The Hotwife Summer (6 page)

C
HAPTER
7
: Gone

Twenty years later, in Rome, Sandro embraced me. My chest was getting tighter by the second. I tried to take a deep breath, and made an absurd noise instead. I tried to cover it up by pounding on my chest in the universal sign of heartburn.

Sandro slapped me on the back.

“Don't have a fucking heart attack, man!” Quickly, he turned to Summer, and held up a hand. “I'm sorry,” he said. “Ladies are present.”

Summer was looking from Sandro to me. The confusion on her face seemed genuine. She seemed genuinely surprised.

Or did she?

Sandro hugged me again. Through his silk shirt, I could feel how trim and hard his body was. He was as intense as every, and the energy coiled inside of him and snaked under his skin.

“You two know each other?” Summer said. She was sinking slowly into her seat, and a variety of emotions seemed to be playing across her face.

Meanwhile, my own stomach threatened to turn itself inside out. I looked at Sandro's face, seeking any sign of connivance, any indication that he had something up his sleeve. But it was impossible to tell with him. He was shining his dentist-ad smile on anyone and everything in the room. He yelled, “My old buddy Benny!” to anyone who was listening, which turned out to be quite a few of the people on the patio.

He threw himself backward into his chair, a low-reclining wicker chair straight from Fellini's Italy. “Benny Brooks,” he said again. He shook his head.

I had no idea if his surprise was an act or not.

Sweat had begun to form everywhere that sweat could form, and I felt icy cold in spite of the heat. My fingers felt numb, and my head was actually spinning, on a separate axis, inside of my head. I was sure I was going to stroke out, or puke, or both.

My own voice surprised me with its calm:

“This is such an unbelievable surprise,” I said. “I just...I've had to use the head since we got here. Excuse me.”

I barely felt my feet moving beneath me as I turned, stepped neatly off the raised deck, and made my way past a lightly roaring fountain, the stern-faced headwaiter, a swinging door, a flight of steps. Opened door, closed door, tiny, cramped room.

I leaned my head against the door.

Sweat was pouring from my armpits and my scalp.

Was I going to hyperventilate?

I had to get control of myself.

I had to get control of myself, and then I had to find a way to get Summer alone. I needed to put the breaks on everything we had set in motion. I needed to -

What was I going to tell her? It had to be quick, it had to be to the point.

I want you to fuck other men. Any other man. Just not Sandro.

And Sandro. What about him?

My stomach started to turn again, this time at my own weakness. I knew that what I should do, if I were a real man, would be to go upstairs, take my wife by the hand, and walk out.

No: I would find out from him if he had planned this all along. Surely he knew her last name was Brooks. Surely she had said my name in his presence. Surely he had put it all together, and he knew it was me.

If I were a real man, I would punch him in the face.

If I were a real man, I would have been in control of this whole thing from the start, and I would not have been masterminded by the cool, dominating Sandro.

The fucker.

Heat began to sear through me, rising up to my face. I turned to the washbasin and turned on the cold water. Leaning on the counter, I looked into the mirror. My eyes were wild and my face was red with anger.

I had to get control of myself.

This asshole had probably plotted the whole thing. And now I had done myself in, I had convinced my own wife to fuck him...

The voice of reason elbowed its way into the dialogue in my head.

Maybe he never knew, at all. Maybe this whole time your wife has just been feeding you lines about screwing around with him. Maybe your name never came up at all...

Was that worse? I asked myself. Was it worse, or better that way, if Summer had never mentioned that she was married, if Sandro had never known her last name.

Don't be an idiot, my angry voice screamed. He's a woman-stealing low-life, and he knows exactly what he's doing.

Shame and anger burned inside of me, each one feeding the other.

I gave myself over to a quick fantasy, in which I marched upstairs, punched him in the mouth, grabbed the wrist of a confused Summer, escaped out the back, and we made love in a taxi.

The room was spinning still, so I clutched the washbasin. I tried counting myself down. I needed to act, to do something to stop this disaster from happening.

Any man but Sandro.

I looked at my watch. How long had I been in here?

I wiped sweat from my brow. 

I couldn't leave my wife alone with Sandro Cervi for more than a few moments.

I needed to get my game on.

Summer's laugh, breaking apart like a flock of doves in the air, reached me over all the sounds in the garden dining area. Her head was tipped to one side, and her mouth was open in a wide and generous smile. Candles dotted the table now, magically air-dropped in by the busy waiters. The lights reflected in the wine glasses and her absorbent eyes.

Sandro was making her laugh, of course, and another peal of laughter reached my ears before I made it to the patio.

She barely looked up at me as I arrived. “That's incredible,” she was saying.

Sandro looked up, his white-toothed grin still swimming around on his face. Something about him gave him the appearance of a Cheshire Cat.

“You look pale,” he said.

I placed my hand over my stomach. “Some kind of...” I began lamely, but Sandro interrupted me and leaned across the table, tapping his finger on Summer's outstretched hand, as though they were the lovers and I was the friend. “He's seen a ghost, is why,” he said. “God. Benny Brooks. How long has it been? Twenty years, almost.” His eyes quickly flickered up and down my physique. I was still standing, like an idiot. Sandro placed his hands on the back of his head, his elbows splayed out. In his neat silk shirt and his expensive jeans, he looked like a European playboy, but his gestures were those of an American stockbroker.

Good fuck
, I said to myself inwardly.

