My Wife Left Me for My Boss’s Wife

I’m going to tell you how I lost Carolina, my wife, and it was all because I was lazy. I didn’t lose her to another man; maybe I could have handled that. I lost her to a woman, and in that fight I had no weapons to give back with.

It started one ordinary morning, one of those mornings when I was still lying face down in bed while the sun was already beating hard in the street.

“Marcos, it’s noon,” Carolina said, yanking the curtains open. “Noon and you’re here, sprawled out like a sack.”

I covered my face with the pillow.

“Baby, give me another half hour. I got in pretty late last night.”

“Pretty late my ass. You got home smelling like a cantina and cheap perfume. Get up or I’ll dump a bucket of water over you.”

Carolina was not one for empty threats. I’d known her for seven years and had learned that when she spoke in that tone, she already had the bucket ready. I dragged myself to the bathroom and let the cold water pull me out of my hangover.

In front of the mirror I gave myself courage. Marcos, you’re handsome. Women lose their minds over a man like you. If your wife doesn’t wake up, somebody else will pick you up off the floor. Drunk-next-day nonsense, but it worked for me.

I came out wrapped in a towel and found her in the patio, scrubbing a shirt against the washbasin.

“Carolina, come on, make me some broth with lots of chile, I feel wrecked.”

She didn’t even look at me.

“The day you bring home money for beans, you can give orders. Today, no.”

I sat on a little stool and begged her. I told her this time I really was going to change. I whined. I’d done it so many times I already had the routine down. She sighed, dropped the shirt, wiped her hands on her apron.

“My brother Ricardo got you a job. Microbus on the downtown route. Today at three you report to Don Eduardo, the owner. You hand him three thousand a day. The diesel comes out of that. Whatever’s left is ours. If you fail me this time, Marcos, I’m never opening the door to you again. That’s not a threat, it’s a promise.”

I nodded like a good little boy. That same afternoon I picked up the microbus keys from Don Eduardo, a gray-haired man about sixty, quiet, the kind who looks you in the eye without blinking. He patted me on the shoulder and said he trusted me because Ricardo had vouched for me. On your brother-in-law’s word, not yours, he added.

That first week I was diligent. I’d come home with a thousand, twelve hundred pesos. Carolina took them counting bill by bill, and at night, when she got into bed, she let me hold her from behind. After a short month of good behavior, she even gave me more than an embrace.

“You earned it today,” she said, and took off her nightgown in front of the lamp.

Carolina was thirty, but she had a girl’s body. Firm legs, full breasts, warm skin. That night she gave me everything, and, as always when she gave herself to me, I emptied out in two minutes and fell asleep without finishing what she had only just begun.

Later she told me that on those occasions she’d lie there staring at the ceiling, breathing hard, and finish herself off with her fingers. That she’d already learned not to expect anything from me. But I found that out later. For now I slept happily, thinking I was the best lover in the neighborhood.

***

After a month of being responsible, I started easing up. I stayed out late, left at four, and the bills coming home got fewer and fewer. Worse: I started not coming back at all. I’d go off with my friends to a bar called El Pistachón, where there was a waitress, Karla, who amused me a lot. Carolina noticed the lipstick stains on my shirts. She noticed the чужой perfume on my neck. And one day, without my realizing it, she overheard me talking on the phone.

“Yeah, my buddies, count me in. At El Pistachón at nine? Perfect. I’ll handle the beast at home, she won’t find out.”

When I hung up, Carolina was on the other side of the door. Her face was a sleeping volcano. But she said nothing. She even smiled. She let me shower, put on cologne, and leave humming. How naive, she later said she thought. I even opened the front door for him so he’d go out happier.

Eight hours had passed since I left. At eleven at night, Carolina put on track pants, twisted her hair into a bun, stuffed a flat iron into her bag, and went out looking for me.

Just as she closed the front door, a car stopped in front of her. It was Don Eduardo, my boss, with his driver at the wheel and a woman in the back.

“Good evening, Mrs. Carolina. I was looking for Marcos or his brother Ricardo. Your husband hasn’t turned in the cash in ten days. He owes me thirty thousand pesos. The microbus is missing too. I’m here to collect what’s mine.”

Carolina felt the ground opening beneath her, but she didn’t let it show. She explained that she was precisely on her way to look for me in a club, that the microbus was surely parked there. Don Eduardo offered to take her in his truck. He opened the back door and my wife got in beside the woman who was already there.

Soledad. That was Don Eduardo’s wife’s name. A woman in her forties, tall, very pale, with a body that was obviously maintained. She wore a blouse with a deep neckline and a leather jacket she took off as soon as Carolina sat beside her.

“You’re Marcos’s wife,” Soledad said, looking her up and down. “I had no idea he was so lucky. Look at you.”

Carolina smiled politely. Two minutes later she felt Soledad’s hand resting on her knee. Not firmly, not aggressively. Resting. Like someone leaving a hand on the table so the other person can decide whether it stays or goes.

The truck moved along the avenue. Don Eduardo was up front talking to the driver: accounts, numbers, business problems. In the back, Soledad pulled out her phone and sent Carolina a message.

“Don’t be scared. Want to see something?”

Carolina replied that she didn’t understand. Soledad, without waiting any longer, lowered her neckline a little and for five seconds revealed the most perfect breasts my wife had ever seen. Big, firm, the nipples dark and hard from the cold air. Then she adjusted her blouse as if nothing had happened.

