Ela's Performance: A Romantic Wife-Watching Novel Read online

  ELA'S PERFORMANCE

  A Romantic Wife-Watching Novel

  By Arnica Butler

  *********

  Copyright 2015 by Arnica Butler

  All rights reserved. No duplicating and no resale, but

  feel free to share with friends or family.

  Published by Thirteenth Line Publications

  This book is a work of fiction. All characters, companies, organizations, products and events in this book, other than those that are clearly in the public domain, are fictitious, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, companies, organizations, events, or products, is purely coincidental.

  All characters depicted in this story are 18 years or older.

  Cover characters are models. Image(s) is/are licensed from:

  korobkova / DepositPhotos

  Published by Thirteenth Line Publications

  Other Novels by Arnica Butler:

  Not Black And White: A Hotwife Novel

  A Gamble: The Making Of A Hotwife

  The Tenant: A Very Naughty Hotwife Novel

  The Hotwife Summer

  A Dark Place: Cuckolded in Lagos

  The Hotwife Tattoo

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  Please drop me a line! I love to hear from readers.

  TO MY READERS

  (I started writing these and I can't stop.)

  There isn't too much I want to say about this novel before you read it, except that I hope you enjoy it. For those who sometimes ask me where I get my inspiration, I often tell them it's a mix of my real life, and people-watching.

  There's a lot in these pages from the first of those categories.

  But I'll never say what...

  Thanks to all my readers, whose continued support makes it possible for me to keep bringing these stories to you. As always, I hope you enjoy reading my story as much as I enjoyed writing it.

  Thank you,

  Arnica

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  1: Another Cocktail Party

  2: Later That Night

  3: Back To School

  4: Seduction

  5: A Strange Haze

  6: La Fogata

  7: Back From School

  8: Thing 1

  9: Thing 2

  10: The Ensemble

  11: Odd Things

  12: London

  13: The Concert

  14: The Plan

  15: The Waiting Game

  16: The Performance

  Epilogue

  More From Arnica Butler

  A NOTHER COCKTAIL PARTY

  Danger was brewing.

  I was far away from Ela, but I could see the agitation building up inside of her. She was sliding her forefinger, with increasing violence, over the curve of her wine glass. Her lower lip was just slightly sucked in to her mouth, and she was gnawing on it gently. All things most people wouldn't even notice.

  Any minute, she was going to blow.

  If people didn't know Ela well, and few people at this party did, they could easily be deceived by her appearance. She was small, with girlish proportions, and the delicate gestures of a ballerina. Her dark brown hair fell just above her breasts. She cut it in a very classic, very timeless style that would be out of place in no decade or setting. Her eyes, an inviting shade of golden brown, were framed by long, straight lashes that gave her the appearance of a sleepy doe. She had inherited the small, well-sculpted Mediterranean features of her maternal Spanish heritage: her nose had a slight aquiline quality to it that radiated cuteness; her lips were full and pretty; she had a single, slightly crooked tooth in her smile; and her cheeks seemed perpetually flushed in a light shade of pink.

  As a result of all of this, she looked sweet.

  Misleading. Ela is short for Graciela, and there is a reason that she anglicized it to “Ela” as opposed to “Grace.”

  I watched her. Her nostril was flaring slightly.

  I excused myself from the conversation I had only been half-listening to anyway, because I was always on heightened alert for Ela's temper flaring. Especially at cocktail parties. Especially at cocktail parties at our house, which almost always ended with me holding her flailing wrists in the hallway while she whisper-yelled at me: “Don't tell me what I can and can't say in my own house!”

  Which was fine. Whatever. The price of marrying Ela. But it also usually ended up with me sleeping on the couch, which I found annoying to say the least.

  I squeezed myself between Aaron Leming and a paralegal he was attempting to seduce. It was rude, but I needed a direct line to my wife.

  I smiled at Aaron. “Just after my wife,” I explained.

  Aaron's eyes jerked away from his pretty paralegal prey and sought out Ela. He had seen this all before, and he didn't want to miss a moment of the action.

  He smiled.

  Aaron, it should be said, was kind of a jerk.

  But back to Ela, who was boiling over like a pot.

  The man in front of Ela was a manager at Gyrric Systems, an enormous client of ours. He was a big man, a boring man, a staunch Republican man, a bottom-line man, all of which, by itself, probably had Ela's hair frizzed. I already knew where this conversation was going, from the way his arms were folded and he was leaning toward Ela, as though to hear her better...

  “Well,” I heard his voice rumble, ending in a haughty chuckle, and I braced myself. “It's a good thing your husband has a real job then, is all I have to say.”

  Great. It was worse, way worse than I had thought.

  I had no idea what to do, so I jumped into the group awkwardly and yelled:

  “Can I get anyone a drink?!” I used a hammy cockney accent and hopped around a bit zanily.

  Since I am originally British, tall, and sort of ginger-headed, this sort of thing never fails to amuse groups of Americans. I've been using it for 15 years. Everyone made an instant semi-circle around me and opened their mouths in expressions of exaggerated surprise. Tom, a good guy to the end, who also knows Ela's legendary temper, and so knew we were all on the edge, shouted helpfully:

  “Oh, hey, the barrister is here!”

