【Jiang Wei · Wife】
I changed into my stockings in the parking garage. The name Jiang Wei sounds like a proper, well-behaved wife, and most of the time that is exactly what I am — thirty-two, married six years, able to reckon the utility bills, able to pick out birthday gifts for his parents. But right now I was balanced on one heel at the passenger door, one hand braced on the roof, rolling a flesh-toned stocking up from my toes inch by inch, my other leg still bare, my toes stiff with cold. He just stood at the far end of the trunk and watched, not rushing me, not helping me, only watching, as if confirming whether tonight’s outfit was to his liking.
In those early days after the restrictions lifted, the mall was frighteningly empty, and the garage on the basement level had a huge echo — even the faint rustle of me pulling up the stocking sounded loud. He came around, bent down, and smoothed the hem of my skirt, the motion as practiced as straightening my tie to go to someone’s wedding. “I checked this cinema out. The late show only has three or four people, and the whole back row is unbooked,” he said, in exactly the same even tone he used when we discussed where to eat on the weekend. But a string inside me had already begun to tremble — not out of fear, but something between humiliation and reassurance, this feeling of having everything arranged for me in advance.
I knew what was in that trunk. I had watched him load it in: a pink vibrating egg with its remote; a teardrop-shaped anal plug, black, heavier than I had imagined; a pair of nipple clamps joined by a thin chain; and that collar — leather, its buckle cold, worn once before, leaving a faint red ring around my neck that took three days to fade at home. On top of it all he had casually tossed a box of condoms. He arranged these things neatly, as if packing luggage for a long trip on my behalf, except this journey needed no plane; it was over in a little over two hours, beneath one dark screen.
“His name is A-Zhe,” my husband confirmed one last time before closing the trunk. “You’ve met him twice. He’s steady, he doesn’t talk out of turn. Tonight you listen to him. Don’t look to me.” I nodded. I rarely ask much at moments like these. Something strange churned in my stomach, half the reckless abandon we’d overdone in our first year of marriage, half the flushed, bashful premonition of knowing a stranger’s hands would reach up under my skirt tonight — hands my own husband had personally invited. I drew the last stretch of stocking up to the top of my thigh, stood straight, and gave him a small smile. Even to me, that smile felt unfamiliar.
【A-Zhe · Single Man】
She was more restrained than her photos, and better looking too. This kind of good looks isn’t the face — the face works too, of course — it’s the kind where you can tell at a glance she’s been raised properly for many years and is now about to be taken apart and used, you know what I mean. Her man had chatted with me on WeChat for the better part of a month, as organized as negotiating a deal: no blood, no marks left, no branding her, he’d come collect her at the end. The cleaner he made the details sound, the higher the little wildfire in my chest burned. With a woman like this — the more respectable she is, the more you want to watch that respectability shatter.
I arrived at the cinema forty minutes early. The screening room was at the very back of the fourth floor, a romance film hardly anyone was watching, which I’d picked on purpose — quiet, dark, slow to empty out. The girl checking tickets was so sleepy her eyelids were drooping; she scanned the code without even looking at us. I walked half a step ahead of her, close enough to smell her — a faint perfume with a trace of nervous sweat pressed beneath it. Her man wasn’t here, only inside her phone. That feeling was exquisite: a man hands his own wife into your palm, then retreats behind a screen and lets you do for him the things he can’t bring himself to do, yet can’t help wanting to watch.
Before we went into the hall I paused at a bend in the corridor, my back to the cameras, and very lightly pinched her chin, making her lift her face to me. Her eyes were bright, her lashes trembling. I did nothing else, just said one thing: “Once we go in, you’re mine. Your husband said so.” Her throat moved like a swallow, she gulped, and nodded. I like the way she nods — not forced, but the kind that surrenders itself with a little expectation folded in. The lights inside the hall were already down, the ads playing; I took her hand and led her toward the back row. Her palm was wet.
【Husband】
I sat in the car. The garage was cold and I didn’t turn on the heat, afraid the engine noise would draw attention — no one would notice, really, I just needed something to do with myself. The phone screen glowed, the WeChat window frozen on A-Zhe’s last message: “Arrived, we’re in the hall, wait for my signal.” I stared at that line for a long time, like staring at a bet I’d placed on myself.
Outsiders don’t get it; they’d think I’m sick. Maybe I am sick. But I can’t explain the feeling — dressing her up piece by piece, packing the toys into the car for her, handing her over with my own hands to another man — in that whole process I’m not the pitiful cuckold, I’m the one arranging everything. I decided which cinema today, which seat, which man. Every single thing happening to her body tonight traces back to me. It makes me feel like I hold some power no one else dares to touch.
But I don’t lie to myself. Just now, when she was pulling up her stockings by the trunk and smiling at me — there’s a spot in my chest that went sour. That smile wasn’t entirely for me anymore; something else was already mixed into it — a sliver of the kind of anticipation you only have for another man. I swallowed that sourness down like a mouthful of liquor too strong, burning through my throat, dropping into my stomach, where it strangely turned into a stickier, hotter arousal. I sent A-Zhe two words: “Begin.” Then I leaned back against the seat and waited for her video call. Still a little over two hours until the credits.