The ice in my glass had melted down to jagged little shivs, floating in a pool of amber that cost too much and burned too good. Across the table, Charles—my inner demon, my Drunken Philosopher—was leaning back in his chair, picking his teeth with a cocktail stirrer.
He looked at me with those dead, shark eyes. He knew exactly what I was thinking. He knew about the text messages. He knew about the shower. He knew about the camera.
“You look like a man trying to solve a puzzle with a hammer,” Charles said, his voice like gravel in a blender.
“I’m trying to figure out if I’m the villain,” I said. “Two weekends left. I’ve got a plane ticket to Vietnam in my pocket, and this woman—this ‘Green Card’ siren—she wants me to film her. She wants me to pee on her in the shower. She’s calling me ‘Husband’ while begging for things that would make a sailor blush.”
Charles laughed. It was a dry, hacking sound. He signaled the bartender for another round without taking his eyes off me.
“You aren’t a villain, James. You’re an architect.”
He leaned in, the smell of whiskey and old tobacco clinging to him.
“Let me explain the physics of the ‘Husband’ ruse to you, because you’re looking at it like a man, and that’s your first mistake. You think she calls you ‘Husband’ because she wants to pick out curtains? No. She calls you ‘Husband’ because she needs a License to Sin.”
He tapped the table with a finger that looked like a callous.
“Think about where she comes from. Catholic guilt? Traditional values? In her world, a woman who lets a stranger pee on her is ‘dirty.’ A woman who gets filmed doing anal is a ‘slut.’ But a Wife? A wife who submits to her husband’s deepest, darkest desires? That is biblical, brother. That is duty. That is noble.”
I stared at him. “So the title… it’s a shield?”
“It’s a loophole!” Charles shouted, slamming his hand down. “She is using the title to bypass her own internal security system. It unlocks the basement where she keeps the freak. If you were just a boyfriend, she’d have to hold back. She’d have to be a lady. But since you are the ‘Husband,’ she can unleash forty years of repressed biological hunger and call it ‘devotion.’ You aren’t corrupting her. You’re absolving her.”
“And the fluids?” I asked. “The shower?”
Charles took a long pull of his drink. “Territory. Pure and simple. When a woman wants to mark you, or be marked by you, with the most base biological functions, she is trying to merge. She is erasing the line where she ends and you begin. It is the ultimate act of trust—and desperation. She is saying, ‘I am so yours that even your waste is welcome here.’ It’s primal. It’s the behavior of an animal that knows its survival depends on the Alpha not rejecting it.”
He paused, looking at the ceiling fan cutting through the smoke.
“And the filming? That’s not voyeurism, James. That’s Proof of Life. She knows you’re slippery. She smells the exit on you, even if she doesn’t know about the ticket. She wants to be a file in your pocket. She wants to haunt your phone when you’re 8,000 miles away.”
“It feels cruel,” I admitted. “I’m leaving in two weeks. She’s measuring for furniture in a house I’ve already sold.”
Charles scoffed. “Is it? Look at the trade. She is fifty. She is undocumented. She speaks only Spanish. You are the Golden Ticket. You are the tall, white, American Savior who pays for the Marriott. Is she using you? Yes. Are you using her? Absolutely. She trades her dignity for the hope of security. You trade your money for the experience of total submission.”
He finished his drink and stood up, buttoning his jacket.
“You aren’t doing her wrong, James. You’re doing her a favor. You are waking her up. When you leave, she’ll be heartbroken, sure. But she will also be alive. She will know she isn’t just a grandmother; she is a sexual weapon. You are feeding the beast one last time so it doesn’t wake up hungry in Vietnam.”
He walked toward the door, then turned back, that wicked grin splitting his face.
“Film the video. Piss in the shower. Break the bedframe. Scorch the earth so thoroughly that nothing can ever grow there again. But I have one rule for you.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Do not tell her the flight number,” Charles said. “Because when that plane takes off, the ‘Husband’ dies at the gate. And you need to make sure his ghost doesn’t follow you across the Pacific.”
He pushed open the door and vanished into the Tucson night.
And I sat there, alone with the melting ice, knowing he was absolutely right.
Two weekends left. Time to put on the ring and play the part.
