The Anniversary

It was the noises, the sounds that had brought David this far. A female's cries he recognized; a male's deep baritone moans and occasional groans; words; spots of laughter; more cries. The once distant sounds had brought him up the stairs and down the landing to the open doorway from which they emanated. He'd stopped short, heart thumping. And thumping even harder following his mild exertion.

The body on the bed he could see, in its entirety, belonged to the male. It appeared tanned and muscular, the build of a linebacker. He had no facial hair and he was smiling--smiling down at a woman who was nearly old enough to be his mother. Undoubtedly her face was made up gypsy-like; or, as their college age daughter liked to say, on her rare visits home from school, like a slut.

David could only see, from his vantage, the lower half of her body. Her thickish legs in the air gripping, loosely, the younger man's sides as he moved, steadily and rhythmically, in her, as she conveyed the usual trite things: "Oh you're so hard today!" "Oh you're so big!" Those kinds of things.

The guy, leaning forward, over her on straight arms, muscular arms, seemed entranced by David's wife, the way he relentlessly stared--smiled--down at her. Perhaps he had a mother complex. Perhaps he liked overly painted women. At any rate he had great stamina. They'd been fucking when David walked through his front door, fucking while he climbed the stairs, and fucking, now, as he watched through the doorway. And the guy didn't appear close to cumming yet. He was fucking her like a machine, an automaton.

David moved back a step and let out an involuntary little chirp. Like a sparrow. He'd very nearly ejaculated in his pants. He stood, back to the wall, breathing hard for a moment while the sounds from the bedroom washed over him. Then he made his rapid getaway: back down the stairs, past the kitchen, through the vestibule, out the front door (not locking it behind him) to his SUV--which was parked behind a stranger's jacked up pick-up (Where did his wife meet these guys!) which in turn was parked behind her Mercedes E class.

David backed out hurriedly, traffic be damned, drove to street's end, hung a right, drove about a half mile and pulled behind a deserted one-story business strip center with a small lake in the back. Hidden now, he shut off the engine and sat there for a moment breathing hard. Then he tore open his pants and pulled down his briefs just as his cum started to erupt. Not shoot--those days were long over. Just cream over his head and thickly run down his shaft and hand toward his greying pubic hair. It was a big load. It was a mess.

He reached for tissues from a box in the passenger's seat and began mopping up the best he could. Then he lowered the passenger's window and, consciously littering, tossed the wet and sticky wad out. After neglecting to first glance in the rearview to make sure a cop hadn't pulled in behind him.

"Sir? You have business here?"

"Here? No, I..."

"Why're your pants open?"

"I..."

"If you get out and pick up what you just tossed out the window I won't write you a ticket for littering. It's, like, a two hundred and fifty dollar fine."

The thought made David shudder. Equally the thought of having to delicately pick the wad up as the steepness of the fine. "OK. I'll..."

"First let me see your license and registration. No, first zip up your pants, OK? That's another violation."

None of this happened. There was no cop car behind David's SUV. Just one, latently, in his paranoid imagination.

David wiped his hand off a last time, pulled up his pants, raised the passenger's window, started his SUV up and backed away. A bar, not a gay bar and not a topless bar nevertheless named Cheaters was a couple of miles up the road. He would drive there and have a few beers, drowning his post-orgasmic cuckold's sorrows until five or so (it was a little past three--he'd left work early today) and then venture back home.

Surely his wife and the linebacker would be done by then.

David returned from the men's room at the back and took a stool near the far end of the bar. He was a semi-regular but not regular enough for the overweight unattractive bartender to remember his name. She took his order and brought back a cold can of Modelo Chelada, no glass, no lime needed it was a green can of Limon y Sal, and left. He drank.

And it was only after the second sip, as his head began to clear and his vision once more approached normal that he remembered the bottle of bubbly and the bouquet of grocery store flowers he'd left on the kitchen counter while listening to the not totally unexpected (pick-up in the driveway) duet coming from the upstairs bedroom. And David felt, at that moment, a slow burn advancing to his forehead.

"Fuck!" he said outloud.

He downed the can and asked for another. "And can I have a glass this time?" The newly minted cuckold was getting bolder. He swiveled on his stool so that he faced the overhead flatscreen and blinked and...

... watched two bodies in motion. Or rather one, as his wife's remained, aside from her rolling head, mouth open, stationary beneath a vision of a younger guy with a linebacker's build. His body was tanned aside from his round, firm ass, while hers was uniformly the pale shade of his buttocks. The view was from above and behind and slightly off to the side. He spoke to her, David's wife, now a porn actor, though his words were unintelligible. He delivered them with a smile however, and there were closed captions:

"Your dipshit husband fuck you this well?"

A laugh. "Are you kidding? He would've been done ten minutes ago."

Laughter.

"I bet he'd like to watch."

"Fat chance."

"I bet he's that type of guy."

"Maybe so but I'm not about to share you with him."

