Between the sheets

He doesn’t know that I’m banging his wife. Every Saturday we head to the stadium together and cheer our team. He is a guy with deep pockets so we usually cap off the game with a pint at the pub nearby with him footing the bill. He gets off on that show of large-heartedness and I love my free beer. It is fun being around him but it is even better when he is not around. I get to meet his wife. Our modus operandi is pretty simple; she leaves home around the same time he does. He comes to the game with me and she goes out to her spa. When the game and the post-game beer are done, I head straight to my apartment, where she waits for me. Yes, she has a spare key. He thinks she is still out with her friends. Or as she puts it, he doesn’t think. After ten years of being married, one no longer concerns themselves over the details. What was once ‘going out to Cristo’s for the karaoke night with Neetu and Shraddha’ now gets conveniently abbreviated to just ‘heading out.’ ‘A late pitch for Yeslife Insurance due tomorrow’ becomes ‘working late.’ So he doesn’t ask. She doesn’t tell. 

She tells me, instead. About his depleting sperm count and growing annoyance at the suggestion of IVF. About the progress she is making at mending ties with her estranged father. She tells me how yoga helps keep her fit but what keeps her calm is lying by my side, talking to me. I listen, without ever proffering advice. I don’t think she needs it because she never seems to notice my lack of participation. In that respect, she is as selfish as I am. On days when I’m not in the mood to listen, I start kissing her toes mid-conversation. It turns her on enough to stop talking. She never asks me why I’m with her. In a way, I’m glad she doesn’t because I don’t think she will like the sound of my answers. She has the most perfect ass I have ever seen. When I hear all this talk about Pippa Middleton, I wish I could line them all up and show them what is in my bed. Actually, she’d probably like to be told that. At her age, she would like nothing more than being told that she has still got it. The message would need a little working on but I think I could make her like that reason. The second reason is that she is my friend’s wife. My friend drives around in a BMW, runs a successful management consultancy, constantly finds himself on the back pages for his golfing exploits and somehow manages to stay humble through it all. And his wife sleeps with me. Lastly, I like her because I am a selfish writer. Writers don’t care as much about material pursuits as we do about the pursuit of material. She provides great material for the stories I write. The last one I wrote about a father who lusts after his young daughter only to be consumed by remorse in his later life was almost entirely based on her troubled relationship with her old man. I was told by those who read it that it is my best work yet. It wasn’t good enough to be published though. All the publications I sent it to rejected it. 

That doesn’t worry me. I am convinced that one day, she will help me write a story that will have the critics drooling. I hope this fling lasts that long. I pray that he doesn’t find out before that. What if he does? I will lose a rich friend, a fuck buddy and a muse in one swoop. On second thoughts, what a great story that will make. I’m sure the journals will fall over each other to publish that.