The Night I Saw My Wife with the Bar Manager

That night we had decided the time had come. We had spent months fantasizing about it, whispering about it after sex, laughing the next day as if it were a joke, but neither of us ever forgot. My wife wanted to be with another man. She wanted me to watch. And I, though it was hard to admit, wanted it just as much as she did.

We chose a bar we used to go to with her cousins on special occasions. We knew the place, the music, the kind of people who went there. That gave us a false sense of control over something that, in reality, could not be controlled.

Camila —that’s my wife’s name— went into the shower at nine. She came out wrapped in a towel, with wet hair stuck to her neck, and gave me a look that was already a promise. She took almost an hour getting ready.

When she came down the stairs, I almost ran out of air. A thin white blouse, no bra. A very short black skirt. A thong of the same color that you could make out if she walked against the light. White Converse, because she told me she didn’t want to look “like a slut.” And a black leather jacket over her shoulders.

—Are you ready? —I asked her.

—I’m nervous —she replied—. But yes. Let’s go before I change my mind.

In the car we barely talked. She looked out the window and bit her lip. Every so often I squeezed her thigh, not out of desire, but to remind her I was there, that she wouldn’t be alone in this.

When we arrived at the bar, the valet greeted us. Camila got out of the car and the boy’s gaze went straight to her legs. She noticed. She smiled. She adjusted her skirt with a slow, deliberate gesture, and walked toward the entrance with her hips a little looser than usual.

—And that? —I whispered to her.

—Isn’t that why we came? —she answered without looking at me—. I’m already getting turned on.

At the door there was a tall guy, about thirty-five, in charge of security checks. He told Camila that her companions hadn’t arrived yet, if she would allow it. She took off her jacket and raised her arms.

The man’s hands went up her waist, around the sides of her breasts, down her hips. He asked her to turn around. He ran his palms over her ass, under her skirt, without even trying to hide it. Camila let out a very low sigh, almost inaudible, but I heard it. So did the guy.

He let us in. As we walked away, I saw him take out his radio and speak to someone, never taking his eyes off her.

The first hour was exactly what we expected. Camila ordered a gin and tonic, then another. Every time a song she liked came on, she went to the dance floor. She had no shortage of dance partners. They pulled her from the table, brushed her waist, one or another pressed against her from behind more than necessary. I watched from afar and felt that strange mix of arousal and something I couldn’t name, something like vertigo.

She would come back to the table, give me a long kiss, whisper in my ear what the last one had whispered to her or what she had felt when he put a hand on her hip. And then she would go off again.

Around one, she sat beside me and took a deep breath.

—There’s no one here —she said.

—What do you mean, no one?

—Look around. Drunks, old men, kids who don’t even know where to put their hands. I don’t want any of them. We’ll have to leave it for another night.

I took a sip from my glass to hide my face. I was disappointed. But I understood her. If the fantasy doesn’t happen with the right man, then it doesn’t happen. The essence was in the desire, not in just any substitute.

We were ordering the last round when a waitress came over and asked Camila if she could speak with her for a moment, privately. They went to a corner where the music dropped a little. I watched them from the table. I saw Camila shake her head once, then again. She came back with a strange smile.

—What did he want?

—The manager. He says he’s been watching me all night and would like to meet me.

—And what did you say?

—No. These managers are always older guys, with bellies, with pig faces. I’m not going to ruin the night to indulge some guy who’s going to gross me out.

I stayed quiet. On one hand, she was right. On the other, curiosity had already bitten me. If the manager had been watching her, he knew exactly what had happened at the door, on the dance floor, in every dance. And if he’d dared send a waitress, he wasn’t just anybody.

—Let’s stay a little longer —I told her—. Have another drink. Let’s relax. If after that you want to leave, we’ll go.

She agreed reluctantly. I waited for her to get absorbed in her phone, told her I was going to the bathroom, and went looking for the waitress.

I found her by the bar. I told her I needed to speak to the manager, that it had to do with the proposal he had sent my wife. She looked at me like I’d asked for the vault keys. It took her a while to decide. In the end she asked me to follow her.

We crossed a hallway behind the bar, another behind a small kitchen, and went up a narrow stairway to a door with no sign. She knocked twice and went in.

The office was not what I had imagined. A black desk, two leather armchairs, an entire wall of monitors with the venue’s cameras. And behind the desk, a guy about twenty-eight or thirty, white shirt rolled up at the sleeves, no tie, clean-shaven jaw and a smile that was neither friendly nor hostile. Attractive. Very attractive. And he knew it.

He offered me a seat and poured me a whiskey without asking whether I wanted one. I accepted it.

—So your wife is the one who’s been teasing half the bar and then, when the invitation comes, says no —he said, not really as a question—. What game are you two playing?

I told him the truth. That it was a fantasy of ours. That she had turned down the invitation because she had imagined something else, a different kind of man. That I, meanwhile, had come to talk to him because curiosity had gotten the better of me.

