The Night I Let My Wife Be with Others

It was almost midnight. Neither of us really knew why we had chosen that hour, right on the edge between one day and the next. Maybe it was an involuntary metaphor for what was happening to us as a couple: we were closing one chapter to open another, and we still had no way of knowing whether what was coming would bring us closer together or break apart forever what we had. We had talked about it for months. We had chosen to take the risk.

Mariana had been shut away for more than an hour, first in the bathroom and then in the bedroom. I had showered in five minutes. I put on a light gray blazer over a white T-shirt and sat in the living room to wait. At some point I understood it was better for her to stay upstairs until the very last second. Going with her would have been torture for both of us.

She came down five minutes before twelve. She was wearing a fitted red dress that cinched her waist and held up her breasts as if they were a public declaration. Mariana is tall, with wide hips and soft shoulders, with blond hair cut just below the jaw. I watched her come down the stairs and felt an absurd pride, as if it were the first time. The dress pressed against her tits and ass with an insolence that left me dry; you could plainly see the hardness of her nipples against the fabric and the sway of her hips beneath that short skirt that looked made to open under a glance.

“I’m nervous,” she said.

She was smiling through clenched teeth, trying to hide the tremor. It eased me to see that she was on the edge too. That didn’t dissuade us; it united us.

“You look beautiful,” I answered, and I hated myself for the way my voice came out.

She came over and hugged me. Her neck smelled of a new perfume, something she had never worn with me before. She kissed me.

“Remember everything we talked about. If at any moment…”

“Don’t repeat it to me, please,” I cut her off. “Really, there’s no need.”

It was true. We had chewed it over for months. It started as a pillow talk joke, one of those things you say in a low voice to see how they sound out loud. Then, when neither of us wanted to shut it down, it turned into a debate. And one day it stopped being a debate and became a plan.

The doorbell rang.

“I’ll get it,” I said, clinging to one of the few decisions that still belonged to me.

Sebastián and Federico were waiting on the other side of the door. Sebastián was the big one, tall, with a white beard and tight black pants that betrayed the musician. Mariana had met him online months earlier. She had told me about him without ever giving it much weight, and now I realized that each one of those casual comments had been a brick in this night.

“What’s up, boss?” Sebastián said, hugging me with exaggerated enthusiasm.

Federico was quieter. Shirt, jeans, neat mustache, a cat’s stare. He extended his hand, sizing me up.

“Finally we meet,” he said.

Mariana had stayed two steps behind, at the entrance to the living room. When the two of them finished with me, they went over to her. Sebastián kissed her cheek, holding her by the waist as if he already knew her well. Mariana blushed. Federico looked at her a second too long before greeting her.

“Nice to meet you,” she said, and her voice trembled just a little.

“Want a drink?” she asked.

“A beer,” Sebastián said. “I’ll help you.”

And he followed her into the kitchen, broad as a doorway, without asking permission. I stayed in the living room with Federico, trying not to listen. A few seconds later Mariana’s laughter came from the kitchen, that low laugh she uses when something embarrasses her a little but she doesn’t want it to show. My hands went cold.

Federico sank into the opposite sofa, spread his legs, let his gaze wander over the walls. I sat with my back straight, like in a job interview.

“What do you do?” he asked.

“I’m an architect.”

“Ah, really. Nice house.”

They came back from the kitchen with four glasses and two bottles. Mariana sat next to me, but she rested her knee on my leg for barely a second and then pulled it away. Sebastián poured the beer with the calm of someone in his own home.

“Congratulations on the new job, Mariana,” he said suddenly. “Last time you told me and I forgot to congratulate you.”

“Thanks,” she answered, and looked at me waiting for me to say something. I said nothing.

“Nice neighborhood,” Federico commented. “Have you lived here long?”

“Five years,” Mariana said, taking a long sip of beer.

“So many books, Mariana,” Sebastián went on, looking at the bookshelf. “I didn’t know you read.”