“You look good,” he said, and his tone was laced with acid.

I did not look good, his tone said. Not good enough for Summer.

Almost as if he were reading my thoughts, or accepting the narration I was providing in my own mind, he leaned again toward Summer and lifted her hand. He moved elegantly to the edge of his chair to kiss the back of her hand, as though she were a princess. “However did you attract such a gorgeous creature?” His voice was dripping with honey, and Summer was batting her eyelashes and smiling.

“Ben, sit down,” he said, almost as part of the same sentence. “You've been standing there like a goon for five minutes.” He brought his hands together in a hearty clap. “Now!” he yelled, and the energy of the room changed – it was a noticeable thing; the waitstaff seemed to stiffen into shape and turn their attention to us, without moving - “Let's eat!”

I sank into the chair in an awkward movement. My knees gave out on me halfway down.

Summer looked at me, and she was smiling. She seemed to notice nothing about me at all, and I wondered if she was just taking everything to the same conclusion we had planned on. I tried to catch her eye, but she was too busy flirting with Sandro, laughing at his jokes, opening her eyes in surprise as he spoon-fed her an appetizer.

Sandro leaned over and poured something from a bottle.

“Aperitif,” he said. “It's for your stomach.” Then, with little pause, he turned on me with his intense, dominating eyes. “It's a good thing you came, mate. I was just telling Summer, the rest of the class has canceled.”

How convenient.

My eyes moved like overcooked eggs from Sandro to my wife, searching for the truth. Had Sandro planned it all along, and if he did, had he known it was my wife, specifically, he was planning to seduce and fuck? Had Summer known? Had they planned this little bit of theater together?

I looked at Summer.

I needed to know if she was in on it, this grotesque plot of Sandro's.

For surely, that's what this was. Even if he hadn't known all along that Summer was my wife, he was seizing her like a hawk now. His eyes would not leave her. He was eating her alive, undressing her right in front of me. Slapping me on the back and telling me what a great catch she was, while his eyes stripped her clothing down to her moist panties and he sucked her inside of his mouth like a plume of smoke.

He would then turn to me, and I could have sworn his eyes said: I am going to fill your wife so full of cum she splits open.

Sandro leaned back in his chair. “Maybe they didn't hear me when I said I would pay for dinner,” he quipped. It took me a moment to realize he was talking about the class.

I watched Summer. She was just playing the game we had agreed upon, I reminded myself. This is what we had planned to do before I saw that it was Sandro she had chosen. Sandro of my past, who I had never told her about. 

Sandro. The smug fuck. Thinking, maybe, that he had plucked my wife right out from under my nose. I couldn't stand him not knowing that this was the plan all along. This was
my
plan, this is what
I
wanted.

Or was it?

Surely Summer had caught on, by now, to the fact that I needed to change the game plan? Surely she would consult me, and ask if everything was still on like it was before? Now that the person was someone I knew?

I had a chilling thought: Maybe she assumed that
I had known
all along that her mystery chef was Sandro.

And what about me?
What about you, Ben?
I screamed inside my own head.
Do something!

I was impotent. Powerless. I wasn't moving from where I was sitting, to snatch my wife away from Sandro's encircling grasp. I thought about it. So many times. Leaning over and telling her I needed to speak to her, whispering the story of Sabrina to her quickly, running away in the streets.

Sandro drank wine, and water, and more wine. I waited for him to need to go to the bathroom. I waited for him to begin a conversation with the waiter, or anything at all that would allow me one small second to say something to my wife, something that would unlink this chain of events.

Summer would go to the restroom. Surely. Then I could stand up and follow her.

I waited. Why was I waiting? Humiliation rose up in my cheeks. Summer said I looked quite drunk and poured me another glass of wine. Was she being mean? Was she being kind? What did her face say?

I downed the wine to give myself more courage. Maybe if I was drunk enough, I would be brave enough to tell Sandro to fuck off. I would get my wife back for the evening. I would find a way to arrange this game with her another time.

Instead of doing any of these things, however, I sank further and further into my chair. Sandro and Summer began to talk to each other more intimately, only occasionally looking my way to include me, in some offhand way, in the conversation.

And wasn't this what we had planned
, I thought.
Isn't his just what Summer said she would do, and now she was doing it?

I looked at her.

It was true: she was simply carrying out the plan we had created together. She was excited. Her face was flushed with her excitement. Her eyes were bright and smiling. 

I looked at Sandro.

The bastard.
He
was just carrying out the plan he had all along, to humiliate me again.

Why wasn't
I
doing anything?

For a brief moment, I let myself touch on what might have been the truth: I didn't want to stop what I had set in motion, even if it was Sandro who Summer had chosen. I didn't want to take the chance that Summer would abandon this plan forever. Because I really, really wanted her to have sex with another man, and I was so close I could taste it.

I tried to dig deeper into myself, and ask myself if I really didn't want it to be Sandro.

A cold feeling spread out in my stomach, the kind that is both erotic and fearful, angry and pleased. The kind I could not exactly explain to myself.

But the feeling turned hard when it reached my cock, and so I guess that was my answer.

I drank so much wine that I started to get ill. The seafood Sandro had insisted on giving me was settling in like barnacles on my stomach. Maybe he had poisoned me. I excused myself and steered like a boat to the bathroom.

I was sweating. My eyes were bloodshot. I needed to get control of myself.

I splashed cold water on my face. I gave myself a talking to. I sat on the toilet thinking.