Somebody That I Used to Know
By blackrandl1958
I was feeling LW, so here I am, back on my bullshit. This is one of those hybrid LW/romances. If that isn't your deal, you've been warned. Les suspects habituels n'ont pas besoin de se donner la peine de commenter. Tu sais ce que je vais faire. Tu vas juste perdre ton temps. Tu sais qui tu es. Shoutout to Gotye for the inspiration. I must thank my team. Harddaysknight is my mentor and gives me critical review. My editors and readers are SBrooks103x, Cagivagurl, Stev2244, GeorgeAnderson and Hale1. I thank you all. Randi.
This is a preview story for my December event, "When a Man Loves a Woman." If you enjoy it, I hope you tune in December 5 for stories by great writers on the theme.
It was difficult for me to imagine that I'd ever be in this position. I had no good explanation, didn't see it coming and couldn't see any way out. I sat on the barstool and nursed my drink, trying to imagine what my life was going to be like.
Two hours before, I had been on a service call. I'm a network troubleshooter, and own my own company, providing companies with network engineers on contract. When people have computer problems, they get a repairman. When every computer at a major business has problems all at once, they call me. I still keep my skills sharp by going out in the field occasionally. It's high stress, high intensity and high pay. People are going crazy, everything comes to a standstill and they think I should be able to just wave a magic wand and everything is back to normal. Sometimes I can do that. This wasn't one of those times. Oddly enough, this was the brokerage firm where my wife worked. She didn't work in the building I was at; she had her own office across town, but I knew she came there occasionally. They had over 200 computers and not one of them could get on the network. They were hemorrhaging money and hovering over me like my mother used to.
I got the network up and made them leave. Now I just needed to figure out what had caused the crash. It was totally accidental. I was just looking for tracks, hackers, viruses or any explanation I could come up with, running diagnostics. The files for that sort of thing are usually hidden so I looked for hidden files. There are quite a lot of them. Most of them are system files that are hidden because you aren't supposed to fuck with them. They're hidden so that morons don't accidently screw the pooch and destroy their system. I looked for files that weren't system files and there were several of those, too. One folder was in a very strange place. It was in the system folder, about three levels deep, and it was labeled "Christmas Party." It was the third week in February, so I doubted that anyone was planning a guest list. There were three MP4 files in it. I ran a scan on them and the first one came up with a quarantine. It had a nasty little worm in it. I made sure it was quarantined and checked the second. It had the same problem. The third one was clean, and I ran it. It showed an office scene. It was kind of dark, but four people came in and turned on the lights. They were in various stages of inebriation and there were three guys and one gal.
It took them about three minutes to get her naked, and they fucked her like a cheap whore. It was like watching a home movie, except it was porn. I wasn't interested after about the second minute, so I just moved it to a flash drive and deleted it off the system. It took me a while to get the other two scrubbed clean and I opened the first one. It wasn't much different. There were five men and two women. I repeated the process.
The third one was a little different. This was a different looking office. It had some nice furniture, leather sofas, big comfortable looking chairs and a bar. A tall, distinguished looking gentleman was sitting at the desk sipping a drink. After a minute, the door opened and a younger man and an older man came in. They were escorting a young woman who appeared to be intoxicated. She had long blonde hair and I couldn't see her face in the video.
"I've waited a long time for this," the older man said. "We're going to have quite a party." I recognized this guy from somewhere. I tried to think of where I might have seen him. Then I remembered. We had been at a convention and Argent had introduced had introduced him to me. He was the senior manager at the main office of the parent firm of her brokerage franchise. I thought he was a twat, but she seemed to like him. I didn't think any more about him until I saw her dancing with him. I didn't like the way they were dancing; his leg was between her thighs and it looked like she was grinding on him. I don't like my wife dancing with other men without my permission, and definitely not like that, so I cut in. She was mad at me, but I didn't give a damn.
"Argent, I'm leaving now," I told her. "You can come with me or catch a cab, your choice."
"What the hell is wrong with you?" she asked.
I turned and walked away. She followed me and she was sputtering mad when we got in the elevator. "You didn't ask me if you could dance," I told her.
"You jealous prick," she yelled. "I need to be here for networking. I told you that when we came. You don't own me! I don't have to ask your permission."
"You're wrong," I told her. "I do own you and you own me. I own your body. I don't own your mind. You're free to do whatever you want. As long as we're married, I own your body. If you decide I don't, we'll just have to live with the consequences."
"Are you threatening me?" She was incredulous. "Stop this elevator right now! I'm going back."
