The Hobby Job: A Romantic Wife-Watching Novel

by Arnica Butler

  “Sorry I ditched you the other day, man.”

  I acted like I had to recall this information. I swiped the inside of a glass and then squinted. “Oh. Yeah man, what was that?”

  Troy was looking fairly haggard, even for him, and had trudged into the bar at precisely eleven. He had propped himself up against the bar top and mumbled incoherently. Now that he had a beer, he was speaking English again.

  Troy's attention had been captured by a game on the TV. He yelled at it, and then turned back to me.

  I blinked at him. “What was that?” I repeated. I didn't want to let him off the hook. I had been thinking about everything I had seen that night, almost nonstop, since it happened. Mainly thinking about Eliza's burning look, while another man nibbled on her ear.

  Troy looked confused for a moment, and then his eyes lit up brightly.

  “That,” Troy said, “is the solution to all my problems.”

  He waved a finger at me, and for a moment I thought we were maybe not talking about the same thing. Like he was thinking of duct tape, and I was thinking of Eliza.

  “Yeah, you know...I wasn't super into it at first. It was all Eliza's idea.”

  “What was?”

  “Man, her...” he leaned over the table, “her fucking other guys. It's so fucking hot.”

  My head was having a hard time processing things, if only because this was not the Troy I knew. Troy was the slut, not the girls he dated.

  Okay, well, maybe the girls he dated. But not like this.

  I cocked my head in genuine confusion. “So what, like...you have an open relationship?” I made air quotes around “open relationship” and immediately felt like an idiot.

  Troy shook his head. “Gimme another beer.”

  We were silent while I poured his beer, and he gulped half of it in one sip. “Ahhhhh!” he announced to the bar. Then he looked back at me.

  “No, see. This is thing. It's not an open relationship. It's just Eliza, fucking guys. In front of me.”

  I smiled, trying to look wiser than I felt.

  Surely he was fucking with me.

  “You don't believe me,” he said. He held a hand up, as though taking an oath. “Swear on my mother's grave.”

  “Your mom isn't dead.”

  “When she's dead. Look, whatever, I don't even care if you believe me. I'm just telling you, it's the way to go.”

  “Letting your girlfriend fuck other guys.”

  Troy was drinking some more of his beer, and it slid down his chin as he shook his head fervently. “No, no. No man, you got it all wrong. It's not...I'm not letting her fuck other guys. She's doing it for me.”

  I stared at him.

  “I don't get it,” I said, after a beat.

  But something inside of me sort of turned over. Like I maybe did get it.

  Troy shook his head, this time at himself. “Yeah, no. No, not at first you don't get it. But it is like....the hottest fucking thing I have ever seen. She does the nastiest shit with these guys, and she's like, you know, doing for me. Like she's making a porno for me to watch.”

  “Buuuut...” I sounded like I had a frog in my throat. To tell the truth, just imagining Eliza doing anything nasty had made my cock twitch a little. But there was something about the image growing in my mind, of Eliza on all fours, taking it hard from some other guy, looking at Troy with that searing stare. It was surprisingly hot to me.

  Really, really hot.

  “Wouldn't you rather be in the porno yourself?” I argued.

  Troy held up a finger. “You'd think so, wouldn't you? But no man, that comes later. It's fucking crazy, I know. But it's so fucking hot. You have to try it.”

  My mouth went dry. For a moment I thought it was a real offer, and I opened my mouth soundlessly.

  “First, though,” Troy said, his eyes going back to the TV, “we gotta get you a girlfriend. No FUCK!” he screamed at the TV, sucked back into his game.

  And that was the last I heard about it for a long time.

  But it wasn't the last time I thought about it.

  The more I thought about it, the more I could understand it. The images of Eliza looking to Troy while another man nibbled her ear, looking at him while another man slid his hands up and over her breasts, in public, replayed in my mind. Every time I thought of them, my cock got hard and I had to jerk off.

  There's nothing new, I told myself, in being attracted to another man's girlfriend. Especially the Elizas of the world.

