The Flash Drive My Wife Left by the Sink

Ever since that card game, we hadn’t gone back to the subject for a long while. It wasn’t that we hadn’t enjoyed it, quite the opposite: we simply let it lie. I suppose it was because the two episodes had happened so close together, because we needed to calmly absorb that new intimacy that had opened up between us or, as I came to fear for weeks, because Renata might have regretted it.

Whatever the reason, our relationship didn’t move an inch and our sex life remained as full as ever. Sometimes, though, I caught her looking at me with a smile she never quite explained to me, as if she were holding onto an idea she still didn’t dare put on the table.

Until one ordinary night arrived.

We were in bed and she was giving me the hottest blowjob I could remember in years. She took her time, alternating tongue and lips, and every time I thought I was close, she eased off to start again. When I couldn’t take it anymore, she climbed up my chest until she was over me, looking down at me, and she drove a whisper into me that burned my blood.

—Would you like us to invite Iván to dinner again? —she purred, without stopping caressing me.

I, frozen like an amateur actor with stage fright and my mind completely blank, only managed to answer in the worst possible way: I came on my own stomach too soon. Then I gave her an awkward kiss, still dazed.

—I’d say that’s a yes —she concluded with a smile, while her index finger drew circles over my skin.

—I thought you’d never ask me that again —I managed to say when I recovered a little sanity.

—I didn’t know how you’d take it —she replied, without stopping massaging my erection, which was already waking up again—. But I can see better than I imagined.

***

We discussed when it could be, but not how. Locking ourselves into too rigid a plan could only lead to disappointment, and experience had taught us that letting things unfold was always the best idea. In the end we chose the Friday of the following week: I had a work meeting in the afternoon, which would give Renata plenty of time to get everything ready without rushing.

She would be in charge of telling Iván. We took it for granted that he wouldn’t object; we’d known him for years and the complicity among the three of us had been woven slowly, without forcing anything. That night I slept relatively well, although I woke up aroused and with my head full of positions, dynamics, things I wanted to try. I had no idea how far all of that was from happening the way I imagined it.

***

On the appointed Friday, the day at the office started with brutal hustle and bustle. I kept looking at the clock in the corner of the computer screen, wishing the hours would move faster. But after lunch, my boss dropped the bomb: the five o’clock meeting was postponed until seven.

It was like a bucket of ice water. I called Renata to let her know I’d be arriving later than expected. She brushed it off and answered me in a voice loaded with promises, telling me not to worry, that dinner wasn’t going to get cold. That lifted my spirits again immediately, although inside I was already feeling a knot of impatience.

The meeting turned out to be one of the worst ordeals I can remember. We went round in circles without getting any closer to an agreement, repeating the same arguments over and over. I looked at the time every five minutes, desperate, and it looked like it would never end.

Around nine, defeated, I sent my wife a message telling her to have dinner without me and that I’d join them as soon as I could. I felt awful for her and, above all, for myself, because I knew it was more than likely that the main course of the night would be canceled. But I was trapped in that room, and there was no way out.

Near ten, the boss suggested we call home to warn them that things were going to take a while. As if I didn’t already know that. I phoned Renata; she told me she’d caught them finishing the second course. I told her the situation, asked her to apologize to Iván for me and to beg him to put it off for another day.

—Relax, come on —she told me with an odd calm—. I’ll handle the apologies.

I thanked her and hung up, frustrated, not suspecting anything in that calm tone of hers.

***

Finally, around half past one in the morning and with everything half-resolved, I left the office. I thought about calling to warn her I was on my way, but I was afraid of waking her and merely sent her a message saying I was on the way. I drove home in a foul mood, cursing my boss’s mother at every traffic light, barely comforting myself with the idea that there would be another chance.

When I walked in, the house was dark and silent, except for a calm breathing coming from our bedroom. I was surprised to see that Renata was already in bed, but I supposed that, after the disappointment, she wouldn’t have felt like staying up waiting for me.

I left my keys in the hall, took off my office clothes in the living room until I was down to my underwear, and went into the bathroom to brush my teeth. What a surprise it was to switch on the light and discover, resting by the sink, a small box with a flash drive inside and a yellow Post-it stuck to the lid.

