Lamblike lovers become wolfish husbands.
—ISAAC DE BENSERADE (1613?–1691), Poem on Their Majesties’ Consummation of Marriage
It is a cold November evening and a light rain is falling over the woods. Cars move slowly down damp paths, tires hissing on the asphalt, coming and going and coming again, their headlights picking out the leafless trees and the figures who stand on the sidewalk, hips swaying, lips pouting, provocative. Behind a steamed-up window, hungry eyes. A car stops, the window is lowered, the prostitute leans down, and the age-old business of the woods begins again. She utters a few words. The man nods. The prostitute walks around the car, heels tapping the concrete. She opens the passenger door and sits down. Then the car disappears into darkness, in search of a quieter side path.
It is an evening like any other evening in the woods. The rain and the cold do not dampen the desires of these nocturnal prowlers for their regular fix of venal love. She looks at her watch. Eleven thirty. At midnight, she will go home. Another half hour to endure—so, three or four blow jobs, at €20 or €25 apiece. With a little smile, she watches as a metallic blue sedan passes for the fifth time, one of those family cars in which she so often ends up, with a baby seat and boosters for kids in the backseat. From behind the windshield, a man in his early thirties looks out at her, his expression almost fearful, his jaw clenched. She smiles at him, not too flirtatiously. You have to be careful with first-timers, because they have a tendency to flee. The car stops a little way off. One of her colleagues sets off, breasts exposed in spite of the grim weather. “Stop!” she shouts. “This one’s mine.” She moves toward the car. The window is lowered. She crouches down. He doesn’t know what to say, what to ask for. He clears his throat, but no words emerge. So, in a gentle voice that seems to surprise him, she intones the same words she repeats fifty times a day, a night: “Twenty for a blow job, fifty pour l’amour.” He doesn’t dare meet her eyes. She knows all too well what her own face must look like at this time of night, in artificial light, after a long, hard day’s work. But she also guesses that this man has not come to these bare trees, after his own day at work, in search of beauty and freshness. She knows he will not remember her face. “Blow job.” A whisper. She walks around the car, opens the door, sits down. His hands are still gripping the wheel tensely. “Take the second road on the right,” she says, in the same gentle voice. He follows her instructions. The car enters a dark pathway. The sky is barely visible between the crisscrossing branches above. She politely asks for her €20. Startled, he searches his pockets, becoming agitated and switching on the ceiling light. She notices he’s wearing corduroy pants and a parka. Finally, he locates his wallet and removes a bill with trembling fingers. As he hands it to her, the wedding ring he wears on his left hand catches the light and shines brightly. Hurriedly he switches off the ceiling light. She asks him to unzip his pants, and he does. She bends down over this stranger’s penis, the God-knows-how-many-eth of the night. It is not completely hard, so she masturbates it for a while. She hears the man’s breathing turn heavy. Finally, he is erect. She opens the condom packet with expert grace and puts it on him. Then she gets to work. She knows the first time is always very quick, and this client proves no exception. A few seconds later the man comes with a sort of strangled groan. She gives him a few seconds to recover, then removes the used condom and puts it in a plastic bag she has brought for that purpose. “There you go,” she says. “Did you like it? Was that okay?” He nods, then suddenly begins to sob. “Now, now … come on, chéri, don’t cry. It’s always like this, the first time. I bet you feel guilty, don’t you? Your wife will never find out. All my clients are married men.”
* * *
His wife is preparing the baby’s bottle. Her face drawn by the sleepless nights she has endured since the child’s birth. The baby screams impatiently, wriggling in his crib. Stifling a yawn, she warms up the bottle. The baby is choking with rage, his face turning purple. She takes him in her arms and cuddles him. He calms down. She puts a bib around the baby’s neck, grabs the bottle, checks the temperature by pouring a few drops onto her wrist, and settles down to feed him. He drinks slowly and greedily, staring up into her bluish eyes. She is almost asleep on her chair, with this hot bundle pressed close against her. All is quiet. She feels tired. The baby burps on her shoulder; she tells him he’s a good boy, changes his diaper, and puts him back in his crib, a stuffed animal to one side and a musical box to the other. She winds up the musical box, but he’s already falling asleep. So she tiptoes out of the room and goes to take a look at his big sister, who is also asleep—that deep sleep of early childhood, breathing light and regular, round pink cheeks, teddy bear gripped tightly in her hands.
As she undresses, she realizes he is still not back. It’s forty-five minutes since he left to drive the babysitter home. And yet she doesn’t live far away. She shrugs, then slides into bed with a sigh of relief. He must be looking for a parking spot. She falls asleep as fast as her son. The next feeding is in five hours’ time.
As he enters the silent apartment, his heart is speeding. He listens carefully. Not a sound. He slips into the bathroom and takes a shower. He examines his penis. It looks a little red, the skin sore. Nervously he soaps it. Then he gets out of the shower and dries himself. He rolls on deodorant and sprays himself with cologne. He does not look in the mirror. He puts on a T-shirt and a pair of boxer shorts, then goes to look at his children sleeping, as he does every night. Tonight, there is an ashy taste at the back of his throat. He forces himself not to think anymore about that furtive blow job in the woods, about that stranger’s mouth sucking him, about the vague excitement he felt. He gets in bed next to his wife, who is sleeping the innocent sleep of the exhausted young mother.
* * *
A few months later, in February, she asks him sleepily as he sneaks into bed, “Why does it always take you so long to drive the babysitter home?”
In the darkness, he turns red.
