The Night My Wife Wanted to Be Shared Again

That winter in Valencia, the bills piled up in a corner of the kitchen like a silent reproach. We had bought the house too soon, with the two girls still small, and every month the checking account reminded us that our salaries didn’t go nearly far enough. Marina and I hardly ever talked about money, almost always in a low voice, after putting the kids to bed, as if saying it out loud made it more real.

We were not a conventional couple, and that’s worth saying from the start. Before the children, when life was a hotel room and a weekend with no plans, we had played. Other couples, swaps, nights when she would go into an adjoining room and I would stay behind listening, my pulse in my throat. We stopped when our first daughter came along. Not out of guilt, but because there was no time, no energy, no room in our bodies for it. But desire hadn’t gone anywhere. It was only sleeping.

That night, Marina curled herself around me in bed. She was wearing my old basketball team T-shirt, the one that hung huge on her and barely covered her thighs. Nothing underneath, as always at home. She kissed my neck slowly, once, twice, and I felt her draw breath before she spoke.

—Do you remember Reyes? —she asked.

It took me a second to place the name. Reyes was a woman Marina had known in another life, long before me. A fixer. The woman who, when we were dating, had gotten her one date after another that solved more than one financial tight spot. I knew. I had always known. And it had never bothered me.

—I remember —I said carefully.

—I’ve been thinking of calling her.

She said it like that, bluntly, with her chin resting on my chest so she could see my face. And what surprised me most was not the proposal. It was realizing I wasn’t surprised at all. And, worse still, that my mouth had gone dry and something was starting to wake between us, beneath the sheets, betraying me.

I shouldn’t be getting turned on by this.

But I was.

—We need the money —she added, misreading my silence—. And I’m good at it. You know I am.

—It’s not about the money —I answered, and that was only half true.

Marina propped herself up on one elbow. The streetlamp light came in through the gap in the blinds and cut across her face in a thin stripe. She had that expression I knew too well: the one of someone who has already decided and is only waiting for the other person to catch up.

—Then why is your breathing like that? —she murmured, and slid her hand down over my stomach, slowly, until she found the proof that she was right.

I didn’t answer. I asked for time to think about it. She nodded, understanding, and that night we made love first with an almost rabid urgency and then with a slow tenderness that kept me awake for a long while, staring at the ceiling while she slept with her cheek on my shoulder.

***

Three days passed without us mentioning it again. Three days in which I thought of little else. Imagining her with another man should have hurt me, should have sparked some wounded-pride reflex. Instead, the image came back again and again, and each time I found it a little more comfortable, a little more mine precisely because I was able to lend her out and get her back.

The fourth morning, before leaving for work, while she was still asleep with the girls, I left a note stuck to the refrigerator door. Two words. Call her.

I spent the whole day useless. I couldn’t focus on a single meeting. Every time my phone vibrated, I jumped, but she didn’t text. I was grateful for that. This was something to talk through face-to-face, looking at each other, not through messages that just hang there on a screen. Midafternoon I made up an excuse and left the office early, with a mix of nerves and anticipation I hadn’t felt in years.

When I got home, Marina was feeding the girls dinner. She greeted me with a wet kiss, too long to be innocent, and pulled away with a half-smile before the kids could see us.

—Come on, off to bed —she told the little ones—, your dad and I have a lot to talk about.

The nightly ritual seemed endless. Teeth, pajamas, a short story, two kisses on each forehead. When the bedroom doors were finally closed and the house sank into that thick silence of homes with sleeping children, we sat together on the big sofa in the living room. Marina pressed her thigh to mine and took my hand.

—I spoke to her —she said—. We’re both happy about it. We’re having coffee tomorrow.

—Tomorrow? —It slipped out of me—. We haven’t even talked to each other yet.

—We have all night —she replied, squeezing my fingers—. And this is just coffee. If you say no, nothing happens. But first we need to set the rules. Both of ours.

And that’s how, in the dark, with only one lamp on and two glasses of wine that remained almost untouched, we negotiated something no couple should have to negotiate so calmly.

Marina laid out her terms first. She had thought them through; you could tell.

