The Whisper of your voice

Talking to that woman blew my mind. It wasn't until I got home that I realized what I had done: behave like a jerk and drag someone else down with me.

I looked him up, found out who he was. It wasn't hard with all the people I knew. They told me he had a sister, where he lived, what he did for a living. They never mentioned her, and I couldn't even remember her name. I didn't even listen to her. Zachary Stewart, 29 years old, single, electrical technician. He worked on large construction projects with contractors. No parents, one sister, 25 years old. I thought it was her, I don't know why. It never crossed my mind to wonder if he was married or had a partner. I was a son of a bitch.

She looked at me standing at the door, in her pajamas, as if I were a lunatic. And maybe at that moment I was crazy.

"Does Zachary Stewart live here?" I asked her as she rubbed her eyes, trying to wake herself up.

"Who are you?"

"Spencer Wildman. I'd like to talk to him."

"Zachary is at work," she said. "He'll be back later. What do you need him for?"

"I need to talk to him about a problem. Who are you?"

"Sabrina."

"Oh, his sister."

His sister? I can't believe how blind I was. How distraught I was that I didn't even realize it.

"What problem do you want to talk to him about?"

She should have slammed the door in my face. "Look..." I hesitated. "Can I come in? I don't want to talk about it in the hallway." And she let me in. A stranger who must have made a good impression because he was well dressed and because it looked like someone had died on me.

I looked at everything with my hands in my pockets.

I looked at her: tangled hair, sleepy face, all the confusion in the world in those green eyes. Pretty, simple, everything Vera wasn't.

Something made me stand still, just watching her. Little by little, she began to get nervous, shifting from one foot to the other, clutching the edge of her pajamas with her hands. Any moment now, she would call the police.

"So, what's going on with Zachary?" she asked me after closing the door.

"His brother sleeps with my wife," I blurted out, without thinking twice.

"Excuse me?"

"His brother is my wife's lover."

She froze. She was petrified.

"I don't understand," she shook her head.

"His brother sleeps with my wife."

How stupid, I repeated it again, slowly, as if she were dumb.

"Look, I think..."

"Vera. Her name is Vera," I cut her off.

"I don't know any Vera, I've never heard her name."

It was confusing, unreal, as if I were trying to say something and there was a lot of background noise distracting me.

"Tuesdays and Fridays are the days they see each other," I continued. "At the same hotel, at the same time."

"I think you've got the wrong person," she said. Yes, later I too wished I had got the wrong person. "You should..."

"Look," I interrupted her, showing her the phone. "It's him, isn't it?"

She took the phone and looked. And yes, it was him. Standing at a reception desk with a blonde woman, just as elegant, my wife. From the way her eyes widened in surprise, I knew I wasn't wrong.

Still, I was waiting for her to confirm it. I swiped the screen and showed her more photos. She stared for a long time at the one where Zachary was grabbing her butt.

"Yes, it's Zachary... How long has this been going on?"

"I don't know."

"And why did you come looking for him?"

"I don't know either. To see him up close, to talk to him. So his brother could explain to me what to do with 15 years of marriage."

She sat down on an armchair, collapsed onto it. She looked me in the face and started crying, just like that.

"He's not my brother," she said.

"What do you mean he's not your brother?"

"No," she cried louder. "He's my fiancé, my boyfriend. We've been together for three years."

"Shit."

I stood motionless. Her hands trembled as she wiped her face. Poor woman. She must have been the same age as him. You could tell how young she was, and I had knocked on her door to shatter her dreams. She had a simple ring on her finger, a silver wedding band perhaps, nothing expensive.

"I'd better go," I said, not knowing where to hide.

"Now you're going to leave after ruining my life?"

"Look, I didn't know..."

"I didn't know either!" she cried. "You come to my house to tell me that my boyfriend is sleeping with your wife as if it were nothing."

"Do you think it's easy for me?" I raised my voice. "Today is our fifteenth wedding anniversary, and that bitch is going to be waiting for me in lace lingerie, like she does every year."

How pathetic, complaining about infidelity like a little girl who had her doll taken away. It was that shit pressing on my chest, that voice in my head screaming that I was an idiot.

"If you're going to smash his face in, he'll be here in about an hour," he said, standing up with red cheeks.

"I'm not going to break his face."

"Then what? Did you come here to meet him, to sit down and talk about how you both sleep with the same woman?" he asked me with all the anger in the world. Since I was already there and had come up with the "news," I might as well eat the shit too.

"I told you I don't know..."

"What don't you know? Didn't you see the photos? Didn't you just tell me the days they see each other and where?"

I felt worse, because she was right. Because the logical thing would have been to beat him up, and yet I didn't even want to do that.

"I can't afford to beat up some piece of trash and end up in jail because my wife turned out to be a whore," I said, my voice thick with rage.

That face turned my stomach. I reached out and gave her my handkerchief. We were two stupid people, two people who had been cheated on, looking at each other's faces. I had lost control over something I didn't even know if I still cared about.

Me in a suit, her in her pajamas, and in two minutes we lost everything.