Reluctant Cuckold Page 3

  I looked at the smiling photos of friends and relatives she had put up on our fridge and her cutely written Post-it note reminders.

  I looked at photos of us—smiling, arms around each other, on vacation, family holidays, on our wedding day, on our honeymoon.

  I began thinking of my wife in that bathroom that night. Wondered how it was possible. If I were to pick anyone to have been in the bathroom, it would have been Tamara. Unlike Ashley’s more conservative and now-married friends from college, Tamara is bold, busty, single, flirty, vivacious, daring—and exudes sexuality.

  Tamara was one of Ashley’s bridesmaids, and barely smiled in the photos that day.

  I wondered why Jim had chosen Ashley. Perhaps it was that she’d seemed more untouchable, less attainable, a greater challenge. The fact she was married and that I was right outside. That she was higher ranked at work. I wondered if he’d been thinking that, what else he’d been thinking, how it all went down.

  My thoughts were all runaway train, and I had to stabilize them. So I went into our home office and started cleaning. Ashley had been on me about it for a while. I had allowed the office to become more of a storage room. I spent the next hour hauling boxes down to the basement.

  ****

  I was lying on the living room sofa when I heard Ashley unlock the door. I pretended to have dozed off, saying, “Oh, hi Ash.”

  I was struck by how sweet and pretty she looked in just jeans and a Virginia Tech t-shirt.

  “How was Lisa’s b-day shindig?”

  “Good,” she said, leaning in to give me a kiss. “What’s up with Mr. Sleepy head? It’s not even eleven. Grueling day at work?”

  “It was OK,” I said. “I had some number crunching tonight. I just fell asleep for a few minutes. So you had a good time?”

  “Yeah. It was kind of subdued, actually. A few peeps canceled at the last minute, which was kind of lame, but we still had fun.”

  “Cool.”

  “So, check this out,” Ashley said, handing me a wrapped, brown roll of coins.

  “What’s this?”

  “The cab was twelve-fifty. I gave him a twenty and asked for five back. But Mr. Cabbie had no cash on him. Literally none. Can you believe that? All I had was twenties. So he gave me this. I was like, what the hell is that? What am I to do with a five dollar roll of nickels?”

  She was laughing, and I laughed with her. “Did you say anything to him about it?”

  “I asked him if he was serious. But he seemed embarrassed, so I didn’t give him a hard time. Besides, I was late.”

  Ashley noticed the folded up cardboard by the kitchen counter. “What’s that?” she asked.

  “Check it out,” I said, pointing to our home office room.

  It was reassuring when she exclaimed, “Wow!”

  “Looks great,” she said, coming back out. “Thank you so much for doing that, honey!”

  “No thanks necessary,” I said. “I know I’ve been blowing it off for a while now.”

  Ashley said she was going to get ready for bed, so I said I’d do the same.

  ****

  I lay in bed, my mind racing.

  Where was the logical explanation? And if this rumor was true, how could Ashley sleep so peacefully beside me? Had she been reassured by my not having heard the rumor? Did she assume I wouldn’t follow up with Craig after telling me not to? That I would remain forever in the dark? Was this a symptom of something seriously wrong in our marriage?

  And yet she had acted as if everything was fine and normal when she arrived home. As though our conversation of the prior night had already been paved over. It wasn’t like she was proposing that we have a “serious talk.”

  But now there was a growing possibility that I was all too oblivious that night. That I had been clueless while a crazy incident unfolded, starring my wife.

  I couldn’t help but think that Ashley had been in that bathroom with Tamara when I knocked. Tamara addressed me by name. If Ashley had been in there, she definitely would have known that I was the one knocking outside.

  And If Jim Murta were already inside, he would have known as well.

  I began to assume all three of them had been in there when I knocked. That would explain why Tamara had been so quick to tell me to go upstairs.

  I had a sickening, gut feeling that the rumor Craig had recounted had been unfolding at that very moment. Had I knocked before or after Tamara asked, “Which one of us do you want to fuck?” That one line kept echoing through my brain, sounding so authentically Tamara.

  And then there was the sheer audaciousness of that comment. She could simply have asked, “Which of us do you want?” Or, even “Do you want to have sex with one of us?” But that was too subtle.

  Instead Tamara had to go with “fuck.” Saying it to a guy who had been stroking himself, looking at the both of them.

  Why would Ashley go along with such a thing? Wasn’t that the moment when she should have pulled the ripcord and left? Ashley wasn’t easily peer pressured—not even by Tamara.

  I thought back to my knock on the door. Was Ashley already fucking him, or had Ashley heard my voice, known I was outside, and still went on to fuck him?