  But I knew there was more to it than that. It wasn't, after all, Eliza leaning over the pool table and showing her perfect ass off that I thought about.

  It wasn't Eliza's big dark mouth opening up for my cock that I fantasized about.

  It was Eliza, Eliza with cock in her mouth, and her eyes looking the other way. To her boyfriend.

  You hear about this kind of thing, of course. (I mean, you hear about everything nowadays.) You see it as a choice on porn sites, and I had just kind of glazed over it. I was a single guy, I didn't have a wife, and to tell the truth I thought the kink was pretty wacky.

  Until Troy and Eliza.

  Until Eliza and her sexy, burning looks. Until I saw other men feeling her up and tasting her, right in front of Troy's eyes. Until I got a taste of the excitement that crackled through the air when Eliza looked at Troy, and Troy got an eyeful of another man stroking her long nipples under her shirt.

  And then, of course, he got to see the whole thing.

  Or did he?

  It was eating me up. It was pretty much on my mind all the time. I wanted to know more about it, but it took me a while to get up the courage to say anything.

  Finally, I broke.

  “You know that thing you say you do with Eliza?” It was a lazy Saturday, and we were having an informal party in the courtyard of my apartment complex.

  It was a ludicrous time to bring it up with Troy. Half the apartment complex was there: a loose collection of sometime enemies and sometime friends, depending on how loud a party was and whether you were invited to it. I don't think I even knew anyone's name.

  Eliza was sitting in a kiddy pool half-filled with frigid water. She was wearing a black bikini and had her face upturned to the sun. The cold water had splashed goosebumps all along her legs and arms, and hardened her nipples beneath the thin fabric of her bikini.

  Most importantly, she was ten feet away and could easily hear us, even over the too-loud music and the loud-because-drunk voices at the barbeque.

  But for some reason, I didn't care. I'd had a few beers and the curiosity that was burning inside of me finally got the better of me.

  In response, Troy just nodded, as if it were the most natural topic in the world to bring up. Like I had asked about a snowboard he had purchased, looking for advice.

  I looked at Eliza. There was no telling if she was listening. She had propped her head up on a pile of beach towels, and large black sunglasses hid her eyes from view as well as giving her an extremely glamorous, movie-star appearance. She could be asleep, or she could be enjoying all the guys' eyes wandering up and down her body.

  “Do you...” I hesitated, and lowered my voice to a semi-whisper. “Do you, like...get to see the whole thing?”

  Troy leaned back, as if to get more comfortable in his chair because he was about to tell a long story. In the pool, Eliza shifted, and her big breasts undulated on her chest, teasing us all with the promise of slipping out from under the bikini. Pretty much every guy there, and even some of the girls, waited with baited breath. Her breasts did not fall out, however, and so I turned back to Troy. He had a light grin on his face, I suspected from enjoying everyone watching his girlfriend.

  “Oh,” he said, and his voice was not low. “Yeah. Yeah man, I hide in the closet or something. It gets tricky. Some guys are into it, you know, just let you sit there and watch. But some guys think it's gay and shit. But yeah. I like to watch it.” He sucked himself forward by the abs to get out of the pull of the flimsy lawn ch
air, and leaned on his knees. I was thankful he dropped his voice at least a little to say: “You can smell it, too. You know? So yeah, you gotta watch.”

  At that moment, I had the most amazing olfactory experience I have ever had in my life. I had a hallucination, a smell hallucination, and the scent of pussy and Eliza's soap rose up in my nostrils, singeing them as if she were really there.

  I put my beer in my lap, against my cock, hoping to cool it down.

  In the pool, Eliza came to life, just barely. She lifted her sunglasses, and winked at me. Then she let them drop onto her nose.

  Something inside me flipped and flopped.

  “How do you choose the guy?” I said, because curiosity was pushing me on, even if Eliza was listening to the whole thing. Or maybe because of that.

  “Oh, it's like...sometimes her, sometimes me. You know. Sometimes it's a game, like we bet on two of them and then try to get our own guy to win. Flip a coin. Sometimes she just likes someone.” His voice suddenly sped up with enthusiasm. “That's my favorite. When Eliza picks.”