“I love it. Martín does too.”

Sebastián didn’t look at me. He nodded without taking his eyes off her.

“All those conversations and you never told me. One more thing to talk about.”

“One more thing,” Federico repeated, and fixed his eyes on me to see what face I made.

I swallowed. Things were moving without me having to do anything, and that frightened me more than any confrontation.

“And… how long have you been together?” Federico asked.

“Three years married,” I said, finding my voice.

“Too long,” he murmured, almost to himself.

***

They talked a while longer about things I no longer cared about. Federico made no effort to hide it. He looked at Mariana’s legs, at her neckline, at her mouth. He did it with a naturalness that was no longer admiration; it was inventory. Sebastián leaned toward her more and more, brushing her thigh with his hand when he laughed, dropping sharper and sharper remarks, as if he wanted to slowly dig out everything that was hidden under her clothes.

At some point he leaned toward me and said:

“Sebastián told me you’re not going to participate. Is that still the plan?”

Mariana went still. I heard my own exhale.

“I’m not participating,” I said.

“If you change your mind, no problem,” Sebastián added, conciliatory.

“Better to know ahead of time,” Federico said.

“No, I’m not changing my mind.”

“Cool. All good.”

Mariana stood up and said she was going to get another beer. I watched her walk away. I knew she was coming back.

When she returned, she didn’t sit next to me. She sat in the middle of the sofa, between Sebastián and an empty space that ended where my leg was. Her fists were clenched over her skirt. So were mine.

“What were you talking about?” she asked.

“The north,” Sebastián said. “I was in Humahuaca last year and I fell in love.”

“Oh yes, it’s incredi…”

She didn’t finish the sentence. Sebastián put his face in her mouth with a movement so fast and so natural it took me two seconds to understand what I was seeing. Mariana recoiled against the backrest by pure reflex. He followed her, grabbed her waist, pulled her to him. He kissed her again, now slower, more calculated. And this time she kissed him back with a hunger that drained the color from my face. Sebastián’s hand slid to the side of her dress, lifting it just enough to touch her hot thigh, bare on the inside. Mariana opened to him without protest, breathing through her nose, her fingers sunk into his arm, while Federico watched with cruel calm.

When they pulled apart, she looked at me. I couldn’t speak.

“Martín,” Federico said, pulling me out of the trance, “do you like being humiliated?”

“What?”

“Humiliated. Some people like it.”

“I don’t know,” I stammered. “No.”

Federico took Mariana by the chin and turned her face toward him. He whispered something in her ear. She gave a low laugh, her breathing short.

“What did you tell her?” I asked.

“That she’s too much woman for you.”

My blood was boiling and I didn’t move. Mariana opened her mouth to correct him and Federico shut her up with another kiss, deeper this time. I watched the tongue of my wife find his the same way it found mine. It was an image I couldn’t tear my eyes from. Sebastián was slowly undoing the top button of her dress, sliding a flat hand against her back to pull her closer, while she moaned softly, just a damp whimper that made her seem like someone else.

Federico stood up. He adjusted his belt with insulting slowness.

“All right, enough talking,” he said. “Where’s the bedroom?”

Mariana pointed to the stairs.

“Upstairs… at the back.”

He held out his hand. She looked at me before taking it, as if asking for permission that had already been given. She found nothing in me to stop her. She stood up. They started climbing. The red dress disappeared step by step, leaving behind the curve of her legs and the steady sway of her ass beneath the fabric.

I made a move to stand. Sebastián pressed his palm to my chest, not hard but firmly, and put me back on the sofa.

“Stay put, tough guy. They go up, she shows him the room and comes down in a bit. Relax.”

I heard the footsteps upstairs, a door opening, the weight of two bodies on the wood. I felt the walls closing in on me.

“You should be proud,” Sebastián told me, pouring the last of the beer. “You need balls to do this.”

“I feel like an idiot.”

