【He Yu · Husband】
Last Thursday, at eleven-forty at night, Wen Ning turned off the bedside lamp and said one thing to me in the dark.
“He Yu, you’ve always wanted to know, haven’t you? I’ll let you see it with your own eyes.”
I thought she was talking in her sleep. Six years married, and words like that had only ever come from me, in bed, over and over. She had only ever rolled over, turned her back on me, and called me a pervert.
“See what?” I asked. My throat was dry.
“See what I look like when I’m actually satisfied.” Her voice was flat, like she was asking whether we should go to her mom’s this weekend. “With Cheng Ye. You ask about him every single time, don’t you?”
Cheng Ye. The moment those two syllables left her mouth, I went hard, hard enough to tent the blanket.
Cheng Ye was her boyfriend from college through her first few years of work, five years together. When I met her she had just split with him, twenty-seven, her eyes still puffy. Over the next six years, everything I knew about Cheng Ye I had pried out of her in bed, bit by bit: he was six-one, he worked as a construction supervisor in Changsha, their first time was in her rented room junior year, he could make her come several times in one night. Every time I asked, she said she didn’t remember. Every time, I didn’t believe her.
Once, when I pushed too hard, she gasped out from underneath me: “He always hit the very deepest spot. Happy now?” That day I came in three minutes, then lay collapsed on top of her, heart pounding like I’d just run five kilometers. She patted my back and said go to sleep. I didn’t sleep all night. All I could think of was “the very deepest spot.”
“Are you serious?”
“If you don’t want to, pretend I never said it.” She rolled over and looked at me in the dark. “Do you want to or not?”
I did. I had wanted it for six years. Every time I was on top of her, there was a faceless man in my head, taller than me, thicker than me, better than me.
I kept an album on my phone, full of pictures I’d found online, tall men and petite women. I looked at those pictures and thought of her, thought of her pinned under someone else, thought of her crying out another name. The album’s password was her birthday. I never dared let her find out.
“I want to,” I said.
【Wen Ning · Wife】
When he said he wanted to, I heard him swallow.
I’m thirty-three, and I’ve had six good years with He Yu. He’s a good man, easygoing, his paycheck card lives in my wallet, and when my mom was in the hospital he took half a month off. He’s good at everything, except that every time he’s on top of me he has to ask about Cheng Ye. He asks until I’m sick of it, asks until I feel guilty, asks until sometimes, with my eyes closed, I really do think of Cheng Ye.
What I remember isn’t him as a person. It’s the feeling of being filled up, of being pounded all the way in, of my legs shaking so hard I couldn’t stand. I haven’t felt that in six years. He Yu can’t give it to me. It’s not that he doesn’t try. He just can’t.
That day I told myself: fine. If you want to see it that badly, I’ll let you see it clearly. Once you’ve seen it clearly, you won’t need to ask anymore, and I won’t need to pretend I don’t remember.
The next day I dug up a number I hadn’t contacted in five years and sent a very long message. I said it straight: I’m married, my husband knows, my husband wants to watch. Are you willing? There’ll be someone next door, there’ll be a camera. If you don’t want to be watched, just pretend I never sent this.
Cheng Ye took four hours to reply, one line: “He really knows?”
I wrote: “He’ll be sitting next door watching the screen.”
Another half hour: “And you? Do you want to?”
I stared at that line for a long time. Five years ago, when we broke up, he asked me the same thing: do you want to stay? Back then I said no.
I replied: “I want to.”
After I sent it I went to the bathroom and splashed water on my face. The woman in the mirror was flushed, her eyes frighteningly bright, nothing like a thirty-three-year-old who gets up at seven every morning to boil eggs for her husband. I slipped a hand under my skirt and touched myself. My panties were wet. It had been a very long time since a single message made me wet.
【He Yu · Husband】
She booked the rooms. The Wanda Reign, seventeenth floor, two side by side, 1716 and 1718, a single wall between them.
Saturday, four in the afternoon, she brought me into 1716 first. She drew the curtains, switched on the desk lamp, and set her laptop on the desk. On the screen was the room next door: a big bed, white sheets, a strip of warm yellow lights along the headboard. The angle faced the bed from the foot, the whole bed in full view.
“I came and set up the camera at noon,” she said. “It’s on the TV stand next door. There’s audio too. Wear these.” She handed me a pair of headphones.
“He knows there’s a camera?”
“He knows. I told him. He knows which way it’s pointing, too.” She straightened out the headphone cord and pressed it into my hand. “There are only two rules. One, you don’t make a sound, you don’t come over, you don’t knock on the wall. Two, if I don’t call you, you don’t come in.”
“And if you call me, I come in?”
“When I call you, then you come in.”
Today she wore a black slip dress with a beige knit cardigan over it, her hair down, makeup on, her lips a color I’d never seen on her, a deep red. She crouched down, undid my belt buckle, pulled my zipper halfway down, glanced at my cock, hard and purple, smiled, and zipped me back up.
“No touching right now,” she said. “Only after you’ve watched.”
She stood, kissed me on the forehead the way she does before leaving for work. Then she took the keycard and walked out.
I heard her heels in the hallway. Seven steps, a stop, the swipe of the card, a beep, the door next door opening and closing.
On the screen, she walked into the frame with the bed. She didn’t look at the camera. She took off the cardigan, draped it over the back of a chair, sat on the edge of the bed with both hands braced on the sheets, head down, waiting.
I put on the headphones. In them was the air conditioner next door, and her breathing, very soft, one breath after another, faster than usual. My hands rested on my thighs, palms soaked with sweat. My crotch was so tight it hurt. I didn’t dare touch. She said only after I’d watched.
At four-oh-nine, the doorbell of 1718 rang.
On the screen she looked up, stood, smoothed her skirt. Before she reached the door she stopped, turned her head, and glanced toward the TV stand. Just one glance, through the lens, through the wall, and it landed squarely on my face. Then she went to open the door.