  And I began to take drink orders.

  A crimson stain of anger was creeping up Ela's cheeks. I had only one shot at diffusing her, and it worked about 50% of the time.

  Humor. All women loved a good sense of humor, or so they said.

  It was tricky with Ela, though. The joke that would save me had to be smart, but smart jokes sometimes went too far.

  I took a few drink orders in my theatrical Geico Gecko accent. This was not for Ela's benefit, because this particular accent actually annoyed her, but it would buy me some time.

  When I turned to Ela, she had brought her empty wine glass to her chest and had folded her arm over her elbow. Her eyes were orange with rage, but her face was relaxed.

  It could still go either way.

  “Get me a very inexpensive, very dark red wine that I can throw at someone,” she seethed.

  I spun through my options. She was definitely tipping toward rage.

  I summoned my best and most fanciful bow, and campiest cockney accent. “And your husband will be paying for that, I presume?”

  It was a long shot. But once Ela's eyes have gone practically red there isn't much left but a long shot.

  Her face was still for a moment. Frozen in an expression of just-below-the-surface fury. Ela never pressed her lips together, she just did a thing with her face that made it seem like
she did. Stiffened them somehow. I could almost see the ire snaking through her veins like a demonic spirit.

  My heart was stopped, hardened with fear.

  Truth be told, Gary or Greg Schmidt or Smith or whoever he was, from Gyrric, was an arse. Letting Ela loose on him to verbally shred him to pieces was not entirely unamusing to me.

  But it would create a mess. A real shit-storm of client-relations, social-circles, networking-and-etc. proportions.

  I watched her face carefully, and my still blood began to circulate again when I saw a flicker of amusement twitch in her right eye. Her lips softened a little.

  I blinked hopefully.

  She smiled, and spun a quarter-turn, and walked away, rolling her eyes.

  Tom raised his eyebrows and turned his thumb up for me. He handed Greg or Gary a drink.

  Good thinking, good man. Get something in his mouth before we have a situation.

  I went to the kitchen, and hummed cheerfully while pouring drinks. Behind me, Ela leaned on the counter, swirling her wine and fuming death rays in my direction. Or amused-rays, rays of cheerful camaraderie. It was impossible to know with her, until they hit you in the face just ahead of whatever she decided to say.

  Like any woman of Spanish descent (or so I am told), Ela was a lovely, laughing, pleasant, passionate person.

  Until she was pissed. In the American sense of the word.

  Then everyone – and I mean everyone – had better get out of the way.

  I turned to her, and found her smiling. This meant nothing: she could still blow.

  It was terrifying.

  But she was sexy as hell.

  I gave a spin as I left through the swinging door. Fingers crossed.

  I settled into a group with Aaron Leming and my buddy Tom, hoping that the combination would attract Ela to our circle and not leave her careening about the room like an asteroid on a crash-course. Ela liked Tom, and I knew she enjoyed Aaron's leering at her, albeit in a perverse way. Aaron was a playboy and Ela wouldn't touch him with a ten-foot pole (of this I felt sure), but she got a pleased flush on her face whenever she was around him. The kind pretty women get when they know good-looking men are watching them with approval.

  “That was a close one,” Tom said, jovially. He looked approvingly in Ela's direction as she emerged from the kitchen. I noted that she had refilled her wine glass, and danger warnings flickered in my mind.

  I think Tom enjoyed sharing in the responsibilities of keeping Ela from flaring up. I could tell, by the way he looked at her like she was a museum object, that he thought all the time about reaching out and touching her porcelain skin, and then resisted the urge. Ela, for her part, did nothing but encourage Tom's adoration of her, because she was sharp-witted and so was Tom, and she liked the banter. I knew her sparkling eyes and quick mind brewed some very naughty thoughts about my wife in Tom's head.

  Aaron's eyes were all over Ela, all the time – but then, his eyes were on every woman all of the time, starting with the hottest one in the room. “Smashing dress, Ela,” he said, as she passed him. He let his eyes take a lingering walk over her small breasts, tucked beneath the black chiffon that hung over her like an oversized shirt. The chiffon was transparent, and tantalizingly offered a view of the black sheath of a dress underneath it, clinging to Ela's small but well-turned ass, her narrow waist, and her pert breasts. The sheath was also very short, and Ela's long, Barbie-doll legs were almost entirely out of it. The chiffon “shirt” cloaked the otherwise hooker-ish dress in respectability.

  Ela extended her middle finger at Aaron and pushed past him as if she were on an errand.

  Aaron spun around and watched her disappear into the next room. “Mmmm,” he said. “How in the hell did you get that woman to even talk to you? She has such a nice, tiny little a-”

  “What happened to your secretary?” Tom interrupted. He usually loved some trash-talking about women's asses, but he had a different kind of appreciation of Ela and he wasn't about to let Aaron say the word ass. Not if it was Ela's ass we were talking about.

  “Bathroom,” Aaron said, shrugging. “I have that in the bag.” His mind was still on Ela. “Seriously that dress.”

