Chapter 5

When Annette walked in, Yuri was jerking off fast on their unmade bed -- the bed where, he didn’t doubt, other men had fucked his wife. As he worked himself, he pressed her panties to his face, breathed in their smell, licked the stain, tasting its tart afterbite. In other words, he was going insane in the only way he knew how. Yuri took pride in the fact that he hardly drank at all, but honestly, he’d have been better off drinking beer.

Of course, he hid the panties under the bed at once and covered his body with the blanket. Wrapped in it, he came out to the living room. Their eyes met.

A wife who’d been cheating the whole trip. A husband who knew she’d been cheating. Two people who didn’t understand what to do next -- who’d gone too far into the dark and couldn’t imagine how to walk back out into the light.

“Hi, wife.”

“Hi, husband.”

And silence.

“I got in today.”

“I ... went to the store...”

Silence again.

Yuri felt that if he went to the shower now, this silence would stay between them forever. So, he let the blanket fall.

Annette hesitated and ... began taking off her clothes until she was completely naked, with only her socks left on. Inside, she was tangled up, worn out, and it didn’t even matter to her that she was still wet down there after morning sex with Omar. That there was still the old man’s semen inside her. He’d gotten especially pushy after he’d brought Anzur over a couple of times -- as if he were trying to prove himself against his friend, to show he was better. Annette, in her mercy, let him prove it. She even felt sorry for the old man, despite the fact he was breaking her life.