“Do you like them?” she wrote.

Carolina didn’t answer. Soledad wrote again: “Want to touch them?”

My wife told me later that at that moment her legs started trembling. That she felt heat in her neck, embarrassment, and curiosity all at once. That she had never looked at another woman like that. But when Soledad gently took her hand and guided it under the blouse, she didn’t pull away.

The skin of that mature woman was firm like a twenty-year-old girl’s. The nipple hardened at once beneath Carolina’s palm. And meanwhile, Soledad’s other hand was already slipping under the waistband of the track pants, sliding between fabric and skin, searching for what was already wet.

Carolina pressed her lips together so she wouldn’t moan. She closed her eyes. When she opened them, she saw Soledad licking her fingers with her tongue out, smiling.

The truck braked. They’d arrived at El Pistachón. The two women composed themselves as if nothing had happened. They got out to look for me. They didn’t find me in the bar, but they did find me four hundred meters farther on: the microbus smashed into a tree, twelve passengers sitting on the curb waiting for ambulances, and me standing there arguing with a cop, stinking of tequila to the bone.

Don Eduardo came over. I made up a story about the brakes failing. The driver ratted me out in two seconds: the guys on the bus had told the cop I’d been driving with a woman on my lap and that was why I lost control of the wheel. Carolina slapped me across the face twice before Don Eduardo stepped in to pull us apart.

That night I understood I had lost her. Though I still didn’t understand just how much.

***

Don Eduardo kept his word: he had me thrown in jail for damages and debt. One hundred thirty thousand pesos. I didn’t have it. Carolina didn’t come to see me even once. I called her from the prison phone and she told me, coldly, that she was going to try to get me out on one condition: that I sign the divorce papers as soon as I got out.

“I’ll handle the rest, Marcos. Don’t ask.”

I didn’t ask. Twenty days later, a guard opened my cell and told me I was free.

The debt had been forgiven.

And only then, once I was out on the street, did I start to suspect how Carolina had paid.

She told me everything later, without a single grain of guilt. The day after my call she dressed well, put on lipstick for the first time in months, and went to Don Eduardo’s house. The maid showed her into the living room. But the one who came down the stairs was not Don Eduardo. It was Soledad.

“I’ve come to ask your husband for a favor,” Carolina said, looking at the floor.

“My husband isn’t here. But maybe I can do it faster,” Soledad said, closing the living-room door.

She offered her coffee. She sat across from Carolina with her legs crossed. They talked a while about the weather and about my uselessness. Then Soledad reached out and put a finger under my wife’s chin, forcing her to lift her face.

“The other night you left yourself half-finished,” she said. “I didn’t. I finished myself thinking about you. Does it bother you if I tell you that?”

Carolina shook her head. She couldn’t even speak.

“If you want your husband out, you owe me nothing. It’s a gift. But if you want to stay a while, I’ll teach you things he’ll never teach you.”

My wife stayed. They went upstairs. Carolina, who had never been with another woman, let Soledad take her clothes off piece by piece, as if discovering her for the first time. Then Soledad undressed, calmly, showing herself completely without hurry.

“Kneel down.”

Carolina obeyed. Soledad put one foot up on the vanity chair and offered her sex at mouth level. She told her step by step what to do, without vulgarity, like a teacher. She taught her to part the lips with her fingers, to glide her tongue flat first and then focus on the clitoris. She told her to look her in the eyes while she did it. She told her to learn how to breathe between lick and lick.

“Don’t be afraid of the smell,” she said. “It’s the best-tasting thing in the world.”

And Carolina, who with me had always been reserved, gave herself over like never before. Then it was the other way around: Soledad laid her on the bed, opened her legs with her hands, and held her open while she sucked her slowly for long minutes. When she slid three fingers deep inside her, Carolina screamed so loud the maid had to turn the television all the way up downstairs.

They both came at once, intertwined, rubbing against each other with a synchronicity that only two women who know where the other’s desire lies can have.

Before Carolina got dressed, Soledad told her:

“Your husband gets out in twenty days. But you come back tomorrow.”

And my wife came back. And the next day too. And the next.

***

When I got out of jail and arrived home, Carolina was getting ready to leave. Made up, in a new blouse, perfumed.

“Baby, I’m here.”

“Good,” she said without looking at me. “My lawyer has already started the divorce papers. Sign whenever you want.”

“Carolina, wait. Is there someone else?”

She turned slowly. She looked me in the eyes the way she hadn’t in years: with peace.

“There is someone. But it’s not another man. It’s another woman.”

“What?”

“Soledad. Don Eduardo’s wife. She’s the one who got me out of the mess, and she’s the one I’m going to be with. You had years to teach me, Marcos. She learned in one afternoon what you never wanted to know.”

She closed her purse, gave me a dry kiss on the cheek, and left. Through the window I watched her get into a car I already knew. Soledad was at the wheel, wearing dark glasses, and she leaned over to kiss my wife on the mouth before driving off.

Because I was lazy, because I was drunk, because I was selfish, another woman took my wife away from me. And even today, when I pass by the street where Don Eduardo lives, I end up seeing the two of them coming out arm in arm, laughing at something only they understand. And I stay on the other side of the street, smoking a cigarette, thinking that of all the ways a man can lose his wife, this is the only one I couldn’t fight against.