  Ela, for unknown reasons, was passing us again. She stopped and cast a glowering eye on Aaron.

  “Hello, Tom,” she said. Her voice was pleasant for Tom, but her eyes were still glaring at Aaron. They flicked to Tom and warmed, and her mouth melted into a smile. “I see you've got your power tie on tonight.”

  Her tone was affectionate. Tom smiled and smoothed his ugliest tie against his shirt. “I have indeed. One can never be too powerful at a cocktail party.”

  “Or a flea market.”

  I watched the two of them exchange their silly, private jokes. Perversely, I almost liked it. Whenever Ela laughed at Tom and touched his arm, I felt a little sliver of pain stab me in the chest.

  Not a really bad one, just a pleasantly fleeting feeling that my wife was flirting with another man.

  I allowed myself a swig of whiskey, and began to relax. Ela hovered for moment with us, and she looked like she was calmed and pacified by Tom's corny jokes.

  But it wasn't over.

  I relaxed too much, and lost track of my wife.

  Never a good idea.

  Somehow, through the magic of cocktail parties, Ela ended up back in an eddy of people who included Greg or Gary, and the topic must have swung back to The Arts, or Ela, or both. I eased myself from the cluster I was in and tried to get there on time, but I was too late. He had finished his sentence and rage had fallen like a curtain over Ela's face.

  I stopped short of the group. It was too late. I could see that. In the corner of my eye I saw Tom's face, a little horrified.

  “So,” Ela said. She cleared her throat and spun the wine in her glass in a slow, perfect wave around the glass – a talent she had, and also a sign that she was about to explode - “You would abolish funding for the arts. I see.” There was a pause here, and I could tell by the way the word see had left her mouth chewing at the air with sharp little teeth, that something terrible was coming next.

  Her voice changed, sweet now, like nectar in a Venus flytrap:

  “But wherever would you wear all your fancy clothes and demonstrate how cultured you are for all the other intelligentsia of the corporate world?”

  Silence. A few open mouths waved uselessly at the air.

  I held my breath.

  There was always the chance that he hadn't really followed what she was saying.

  Greg (I remembered with sudden, perfect clarity at that moment, that Greg was in fact his name. I could see it so clearly now, printed clearly at the bottom of a letter dissolving our attorney-client relationship) made an odd face, one that was neither amused nor angry. He gave a short, uncomfortable laugh.

  Ela tipped her head back and dropped the rest of her wine into it, shrugged, and set the glass on the table behind her. She winked at me and walked off.

  Someone cleared their throat, and we began to talk about a recent acquisition in the business world that affected no one and was barely interesting. Someone had thankfully read that week's Economist, and we all thanked him silently for having done so.

  Ela's comment hung in the air, of course, like the smell of burnt cooking. Not long after that, people began to leave with abrupt excuses.

  And thusly, my wife ended another cocktail party.

  L ATER THAT NIGHT

  Ela was brushing her teeth furiously.

  I knew she wanted me to say something to her, because I knew she knew she had been out of line. But I also knew there was no point bringing it up. Or saying that. Not if I didn't want to be clobbered in my sleep.

  I tossed the bed cover down and flopped onto the bed.

  Ela looked at me through the mirror. She paused in her brushing, and then started again.

  She spat.

  “You don't have anything to say, then?” she seethed.

  “About what, darling?”
I teased.

  Ela groaned. “Oh my god, you are annoying. About your stupid, stupid client, and me ruining your stupid, stupid party.”

  “Did that happen? When did that happen? I don't even remember that,” I said, squinting at the ceiling as though it might remind me.

  The pillow came out of nowhere and hit me hard enough to spray stars across the inside of my eyelids. Expected.

  But then Ela jumped on top of me, straddling me, and pressed the pillow onto my face.

  Playfully, mind you. But there was always an element of reality in Ela's 'games.'

  I easily caught her wrists in my hand, and not-so-easily pried her away from the pillow.

  By now, her small, feisty frame had wriggled on top of me, with her soft skin against my legs, and I had an erection. When I nudged the pillow out of the way and looked up at her, I was relieved to see that she was grinning, playfully. Her hair was disheveled sexily, and she bit her slightly crooked tooth into her front lip. She was wearing a very thin white cotton shirt, and I could see the shape of her breasts through it, the darkness of her skin, and if she only held still, the hard, brown pebble of her nipple.

  “Aggggh!” she yelled. “These people you work with are such tools!”

  She tried, not very hard, to wriggle her wrists away from my grip.

  “What's the other word you used, the one I liked so much?”

  “Asshats.”

  I laughed and threw her to the side, climbing on top of her.

  She was struggling, but for show. If she had really been trying, it would have been much more work. Ela was small but fierce, with a lot of electricity coiled up inside of her that she could tap for a spurt of furious strength is she wanted to.

  Her mind worked the same way.

  But today she fought at only half-power, just enough to get me excited, because she knew I liked it. I grasped both of her wrists with one hand and held them above her head. She rewarded me with a jut of her jaw, and a little grin before opening her mouth in a light gasp.