The Bet the Old Man Upstairs Made Over My Wife

I never answer the phone at three in the morning. It’s a rule I set for myself years ago, when I understood that a psychologist needs a firm boundary between the office and his own bed. But that night, when the mobile buzzed on the bedside table and I saw the name on the screen, I knew it was Marcos. And I knew that if I didn’t answer, I’d spend the rest of the night lying awake, trying to guess what had happened.

I picked up.

“Go ahead.”

“Don Adrián…” his voice was broken, as if he’d been rehearsing that first word for an hour.

“Good evening, Marcos. Something pretty serious must have happened for you to call me at this hour.”

“You’re right, and I apologize a thousand times over. But I need to tell someone, and you’re the only person who knows about this matter. It happened barely an hour ago, and I couldn’t stop myself from falling in the lowest, most humiliating way you can imagine.”

“All right. Breathe and tell me.”

I heard him draw breath on the other end of the line, that charged silence that comes before confessions that are shameful to make.

“You know that, since what happened in the elevator, something inside me broke. That man, when he saw me in the state I was in, understood perfectly what was going on between my wife and him. When he came near me, he looked at me, studied me, measured me from head to toe. I felt his gaze like a slab of stone, making me smaller. I lowered my eyes, and in that instant he took control. I felt it physically, as if he were ripping it out of my hands.”

“And your wife?”

“Bárbara was silent all evening, nervous, agitated. She didn’t dare say a word, but she didn’t need to. I knew she was aroused in a way I had never seen before. Probably when she noticed my hardness, she understood my true nature better than I did myself. And I felt humiliated, reduced to a rag doll. The strange thing is that, with that feeling, I felt more alive than ever. I needed another jolt. I needed something new to happen.”

“And it has happened.”

“We were going up in the elevator toward home. When we reached the fourth floor, just as Bárbara and I stepped onto the landing, I heard a voice from the neighbor’s half-open door.”

“‘Marcos. Come down.’”

“My wife and I looked at each other. Two, three long seconds, wordlessly asking each other what the old man wanted. She had a worn-out look; she was begging me with her eyes not to go down, not to keep going down that road. I held her gaze, turned around, and went down the stairs. I heard the apartment door close behind me as I made my way to the landing where Heriberto was waiting for me.”

“Tell me what he said.”

“‘I was waiting for you. Come in, you and I need to talk.’ He moved aside from the door and forced me to brush against him as I went in. I felt his smell, the warmth of his body, the graze of his belly against my arm. Then he stopped me dead: ‘Don’t go past here.’ And he left me standing on the threshold of a house I had never entered and into which, now, he was denying me entry.”

***

“And then?”

“He came so close I could feel his breath. He smelled of stale tobacco, of old furniture wood. He told me: ‘I have a theory. The other night, when Bárbara was carrying the trash up the stairs, I thought I heard a door open. I think it was you, because you could see your wife was taking a while. And I think you saw, or at least heard, what happened between us. Am I wrong?’”

“What did you answer?”

“I told him it could be. He smiled and asked, ‘Would you like to know exactly what happened?’ And, Don Adrián, in that instant that tingle came back in my stomach, the one that drops lower and concentrates down there. I got hard again. He noticed. He saw my breathing, looked down at my crotch, and knew I’d given myself away.”

“He read you like an open book.”

“‘It’s obvious you’re dying to know,’ he said. ‘But I want you to ask me.’ And I asked him. ‘Please,’ I said, ‘tell me what happened on the landing outside your apartment.’ He nodded slowly, like a man who has just won something. ‘That’s better. But first answer me something else, though I already know the answer: would you have liked for something to happen?’”

“And what did you feel while he asked you that?”

“I wanted to resist. I clenched my teeth, trying to shut up what my head was already screaming. But in the end only one word came out: ‘Yes.’”

As I listened to him, I began to understand the true nature of Marcos. That man was a voyeur in the purest state, a cuckold-in-waiting, someone burning with the fantasy of watching another man take his wife. I let him go on.

“Heriberto got serious. ‘You’ve earned the right for me to tell you. But first I want you to know something. I’m going to fuck Bárbara. Your wife is going to end up spread open under me, and from that day on she’ll be someone else. And when that happens, I’ll be the master of this house. Think of it as a bet. When I win it, you’ll tell me, with your own mouth, that you’re going to be my servant.’”

“A bet with the dignity of your marriage on the table.”

“I told him that, knowing my wife, I didn’t think he’d manage it, but that if it did happen, I’d sign up to that bet. And the strangest thing, Don Adrián, is that I didn’t even believe my own answer. I didn’t just not trust myself: I no longer trusted her either, nor her will, after what I’d seen in the elevator.”

“I understand you. Did he notice?”

“Of course he noticed. ‘You trust your wife far too much and me far too little,’ he told me. ‘It’s normal. Everything will change the day you see her open her legs for her new stud. So, do we have a deal? When I break that little wildcat of yours, you come in with the package and you become mine too.’ And I, stammering, said: ‘A… agreed.’”

***

“Marcos, what did you feel when you closed that deal?”

