The Club Where My Wife Stopped Being Only Mine

We had talked about it so many times in bed, in the dark, in that low voice one reserves for what frightens you to desire, that when we finally crossed the club’s threshold neither of us needed to say a word. Lucía squeezed my hand once, hard, and let go. It was her way of reminding me of the arrangement: I could stop everything with a word, so could she, and while that word remained unspoken, the night was hers.

The place was on the outskirts, with no sign, behind an iron door that only opened by appointment. Inside it smelled of polished wood and something sweet, like burnt vanilla. The lights were low, a thick amber, and the music drifted in muffled from somewhere I couldn’t see. A woman greeted us, took our coats, and led us to a private room with worn leather sofas.

—Rubén is waiting for you —she said, and vanished behind a curtain.

I knew Rubén by name before I knew him by face. Lucía had mentioned him one night, months earlier, like someone dropping a forbidden thing to gauge the other person’s reaction. A man who ran that place, who had a reputation for reading women better than they read themselves. And I had said yes. I had said yes to everything, because that was my thing: to consent and then stay behind to watch the consequences.

Don’t fall in love with your own cowardice, I thought. What you feel isn’t fear, it’s desire.

Rubén came in unhurriedly. Tall, broad-backed, with that calm of someone who never has to raise his voice. He greeted Lucía with a slow kiss on the cheek, too close to the mouth, and me with a firm handshake and a smile that said everything.

—So you’re the husband —he said, not letting go of my hand.

—That’s me.

—I’ve been told you like to watch.

I felt heat rising up my neck. Lucía was watching me from the side, waiting to see if I’d break or if I’d hold my ground. I held it.

—I do —I replied.

—Then the three of us are going to have a good time.

***

We sat down. A waitress brought a bottle of red wine and three glasses, and left, closing the curtain. Rubén poured and handed Lucía hers, brushing her fingers with his, looking at her as if I weren’t there. And she met his gaze, the gaze I knew by heart and which was almost never meant for me.

—You’re prettier than they said —he told her.

—And you talk too much —she replied, amused.

Rubén let out a deep laugh. He put a hand on her knee, over the black stocking that ran up to mid-thigh, and began to stroke slowly, without urgency, drawing circles that moved forward a centimeter and back two. Lucía took a sip of wine without taking her eyes off him. I was sitting opposite them, perched on the edge of the sofa, my glass forgotten in my hand.

—Are you going to stay there all night? —Rubén asked me without turning around.

—I’m going to stay here all night —I said.

—Good. I want you to see your wife like you’ve never seen her before.

Lucía set her glass on the table. She stood, smoothed her skirt with a slow gesture, and instead of going back to her place, she crossed the room and settled on his lap, facing me. She didn’t look at me. She looped one arm around his neck, only one, and let the other hang loose along her side. And then she did look for me with her eyes, just for a second, enough to make sure I was watching.

I was watching. I couldn’t do anything else.

He kissed her. It was a long kiss, the kind that starts softly and turns into hunger. He slid his hand up her thigh to the edge of the stocking, played with the elastic, and she answered with short murmurs I couldn’t quite make out. This is what you wanted, I told myself. Watch her closely, don’t miss a thing.

***

—Take off your dress —Rubén said against her neck.

Lucía straightened, brought her hands to her back, and pulled down the zipper with a slowness that was pure provocation. The dress fell. Beneath it she was wearing almost nothing: a dark lace set, the stockings, the heels. She stood in the middle of the room, lit from one side by the amber light, and for a moment she looked like a woman who needed no one and needed everyone at once.

—Turn around —he ordered.

She obeyed, slowly, swaying her hips, and I recognized every mole, every curve, every inch of a body that had been mine until that night and that night was deciding not to be. Rubén traced her with his eyes without touching her, prolonging the wait, and when he finally drew her by the waist she was already trembling a little.

—See? —he said to me—. She has no shame. She’d been saving it for someone who knew how to take it away.

I wanted to answer him, defend her, defend myself, but the truth was there was nothing to defend. Lucía knelt in front of him without being asked. She unbuckled his belt, lowered his zipper, and freed him with a ease that left me breathless. And then she started.

I knew her inside out and still I could hardly recognize her. The way she took him in her mouth, unhurried, looking up so she wouldn’t miss his face; the hand that moved to caress him, the other resting on his thigh. Rubén threw his head back and let out a low groan.

—Fuck —he said—. They weren’t lying.

My heart was hammering in my throat and an unbearable pressure was building under my clothes. This is ridiculous, I thought. I should be furious. But I wasn’t. I was pinned to the sofa, my hands clenched on my knees, fixed on the slightest detail: the sheen of saliva, the sway of her hair, the wet sound filling the room’s silence.

***

The curtain opened. Another man came in, Rubén’s age, leaner, in an open shirt and with an easy smile. Rubén didn’t even flinch.

—Right on time, Marco —he said—. Meet the girl from Madrid.