“Traffic…”
“At this time of night?”
“There’s always traffic at this time of night.”
“We should try to find someone who lives locally.”
“Yeah,” he says.
* * *
In May, his son is six months old. He’s sleeping through the night. His wife is less tired. They start making love again. But he still feels drawn by the secret world of the woods, by those women who wait there, always available. He doesn’t feel as if he’s cheating on his wife because those women who dispense oral pleasure in the privacy of his car have no names, no addresses, no telephone numbers. And he limits himself to fellatio with protection; he would never have intercourse with them. That would be going too far. That would be cheating on his wife. He thinks he is not cheating on her like this, because he is not penetrating another woman.
Sometimes he goes there during the day. He goes to a different forest, farther away, because he’s afraid of seeing someone he knows. Instead of eating lunch with his colleagues, he drives off in his car. He now approaches these women unhesitatingly. He chooses one quickly, she gets in, he hands her the cash, and it’s all over in a few minutes. He goes back to the office, filled with a growing self-disgust. He loves his wife deeply, sincerely, but he also loves these sordid desires that rise up within him, those anonymous lips, those women who never say no. He loves roaming these hot places, seeing this display of flesh, the garish makeup, the obscene lingerie. Every day, he fights against these buried urges. Every morning, when he wakes up, he tells himself he has to stop before it’s too late. But each time he ends up driving to the woods, fascinated by this perverted drive-thru. He knows he could never talk to his wife about it. She wouldn’t understand. She would never accept it. He can imagine all too well how her face—her very existence—would collapse if she ever found out.
Does she ever suspect, when she cooingly secures her children into their seats in the back of the car, that dozens of prostitutes have sat in her seat and have put her husband’s erect penis into their mouths to make him come?
Yes, she suspects something. She thinks that the babysitter is perhaps her husband’s mistress. In June, she casually asks the girl how long it takes to drive to her house. “Ten minutes.” She asks if there’s much traffic on the roads, around midnight. “Hardly ever,” the girl replies.
She thinks about this. So, he should be home within half an hour at most, whereas he usually takes more than an hour. She is not a naturally suspicious woman, but she is not stupid either. She is a calm person, quite mature for someone of twenty-eight. She has been married for five years and she loves her husband deeply. She has never doubted him before.
“Are you happy?” she asks him that evening.
“The happiest man in the world.”
“And do you love me?”
“More than ever.”
“Have you ever cheated on me?”
“Never.”
“Have you ever wanted to cheat on me?”
“Never.”
She looks at him steadily. He doesn’t blink. He doesn’t appear guilty. But she puts her plan in action, all the same, just to be sure. She borrows her sister’s car for two days. She leaves her daughter with a friend for the night. She goes out to the movies and a restaurant with her husband. The babysitter looks after their son. They get home around midnight. She pays the girl. Her husband has stayed in the car, to take her home. She hears the car door bang and the engine roar. She races to her son’s bedroom, picks him up, as gently as possible, and places him in a bassinet. Then she leaves the apartment, puts the baby in the backseat of her sister’s car, and gets behind the wheel. She can no longer see her husband’s car, but she knows which way he is going because she knows where the babysitter lives. After a few minutes, she catches up with his car, and follows it from a distance. Checking her watch, she notes that the trip took no more than ten minutes. The metallic blue car stops; the girl gets out, waves good-bye, types in her entry code, and disappears through a gateway. So it’s not her; the babysitter is not the mistress. “What now?” she hisses.
To go home, he has to take the first left. But instead he drives straight on, and he drives fast. She follows him through dark, deserted streets. The baby is asleep. She is frightened, uneasy; her heart is pounding. But she wants—needs—to know the truth. The woods stretch toward them, black and tentacular. Still she tails her husband. There are lots of cars here; she is afraid of losing him. Where is he going? She doesn’t understand. Does he have a mistress on the other side of the woods?
Then she sees the prostitutes. Fluttering eyelids, blowing kisses, no more than a few yards between each of them, they flash their breasts, butts, and thighs to the passing cars. She feels her throat tighten. In the back of the car, the baby moans in his sleep. Her husband’s car comes to a halt. She brakes, and hears the honk of a horn from the car behind. Quickly she overtakes him, watching her rearview mirror, then stops a little farther on, eyes riveted to the little reflective rectangle. She sees a prostitute get in her husband’s car. The baby grumbles. He’s lost his pacifier. She doesn’t hear. The blue car makes a U-turn, and hurriedly she does the same thing, tires squealing. It turns in to an empty path. She extinguishes her headlights and drives slowly behind it. Silence descends upon the woods. She can no longer hear the raucous laughter, the traffic noise. He has switched off his engine, so she does the same. She can’t see much. The baby has fallen asleep again. She gets out of her car and quietly closes the door. There is a thick carpet of moss and twigs beneath her sandals. The night air is pleasantly cool. It feels like the countryside. She walks toward the blue car.
And then the moon, as if taunting her, emerges from behind a cloud, and she sees her husband’s face, contorted by pleasure. She moves closer still, her heart rent in two. Between her husband’s thighs she sees a head of brown hair, busily moving up and down.
Suddenly the baby screams, loud in the night. The man jumps, opens his eyes, and sees his wife standing in front of the car. He freezes, paralyzed with horror. The prostitute lifts her head and she, too, stares speechlessly at this sad, beautiful young woman bathed in moonlight.
His wife looks at him with sorrow, with pain, with disgust. Before leaving, she removes her wedding ring and places it delicately on the hood of the car, without a word.