I pushed the button for the next floor. The door opened and she stalked down the corridor to the stairs. I watched her until the doors closed. Argent was a gorgeous woman, no question about it. She was perfection in miniature: silky blonde hair that swirled around like it was alive, tiny little perky titties with nipples made for love, slender, but with curves in all the right places and an ass that would give a zombie wood.
She could have anyone she wanted, and I always felt extremely lucky that she'd picked me. I wasn't feeling lucky as I rode the elevator down. I left the hotel, got the car and drove home. I was fuming all the way.
I poured two fingers of rum and took it upstairs, where I changed into shorts and a t-shirt, then went down, outside, and sat by the pool, watching the lights rippling with the slight motions of the water.
I hadn't been there long when I heard a car in the driveway. I suspected it was Argent, but I didn't move. The car pulled back out and there was silence. She came and found me. She stood in the doorway that opened onto the deck for a minute, looking out at me, I figured, then went back inside. Five minutes later, she came outside, also changed and with a drink.
She pulled a chair over by me and sat down. We sat in silence for a few minutes. "How angry are you, Julian?" she asked.
I sighed. "I was pretty steamed. I'm just disappointed, now."
"I'm sorry," she said. "I reacted badly. I apologize."
"No, you didn't 'react' badly," I said. "You ACTED badly."
"I'm not trying to piss you off here," she said, "but please explain what I did that triggered you like that."
"Argent, we have a rule," I said. "We have it for good reasons. I don't mind you dancing, I even enjoy watching you. The rules are that if we're asked to dance, we always ask each other if we mind. If I don't like the man or you don't like the woman, we have agreed that we can say no without any reason, right?"
"Yes," she said. "You weren't there when Dean asked."
"Then you should have waited until I got back or came and found me," I said. "We also have that rule so that if either of us don't like the person asking us, we can give the other one a look and they can say no."
"I get that, but he's my boss. I wanted to dance with him and you weren't there."
"See objection "A," above," I said. "That's not all. It was the way you were dancing."
"It was just a dance," she said, but she looked down, like she was embarrassed.
"Do you usually grind on the leg of the person with whom you're dancing?" I asked.
She turned red and couldn't look me in the eye. "Sorry, I had a few drinks. No, I don't, to answer your question. I apologize for my actions, and reactions."
"We'll forget about it, okay?"
"That's what I want," she said.
We went inside and she proceeded to destroy me. Her sexual appetite had always amazed me. Her hunger and desire knew no bounds, especially that night.
I hadn't thought a thing about it after that. Watching the video in that office brought the episode into crystal clear focus. Now, I was looking back, wondering if that party was the continuing of something deeper, wondering if it was the tip of the iceberg, wondering... I looked closer. The woman in the video was Argent. It was around Christmas, because she'd cut her hair after the first of the year. I watched, and she was plainly drunk or high, but still able to navigate.
What happened next left me in shock. They got Argent dancing, sandwiched her between two of them, and over the course of the next 15 minutes by the time counter, got her naked and used her in every imaginable way. I sat there for a while, trying to decide what I was going to do.
I copied the files, saved them to my flash drive, cleaned up two more infected files and got everyone an email that the network was back up. I spoke with the division head and told him he should keep his employees from surfing for porn.
He asked me who it was, but I told him I couldn't tell. I was so damned angry, hurt, depressed, every possible emotion sweeping through me in waves, my mind was in turmoil, nothing made sense. It was hopeless; I needed to escape the feeling of walls closing in. I called my PA and told her I was going home.
I got there about 30 minutes before Argent was due home. That gave me a minute to compose myself. It gave me a chance to figure out how to approach her. I needed a drink to try and calm my nerves. I just couldn't get my head to stop spinning. How do you process information like that? My wife, fucking not just another guy, but three of them. That didn't seem like a first time, one of a kind, event. I sat and thought about what I was going to do. When she came in, she put down her stuff and came to sit on my lap. I looked at her. She didn't look any different than usual. I guess I was expecting to be able to see some difference in her, some guilt, shame, or something.
That told me something. She was good at this. I had detected not a single change in her. She was exactly the same, no difference in the way she acted or treated me. How could that be?
She snuggled in. "Have a good day, baby?" she asked.
"No, the worst day of my life," I said.
She squeezed me. "I'm so sorry. Want to talk about it?"
"Well, I got a call from Milligan and Wright," I said. "Their network was down."
"I got an alert," she said. "Was it hard to fix?"
"No, a virus," I said. "I had to dig around in the files."
She didn't seem to be worried about that, so I figured she didn't know about the recording. "Want to see the file?" I asked.
"Umm... I wouldn't know a virus if I saw one," she said.
