The Threesome with My Wife and the Woman Identical to Her

The idea wasn’t mine. I’ve spent years telling myself it wasn’t mine, and I almost believe it. It was Elena who one night, with the lights off and my hand still wet between her thighs, whispered in my ear that she had met someone who looked like her. Not a neighbor, not a coworker from the clinic where she worked. A woman who sold herself in a place on the coast, in Málaga, and who from behind, in the half-light, could pass for her twin sister.

—I’ve seen her twice —she murmured—. The second time I spoke to her. Her name is Rocío.

I didn’t know what to say. My wife had never been shy about what she wanted, but this was new, a step I hadn’t known existed.

—And what did you do? —I asked, pretending to be calmer than I was.

—Had a drink. Looked at her a lot. Thought about you.

Elena had that habit of dropping the sentence that changed everything and then going quiet, waiting, like someone leaving a letter face down on the table. That night she didn’t push it. Nor was it necessary. The seed had been planted, and for weeks it grew on its own, in silence, every time I looked at her and wondered what it would be like to see her in duplicate.

***

The place was called El Candil and there was nothing elegant about it. A long bar, dim light, music chosen by a guy behind the counter with a taste that didn’t match the place. That guy was Bruno, the owner, a man with big hands and an easy smile who understood people better than any psychologist I had ever met. He was the one who greeted us the first night we went together.

—So you’re the husband —he said, without malice, while serving us—. Your wife has good taste. Rocío and she, from a distance, are the same person.

—That’s what I’ve been told.

—You’ll see for yourself. —He leaned a little over the bar—. It’s lovely, you know? Two women who look alike, understanding each other. People will pay anything for that.

Elena said nothing. She drank slowly, watching the entrance every time the curtain at the back moved. When Rocío appeared, I understood everything at once.

She wasn’t identical. Up close, her eyes were darker, her mouth wider, there was a small scar on the eyebrow Elena didn’t have. But the whole, the way she walked with her hip set, the long hair falling over her left eye, the tilt of her neck when she smiled… it was like looking at my wife through a fogged-up pane of glass. I felt a vertigo that wasn’t entirely unpleasant.

She sat with us. The two of them together, side by side, were a mirror returning a slightly wrong image. They talked as if they’d known each other all their lives. I barely opened my mouth; I just watched, compared, searched for the differences, and lost myself every time I found them.

—Does it bother you that we talk about you as if you weren’t here? —Rocío asked me at one point.

—No —I said, and it was true.

—Good. Because tonight you don’t decide anything.

Elena laughed softly. I recognized that laugh: the one she gave when something pleased her too much and she didn’t want to admit it.

***

The room was at the end of a hallway, behind the curtain. A wide bed, a floor lamp with diffused light, an armchair in the corner. Bruno pointed at the armchair with his chin before closing the door.

—Start there —he said—. They’ll tell you when.

I sat down. The two women stood facing each other, a step apart, looking at one another with a curiosity that was nothing if not genuine. It was Elena who moved first. She raised a hand and brushed the strand of hair off Rocío’s eye, the same gesture I made to her a hundred times. Rocío closed her eyelids for an instant, as if recognizing the touch.

—It’s strange —Elena whispered—. It’s like touching myself.

—I know.

They kissed slowly, without hurry, mouths barely open. It wasn’t a movie kiss or a display-window kiss; it was a probing kiss, two women finding out how far the resemblance went. I watched my wife’s hands slide down the other woman’s back, watched her unzip her dress with the same skill she used to undress herself. The fabric fell to the floor and, for one absurd second, I couldn’t tell which of the two bodies was the one I knew by heart.

I shifted in the armchair. The pressure under my trousers had become unbearable, but I didn’t touch myself. Not yet. Things had their timing, and I was only a guest.

***

Rocío was the first to kneel. She guided Elena to the edge of the bed, spread her knees with her hands, and kissed her inside the thighs, moving upward little by little. My wife threw her head back and let out a sound I knew well, the one that always escaped her just before she lost control. Seeing it provoked by another person, by a woman who was almost herself, took my breath away.

—Look at your husband’s face —Rocío said without lifting her mouth all the way—. He’s about to come without anyone even touching him.

Elena turned her head and found me. Her eyes were shining, cheeks flushed, lips parted. She said nothing, but held my gaze while the other woman devoured her sex, and that silent complicity was more intimate than anything we had shared in years in bed.

—Come —she said at last, stretching out her arm—. You can now.

I got up with slightly unsteady legs and knelt on the bed behind Rocío. I ran my hands over her back, that back that from behind was my wife’s, and found the tattoo at the base of her spine: a small geometric design I didn’t understand and didn’t stop to decipher. I kissed it. She arched her body toward me without stopping what she was doing with Elena.

—Don’t just stand there watching —she murmured—. Tonight you’re not the audience.

***

What came after mixes in my memory like images from a dream that returns in flashes. I remember Elena lying on her back, Rocío straddling her mouth, the two of them moving with a synchronization that was frightening, as if they shared the same body and the same desire. I remember my hands split between the two of them, not knowing which moan belonged to whom. I remember my wife asking me to go into the other one, and the feeling of sinking into flesh that was and wasn’t hers, while she watched us with a smile I had never seen on her before, the smile of someone who has finally found the exact reflection of her fantasy.

—Do you like it? —Elena asked me, her voice rough, caressing both of us—. Do you like not knowing which one I am?

—I like it —I admitted, the word coming out broken.

—Say it again.

—I like it. It drives me crazy.

Rocío laughed beneath me, a laugh that was almost my wife’s, and that slight mismatch, that note that quite fit, was what pushed me to the edge. I pulled back just in time and it was Elena who took me in, who finished what the other had started, with her head resting on Rocío’s thigh and the two women’s fingers intertwined over my skin.

***

Afterward the three of us lay there, catching our breath, a tangle of legs and dark hair impossible to separate in that light. Rocío lit a cigarette and passed it to Elena, who took a drag and handed it to me. We smoked it in silence, passing it from hand to hand as if we’d been doing it all our lives.

—You know what’s strangest? —Rocío said after a while, looking at the ceiling—. That for a moment I didn’t know who I was either. Whether I was the husband’s wife or the woman who gets paid at night. You two made me forget.

—Don’t talk like it’s a job —Elena said, squeezing her hand.

—But it is, darling. —Rocío smiled, without bitterness—. But there are nights that feel so little like work that a person gets confused. This was one of those.

I propped myself up on one elbow and looked at the two of them, so alike and so different, outlined against the beige wall of the room. I thought about how easy it had been to cross that line, how what weeks earlier had seemed unthinkable now felt like the most natural thing in the world. I thought we would come back. I knew it with a quiet certainty, without guilt, while Elena curled against my chest and stretched out an arm so Rocío would do the same on the other side.

—What are you thinking about? —my wife asked me.

—That I don’t want to know when this is going to end.

—Then don’t ask —she said, and kissed me—. The future will tell us.

Outside, in the bar, Bruno had put on another song, one of those slow ballads that sound like a confidence shared in secret. The curtain at the back moved with the air conditioning. The two women fell asleep almost at the same time, breathing in rhythm, and I stayed awake a little longer, watching them, still unable to fully tell where one ended and the other began. Maybe I never wanted to tell. Maybe that confusion, that vertigo of having my wife and her double tangled in my arms, was exactly what I had gone looking for without daring to name it.

When sleep finally won me over, the last thing I felt was a hand —I didn’t know whose— searching for mine beneath the sheet, and squeezing it.