Lucía lifted her eyes without letting go, looked at the newcomer, and went back to it, as if the interruption had nothing to do with her. Marco came closer, nodded hello to me, and sat on the armrest to watch.

—And this one? —he asked.

—The husband —Rubén said—. He likes to watch.

—Good plan —Marco laughed.

My face was burning. Not from humiliation, or not only from that; it burned from something more confusing, a mix of jealousy and desire I didn’t know how to separate and didn’t want to separate either. Lucía let go of Rubén, straightened a little, and turned her head toward Marco. One look was enough for her to understand. One gesture from Rubén’s fingers on the back of her neck was enough for her to know what was expected of her.

—Come here —she told Marco, in a voice I had never heard from her before.

***

She stretched out on the rug, between the two men. Marco undressed quickly, without Rubén’s calm, and knelt beside her. Lucía tended to them both at once, one hand for each, her mouth moving from one to the other, her neck arched, her eyes half-closed. Rubén set the pace with his palm against her forehead; Marco, more impatient, held her hair. And she let both of them handle her with a surrender that made me clench my teeth.

—Look at her —Rubén told me, finding my eyes—. You’d never seen her like this, had you?

—Never —I admitted, and the word came out hoarse.

—Then look closely. This has only just begun.

The curtain moved again. This time a woman came in, brunette, with curly hair, wearing a barely-there dress she took off before she even said hello. Daniela, Rubén called her. Lucía welcomed her with a conspiratorial smile, the kind you reserve for someone with whom you’ve already shared something, and when Daniela bent to kiss her on the mouth it was obvious there was no work or ceremony between them: there was fire.

The two of them tangled on the floor, laughing, biting, while the men watched them. Lucía pulled Daniela’s lace down, ran her tongue over her breasts, moved down her belly. Daniela threw her head back and looked at me, straight in the eyes, while my wife opened her legs for her. It was the most obscene and the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life.

***

—Now —said Rubén.

And they got into position. Lucía got on all fours on the rug, her face buried between Daniela’s thighs and the rest of her body offered up. Rubén settled behind her, held her hips, waited one eternal moment —a moment in which he looked at me, not at her, as if asking whether I was still in the game— and entered her.

Lucía let out a moan that was smothered against Daniela. The four of them began moving at once, in a choreography no one had rehearsed and yet that fit: Rubén thrusting slowly, Daniela arching under Lucía’s mouth, Marco kneeling to one side waiting for his turn with quickened breathing. And I, on the edge of the sofa, the sole spectator of a scene I had myself put her in.

—Switch —Rubén told Marco after a while, pulling out.

Marco took his place without pause. Lucía lifted her head for a second, panting, her hair stuck to her face, and looked for me. Are you okay? her eyes asked me. I nodded. I couldn’t speak. My throat was closed and an emotion I couldn’t name was slicing through my chest. She smiled, a brief and fierce smile, and lowered her head again between Daniela’s thighs.

***

It lasted as long as these things last when you lose track of time. They changed positions several times, took turns, laughed, sought each other out. Daniela ended up lying on her back with Lucía on top of her, the two of them kissing while the men finished; first Marco, with a strangled roar, and then Rubén, who took his time, who always took his time, and who at the end caressed my wife’s back with a tenderness I hadn’t expected from him.

Lucía remained stretched out among the three of them, catching her breath, her skin shining with sweat. Daniela whispered something in her ear that made her laugh. Marco sank into an armchair. Rubén poured himself another glass and handed it to me first.

—Drink —he said—. You earned it.

I accepted the glass. My hand was trembling a little.

—Well? —he asked, sitting opposite me—. Was it like you imagined?

I looked at Lucía. She had sat up and was watching me from the floor, disheveled, naked, with that impossible-to-read expression she wears after crossing a boundary. I saw no shame. I saw no guilt. I saw something like relief, and beneath it, very deep, a glimmer that was for me and only for me.

—Better —I said, and it was true.

***

We went back to the hotel at dawn, in silence, our hands intertwined on the taxi seat. We didn’t need to speak. Sometimes desire opens doors that are hard to close again, and both of us knew we had opened one that night. The difference between us and so many people is that we had opened it together, hand in hand, with a safeword neither of us had to use.

Back in the room, Lucía sat on the edge of the bed and slowly took off her stockings. She looked at me.

—Aren’t you jealous? —she asked, and for the first time all night she sounded unsure.

—I am jealous —I answered, sitting down beside her—. I’m insanely jealous. That’s why I like it so much.

She laughed. She rested her head on my shoulder, and I could smell other men on her, another woman, an entire night that was already ours and no one else’s.

—You’re very strange —she said.

—I know.

—So am I.

I kissed her. And as I laid her back on the bed and finally claimed her for myself, I understood that I hadn’t lost her in that club. On the contrary: I had never felt her more mine than when I let her be, for a few hours, everyone’s.