, something that would unlink this chain of events.
Summer would go to the restroom. Surely. Then I could stand up and follow her.
I waited. Why was I waiting? Humiliation rose up in my cheeks. Summer said I looked quite drunk and poured me another glass of wine. Was she being mean? Was she being kind? What did her face say?
I downed the wine to give myself more courage. Maybe if I was drunk enough, I would be brave enough to tell Sandro to fuck off. I would get my wife back for the evening. I would find a way to arrange this game with her another time.
Instead of doing any of these things, however, I sank further and further into my chair. Sandro and Summer began to talk to each other more intimately, only occasionally looking my way to include me, in some offhand way, in the conversation.
And wasn't this what we had planned, I thought. Isn't his just what Summer said she would do, and now she was doing it?
I looked at her.
It was true: she was simply carrying out the plan we had created together. She was excited. Her face was flushed with her excitement. Her eyes were bright and smiling.
I looked at Sandro.
The bastard. He was just carrying out the plan he had all along, to humiliate me again.
Why wasn't I doing anything?
For a brief moment, I let myself touch on what might have been the truth: I didn't want to stop what I had set in motion, even if it was Sandro who Summer had chosen. I didn't want to take the chance that Summer would abandon this plan forever. Because I really, really wanted her to have sex with another man, and I was so close I could taste it.
I tried to dig deeper into myself, and ask myself if I really didn't want it to be Sandro.
A cold feeling spread out in my stomach, the kind that is both erotic and fearful, angry and pleased. The kind I could not exactly explain to myself.
But the feeling turned hard when it reached my cock, and so I guess that was my answer.
I drank so much wine that I started to get ill. The seafood Sandro had insisted on giving me was settling in like barnacles on my stomach. Maybe he had poisoned me. I excused myself and steered like a boat to the bathroom.
I was sweating. My eyes were bloodshot. I needed to get control of myself.
I splashed cold water on my face. I gave myself a talking to. I sat on the toilet thinking.
A man pounded on the door.
“Just a fucking minute,” I said.
A discussion ensued outside the door. I couldn't follow the Italian. I placed a washcloth on my face.
You need to act.
I looked at myself in the mirror.
No, I thought slyly. What I needed was not to act. I f I never left early, then Summer would know it was off. We had to go home sometime.
I straightened my jacket and looked at myself again. I walked tall up the stairs and into the garden. Where Sandro and my wife were -
Gone.
The word gone flooded my mind, the way blood seeps from the floor in a horror movie. With it came the image of Summer, her arm linked with Sandro's, walking down
the streets. Back the way we had just come, her skirt dancing around her bare thighs. Her hair streaming around her face, her lips open in a generous smile. All the same things that I had treasured so much as we walked down here – but now she was giving them to Sandro.
And Sandro, his bright smile and his perfect hair, his blue eyes moving up and down her body. Smiling, pretending to listen. All the while thinking about what her pussy would feel like when he slipped his cock inside of it.
I spun around in the middle of the restaurant, looking for signs of them. The waiters were busy waiting, the diners were busy dining. Incredibly, no one cared about my problem. No one had noticed them go, or cared that they were gone, and that my life was unraveling before my eyes.
My heart was racing as I pushed my way hastily out of the restaurant. The headwaiter glared at me as I left. “Did they pay the bill?” I said, not wanting to get arrested.
The man's lips quivered, just a little, at the edges, and turned up into a smile. He looked down quickly, as though he had just suddenly gotten the very big joke that was all on me, as if he knew everything that had just played out before him. He flipped a page of his reservation book for no reason. “The bill has already been paid by Signore Cervi, sir.”
I fled.
I ran until I was out of breath, which didn't take long. I knocked people out of my way as I did, and many of them shouted at me in Italian. I slowed to a brisk walk.
I knew that I looked ridiculous. Frantic, pathetic. My eyes were devouring the streets in search of Summer's white dress, but it was Rome, and it was summer, and every woman was beautiful and wearing a skirt that was caressing their legs.
I threw myself down the subway steps like a drunk.
As the windows filled and refilled with scenes of Rome and rock and Rome and rock, the train going in and out of the city's holes like Sandro would go in and out of my wife, I thought of what had just happened.
Summer must have thought I decided to leave early.
Now she was heading back to the house.
What excuse had she given Sandro? What had she told him to get him out of the restaurant so quickly? How much had he wanted to fuck my wife that they took only seconds to pay the bill and disappear from the restaurant?
My mind was spinning. How long had I been in the bathroom? Longer than I thought?
Or was this a plan the two of them had made, was this all an elaborate ruse of Sandro's...to make me think I was pulling the strings, only to find out it was him all along? Maybe Summer was with him, helping him, cutting me open...
I saw the ticket controllers making their way down the train, and realized I had no ticket. I got off one stop early, and spun wildly on the platform trying to decide if I should wait for the next train or run to the apartment.
I felt like I had gone through a terrible time machine, one that worked like a washing machine and sloshed everything together. The street where Sabrina had lived was not far from here, looked like this one, and smelled the same.
No, it didn't look like this. This was not the past. This was not the same thing.
I started running again when I reached the quiet street where our apartment was. I fumbled with the outer lock, I threw the door open. Anyone seeing me might have called the police. I was wild, confused, drunk.
I froze.
I reached out, and took the sticky note from the stairwell door.
It was, of course from Summer. The post-it was American in every way – Europeans did not deign themselves to leave post-its on doors. It was a bright orange, taken from our drawer. The color of my own notes for my research. There was little doubt that it was hers.