A single word written in her handwriting: “Play me.”

***

I stood frozen, toothbrush still in my hand. All of it felt too cryptic for two in the morning. For a moment exhaustion nearly convinced me to ignore it and get into bed, but curiosity, that sick curiosity that has never left me in peace, won out by far.

I walked barefoot out of the bathroom, felt my way in the dark to the USB port on the living room TV, and sank into the sofa before turning on the screen. The brightness stabbed my eyes for a second. The file browser left no room for doubt: a single folder with a single document that, by its name and extension, I immediately knew was a video.

I hit play with my heart pounding against my ribs.

The frame was fixed. In the image I immediately recognized our bed, seen from the side, cut across its width by the mattress and in height by the headboard. A flickering light, which I assumed came from a couple of candles on the bedside table, cast warm shadows and bathed the room in a soft glow. A faint static noise, mixed with distant, unintelligible conversations, broke the stillness of the scene.

She recorded it. She recorded it for me.

—Bruno says the meeting is going to go on for a while and to apologize on his behalf —my wife’s voice was finally heard clearly—. He won’t be able to come, apparently.

—Well, that’s a real shame —Iván replied, with a dismayed tone that struck me as sincere—. He’s missing a wonderful dinner. I didn’t know you cooked so well.

—No —Renata answered, full of mischief—. But you know how good I am at other things.

The sentence caused a thick silence that she herself took care to break.

—Don’t play dumb now, come on. You knew perfectly well what you were coming for tonight.

—Well, but without him here… I don’t know, it feels weird —Iván replied, hesitating.

—Exactly for that reason. Somehow we’ll have to make it up to him, don’t you think? And I’m sure he’s going to love the surprise. Come on, come in and lie down.

Renata’s voice suddenly sounded much closer to the microphone, just before two figures burst into frame. I recognized our guest’s face as he rested his head on my pillow and laid his arms over his abdomen, visibly tense. I swallowed in the darkness of the living room, unable to move.

My wife’s waist suddenly filled the foreground, covering the camera as she busied herself undoing her partner’s jeans until she could pull them down. The garment and she herself slipped out of the image for a second, leaving the nervous nakedness of Iván as the sole focus of the shot, his chest rising and falling with increasingly agitated breathing.

And then, in a few seconds that felt like hours to me, the reason for that broken breathing came back into frame. Renata, wearing only a clip that gathered her hair into a messy bun, got onto the bed on all fours. She slowly climbed up his legs until she brought her face level with his navel, stopping there, stretching out the moment.

—You didn’t think I was going to skip dessert, did you? —she said, and turned her face to drive her dark eyes straight into the camera lens.

She was looking at me. Through the screen, through the hours that separated us, she was looking for me. She held the gaze for one eternal second and then, without looking away, lowered her head and trapped him with her lips.

***

I don’t know how long I sat there, in my boxer shorts, with the bluish reflection of the TV trembling over my face. I felt a mixture that’s impossible to describe: anger at having missed the night, desire to the point of pain for what I was seeing, and a new kind of excitement born precisely from knowing she had done it thinking of me, that every gesture was a recorded message for me to find.

The video went on. Renata took her time with him the same way she took her time with me, teasing him, leaving him on the edge and pulling away, playing with his impatience as only she knew how. From time to time she turned her head back toward the camera, making sure I was still there, reminding me that all of it belonged to me even though it had happened without me.

When the screen finally went black, I realized my wife had not regretted a thing. Quite the opposite. While I was burning away in a meeting room, she had turned my absence into the most twisted and most arousing gift anyone had ever given me.

I switched off the TV, took out the flash drive and squeezed it in my fist. I walked down the dark hallway to our bedroom. Renata was sleeping on her side, or so she pretended, her breathing too steady to be real. I slid under the sheets and pressed my body against hers.

—Did you watch it? —she murmured without opening her eyes, with the hoarse voice of someone who has been waiting a long time for that question.

—I watched it —I answered against the back of her neck, my heart still racing.

She slowly turned to face me. In the dim light I could barely make out the shine in her eyes, but I felt them searching for me just as in the recording.

—This is only the first part —she whispered, sliding a hand downward—. Next time I don’t want you to miss it.