My Irina

Finally I walked back to the car. Night had fallen. I drove slowly back to the house, back to Irina and my two beautiful children, wondering whether we'd ever be a family again. Whether there was any way forward from this point.

When I got home the lights were out in the twins' rooms; only the master bedroom was illuminated. But as I reached the front steps the downstairs lights came on and Irina flung open the door.

"Tom--thank God!" She rushed down the steps and threw herself at me, holding me tight. I gently disengaged myself, peeling her arms from around me, and stepped back.

"Don't do that, Irina," I said very quietly, and at once she began to cry again, softly, her eyes fixed on me.

I walked back into the house, leaving her behind me crying on the steps, her shoulders heaving. I went straight upstairs, grabbed a few things from the bedroom and headed for the downstairs guest room. I locked the door behind me and listlessly got ready for bed.

I had no real hope of being able to sleep, but I knew I didn't want to be around Irina. She knocked gently on the door, asking for me in a tear-filled voice, but I didn't answer; finally she went away, and to my surprise I quickly fell into a dreamless sleep.

****************

As our second year in California began, Irina and I were happier than ever. She seemed to have grown more comfortable with everything: our wealth, our new home, and above all her own extraordinary beauty. I was so proud to watch the way she interacted with rich bankers or movie stars, as well as the less-famous but still wealthy parents of Lily and Earl's friends from nursery school.

Having Elaine, our near-perfect nanny, living in our guest house meant that Irina and I had all the freedom we wanted to take spontaneous trips to San Francisco or New York or even Paris for the weekend. Imagine--being rich enough to take a weekend trip to Paris!

We didn't behave like that often, of course. TLI, the company Rick Torgerson and I were developing, required a great deal of my time. I was in Madison at least three days a month, and at other times making quick flying visits to venture capitalists to raise money or to software firms in Silicon Valley, looking for the best talent.

The work was going well, and I found it so rewarding to be busily employed again--not to mention that Rick was the perfect partner, as he had been when we first worked together.

I flew back from a two-day trip on a Sunday afternoon in late October, and our driver Jayson picked me up at LAX around 5 pm. Usually chatty, he was surprisingly somber and quiet. He asked all the right questions about how my trip had been and so on, but he didn't have any of his usual gossipy stories to tell.

"Anything going on, Jayson? You seem a bit distracted today."

There was a silence. Then, sounding uncomfortable, he said, "I, uh--Tom, I don't really want to say too much. But Irina, uh, well, she's kind of upset. You'll see when I get you home."

I was instantly concerned. "Upset? What about? Is she sick? Are the twins okay?"

"No, no, everybody's fine--it's nothing like that. Look, I really don't want to get in the middle of anything. We'll be at the house in five minutes, okay?"

And I couldn't get another word out of him, try as I might.

When I ran into the house, I found Elaine supervising Lily and Earl, who were happily playing on the swings in the yard. We had a noisy, boisterous reunion, and it was more than fifteen minutes before I could get away to find Irina. Elaine gave me a serious look, but I had no idea what it meant.

I hurried up to the bedroom to find my wife lying on the bed in her bathrobe. She turned to me, her face full of grief, and I could see she'd been crying.

"Honey, what is it? What's wrong?" I ran to her, taking her in my arms, but she pushed me away.

"No! Don't touch me, Tom! You'll never want to touch me again, when I..."

She burst into loud sobbing, unable to finish her sentence.

I went to the other side of the bed, kneeling and taking her hands as she wept. She tried to pull away but I wouldn't let go.

"Irina. Honey. Talk to me--whatever it is, we can deal with it. As long as you and the twins are all right--"

"But I'm not all right!" she cried, interrupting me. "I'll never be all right again!"

She took a long, slow, shuddering breath.

"Tom--I ... he fucked me. Jamie. Last night--I had sex with Jamie."

****************

After she told me; after I fell back into a chair, stunned; after I ran out of the house and drove to the hill overlooking the Pacific; after I came back, hours later, and went to bed in the guest room; after all of that came the next day. Monday. The day I had to get up and face what was to be.

I awoke at 7:30 and headed straight for a long hot shower in the guest bathroom--with the door locked. When I emerged Irina was standing in the hallway waiting for me.

She looked terrible, as though she'd spent a sleepless night. Hair mussed, eyes puffy, her face ravaged from crying. That beautiful, perfect face.