—Only on weekdays, and only in the mornings. That way I take the girls to school and we can have lunch together almost every day. —She counted on her fingers—. Reyes assures me the clients are trustworthy, discreet people. The pay depends on the time and what they ask for, but it’s almost always short dates. And if there’s a special request, she runs it by me first, and I run it by you. No exceptions.

I listened without interrupting. There was something hypnotic about watching her so in control, so serene, while she talked about selling herself and protecting us in the same sentence.

—My turn —I said at last—. And I’m going to set mine.

—Go ahead.

—Only in hotels or at Reyes’s place. Never in private homes, never alone in a place we don’t control. —She nodded—. Weekends are ours, untouchable. No nights away; at most, one morning. —Another nod—. And most important: you tell me everything. Everything. The good and the uncomfortable. I don’t want this to be your secret. It belongs to both of us, or it doesn’t.

—It belongs to both of us —she repeated, her voice softening—. It always did.

—One last thing. —I looked her in the eyes—. The day either of us feels bad, really bad, it’s over. No blame, no arguments. It ends, and that’s that.

Marina set her glass down on the coffee table and turned toward me. The strip of light now fell on her collarbone, on the neck of the oversized T-shirt that had slipped off one shoulder.

—Deal —she whispered.

***

I don’t know who moved first. I think it was me, but she was already coming toward me. Her mouth found mine with an urgency that had nothing theatrical about it, and all at once the negotiation, the rules, the bills in the corner of the kitchen, everything dissolved into the heat of her tongue.

I lifted her shirt slowly, savoring the moment when the fabric revealed her waist, her stomach, her breasts. Marina raised her arms to help me and ended up naked on the sofa, half-lit, with her hair tousled and her breathing already quickened. I looked at her as if for the first time. And, in a way, I was: because I was looking at her knowing that soon other men would look at her too, and that, far from taking anything from me, made everything more intense.

—What are you thinking about? —she asked, reading my face as always.

—That tomorrow someone is going to like you —I said, and my voice came out rough—. And that after that you’re going to come back here, with me.

Something flashed in her eyes. She grabbed the back of my neck and pulled me to her chest. I kissed her slowly, tracing her skin with my lips, feeling her whole body rise in goosebumps under my mouth. I went down over her stomach, over the curve of her hip, while she tangled her fingers in my hair and arched her back against the cushions.

By the time I reached between her legs, she was ready. She met me with a muffled moan, careful of the house’s silence, biting the back of her hand so as not to wake the girls. I worked her patiently, with my tongue, listening to her breathing break into little gasps, to her hips move searching for more. I know her. I know exactly when she’s on the edge, and I kept her suspended there longer than she would have wanted.

—Please —she begged, and that word in her mouth was worth more than any glass of wine.

I climbed over her. Marina wrapped her legs around my waist and guided me inside with a firm hand. We fell into that rhythm of ours that has lasted so many years, the one that doesn’t need words, while she dug her nails into my back and whispered things in my ear that I won’t repeat, promises, half-formed fantasies about what she would tell me when she got back, about what she would do with me after each date.

—Tell me everything —I begged between thrusts—, I don’t want you to keep anything from me.

—Everything —she panted—, I promise you, everything.

We came almost at the same time, she stifling her cry against my shoulder, me holding back until the last instant. We stayed tangled on the sofa, sweaty, laughing softly like two teenagers who’d gotten away with something, with the lamp still on and the wine untouched on the table.

—Sealed —Marina said, kissing my chin.

—Sealed —I repeated.

***

The next morning I watched her get dressed for coffee with Reyes. She chose jeans and a simple blouse, nothing provocative; she was only going to meet an old acquaintance, she told me, to remember old times and hear what she had to offer. I walked her to the door after dropping the girls at school. I kissed her and brushed a strand of hair back from her face.

—If at any point you don’t want to, turn around and come home —I told her—. You don’t have to prove anything.

—I know —she replied, and winked at me—. But I want to.

I watched her walk away down the street, with that stride of hers, that stride of a woman who knows her worth, and I went back inside with my heart racing. I was useless all day at work. At midday I slipped out early to have lunch with her, so she could tell me, word for word, gesture for gesture, how the reunion with Reyes had gone and what awaited us from then on.

But that lunch, and what came after, is already another story.