The House of Robles

Chapter 16

Total Breakdown

Pablo Robles tapped his fingers on the kitchen table. He'd been somewhat enjoying a half-assed cup of coffee, because that's the best he could manage to make on his own, when his wife Lorena stalked into the small room. She leaned against the counter with her arms crossed, and started scalding him with her malicious, guilt-trip laying eyes.

Pablo knew the score. He knew that she was trying to provoke him into some huge, drawn out argument. At the same time, the savvy man wasn't going to be stupid enough to simply walk right into the figurative bear trap that Lorena had just set out for him. If she wanted a fight, she was going to have to start it up without his assistance.

"Where were you?" Lorena asked, the ice hanging heavy in her words. "Where were you all of yesterday and all of last night? You haven't been home for a day and a half!"

Knowing his wife's proclivity for sudden violence, Pablo took a quick drink of his coffee. He slid the mug to the end of the table where it would be more difficult for his wife to reach it. Pablo didn't feel like answering right away, so he didn't. He merely propped his elbows up on the table, and curled his fingers together in mock prayer.

"Answer me!" She shouted.

He shrugged his shoulders. "I was at work."

"You were at work from the afternoon of two days ago, up until this morning?"

"That's right."

"You're lying!"

Here we go, he thought. Soldiers, man your battle stations. "I finished my shift at the hotel, and I was so tired that I went to sleep in the room I was working on. When I woke up, it was so late that I figured I might as well stay there. So, I ate there and I showered there. When it was time for me start work, I didn't have that far to go to clock in, did I? Besides, why would I want to come back home? It's not like you've been any good to me over the last few months."

"Maybe that's because you've been sleeping with every woman who opens her legs for you when you're at work!"

Although he knew it was going to piss his wife even more, Pablo allowed himself a short chuckle. If Lorena only knew the truth about that comment, and changed the last part from 'when you're at work' to 'when you're at home' instead. He shifted in his chair to face her more directly. Sure enough, his wife looked even more furious. "A little bird came and told me that Melinda was the one who said she'd caught me with another woman."

"And it's a good thing she did!"

"This little bird also told me," Pablo went on. "That Melinda wants to buy a new car. Melinda knows I won't give her the money, because she basically ripped me off for the money I spent on her beauty school. Which I'm still paying for by the way, and which you talked me into giving to her. So, what Melinda really saw me doing was taking a coworker out for dinner, once and only once. This is the only female not related to me, that I've ever taken out on a date, in the entire twenty-four years that we've been married."

"Leave Melinda out of this! She saw what she saw! She even took me to your job so I could see this bitch for myself!"

"I'll admit that maybe I did like this coworker, the woman I took out to dinner that one, single time." Pablo said. "I'll admit, that it was possible that I would have messed around with her, if she'd wanted to and I wanted to. The thing is, she left the job a couple of days later and went to work somewhere else. That was the whole reason I went out with her, because she was leaving the hotel."

"You're lying. Melinda showed me who your bitch was a couple of weeks later!"

"What did she look like?"

Lorena was glad to be rubbing this evidence in her husband's face. "She was fat, she had no breasts, and she dyed her hair blond like a cheap hooker. She was wearing one of those stupid maid uniforms."

"So, she was a Mexican woman?"

"Yes, she was." Lorena looked smug and haughty.

Pablo chuckled again. "The woman I took out to dinner was a Filipina. She worked as an event coordinator in the hotel. She was tall, with long black hair, and she had a body like Linda Carter from the old Wonder Woman TV show. You know how I used to watch those Wonder Woman reruns all the time. You remember how much I liked Linda Carter back then, and how I always told you that you were like a miniature version of her? Do you really think I would cheat with somebody who wasn't at least as attractive as my own wife?"

Lorena's cold and calculating eyes shifted around for a moment. In that brief instant, they showed uncertainty. Then her face hardened up again, like stone. "You're lying. Melinda had no reason to make up something like that."

"No?" Pablo asked. "Answer me this. Has she been trying to get you, to force me, to lend her a large amount of money recently?"

There was that uncertain twitch again, Pablo noticed. Through his wife's expression he confirmed that yes, Melinda was presently conspiring against him just like his oldest daughter Vicky had said she was.

"You can tell Melinda I said this." Pablo stated. "And you can say it exactly as I'm saying it to you. I will not lend her any money, because she lied about me having an affair with somebody at work."

"I am not going to tell her anything!" Lorena growled. "I know what I know, and I saw what I saw!"

Pablo knew his wife would vehemently stick to her guns, even if she'd been proven wrong. "You saw Melinda point out a woman wearing a maid's uniform, while this woman was walking back and forth and doing her job. You didn't stop once to think that this might be a normal thing to see? Melinda's been lying to you and using you against me ever since she was twelve, and you've always been too blind and too stupid to see it. You wouldn't know the truth if it came up and slapped you across the face!"

Since his own temper was starting to get the better of him, he cut the rest of his tirade short.

Like most women would when cornered on a detail they couldn't refute, Lorena switched to another subject. "Where have you been for the last day and a half?"

Pablo thought this over, and sighed. "I'm not going to lie to you anymore. I'm done with it. All of it. I was getting ready to clock out of work two nights ago, when I got a call to check out one of the suites. I went over and I met three black girls. One by one, they took off their clothes for me. I slept with all three of them that night. I was so tired after sleeping with them that when I woke up and got ready for work the next day; it really was almost time for my shift to begin.