  Good God, I thought, it’s 4 a.m.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I took a walk in Bryant Park the following day.

  I couldn’t get past my growing belief that the story Craig had told me was true. But I needed to mentally step back from wondering about the minutia of that night.

  I wasn’t the first husband in the world to learn his wife had cheated. Quite the contrary, it was an age-old story. Hell, I even had a friend who had experienced this.

  Two years ago, my friend Greg learned his wife was having an affair with her boss. What a kick in the balls that must have been at the time, I thought.

  He had told me he thought about divorcing her. Then they went to counseling. He didn’t talk much about it after a while. But eventually they reconciled. As far as I could tell, things were very good with them now.

  I remembered his friends questioning his decision to take her back. Hell, admittedly I was one of them. Some guys were pretty harsh about it, telling him to “dump that bitch.”

  But apparently he thought their marriage was worth saving. None of us were in his shoes.

  I compared my situation to his. Mine was different. His wife was having a full-blown affair that she had hidden for six months, maybe even a year.

  With Ashley, it was a one-night, completely out-of-nowhere event. And if Tamara hadn’t propelled it forward, it would probably never have happened.

  Still, the fact that it did, or probably did happen, meant something.

  I could only mentally whitewash so much.

  I thought of calling my older brother. But I knew what Sean would say. He’d be clearly on the “dump that bitch” side of the fence.

  It’s all black and white with him. I could imagine him saying, “She cheated, that’s it, toss all her stuff onto the street and change the locks tonight.”

  I imagined my friends giving me a similar response.

  And that would be after just hearing she’d cheated. If they knew it was at a party I was at, where I had even knocked on the door, I’d be hearing the “dump that bitch now” refrain in unison.

  But I knew in my heart that not losing Ashley was my number-one priority. I loved her too much and had invested too much.

  And none of my friends or family knew what had happened.

  Yes, Craig did, but he wasn’t part of my regular social circle. So long as I didn’t talk about it, it would remain a secret.

  Whatever issues this had exposed, Ashley and I could work through them in private. There was no way I going to just throw our marriage away now.

  I was going to become more engaged. When she talked about work or friends or what was going on in her life, I wasn’t going to be half-there, distracted or dismissive. She was going to have my full attention.

  ****

 
Ashley was still at the gym when I arrived home from stopping off at the supermarket.

  I had uncorked a bottle of wine and was cooking a pasta dish.

  I’m not much of a chef, but my mom taught me the basics growing up. I have about a dozen meals I’m confident about, and this was a particular favorite with Ashley.

  She walked in saying, “mmm, something smells good —yum!”

  When she came out of the shower, I had dinner on the table and we toasted each other.

  We talked freely, as if everything was fine. I discussed work politics I was negotiating through, and my parents’ recent trip to Australia. She mentioned a Lennon documentary about John and Yoko’s time living in the city.

  We polished off the first bottle and broke into the second.

  “There’s something else,” I told her, pulling out a Netflix envelope. “Your movie arrived a few days early.”

  Ashley widened her eyes, affecting a child’s expression, and said “Yay!”

  It was a children’s Disney-type movie that had gotten four star reviews. She had wanted to take her eight-year-old cousin to it the last time she was in town. But something had happened. Either they had gotten the times wrong or she or her cousin didn’t want the 3-D version.

  She would normally watch something like that on her laptop using her ear buds. But I surprised her by offering to watch it on TV with her.

  So she grabbed a small blanket and lay beside me. It wasn’t even half over when Ashley fell asleep on my shoulder.

  Stroking her hair, I lowered the TV sound and thought of the first time I’d met her, five summers ago, at a Columbia alumni party at an Upper West Side bar. Five blocks from where we now lived.

  She wore a stylish, black, cocktail-type dress, and she captured my eye the moment I spotted her.

  She was a classic, dark-haired beauty. I was struck by her excellent posture and the grace and ease of her movements.

  Her smile was warm and girl-next-door American. Her slightly Asian looking eyes gave her an exotic quality. Her legs were thin and tanned. And her breasts, though revealing almost no cleavage, stood out magnificently in that dress—full, firm and natural.

  I’d always been drawn to big breasts. And thin, tight, compact brunettes. In my early teens, I watched reruns of Dallas and lusted over Victoria Principal. Ashley reminded me of her.

  At 5’4” and barely one hundred pounds, I found her unbelievably hot. I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

  I was determined to at least introduce myself. I asked my few friends there, but no one knew her. One said she looked like she was still a freshman.

  Finally I walked over and asked the three girls in her group how they were doing. I didn’t claim to have organized the event, but I tried to create the impression that I was important—a significant alumnus.

  I asked their graduation class and surmised they were around twenty-five.

