The Wager 21

It all came out of a bet I had with my friend Jake when he said he was surprised at the number of married women who had affairs. I said I was sure of Claire, not so much that I was, but I wanted him to think so, that I didn't want him to think of my wife as a woman who would cheat on her husband, would have an affair. He asked how I could be so sure. I said because I know her.

Jake considered Claire pretty normal and just as susceptible as any wife would be. I disagreed. "You want to find out?" he asked. I said I didn't, but he persisted. "I know a guy who beds many wives, and he brags he can get into just about any housewife in town."

"Only this town?" I asked sarcastically.

"Okay, make fun, but he says all women are vulnerable."

"And that's as dumb as saying most women aren't, right?" I said.

"Okay, point taken," he said, "but he says most women are desperate for strange, and it isn't hard to get a lonely housewife to be a mistress of a man with time and a pleasant voice and a dick. I just bet you if Claire had the chance, we'll, that she would take the opportunity like most every other little woman in this town."

"Right," I said. "The operative word here is 'most' not all. You're probably right, most women would jump at the chance to be wooed and screwed by a handsome dude with a dick and a nice voice. Most, not all."

"You confident enough to bet money on it?" he asked.

"Do I want to bet that my wife won't fuck someone we turn loose on her?" I said sarcastically. "And if you collect, do I just let it go because I couldn't possibly say, 'I just bet you wouldn't screw so and so, but I lost.'"

He smiled, realizing how crazy it sounded. Finally, he said, "But are you sure enough to risk money or your reputation as a happy hubby on it?" I said I was sure, but it was crazy to bet my wife wouldn't fuck his horny friend. "Not a friend, he is just a guy I know. Okay, if you're not confident enough, then... "

"It's a bet," I said. "How much?"

"Got to be worth a lot. A hundred?" he said, holding up one finger.

"So how long does this go on?" I said.

"The summer. If not by September, you win. We'll have to take his word."

"If he says he fucked her and he didn't he'll need a new address," I said with a frown.

"He's a big guy," he said.

"Won't matter," I said. "He'd have to be bigger than my 38 special. Okay, a hundred bucks that my wife won't fuck what's his name by September. He will need to provide proof. I am not just taking his word he fucked my wife," I said.

We decided 'nameless' would do work at my house starting in May. It would take two months and he was assured her husband wouldn't shoot him, unless he lied.

I explained to Claire that a fellow would be doing work for me in the backyard during the summer. She said she would be gone a lot during June, since she was taking a Pilates class three days a week. "No problem," I said, "he'll come in the side gate."

The first week she was at home two days and told me she met Mike and he was very friendly. Just how friendly was he, I thought of asking, but of course I didn't.

After three weeks she had been home while he was there for six days. Six days, and I found myself wondering just how much work was getting done on the patio, although progress seemed to be going as expected. Three weeks after he started I asked her what she thought of our handyman.

"He seems nice," she said casually. I asked if she talked to him at all and she just said, "Rarely." I figured I would have an extra hundred by the end of summer.

"Don't get too cocky," I actually told myself aloud. Then I started thinking how I would react if I actually lost the bet. I began to obsess over the possibility of finding that my wife had been fucking the handyman while I was selling houses to desperate housewives around town at work.

It started to make me crazy thinking about her fucking him at home in the family room or, worse, our bedroom. I began to look at the bed at night and wonder what went on in there during the day. I wondered if he'd present pictures at the end of the summer of shots he'd enticed her into of nudes of her in our den or bathroom or on the 'new patio.'

By July I was frantic with worry that she was taking him from behind in our living room or next to the pool or in the bathroom after their shower. I began thinking of it constantly, imagining images of them in coital bliss in the jacuzzi or at the kitchen sink with her standing with her dress up in back with him behind her with his manhood embedded in her womanly wonders as she stood looking out the kitchen window.

I was almost convinced she was, indeed, shagging the handyman on his lunch hour. Her mood was too good, she was just way too happy and cheerful around the house for no apparent reason. I began looking for signs and I began to see them everywhere I looked.

She would be buoyant and animated, unusually cheery, and it made me suspicious as hell, suspecting that something besides me had elevated her frame of mind. Could it be, I thought, that someone had made her happy during the day? I shuttered at the thought.

I noticed that her cheeks and neck seemed to be more flushed than normal and I started to envision scenarios that were taking place during the day between our handyman and my wife, and I couldn't get them out of my head. They simply were haunting me almost constantly.