“His hand. I slapped hands with him to seal it, a rough, callused hand, and he brought it to his belly so I’d rest mine there. I should be ashamed to say it, but it excited me a lot. Especially the idea that that man was capable of breaking my wife’s shell. Because Bárbara, Don Adrián, is the dullest being I know. No imagination, no initiative, not a drop of desire. I couldn’t understand how that old man was going to light something in her that I’d never managed to light.”

“That’s more common than you think, Marcos. People settle into the routine of marriage and, without realizing it, they slowly go out like a flame nobody tends. And then someone appears who can bring it back to life in a matter of seconds. The question is whether that man has found a way to ignite your wife’s flame.”

“That’s exactly what he said. And when he talked about her like that, when he insulted her, when he put her down, he got turned on. I could hear it in his voice, in his breathing. He got aroused in a ferocious way. And, to my shame, I wanted to play that game with him.”

“Listen carefully. If it turns you on that much, get into the game, do whatever he orders you to do. That guy is probably just as straight as you are. But sexual humiliation doesn’t care about orientations. You may end up being forced to use your mouth on him, or to clean up whatever he uses with your wife. Unless he’d rather order her to do it.”

I heard a guttural sound on the other end of the phone. I know that sound. It meant Marcos was completely aroused, that at that moment I had him in the palm of my hand and could ask him for anything.

“How did things continue on the landing?” I asked him. “Because I imagine it didn’t end with the bet.”

“No. When I accepted, he told me he already had a plan to start with Bárbara. He told me about the elevator in a way that unsettled me. ‘Just as you were spying on me out of the corner of your eye,’ he said, ‘while I slipped my hand under your wife’s skirt and up to her panties, that’s how, little by little, I’m going to make her mine. While with one hand I was squeezing her neck in that elevator, with the other I was spreading her legs, and she barely resisted, knowing you were behind us, sensing that you wouldn’t dare turn around. In that instant she understood the kind of passive man she has for a husband. And so, watching you lower your head, she’s going to surrender to me.’”

“He was describing your own humiliation to you as part of the plan.”

“Exactly. And I listened with a dry mouth. Then I asked him what had happened on the landing outside his apartment, what I had only been able to make out from my doorway. He looked at me and said: ‘On the landing, what had to happen happened. Your wife saw for the first time what a real man is. She finally understood what it means to have something like that in your hands.’”

“And that man, Marcos, had already understood exactly what it was that turned you on.”

“Yes. He understood it completely. And that’s why he treated me the way he did. He said: ‘While I tell you, you’re going to do whatever I order you to do.’ I told him okay. And then: ‘Take it out for me.’ I froze, silent. He repeated it with a hard shout: ‘Take it out now!’”

“And did you?”

“I put my hand inside his pants. I felt that bar of hot flesh, heavy, hard, throbbing against my fingers. And all at once I saw myself freeing it, looking at it up close as if I’d never seen anything like it. ‘Do you like what you see?’ he asked me. All I could manage was: ‘Yes.’ And he smiled: ‘Your wife said the same thing when I showed it to her. I ordered her to take it out, just like I did with you. And she obeyed, without a word. She imagined how it would feel inside her. But then your door rang and she pulled away. I held her there, but she slipped through my fingers.’”

***

“‘Now I understand everything,’ I told him,” Marcos went on. “And he cut me off: ‘There’s something you still don’t understand. I didn’t get to finish. And now you’re going to give it to me. Start.’”

“Did you refuse?”

“At first, yes. But a couple of slaps made it clear what disobeying would cost. So I started moving my hand. Slowly. That thick, veined cock had me hypnotized. I had never in my life touched another one that wasn’t mine, and there I was, obeying the man who had just told me my wife had stroked the same thing, that she would have let herself be touched all over if it hadn’t been for that cursed door. I looked up and saw him watching me, enjoying my submission. I kept adding more force, more rhythm, and, to my own shame, I was enjoying it.”

“That’s a very honest confession, Marcos. Especially your admitting that you liked it.”

“He warned me he was going to finish. I was afraid he’d make me do more, use my mouth, swallow. I didn’t feel ready for that. But I think he was too smart to push too hard that soon. He only warned me, and I stood there watching him come. I’d never seen a man give so much. Something broke inside me, as if everything I’d been taught about what a man is supposed to be suddenly collapsed. And with his sex still throbbing and spent in my hand, I felt complete. I felt happy to have given pleasure to the man I had hated before, the one who had seemed to me repulsive and overbearing.”

“It’s brave to recognize a part of yourself you’ve only just discovered. That, believe me, has its own dignity.”

“Don Adrián… as a psychologist, what do you recommend? How do I deal with this?”

“If I’m honest, if I were you I’d let myself be carried along. You’re feeling a mix of emotions that’s completely new to you. And there’s an old, inherited part of you insisting that what you feel is sick. Maybe you should stop fighting it and see how far all this takes you. At worst, what can happen? That your wife discovers ten orgasms she never had? Don’t give those prejudices so much importance.”

“All right. I’ll take your advice. I won’t overthink it. Have a good night, and sorry for the trouble.”

And that was where the call ended. Another step in Marcos’s discovery, another crack opened by that foreign cock in his hands. I hung up, lay there staring at the ceiling in the dark, and knew, with an uneasy calm, that I meant to profit from all of it too.