  I mentioned that I worked at a hedge fund in midtown, propped up my position there, but that was a conversational bust.

  So I went from boasting to humility.

  “You know,” I said, “I nearly dropped out after my first month.” They all gave me a look that invited me to continue talking and explaining myself. “Well,” I began, “I had broken my arm just before and arrived a week late. Cliques had already formed. My roommate was a football player who was never around. “But mostly,” I continued, “my econ professor asked me after class why the school would admit a dunce like me. Told me I would be lucky to last past the semester. For the first time in my life, I started thinking I was dumb. You know, where you’ve been told you’re smart throughout high school, and then there you are in New York City. It can be a cold and lonely place when you’re a seventeen–year-old kid on his own for the first time.”

  “I know what you mean,” Ashley said, stepping conversationally forward. “I had never experienced city life. It took a long time for Manhattan to grow on me. I didn’t grow up on Zuckerman’s farm or anything, but the pace and crowds and noise had me mega-homesick. And I’d studied piano since I was six. I planned to major in music. I thought I could go professional. But when you’re not in that top one-half of one percent, all you get is rejection for anything serious.”

  “Zuckerman’s Farm?” I asked.

  “It’s nothing, just a silly reference from Charlotte’s Web.”

  Soon we were talking one-on-one and I couldn’t believe it when she said she was single and agreed to a first date.

  It became coincidental that she would refer to that book. I later introduced her to a friend when we were first dating who told me, “Ashley has such a soothing voice. I would love for her to read me Charlotte’s Web, and just before drifting off to sleep, I’d blow a load in her face.”

  I wasn’t offended, I laughed. I had no idea the relationship would continue. I told him he lived in a fantasy world but agreed that Ashley spoke in a uniquely calming way.

  ****

  As for my first actual date with Ashley, I was mighty nervous, and impressing her was the priority.

  It was an August evening, and I was in my work suit, taking a cab down to Tribeca Grill. Ashley was working in that neighborhood at the time. I had never been to the restaurant, but it had gotten high marks on Zagat’s.

  As I shut the cab door, I checked my pants, the breast pockets of my jacket and then my back pockets. I suddenly realized I had left my wallet in the backseat of the cab. I waved frantically, trying to get the cabbie’s attention in his rearview as I watched the cab speed uptown.

  I’d never lost my wallet before. I always check the seats when leaving a cab. But I had been distracted with a work call.

  The timing couldn’t have been worse. I had no money, not even a couple bucks for coffee. I was going to make a terrible first impression.

  I called my parents. My driver’s license still listed their address. My dad told me to start canceling credit cards. But I was already late.

  I spotted Ashley waiting for me outside. She looked angelic and curvy in her fitted business suit.

  I greeted her as normally as possible, giving her a hug. Then I said, “This is going to sound really strange, but my wallet is in the backseat of a cab, probably at Times Square by now.”

  She looked at me puzzled, and I added, “I just lost my wallet. I left it in the cab. My money, all my credit cards are in it.”

  At first she regarded me as if my excuse were of the “dog ate my homework” variety, but my expression of sincere angst soon convinced her otherwise.

  “It’s OK” she said, “I can get it.”

  It was a huge gesture and I was so grateful for the offer. But Tribeca Grill was five-dollar-signs expensive, and I suspected she wasn’t making much money. Besides, I didn’t want her paying.

  “How about we just grab a drink somewhere, so I can figure out what to do?”

  As we walked, I told her about a surfer-type friend of mine from California. How he would always talk about karma. I wasn’t much a believer myself. “But” I said, “I found a wallet once before, in a cab actually, and I called the girl when I got into work. She came and picked it up. It had over 200 bucks, and that’s how I gave it to her. Where’s this thing called karma now, when I need it?”

  Ashley bought me a beer and herself a glass of wine. I was trying hard to make small talk, despite being distracted.

  When my cell rang, and I didn’t recognize the number, I quickly picked up and heard, “Hi, is this David Martens?”

  “You found my wallet?” I asked.

  He had indeed! He’d called information and gotten my number from my parents.

  “Thank you so much man, you don’t know how much I appreciate this.”

  I asked where I could meet him. He told me he was going to a movie at the Angelica. I told him I’d meet him there. He asked where I was. I asked the bartender for the name and location of the place we were at.

  “Tell you what,” he said, “I’ll just bike down on my way there.”


  “Are you sure?” I asked, “I can meet you anywhere.”

  “No, I’ll just bike down there.”

  I couldn’t believe it. Incredible relief rushed over me. The whole mood of the evening had suddenly changed.

  I could talk to Ashley now, in high spirits, undistracted.