He gave a short laugh.

—What a pair. Look, I’ll make this easy. I’ll send her another drink, one on the house. I’ll tell the waitress to tell her it’s from me and that, if she wants to come upstairs for a moment, she should. I’m not going to force anyone into anything. If she comes down, she comes down. If she stays, I’ll let you know so you can come see. I’ve got monitor and audio in this office and in the one next door. How does that sound?

It sounded good to me. I shook his hand. I went back to the table.

—Did it take you long? —Camila asked me.

—There was a line. Order another drink. The last one. I promise.

Five minutes later the waitress arrived with two glasses of wine, a Ribera, and said out loud that they were on the house. Then she leaned toward Camila’s ear and whispered something. I saw my wife’s breathing quicken. The waitress left.

—What did she say?

—That the manager wants to see me for a moment. Upstairs.

—And?

—I don’t know.

—Go up —I told her—. Just to see him. If you don’t like him, come back down. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.

She looked at me for several seconds. Then she stood up, adjusted her skirt with that same deliberate gesture from the entrance, and went off behind the waitress. Before disappearing down the hall, she turned and gave me a look I couldn’t read.

I gave her a minute. Then I got up and went to the bar. The waitress was already waiting for me with instructions. She took me to the office next door, opened the door, and said in a low voice, “Anything happens, you open it and that’s it. No show if you don’t want one.”

She closed it. I sat in front of the monitor. I put on the headphones.

***

In the other room, Camila was standing in front of the desk. The manager had welcomed her with a glass in his hand and offered it to her. She took it, but didn’t drink.

—I was expecting someone older —she said.

—I was expecting someone less of a bitch —he answered. He said it with half a smile, and my wife laughed despite herself.

They talked for a couple of minutes. He asked her about the fantasy. He asked what she wanted to happen. He asked what she didn’t want to happen. From the monitor, I heard it all. It was the first time that night someone had spoken to Camila like she was a person and not a piece of meat. And, paradoxically, that was what convinced her.

She sat on the edge of the desk. Crossed her legs. Her skirt rode up a couple of inches.

—He’s watching, right? —she said, without lifting her gaze.

—He’s watching —he replied.

Camila took a deep breath. And then she set the glass down.

—Let him watch.

He came closer slowly. He put a hand on her knee, slid it up the inner part of her thigh, unhurried, waiting for a sign to stop that never came. When his fingers brushed the edge of her thong, Camila closed her eyes.

—Take it off —he told her—. Slowly.

My wife stood up. She pulled the black thong down her legs and let it fall onto the carpet. She sat back on the desk and spread her legs a little, just enough, looking him in the eyes.

The manager knelt between her thighs. What happened next I experienced more through the headphones than through the image. Camila’s sighs, the way she threw her head back, the words she had gone months without saying to me and was now saying to a stranger in a half-lit office. She begged him not to stop. She told him to keep going. She said things I didn’t even know she knew how to say.

When he straightened up, she reached for his belt with both hands. She was determined. There was no trace of the woman who half an hour earlier had told me she was disappointed. That woman had stayed downstairs, at the table.

What came next was longer and slower than I expected. He turned her around, bent her over the desk, hiked her skirt to her waist. He fucked her without rushing, setting the pace, holding her by the hips. Camila had her eyes open, staring at the wall without seeing anything, and her mouth hung open with every thrust.

—Look at the camera —he told her at one point—. The one in the corner.

My wife turned her head and looked for me. Even though she knew she couldn’t see me, she looked straight at the camera giving me the image. And she smiled at me.

That smile was, possibly, the sexiest thing I have ever seen in my life.

They stayed at it a while longer. They changed positions. She sat on top, setting the rhythm, looking at the camera every few seconds. When he came, he did it outside, over my wife’s lower back, and she laughed softly, as if all of it were a private joke between the three of us.

They dressed in almost complete silence. Camila gathered her hair. Picked up the thong, looked at it for a second, and tucked it into the pocket of her jacket. The manager gave her a short kiss on the temple, almost fatherly, almost mocking.

—Whenever you want to come back —he told her—, you know where I am.

***

She came out through the office door. I came out through mine at the same time. We met in the hallway. We didn’t say anything. I took her hand. She squeezed mine so hard I thought she might break my fingers.

In the car, on the way home, we still didn’t talk much. Only when we were already arriving did she take my hand and place it on her thigh, still without a thong, and tell me:

—Tonight you didn’t touch me.

—Tonight wasn’t the time.

—Well, now it is.

We got home and I held her in the entryway, against the door, before we went upstairs. What happened after that I’m not going to tell here, because it was ours, just ours. But I told her, while we were in bed and she was breathing against my chest, that I didn’t know whether I wanted to do it again.

—I don’t know either —she answered—. But just in case, don’t throw away that place’s card.

And she fell asleep on my chest, breathing calmly, as if nothing at all had just happened.