Cheating

The taxi arrived at two-thirty. I climbed four flights with two bags in my hands and the certainty that there was no turning back.

Every first Tuesday of the month he rang the bell with the water drum on his shoulder. I greeted him each time wearing less and less, hoping he’d stay longer than necessary.

I got to her place an hour before my girlfriend. My mother-in-law opened the door in a short robe, a poured whiskey, and a smile that was anything but innocent.

When I opened the door to breathe the wet air, someone jumped the wall. He was naked, he wouldn’t give me his name, and my husband was still sleeping inside the house, knowing nothing.

Eight years had passed since the last time I undressed in front of that camera. That night I turned it on again, and on the other side the same man was still waiting for me.

He asked from the screen, and I obeyed: opening the window, dropping my clothes, and letting those men watch me shamelessly.

I had never seen her, I didn’t know her name, but that night her sentences touched me deeper than anyone had touched me in years. And I let them.

When she let the robe fall, I understood that my perfect neighbor was hiding far more than anyone imagined, and that night I no longer wanted to turn back.

I went upstairs to use the bathroom and he was waiting for me with his fly open. What I didn’t count on was someone opening the door just when we were on all fours.

For a whole year I lived two lives: the perfect professional beside my partner, and the insatiable lover who returned to the hotel each night. Until television announced his death.

She climbed into the back seat beside my boss’s wife, thinking she was going to help me. She got out wondering when she could see her again.

If his cock wouldn’t respond, he’d borrow another man’s. It was enough to look a man in the eye and whisper the right suggestion to get to his wife’s bed.