“No. What you’re doing, you’re doing out of love. You’re letting her live something that can’t live with you. That isn’t weakness, it’s generosity. Federico is a brute, he likes to mark territory. But the owner of the film is you. Without you, this doesn’t exist.”

He said it with a sincerity that confused me. I wanted to hate him and I couldn’t.

***

Mariana came down alone. Her cheeks were red and her breathing was short, but she wasn’t upset. She was lit. Sebastián gave her a quick caress at the waist as they passed, and went upstairs. Another door up there. Another bed creaking.

Mariana stood in front of me.

“Are you okay? If you tell me no, this ends right now.”

I looked at her. She smelled of another man and still of her perfume. I felt a knot in the pit of my stomach that wasn’t fear.

“Go on,” I said.

She kissed my forehead. “Thank you,” she whispered, and it sounded like goodbye.

She took my hand and led me into the kitchen. She took a blister pack from the drawer, pulled out a morning-after pill, swallowed it with tap water. The gesture was so mechanical, so premeditated, that it hurt me more than anything else that night. My wife’s body was preparing for what was coming.

She turned. She saw me standing in the doorway.

“Come on,” she said.

She took off my blazer carefully, folded it over the back of a chair. Then she leaned against the little table and kicked off her shoes. She asked me to unzip her dress. I brought my fingers to the nape of her neck and felt them heavy, as if they were asleep. I pulled the zipper down. The dress fell to the floor in a perfect circle and my wife stood there in white lingerie, in the middle of my own house, the living room light behind her outlining her silhouette. Her tits were pressed tight by the thin bra, her belly smooth, the little white triangle barely marking the wetness between her legs.

“You’re gorgeous,” I managed to say.

She smiled with something between tenderness and pity. She took a strip of condoms from her purse and showed it to me like a trophy.

“Thanks, my love. Let’s do it all the way.”

***

The room had been transformed. The ceiling light, the one we almost never used, was on bright and unapologetic. In the center of the bed, Federico and Sebastián waited naked, lying back as if they owned the place. And there was the chair, a dining chair someone had placed at the foot of the bed, no pretense, in an exact spot so I wouldn’t miss a thing.

I sat down. I felt small in my own house.

Mariana went over to the bed. She looked at them for a moment without moving. Then she covered her mouth with one hand.

“I can’t believe how big they are,” she said softly, as if talking to herself but making sure I heard.

She climbed up. She started touching them with both hands, one on each side, running her fingers over the hardened cocks with a mix of wonder and hunger that split me in two. They whispered things in her ear that I couldn’t quite hear. They brushed her breasts, pinched her nipples through the thin fabric of the bra, lifted her chin to look at her face up close. They praised her without stopping. She was a different Mariana, one I had not found in six years of bed.

She took out a condom, opened it with her teeth, and knelt in front of Federico. She looked at me for a second—made sure I was watching—and brought the latex to her mouth. She rolled it on without using her hands, slowly, and kept her mouth on it, sucking it with obscene precision while Federico sank his fingers into her hair and pried her mouth open so she’d take more.

Sebastián didn’t wait. He put on another condom himself and settled behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist. He kissed her ass cheeks with a hunger that had nothing affectionate about it. Mariana arched without letting go of Federico. She crossed my gaze from that position and I understood that she was no longer there as my wife. Sebastián pulled her thong aside, revealing her shiny cunt, already open and wet, and touched her with two fingers before pressing the head of his cock against the entrance. Mariana let out a long, trembling moan and closed her mouth around Federico as if she wanted to drown in him.

“Look, Martín,” Federico said, tugging Mariana’s hair a little so she would let go for a second. “Look well at what you wanted to see.”