"Tom?" she said quietly. Tentatively, as though she wasn't she sure she had the right to speak to me.

"We'll talk later," I said. I didn't even want to look at her. "I know we need to talk, but I'm not ready yet."

"But I--"

"I promise I won't do anything crazy, Irina. I won't kill anyone or file for divorce or run away to Argentina. But you need to leave me alone for a while first."

And without waiting for a reply I turned away to get dressed.

After a quiet breakfast by myself, during which I read the paper without really seeing a word, I sat in my office and called Jayson to come over. Time to start finding out what the fuck had happened.

When he came in, looking troubled, I locked the door and had him sit across from my desk. He'd probably never seen me looking so serious either.

"Jayson, Irina told me about it. Just the bare bones. Please fill me in on what you know."

He sighed, and looked down for a minute. "Okay, Tom. Well, you remember that Jamie and Barbie were having a big party the night before last, right?"

"Yes." I knew all about the party, to celebrate Jamie's new action movie that just opened, and both Irina and I were perfectly comfortable with her going without me. Jamie and Barbie were our good friends, after all.

"Well, I took Irina over there Saturday night, and figured I'd be bringing her home too. But about 11:30 Ned Compton, you remember he's Jamie and Barbie's driver, came outside and found me and told me I could take off. He said Barbie had invited Irina to stay over after the party, and she'd call the next day when she needed to be picked up."

This was completely plausible--Irina and I had stayed over at friends' houses before when parties ran late.

"So I went home," Jayson said, "and then Barbie called me a little before noon yesterday and asked me to come pick up Irina."

"Wait--Irina didn't call you herself? Why not?"

"No idea," he said. "So I went and got her, and she looked awful. Not just tired--like, I don't know, sad. Like somebody had died. She had the same party gown on, but she hadn't brushed her hair or done her make-up or, I guess, even washed her face.

"I asked her if she was okay and she just shook her head. 'No,' she said, 'I'm not okay. I don't think I'm ever going to be okay again.' "

Jayson told me she hadn't said anything else, just cried a little on the ride home.

"And what do you think happened?" I looked at him hard. He was silent.

"Listen, Jayson, I like you and I trust you. Please be honest with me--I can handle it."

He smiled unhappily. "If I had to guess, Tom ... Well, let's say that Jamie has quite a reputation with the ladies. If I had to guess I'd say that Irina ... that somehow, Jamie got Irina into bed."

I nodded. "Yeah--that's what she told me. But not that she sent you home--that makes it sound premeditated, doesn't it?"

Jayson didn't answer, and we sat silently for a couple of minutes.

"Okay, Jayson, thanks," I said, standing up. He walked to the door, and as he opened it he said, "listen, Tom, I'm sure sorry."

"Me too," I said, watching him go.

****************

I sat in my office and made some calls, re-scheduling a trip to Northern California that I hadn't planned to make for another ten days. I wanted to get out of the house.

I ran upstairs and packed an overnight bag. Then I wrote a short note to Irina and left it on the kitchen table.

"I'm going to be away for three days. We'll talk when I get back, I promise. But I need a little time right now. Please take good care of the twins, and don't panic.

Tom"

I tried to make myself write "Love, Tom," if only to reassure her, but I just couldn't do it. I did love her--of course I did, she was my whole life--but I couldn't put the word down on paper right then.

****************

The time away didn't help much, except that I was busy, too busy to think about Irina every moment. I got caught up in meetings and interviews and planning sessions--work that I was good at and knew how to concentrate on.

Sometimes I could forget about her and Jamie for as long as fifteen minutes or so--and then the thought would spring into my mind with stunning force. Once I must have winced visibly, right in the middle of a meeting, because the Vice-President for Strategic Planning of Optimal Software interrupted herself to ask if I was all right.

It took a minute before I could focus enough to answer her. I'd been in the middle of a waking nightmare: seeing Jamie's body on top of Irina's, his hard cock plunging into her, her arms clutching his back, their mouths pressed together.

Still, the days were generally almost bearable. The nights, in a luxury suite at the Hilton, not so much. I'd brought a couple of books but I couldn't read them. I watched some of the bad movies available on pay-per-view, and the second night I forced myself to drink enough Scotch be able to sleep. It wasn't worth it, of course--the next day I was not only preoccupied and unhappy, but afflicted with a pounding headache.

