The Watcher

4

It’s Friday night and I come home late, at a time when my wife will no doubt be asleep. Even so, I get it into my head that she’s sitting up, waiting in there, that she’s standing behind a curtain watching me. Maybe that’s why I don’t raise my face to look up at our bedroom window. I can’t handle having her look me in the eye just now.

I feel self-confident but tense, checking one more time that my shirt is properly tucked in. Just before I reach the door, I trip and almost fall, then I regain my balance but still don’t look up.

In the front hall, I hang up my jacket and put my shoes where they go. I move as quietly as I can and don’t turn on the hallway light. Sometimes I sneak into the bathroom and rinse off, but usually I shower before I come home, at her place. Yes, I’m sleeping with a woman who isn’t my wife. It’s not something I’m proud of, but there it is. One could say that there are many reasons for it, and one could say there is only one reason.

The bedroom door is almost completely shut. It’s only very slightly ajar. I cautiously push it open and then stand in the doorway for a couple of seconds until my eyes can see through the room’s shadows. The contours of a body in the bed, the blanket rising and falling in time to the faint sound of regular breathing. Exactly as though she’s sleeping. Why does it even occur to me that she isn’t? Why do I imagine she’s pretending? I tiptoe over to the bed, lift up the blanket, and slip in under it. The mattress complains under my weight, making me think of the body that moaned and groaned beneath me earlier. The blood pumps faster through my member as I remember.

I’m not going to lie. The sex is amazing, it is. A new body, with new lines and a new scent, new skin beneath my palms. The attraction is heady and raw. And yet what’s going on between us has astonishingly little to do with sex—that part, I could do without. I know that sounds strange, but it’s true.

It’s like this: When we shut the door behind us, it’s like leaving the world for a while. She touches me, and everything else disappears. For a while, I can forget. That’s the feeling I can’t do without.

Sometimes I feel pathetic. I am pathetic, if not even worse. That day when we got married, we were so sure then, so convinced that what we had was unique, that we weren’t like other people. We would never allow our love to be sullied, never betray each other the way men and women have done from time immemorial. We were different. Our love was of a different sort. That was before I found out my wife’s secret, before I cheated on her with someone else.

Now we lie here in the dark, each on our side of the mattress, breathing in time through the lies.

I close my eyes and wait for sleep to arrive. I occasionally dream that I tell my wife the truth. Everything feels so realistic in those dreams, just as if it were really happening, as if I were there and saying those actual words, unburdening myself. But then, when the dream gets to my wife’s reaction, everything is torn apart. Each time, the same thing happens. I never get to see her face after the revelation, never know what effect my words have on her.

I wake up from those dreams in a cold sweat, my pulse running rampant. I stare into the darkness for a while, then turn toward my wife, who is sleeping up against me, and feel the lines of her body under the blanket. How would she react if I told her, in reality?

I don’t even dare imagine.