  I looked furtively at the pool. Eliza had smile on her face, and she turned her thumb up in the air silently.

  I looked back at Troy. He had sort of faded into a fantasy of some kind. Then he snapped out of it. “Hey man,” he said. “Can you reach that cooler? Grab me another brew.”

  So I watched this unfold for a while. Maybe months. They didn't do it every time we went out; sometimes they just hung out at The Yard and Eliza played pool in tight pants while every guy in the place watched her bending over. Sometimes Eliza spent the whole night plopped on Troy's lap, laughing her big laughs, tossing her shiny hair, and smashing her pillow-breasts into his face.

  But other nights, Eliza stopped on her way back from the ladies' room, and let another guy buy her a drink. Troy watched from wherever he and I were sitting, as she slid into another booth with another man, and touched her lips while he told her all about himself.

  It was a strange experience. Eliza wasn't my girlfriend, and of course I knew that. I didn't even want her to be. But I was getting off vicariously, I guess, through the experience. Watching Eliza let another man touch her collar bone. Seeing another guy let his fingertips wander down her soft skin to the line of her tube-top, his mouth getting closer and closer to her lips...

  In truth, I think I only saw Eliza leave with two or three men, with Troy leaving right after. He stiffed me with the bill once, just up and disappearing and leaving me to pay the tab and get home. He apologized later, explaining it all just happened so fast, which was true because I didn't even see Eliza leave.

  And then came the night I got to see what happened, from start to finish.

  We were meeting a group of people for “Amber's birthday,” and who Amber was or why anyone cared about her birthday, I never found out. I don't even think we saw the mysterious Amber all night.

  The bar we ended up at was the ultra-trendy Blue Martini, an open-concept open bar that was, inexplicably, entirely red inside. The only blue in the whole place was a giant neon sign in the shape of a martini.

  “It's so...Cocktail,” Eliza declared, taking the scene in from the entranceway.

  She was wearing a particularly hot pair of pants that night; they were tight, white, and made of a thin fabric that allowed the darker hue of her skin to show through. Just barely, not untastefully – just hinting at what was underneath. As the night went on, black lights would reveal the outline of a white thong nestled between her round buttocks, and in front, just a sliver of white that was the only thing covering her dark, curly snatch.

  It was clear from the moment she stepped into the place that it was going to be one of those nights. She turned to Troy and gave him a sweet kiss on the cheek, and then she began to move in that very deliberate way of hers.

  Some beautiful women move like skanks, where every step is so over-the-top sexual that it's practically desperate. Eliza wasn't this kind of girl. Not so obvious. But there was an element of sexuality that she turned up, just a little, when she and Troy were up to their game. A slight smacking in her narrow waist. A little more of a sway to her round ass.

  She left us with a promise to get drinks, and then she was gone. Eliza cut through a crowd much more easily than we did. Everyone got out of her way, and then they closed up the gap she made to catch her retreating figure.

  The music got louder. Troy pointed at a group of girls who appeared to be abandoning a half-circle booth that looked out onto the bar and a dance floor.

  Eliza came with drinks and went, but she didn't get very far. Nearly every guy she passed said something to her. Some she smiled at, and tossed her hair for, and even touched on the arm. Some she rolled her eyes at, or gave the finger. Some she ignored.

  I looked at Troy, who was sipping his beer and watching everything unfold like he was watching TV. I had a realization that I was keenly jealous of Troy for a bunch of reasons: one, that he could be so calm while his girlfriend flirted with other men, and two, that he had the kind of girlfriend who did that sort of thing.

  After about half an hour of blaring music, no conversation with Troy, and no hope of attracting any of the high-pitched, hysterical girls that were swarming the place like schools of glittering fish, my mood soured. I decided to try and leave early. I didn't even know why I was there.

  I mean, I did. I liked watching Eliza flirting with other men.

  But I also didn't.

  “Troy,” I said. “I think I'm gonna roll.”

  Troy raised his eyebrows, and then his glass. “Why's that, man? Evening's just getting started.”

  Maybe for you.