The visions were with me pretty much all the time. Irina's beautiful body in Jamie's arms, his dick in her mouth, her writhing beneath him or on top of him, their passionate deep kisses. It was a movie inside my head, one I couldn't turn off. How could I compete with the Sexiest Man on Earth? With those abs, those sculpted muscles, that impressive cock?

Not wanting to talk to Irina or even hear her voice, I texted her once a day just to say I was safe. On Thursday I sent a message that said, "I'll be home tomorrow night for dinner. Let's talk when the twins are in bed."

When I walked into my house on Friday, tired and depressed, Lily and Earl were all over me. Thank goodness they were too young, at 5 ½, to pick up on the unhappiness and tension their parents were feeling, though it was obvious enough to Elaine, who watched me with quiet concern.

I sat at dinner, letting them feed me pieces of their hot dogs and tell me about school and show me the crayon pictures they'd made. And since I'd been away they insisted that I be the one to give them their baths that night. It was a happy, if messy, hour. I loved my children, and the disaster Irina had gotten us into made my moments with them feel even more precious. I wasn't sure how much longer we'd all be living in the same house.

When I came into the bedroom Irina was sitting on the loveseat, watching me with an unhappy face. I ignored her and went into the closet to get dry clothes, tossing the ones the twins had soaked over the tub rail in the bathroom. Then, without eagerness, I went back in and sat down on the bed facing her.

"Okay. I'm back."

"Tom--it's ... none of this is ... what you probably think it is." Silence. I waited.

"I mean I ... I never--oh dammit!" She burst into tears, and came across to me with her arms outstretched.

"Hold me, please!" I let her embrace me, mechanically putting my arms around her, feeling cold and empty. She cried, tears flowing onto my neck and my shirt, while I patted her back, wishing I could be elsewhere. Wishing we didn't have to go through this.

Finally I got impatient. Before she had completely calmed down I stood up and led her back to the loveseat.

"Sit," I said. She did, looking shocked and a little afraid. "Now, Irina--talk to me. Tell me what happened."

Pulling herself together with a visible effort, she looked into my eyes--maybe hoping for reassurance, though I doubt she found any.

"Tom--I will tell you everything. I swear, everything I recall. But you have to know one thing first: I didn't want this. I didn't mean for it to happen, I don't really understand why it did happen."

She looked down. "I have always loved knowing that you would be my first, last, and only lover, for my whole life. And now that's--" she started to cry again, "now that's all ruined!"

"Stop crying!" I barked, startling her. She stared at me, wide-eyed; then wiped her face and sat up straight, as if ready to take her punishment.

"You can cry all you want later," I said, more gently. "I'll probably do my share too. But right now would you please just tell me what happened at the party?"

"Okay. Yes. You're right.

"It was a typical Jamie and Barbie party--fancy, glittering, all the beautiful people in LA. You know. I was a little nervous at first without you--but then I saw Barbie, and she introduced me to a couple of people, and I talked to Tony and Margaret and some other people we know, and ... well, I relaxed and just had a good time.

"Sometime during the evening, not too late I think, Barbie came and pulled me aside. She said her driver Ned had said that Jayson wasn't feeling well and thought he should go home, so she invited me to stay over after the party was finished."

"Wait a minute," I said, "Barbie told you that Jayson needed to leave? That's why you stayed over?"

She nodded, looking at me in puzzlement. "Yes, that's what she said Ned had told her. Why?"

"Never mind--just go on."

"Well, at the end of the party it was just like that other time last year, when you and I both stayed over. Jamie brought out the champagne--not that any of us needed any more, I was already pretty tipsy--and the three of us sat by the pool and laughed and joked about everything. I was feeling pretty mellow, and I teased him about whether he'd put Ecstasy in the champagne again, and he just winked at me.

"And then after a while I felt SO relaxed, and I wondered whether he really had put Ecstasy in--but I was just so comfortable that it didn't seem to matter, and I didn't say anything. And just like the other time, Jamie and Barbie started making out, and I watched for a while.

"She got his shirt off and was running her hands all over his chest, and he'd opened up her blouse and was ... licking her nipples, and she was moaning." Irina was looking away from me now, obviously uncomfortable.

