The Whisper of your voice

I still remember the first time I saw Vera. She was with a group of friends on the other side of the room. Beautiful, sensual, with a magnetism that blew my mind.

I approached her because the guys insisted, pushing me in front of her. Tomorrow we celebrate fifteen years of marriage. After my career, it was the best decision I ever made.

We didn't have children. There was always something else that came first: the new house, the car, the trips. Vera loves to travel. We wanted to be one of those couples who fill their lives with work, parties, and sex. We talked little, fucked a lot. And it worked.

She's still just as fucking beautiful. Erotic. She has that poison that disarms me. I get hard when I see her coming out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel, her hair dripping over her shoulders, when she walks around in her underwear choosing what to wear. We're not kids anymore, we're in our forties, but seeing her still turns me on just as much.

Although I notice that her desire isn't the same anymore. We don't fuck like we used to. Not as often, nor with the same enthusiasm. Gone are those nights in front of the TV when she would kneel between my legs and suck me off until I was breathless. Now we have more work than sex.

This morning I hardly exchanged a word with her. Just a quick hello before she left for the dentist's office. I had a meeting with the senator to plan the campaign. Agendas, polls, speeches. That's my world: advising politicians, designing strategies, talking to the press. And, when necessary, covering up the shit that shouldn't come to light.

I work with guys who spend their lives talking about values, family, morals. And I'm the one who writes their speeches while they sleep with anyone who smiles at them.

Jenkins, for example. A congressman, fervently Catholic in public. A month ago, he called me at midnight, desperate because he had been photographed entering a hotel with a young woman who could have been his daughter. He asked me to save him. And I did. I solved his problem with a couple of phone calls.

Or Liam, the senator's campaign manager. Another political dinosaur who thinks everything can be solved with a smile and an envelope full of cash. Over lunch, he told me, in great detail, how he fucks the party assistant in the committee bathroom. He looked at me as if he expected me to applaud him.

But I didn't applaud him. I don't give a damn about macho reproductive pretensions. I don't need to hide lovers or find a new ass every week. Vera is enough for me, even though I sometimes feel her drifting away.

It must be that time wears everything down. That there's nothing new left to discover. When things settle down, they start to rot. And you no longer know if it's still love or just habit. Still, it hurt. Still, it made me angry, still, I felt like an idiot. Lucas, the eternal seducer, showed them to me. He also went from bed to bed, from woman to woman. My childhood "friend," one of those you see once every five years at a reunion, but they still hug you as if you ate with them every Friday.

The photos sent in a WhatsApp message:

"Bro, is that your wife?" Son of a bitch, as if I didn't know. They were of her, in a hotel lobby, with a guy. A younger guy. In one, she was laughing; in another, he was whispering something in her ear; and in the last one, he was touching her ass.

"I came with my girlfriend. That's Vera. I slipped the receptionist some cash and he told me they come every Tuesday and Friday."

I was in the middle of a meeting watching my wife, my spouse, walk into a hotel with another man. And then I understood everything: why we weren't having sex like we used to, why she left the clinic early on Tuesdays: to go to yoga, according to her.

And Fridays suited her because they were the senator's sacred days for putting together the week's strategies.

"Spencer, do we need to add anything else?" Liam asked me, bringing me back to reality.

"No, that's it."

"Everything okay?"