***

What came after that I have no way of ordering. There was a sequence where they were both kissing her at once, one on each breast, and she lifted her head and said out loud, “More, give me more,” and I didn’t recognize her. There was a moment when she was on all fours, Federico behind her and Sebastián in front, and she moved her head from one body to the other as if she had years of practice, sucking them alternately, licking one man’s balls while the other opened her ass with his fingers. There were slaps on her ass that echoed against the bedroom walls. There was a moment when she looked aside and met my eyes, and her mouth trembled between smile and tears. Federico shoved her face into the pillow and started fucking her in short, hard thrusts, while Sebastián held her hips to line her up better from behind. The room smelled of leather, sweat and wet sex, of hot condom and the broken breathing of the three of them.

And I, sitting in that chair, discovered what I didn’t want to discover: that my hand had gone down on its own to my crotch and was moving. That the scandal I was watching didn’t make me want to leave. That the monster devouring my marriage was the same one keeping me hard. Mariana gripped the sheets with her nails, repeated each of their names as if spitting them out, told them yes, more, fill her, leave her breathless. There was saliva on her chin, on her breasts, on her open thighs; her face was red and her eyes were shining, and she looked happy to be used in front of me.

Sebastián said it without looking at me:

“Take it out, Martín. We’re all here now.”

And I obeyed.

The difference was brutal and they both knew it. Federico laughed.

“Got shy, little Martín? Tell her you love her. Tell her it turns you on to see her like this.”

“I love you, Mariana,” I said, my voice breaking. “It turns me on to see you.”

Mariana let out a muffled laugh without taking her mouth off. She lifted herself slightly, with her thong pushed aside, her cunt open and glossy, and searched for me with her eyes, forcing me to hold her gaze while Sebastián slid two fingers into her and Federico kept licking her. It was an unbearable and perfect scene.

***

The end came fast and all at once. They arranged her in double penetration, her mounted on Federico and Sebastián entering from behind. Mariana cried without suffering, screaming that she couldn’t take it anymore and begging them not to stop at the same time. The bed slammed into the wall. I never once looked away. Federico held her waist with both hands, marking her skin; Sebastián spread her ass cheeks to push his cock deeper in, slow at first and then harder and harder, until Mariana’s moans became a wet, exhausted shriek of pure excitement.

When the two of them felt they were about to finish, they ripped off their condoms at the same time. Federico dropped to his knees at her face level, Sebastián at her chest. They came over her a few seconds later, almost in sync, as if they had rehearsed it. Mariana stayed still, eyes closed, receiving it all in silence. Her breathing was ragged and her chest was trembling, her tits splattered and her mouth half-open, still asking for more even though not another word came out.

The orgasm hit me in the chair without warning. It was long, dirty, shameful. She heard the sound and opened her eyes to look at me, and for one eternal second it was just the two of us again in the room.

After that they got up. The three of them showered together. I heard them laughing under the water, and I recognized the sounds of a final encounter I had not been invited to. The water washed the remnants off their bodies, but it didn’t clean anything: the noise of slipping hands, of mouths meeting, of one last obscene brush before getting dressed kept reaching my ears.

When they came out, Sebastián dressed quickly. Federico took his time, tying his shoes while looking everywhere.

“Thanks for the hospitality, Martín,” Sebastián said.

“Take care of her, huh,” Federico added, extending his hand to me.

I nodded. My voice wouldn’t come. Mariana, in a robe, walked them to the door. She gave each of them a quick kiss on the cheek. The door closed.

We stood there in the living room, silent, smelling like what had happened. I grabbed her by the waist and kissed her as if I could still claim her. She kissed me back the same way, with the same desperation. What happened on the sofa was ugly and necessary, and for a while it gave me back the feeling that she was mine. She grabbed my face with both hands, told me not to let go, and I fucked her again with rabid urgency, still with someone else’s taste in her mouth and the smell of sex stuck to her skin.

At dawn I woke before she did. I went downstairs to the kitchen for water and found her there, with her back turned, making coffee in one of my T-shirts, humming a song I didn’t know. She moved lightly, happily, as if the night before had been a trip to the sea.

I stayed in the doorway watching her, not knowing whether I wanted to hug her or run away.