"And you were getting turned-on," I said.

She looked at me sheepishly. "Yes, I was. I mean, their bodies are so beautiful! And Barbie was sighing and licking Jamie's chest, and he was pulling on her nipples, and...

"Anyway, she slid down between his legs and unzipped him and ... you know, started ... sucking him. I realized later that she was making sure I could see everything she did, like it was all a show for me. She pushed his legs apart and kneeled so that I could see what she did with her mouth and her hands."

Irina was struggling to tell the story. "I was aware that I was getting hot--I guess like when I watched them on the boat, you know, on our vacation. And Jamie was looking at me, saying that I should come over and join them, let him kiss me. And I didn't want to do that, I never moved, I was just mesmerized, watching her ... her mouth go up and down on him.

"I think I must have closed my eyes at some point, and started to ... to touch myself, my breasts, just listening to the sounds they were making. He must have given me a LOT of Ecstasy, because I was way more relaxed and out-of-it than last year when we both were there.

"And then I felt a light touch on my knee, gently pushing my legs apart. I wasn't even sure at first that it was there--and I was so relaxed, I couldn't manage to open my eyes, I was just touching my breasts... And then finally I realized it was actually happening, someone's hand was sliding up my thighs, pushing them apart, and it went on for a long long time, minutes probably, until the hand touched my ... my pussy, through my panties, and I realized I was totally wet."

She looked right at me now, pleading, and I waited for her to continue.

"And then while the hand was touching, caressing me, I felt kisses on the side of my neck, and I was aware of a body pressing against me. It had to be Jamie, but I still didn't even want to open my eyes. I was just feeling everything--the lips, the hand between my legs, my own hand...

"And slowly, very slowly I think, he caressed me and stroked me and I got more and more worked-up. Then he stood me up for a moment, just long enough to pull my dress up over my head, and he lay me back down on the couch, and slid my shoes and my panties off.

"Then I did open my eyes, though it felt like a huge effort. Barbie had disappeared, it was just me and Jamie left in the room. And I protested a little, I know I did, I said, 'no, where's Tom?' or something like that.

"And he smiled and said, 'I'm Tom tonight--just relax and enjoy.' "

I couldn't stop myself. "And you went along with that?!"

"Tom. Please. Don't you think I've been over it a million times? Don't you think I hate what I did, what he made me do? Don't you know I'd give anything--ANYTHING--to undo it?" She was crying, glaring at me, trembling with emotion.

We sat there. I didn't look at her, I didn't look at anything.

Finally, I made her go on. I made her tell me. I was harsh--I said, "okay, let me hear the rest. He fucked you--he mastered you, thrilled you, gave you orgasm after cosmic orgasm, right? Jamie Breland, the World's Sexiest Man, riding you! How could it not be thrilling?"

And she shouted at me to stop, she cried harder--and she told me.

He'd licked and sucked her pussy for a long time, until she cried out repeatedly in orgasm; then he'd climbed on top of her and fucked her, hard, in missionary position. She said it seemed to go on forever, because of the Ecstasy.

"And yes, dammit, yes, it was exciting! It was unbelievably exciting! Not because of Jamie, you jerk--because I was turned-on and full of drugs and I didn't know what I was doing!

"I didn't even know it was Jamie--part of my mind thought it was you!"

When it was finally over, she said, he'd taken her to the guest bedroom and she fell instantly asleep, stark naked, without even the strength to get under the covers.

"Sometime in the middle of the night I realized he was fucking me again. He had me up on my knees, my ass in the air, and he was fucking me from behind. I was still high from the Ecstasy, not really all there, and I just let him do it."

Irina was dry-eyed now--angry and beyond tears.

"I was still a mess--confused and out-of-it. It was dark. I didn't feel any pleasure at all. I didn't have the energy to even turn around and see who was behind me, whether it was you or Jamie. And then he must have come, and I fell asleep again."

When she woke up, it was 11 am and the sun was streaming in the window. Jamie was sitting by her side, wearing only boxer shorts, stroking her thighs.

"He was smiling at me, that prick, saying, 'morning Irina--boy, you were something last night! How about a little more loving before breakfast?' And he started to pull his shorts off and climb on the bed with me."

It took Irina a moment, woolly-headed and sleepy as she was, to remember what had happened. Then she started screaming, she said.