  I pointed vaguely at my throat, and my head, meaning, I guess, to indicate that I felt sick. I picked up what was left of my beer and slammed part of it.

  Troy held up a finger. “Man, let me get you another drink. Okay? We came all the way down here.”

  He was gone before I could protest.

  A cluster of blonde girls, all in baby-pink babydoll dresses, all of whom looked very under-aged, edged toward the booth. They fluttered and giggled, and finally a brave one, with blue eyeshadow on her pastel eyes, pointed at the table. “You leaving?” she mouthed, and then clamped her lips on her straw.

  I shrugged.

  The girls rolled their eyes and scooted away.

  Eliza plopped into the bench next to me, sliding over the back of it, long legs first. Her shirt caught on the pleather and rode up, over her smooth stomach, all the way to the soft curve of one breast. Then it slid back down.

  I looked the other way, as though assessing something by the bar. She was blocking my way out now, and looking at me with a peculiar expression.

  “How's the hunt going?” I joked. I wished I had a beer to sip or something to do. “You find your man?”

  Eliza tossed her hair. “Now, Connie, it almost sounds as though you disapprove.” I could see her smiling in the corner of my eye, her jaw lifting, her eyes devouring me – though exactly how or why, I couldn't fathom. “But yes, yes. I got my man.”

  I set my beer on the table. Eliza's long leg was crossed now, and her pants slid up to reveal a swath of her toned calf. Her perfect ankle and smooth foot were bobbing lightly, criss-crossed by straps of red leather that matched her shirt and the bar itself.

  It seemed as though she were expecting something. I looked up at her.

  Her eyes were on me. Burning through me. She tapped her fingers on the pleather.

  “Good guy?” I said, not really sure if I was joking with her anymore.

  “He's cute.” She put a finger between her teeth and bit on it.

  I nodded. Eliza disarmed me. I tried to play it cool when these two got up to their games, but it wasn't easy.

  “So?” I said, looking around.

  Troy, just then, hopped – actually hopped, one hand on the back of the booth, legs in the air – into the booth next to me. His feet came withing an inch of a passing girl's face. He had it smoothed over in seconds, with his
charming grin. “All good here?” he shouted, at Eliza. The music had suddenly gone louder.

  Eliza gave her foot another sultry spin.

  Troy turned to me. “You good, buddy? I told her it might be..I dunno...weird.”

  My eyes were still on Eliza, and she raised her eyebrows, just a millimeter or so.

  Suddenly I got it.

  They had chosen me to be their bull.

  “I dunno,” I said. I did know: I knew perfectly well that even though it was little off of my actual fantasy, it was still close enough that there was no way I was turning it down. I also knew that Eliza was licking the ridge of her upper lip, and staring at me with her fuck-me eyes, and that my cock was doing most of the thinking for me.

  Eliza was amused. She shook her prefect foot a little and squinted. “Too weird,” she said. But she didn't seem to believe it was. She seemed to know she was going to get what she wanted.

  I imagined all girls like Eliza would know that sort of thing.

  There was an awkward pause between us.

  Troy waved his hand in their air. “Look, man, if you really don't want me there...”

  I felt a sinking sensation in my chest.

  It took me a moment to put my finger on it. On why I felt a sense of disappointment, of an opportunity escaping through my fingers.

  Luckily, at that precise moment, a passing girl recognized Eliza and screeched her name in the high-pitched squeal all women use for other women they haven't seen for a while. Eliza stared at me for just a moment, and then broke her spell to look up. She popped out of the booth and began doing one of those rocking-hug things girlfriends always seem to be doing.

  From there, the evening went along as most evenings did before it. I had too much beer. I sat around waiting for something to happen, looking at pretty girls with Troy. Watching Eliza flirt.

  But in the back of my mind, this time, was the offer that Eliza had put on the table, and then seemingly abandoned. It's what kept me from going home.

  Inwardly, I was struggling with my disappointment. I tried to tell myself it was for the best. I didn't want to get involved in something like this with a good buddy's girlfriend. I didn't want to have some group sex thing happen.