One day I came home and found a man's handkerchief in our bedroom. I was afraid to ask her about it, so I just dropped it. I didn't forget about it however and it kept eating at me. How in the hell would it get in our bedroom unless....?

At night I thought about her home all day with our handyman in the yard with his shirt off and his muscular arms flexed as he worked in the hot sun, sweat gleaming off his skin. I pictured her watching from the bedroom window, offering him lemonade or tea, and I began to imagine him in my bed, fucking my wife while I worked in town, just a few miles from the house.

I envisioned him undressing her, removing her blouse, her skirt, then her panties and bra. The movie in my mind had him pushing a very erect penis into her and creating climaxes far beyond anything I had generated for years. I imagined I heard her moans as I lay next to her at night and wondered if she was also remembering times during the day when she was under him, or riding him cowgirl, calling out his name, which I only just remembered was Mike.

I began to constantly think of what Jake had said about the high number of wives having affairs and I started reading about the studies on unfaithful wives and the percentages of unhappy housewives giving sex to happy boyfriends who visited during the day while they are home alone, the women just hoping for a little excitement in their lives. As I read the statistics I pictured Claire as one of them, pleasuring her daytime beau in rooms around the house, running naked through the family home squealing with delight before stopping to consummate their "friendship."

At night I looked at her, seeing her with him, picturing them together in different settings and positions, enjoying one another in an empty and secluded house with all the time in the world between morning and the time I got home.

I thought of the things she liked to do, imagining her doing them with him, picturing the two of them engaging in carnal pleasures while they were alone and free to do whatever they wished.

On August 30 I sat at the restaurant where Jake and I had first talked about wives having affairs, about Claire, and made the wretched bet about whether she would be unfaithful and fall under the spell of a clever suitor and become one of the many married women having affairs while their husbands worked. I had been confident, but that conviction had vanished like the buffalo and left me as a mental wreck, unsure about the wife I had been certain would remain a faithful bride at any cost.

When I heard him come in I didn't look around, just waiting for him to gloat and want his money. "Well," he said, "what are you going to do with your hundred bucks?"

I looked at him, not yet understanding what he had said, so prepared for the worst. "She is as faithful as an old St. Bernard dog."

I asked if he was calling my wife a dog. "She's a gem," he said. "He couldn't interest her in even a little kiss. Says you are one lucky son of a bitch." He held out a hundred dollar bill and I took it. "So what are you going to do with it?" he asked again.

"This month is our anniversary, so I am taking her to dinner, to celebrate my victory," I said with a smirk, "and our twenty years of monogamy."

That night I said I would like to take her to dinner for our anniversary. She kissed me, saying that we always went out to dinner on our anniversary. "But this one is special," I told her, because we have been together so long.

As we sat down at the Hitching Post Restaurant she let me help her scoot in her chair. "You remember Justin?" she asked as I went to my seat.

"Your old boyfriend?" I said.

"Yes, he is back in town," she said. "He called the other day and asked if I wanted to have a drink with him. He asked if you would mind. I said you wouldn't because you aren't the jealous type. He just wants to have a drink, nothing serious. You don't mind, do you?"

It began to all come back: the recent insecurities, the doubt and uncertainty. Instead of our handyman, it was images of her old boyfriend in bed with her and his hands on parts of her I had been the only one to touch in years, at least I hoped. The confidence I had recently had restored suddenly left me like a friend who owes money.

As we sat at dinner I looked at her and thought what a lovely woman I had married, how sexy and vivacious she still was even after twenty years of being with only one man, perhaps the luckiest man ever to lose confidence so quickly at an anniversary dinner table.

I sat at the table feeling ashamed of myself for doubting her, and then doing it again during our anniversary dinner. She had passed the test, I had won the bet, and she had gone the summer not falling under the spell of the man out to seduce her into an affair.

Relax, I told myself, she has passed. The woman I started to doubt had given me no reason to suspect her, and I should be celebrating our time together, not worrying about things that may happen in the future. It was our twenty-fifth, after all, and we still had the same address, the same last name, and slept in the same bed. She did not ask me to share her with my best friend or announce at dinner that she was gay and wanted a divorce.

"You still are one lucky bastard," I told my reflection in the mirror after we got home. "Get yourself together. Yes, you are one lucky bastard."