"You've been treating me like shit for the last few months, over something I didn't even do. Now that I've actually done it, you can pretend you were right about me all along. And if you want to blame somebody for what I did, you can start with yourself, because you were stupid enough to believe Melinda's lies. If you hadn't done that, a lot of things would not have happened the way they did."

Lorena glared. A moment later, her arm lashed out toward the dish rack, and a large plate was in her hand. The plate flew across the kitchen. It barely missed Pablo as it bounced of the table and smashed against the wall.

Pablo had never hit a woman before, although he felt an overwhelming anger to do so now. He shoved his chair back violently enough to topple it over as he got to his feet. His face twisted into all manner of ill emotions, from frustration to the thoughts of being betrayed by both his wife and his daughter, until he turned his back and stalked toward the living room. He snatched up his car keys and his wallet. Even though he was wearing only the clothes he'd woken up with, he made his way toward the front door.

"You're not my husband anymore!" Lorena shouted at his back.

"Yeah, well you stopped being my wife a long time ago!" Pablo countered.

A new face appeared in the living room. It was their daughter Vicky, dressed in a long white shirt, and holding her infant in her arms. "You guys want to keep it down? You're scaring the baby."

Pablo had more to say, more to yell across the kitchen, but the sight of the little baby clammed him up good and tight. He started for the door again.

"I won't be here when you get back." Lorena snarled. "I'm leaving you. I'm going to stay with my sister!"

"You haven't been here for a long time anyway, so what do I care?" Pablo grumbled back.

He'd already started slamming the door when he remembered the infant lying peacefully in his daughter's arms. The door crashed loud enough to jar the wall and window next to it. The angry man regretted having done it at once, but it was too late for him to change things.

To the background sounds of his wife's angry voice yelling some choice expletives in his wake, and of Vicky's baby taking up a startled and relentless cry, Pablo Robles trudged toward his truck.

That same morning, inside a certain, high-priced apartment complex across town, Frankie Robles was busy getting for work. He'd slept on the living room couch, by choice, and hadn't spoken a word to his wife since she'd come home sometime very early that morning.

Of course, Frankie knew what his wife Carmela had done. This was thanks to what had sounded like a teenager with a squeaky voice, who'd brazenly placed his wife's cell phone in the same room where Carmela was fucking not just one, but two men at once. Two brothers even, to make things worse.

Frankie had gone into his room, quickly gathering his work attire for that morning's shift. He left the bedroom just as Carmela started stirring around in the bed.

His wife soon appeared at the stairs, looking much bedraggled in her plush bathrobe. "Did you have breakfast yet, Frankie?"

"Don't bother." He said, finishing up putting on his polished black shoes for his waiter job. He stood up, checked his pleated slacks for blemishes, and started buttoning up his long-sleeve shirt. "I'm going to stop at a burger joint that serves burgers this early in the morning, and get me the fattest fucking hamburger they have."

Absently, Carmela said, "That's a lot of bad calories you'll be eating. Why don't you wait so that I can make you something healthier?" She glanced up at the clock. "You have plenty of time."

"I would wait, but I don't really want to hang out in the apartment anymore." Frankie said. "Especially after I found out that my wife was fucking two guys last night!"

"What are you talking about?" Carmela quickly came up with a lie, because she'd gotten good at doing so after having deceived her husband so much. "I spent the whole night at work, reworking a contract for one of my clients. Their lease is going to be renewed in a couple of days."

"I'm sure you can give me the name and suite number of a real client if I asked you to." Frankie said, as he was becoming more and more wise to her tactics. He finished buttoning up his shirt and its cuffs. His clip-on bowtie, his keys and his wallet all were stashed in his pockets. He turned to face his wife. "The thing is, some girl got your cell phone. She called me on it and she told me what you were doing."

Carmela shook her head. "That's not possible, Frankie, I had my phone with me the entire..."

"And." Frankie cut her off by being loud. "She put the cell phone inside the room where you were fucking those two guys. I heard your voice, as those two brothers, named Brad and Derek, were fucking you. I have to tell you that after all the other times you've cheated on me, I wasn't really that pissed off about it. Not anymore. Not after everything else you've done to me."

Carmela stared at him, apparently having given up on trying to lie to him any further. She was tired of all the subterfuge as well. Now was as good a time as any to get everything out in the open. "What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to have me a hamburger so fat, that just one of them is going to clog up my arteries and give me a heart attack." Frankie said. "Hopefully, I'll have a heart attack before this day is over. I'll fall down and die somewhere. That will be a good thing, because I won't have to feel like the biggest dumb-shit in the world any more, for having my wife cheat on me over and over again, and for not having listened when people around me were telling me all of this was going on!"

There might have been a hint of regret on Carmela's face, as those words hit home. As oblivious as he ever was, Frankie didn't catch it. A second later her husband started for the door.

"I won't be in for lunch either." Frankie said, as he opened the apartment's front door. He turned around, one final time. "Fuck you, Carmela, fuck you very much for ruining my life!"

There might have even been a few tears in Carmela's eyes, a minute or two after that door had shut, one last and deeply meaningful time.

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And thus concludes The House Of Robles 1 - Carnal Introductions. This the first erotic novel I wrote, and I would not have been able to write it without gaining insight and encouragement from similar stories I read here on Literotica. Thank you, reader, for taking the time to read my writing. I hope you've enjoyed my stories. - C. Turrim