"Does he suck cock?"

"How should I know?"

"I bet he does, on the side. You told me he's a pantywaist."

"So?"

"So pantywaists like to suck cock. And watch their wives get--"

"You wanna watch this or...?"

Betraying a moment of professional courtesy the bartender had waddled over. And David blinked.

A couple of midfielders were batting a soccer ball around. The score in the upper lefthand corner said nil/nil. It was the 89th minute.

"You want me to change it or...?"

David's iPhone was buzzing. "I have to get this," he said, as the bartender shrugged and walked away. He pulled the phone out of his pants pocket as his wife's pretty if overly made up face loomed at him.

"What," he said coldly.

"Where ARE you?" a note of (affected) genuine concern in her voice.

"Cheaters."

"WHAT?"

"A bar. Having a beer."

"It's, like, four in the afternoon!"

"I left work early. It's...," his voice edging downward, toward sadness, "... our anniversary."

A pause.

"Were you, like, HERE earlier?"

David had no response.

"Because there's a bottle of champagne and some flowers here in the kitchen."

Again, David remained silent. It was as if he were tied up and gagged. As when, occasionally, he and his wife played their S&M games.

No, it was as if his mouth were his penis and the chastity cage they kept in a bedside drawer had been brutally attached. Had she jokingly showed it to the linebacker yet?

"Did you?"

"Did I what?"

"Come home earlier?"

David sighed. "I've got another call...," he lied.

"Come HOME," his wife fairly well pleaded.

And David terminated the call.

He had a third puckery Modelo as one soccer match replay bled into another before backing off his stool, unsteadily, and heading out to his SUV. It was chilly out, the sky was grey and a drizzle had started to fall. Winter was coming.

The grocery store flowers had been put in a clear vase and David, as if in a daze, stood staring at them. The water came three-quarters of the way up.

"Aren't they beautiful?" his wife beamed. "I put the champagne in the freezer a few minutes ago. Don't let me forget."

All that was missing was a welcome home/Happy Anniversary kiss. But none was offered and none given. And none wanted, apparently.

"Your daughter called a little while ago...," making it sound like she was his and not hers, "... to wish us a happy. Surprised she remembered..."

At least she hadn't referred to her own daughter as a bitch. It was a mother-daughter thing. Youth resenting a mother's unwillingness to let go of hers. Even though it was long past.

She'd pulled on a panty, after sex, and had tightly cinched a flowerful kimono around her thick body. Her breasts were loose underneath, large and saggy. Did her lover feel them while he fucked her? Did he suck them?

"Who is he?" David at last ventured.

"Who?" As if she didn't know.

"Him. Today."

"Oh him!" she said, throwing a hand up in the air. "Nobody. Just some guy I met. He doesn't mean anything [to me]."

"How long's this been going on?"

And she stood thinking for a moment. As if counting up the fucks. "A few times."

"Times?"

"Weeks, I mean. A month. Two months... I was going to tell you about it."

"Are you going to continue...?" having sex with him, that is.

"For a while." Whatever that meant.

"Do you love him?"

She let out a cackle. "Fuck no! It's just sex, that's all. Good old-fashioned sex. Remember that?"

And David found himself thinking back. About what he wasn't quite sure.

"I'm Italian," his wife went on. "An Italian Stallion. I need it, y'know? And you've lost interest. Besides... you tell me all the time you want me to fuck other guys..."

"Is he the first?"

"No comment." And for emphasis she drew an imaginary zipper across her mouth. Meaning, of course, he was not.

David felt himself crumbling, a bit. Had he not cum already he would be getting a hard-on about now. If not before.

"Well... I hope he satisfies you," he allowed.

"He does," she said with the same conviction as "no comment." "I cum more times in a single fuck with him than in twenty years of marriage to you."

And David hung a heavy head. "I'm sorry..."

His wife shrugged, her shoulders appearing small, pinched in, beneath the kimono. "It's water under the bridge," she analogized, for some reason. "It won't affect us. Our marriage. Anyway, you'd rather be tied up and whipped at this point."

And with this David's wife turned her back on him.

Then turned around just as abruptly. "He says..."

"Who?"

"Him. My new friend... He says you'd like to watch."

"I don't know him," David replied.

"I know you don't but... That's what he says. Would you?"

Head down once more, "Maybe..."

"I'll talk to him. See what we can do. Maybe he could stay over some nights?" she wondered.

"With you?"

"Who else! You? Of course with me! The price for letting you watch..."

"Oh," David acknowledged. He was the bargaining chip. Or something was.

"He said he'd be OK with you prancing around in your little panty on weekends."

"I don't prance."

"Whatever. If he stayed over, I mean."

"All weekend?"

"Oh Christ!"

"What?"

"The anniversary champagne!"

And she opened the freezer door and took the dark green bottle out and held it aloft, frowning, as if at a curious trophy.

It was frozen solid.