Still, my mind tried to tell myself a thousand lies as I read it. This wasn't English (it was) and it wasn't her handwriting (it undoubtedly was).
Remember your promise.
I crumpled the note in my hand.
The first flight of stairs: I ran. Fuck my promise. I promised before I knew it was Sandro she was going to fuck.
The second flight, I walked.
Did it matter that it was Sandro? It didn't matter to her. We were going to do this anyway. Nothing about our own arrangement had changed.
The third flight of stairs, I was re-energized again by my hatred for Sandro, for the way he had so smugly stolen Sabrina right from under me.
The last flight of stairs:
Did I care about Sabrina? Sabrina was gone. If Sandro hadn't stolen Sabrina, I never would have met Summer.
My face grew red with anger. But it was the way he had done it.
I opened my palm and looked at the crumpled note.
The thing was, and I didn't admit this to myself at the time of course – the thing was, I was grateful to have the note. The note made it so that I could avoid the real humiliation, and the darkest one: I was too afraid to stand up to Sandro, anyway.
I took out my key, and slid it into the door silently. I turned the lock slowly, and with it my chest turned inside. Like I had swallowed a ball of molten lava.
When the door clicked, it sounded like the clanging of the doors of the Vatican gates. I stopped, but my own heart, knocking against my chest, drowned out every other sound in the hallway.
I placed my hand on the wood door. It was new, the landlord had told me several times, knocking on it and smiling with his ear to it, as though he was expecting something inside of it to answer him.
I blinked away the memory of the landlord's smiling face.
I pushed against the heavy wood, and stepped into the small foyer.
Remember your promise.
I stepped out of my shoes. Since coming to Europe we had decided to be as European as possible, and we placed our shoes by the door. There were slippers there for me, but I ignored them and began to shuffle down the hall on my socks. Silently, remembering my promise.
My face burned as I looked at Summer's shoes: one, tipped over in haste, near the shoe rack. The other standing upright, a few feet down the hall.
The scene drew itself for me. Summer trying to get her shoes off, and Sandro too hungry for her to keep his hands off her. Did he lift her with his big, muscular arms? Is that how her shoes had fallen, straight down, to land with a clank on the tiled floor? And then what? Against the wall, his lips pressed to hers?
I imagined the look on her face as his hard body pressed her against the wall. So much muscle, all of it hard as a rock, all of it animal and beautiful. And against her thigh, his stiff cock, bigger than mine, bigger than she had imagined, bigger than any cock she had ever had.
I reached the end of the hallway. I heard their voices, both of them speaking in the low, sultry murmurs of two people who know they are about to fuck and are just dragging it out.
I tipped my head to the side, to look past the wall and into the small living area.
Summer was propped on the coffee table, perched like a beautiful cat. Her legs were tucked under her and to the side, and she was holding a glass of wine. Her eyes, which were resting with a dreamy, bedroom glaze on the man in front of her, lifted immediately and met mine. A knowing smile turned up the corners of her mouth, and she took a sip of her wine.
Was her hair out of place? Messy, like Sandro had grasped it in his hands?
The knife of alternating pain and erotic heat turned slowly in my abdomen. If I wanted her to stop, this was my last chance. I could shake my head, bring my hand to my throat and make a slit over my neck.
But I did none of those things, and before I could think any more about them, her eyes were back on Sandro. Her smile, the one she had cultivated in Italy and which she had given only to me, blossomed up for him.
She turned ever-so-slightly, and set her wine glass down on the table. Her mouth was moving and I could hear the seductive tones of her voice but not what she was saying.
I had a hard time tearing my eyes away from what she was doing, even though it time to go to the place we had agreed that I would hide to watch her.
To watch my wife with another man
.
The excitement prickled through me and filled my head like a strong drink. My cock twitched and strained against its own skin. My wife, who now was brushing her hair over her shoulder and leaning forward, was going to let another man fuck her for my pleasure.
“Oh yeah?” I heard Sandro say. I could easily imagine the expression on his face, even as I tried to imagine what Summer might have said to him. What dirty, conniving things was she saying, in her sultriest voice, to lure him to the places she wanted him?
My body moved itself, while my mind remained where it was, trapped in loops of disgust and pleasure. The truth, it would seem, was that I wanted this.
Even if it was Sandro.
Even if it was Sandro.
The landlord had apparently blown all of his money on the door he took such pride in, because the closet in the bedroom was blocked off by a rickety, folding door that seemed to swing in every direction except the one you needed. A material that was not quite cloth, not quite rattan, and not at all new, covered the frame of the strange door. We had enjoyed making fun of it since we arrived, but now the door redeemed itself. It swung silently back to place, slightly open so that a long crack of the room was visible from inside. The strange material had large gaps in it from place to place, so I could easily follow the action in the room with little difficulty.
It was spacious in the strange closet, and there was even room for a chair. I sat on it it now. I tried to slow my breathing, which seemed incredibly loud.
My cock was a fat, swollen slab of meat when I touched it, and I could have easily jerked myself off in ten seconds without seeing another thing. Just imagining Summer's lips parting to say the word fuck next to Sandro's ear.
The promise was that I would let her be in control of everything. That I would not interfere, once things were going. It was Summer's show, and I would let it happen.
I took my hand away from my cock, and let the throbbing pain wash over me. I had to wait.
I could hear their bodies moving in the hallway. They were colliding with each other, kissing. The sounds were wet and animal, like two wild boars coming through the bushes.
I closed my eyes.
The Hotwife Summer Page 6
