The Cheating Wife

I walked out into the backyard to get a breath of fresh air. I had been working hard all morning on code in C and I was tired out as hell from it. The game just wasn’t going to plan; and I was getting to the point ... I just wanted to quit. I had grabbed a can of beer before going out; and I had never expected to see her out there. I thought she was still in Chicago or Miami or wherever the hell it is she goes when she goes.
But there she was, lying down next to the pool,tanning, with the sun beating down upon her. Shehad only a bikini bottom on and her breasts out and bare. A little radio was set up next to her playing that girl she is now obsessed with, Azealia Banks (“the latest big controversy in Silver City”). I sat taking a sip of my Miller Lite just staring at her. Was I angry still...? I dunno. But just as I was about to turn and go back into the castle and just ignore her , she shouted out to me. Evidently she had seen me. “Get your ass over here boy.” she said. I sighed, looking in the window of the house. The dog was staring at me pawing at the glass. Then I turned around. Fuck.
“What do you want ?” I said. “I’m busy.”
“Damn. Really? Like that? First time I see you since middle May and this is the response I get? God damn.”
“I thought you wer still going around with Madeline on your little summer tour.”
“We are still goin around. Just on a little break. Tomorrow I’ll be flying out to Arizona. A big rap concert going on out there, Young Drizzy. But I thought I’d come back for a day ..lay by the pool.” she smiled, and lifted her Dolce sunglasses up over her head. She had put bright white contacts in I could see. “Come sit with me. I’ll give you a massage?”
Apprehensively I walked over and sat down next to her. She turned the radio off. All you could hear was the filter from the pool. She started to dig into my muscles. “So you are still mad at me huh? As though it was even, like, shocking?”
“I guess you’re right, it is no longer shocking that I have a wife who cheats on me whenever she feels like it. I guess it’s not shocking. No. What in hell am I thinking ? It is not shocking.”
She kissed my back digging her fingers into my shoulders. It felt hot and warm like magic. She has always given the best massages..when I was younger I used to live for them...I used to sit there typing code late into the night -- living in a little closet with no working light half the time --  and she would get up, bring me a coffee, make me something, and massage me, watching as I coded.She never cheated then, no way. She was like the perfect girl. She loved me. Then I sold my first game and made bank and....
“You just never to understand that you have a hot fuckin wife.” she said laughing.
“So that means she has to cheat on me?”
“A little. Don’t you think? You would be sick of me if I didn’t cheat.”
“That’s preposterous. Davey’s wife does not cheat. He’s elated with her.”
“Babe, Davey’s wife literally looks like some rat the sewer spit up from Hell.”
“For the love of God, Kate is an incredibly nice person.”
“Because she looks like a pigeon.” she snorted.
“You are a terrifying human being.” I said.
“The Gods created me beautiful, babe. You knew this when you married me. You made a decision to marry a hot bitch. Not my fault. I have been blessed by Aphrodite to be drop dead gorgeous; and so it shall be until...well, the skin gets wrinkly I guess. But you gotta deal, and it’s not like you made it any better. You got money and let me use it to get even more beautiful.”
“So now there is a price to pay.”
“There is.”
I sighed. She leaned over and grabbed a pipe out of her purse, lit it up. The wreak of marijuana fell over us. She coughed; then got back to massaging me and talking.  
“It’s the law of the jungle babe.... you feel more attracted to me when I cheat. It’s, like, it’s literally a law.”
“I don’t agree. I think I just get angry. I don’t like thinking of my wife with other men.”
She wet her finger in the pool water and ran it tingling down my spine then began to work on massaging my lower back now occasionally touching my thighs, squeezing.
“Well just let it go and ..how’s this..I won’t cheat for at least .. let’s say until next July now.” She laughed.
“A full year you’ll give me? But no! I don’t believe it! “
“Shaddap. Its true. I’m totally pure and yours for the rest of this summer and...”
“You’re gone for this whole summer with your bitch Madeline.”
“Ok. True.”
“You’ll cheat again this summer.”
“Probably... but how about September, and it’s over? Me and you like in the beginning..until, we’ll say, June. When next summer begins. Come on. All winter babey. I won’t leave once. Madeline will come visit but I won’t leave. Even for Christmas when I usually go to France, I will not leave. I’ll be here and I’ll watch how your new game is coming along. I’ll even help -- if you know what I mean.”
“I make all the money just to get cheated on. I built this entire castle. For what?”
“For an awesome life that we have.”
“Then why do you cheat on me?”
“Because I know you understand.”
“I don’t understand! I hate it! It’s humiliating! ”
“Come on, you don’t really care. You’re still like you were, even worse ... you code all day long. You got rich boy but you’re still the same kid you always were. What do you expect me to do? You’re, like, asexual.”
“What! That isn’t true at all.”
“Babe you request a fuck maybe twice a month. I can’t survive like that. Plus, what the hell, all this money, money you harldy even spend - someone has to enjoy it. And see reality. Instead of that fake world you live in in your games. You’ve been a millionaire for, like, a decade now, and you still haven’t even really seen anything in the world. You just keep making new games. Every year I say ‘babe come to France with me’. You won’t go. You just... ‘I gotta make a new game, I gotta work on Crystal Quest...’”
“That’s my job, it’s what I do. I create wo-”
“And you’re fucking amazing at it. Your games are fucking amazing. I’m just saying: I always thought you’d get rich once Avalon sold and you’d, like, you know, take an interest in reality. I was wrong.” she laughed ,”You just delved even more into games once you were loaded. Cause now the games are better...”
“They’re considerably more immersive, yes, because Scottie and I..”
“Don’t even mention him. You wanna talk about cheating?”
“Ok. I’m done. Let’s not argue. I won’t see you again til September. Let’s not argue.”
She took another hit from the rainbow pipe she had; she offered it to me and I shook my head. I just drink the beer mostly these days - an occasional mushroom trip. Pot became terrifying. She laid back down then bringing the sunglasses over her eyes.
“So,” she said, “I know you’re dying to tell me. What’s the new game you’re making now?”
“You won’t believe it.” I said.
“What?”
“Well it actually has a main character thats a woman.”
“Shut up.”
“No. It’s true. We brought in this , I guess he is some sort of trans writer, I have no idea, Scottie found him somewhere in Michigan or something, living way up north, but he writes these very famous novels for women, and gays, and stuff like that, and he is helping us bring one of his best characters to life...”
“It’s a woman?”
“Yep. Oh yeah. Big time woman.”
“What does she do?”
“Well in his novel ,whcih i sactually very good, I read a great deal of it, she starts out in the 70’s, right, but then, like, some sort of catastrophe happens, where she gets sucked backwards in time in some sort of weird wormhole or something.”
“Uhuh.”
“And then from there she becomes like this magic user and shit..she starts figuring out how to travel through time herself and shit... I don’t know how to describe it to you. The novel is crazy good though, it’s called Amethyst... the New York Times loved it...and those people don’t like anything with fantasy...and, anyways, the game is, like, it’s just extremely different.”
“Is it a multiplayer game?”
“Yea.” I said, looking out at a big bluebird as it flew towards the roof of one of my properties guest houses. “It is multiplayer. Online. Of course. It has 6 continents. But see the lady is, like, the star of it all. I dunno. It’s hard to explain.”
“So is she sort of like Ghennozus was in Avalon?”
I laughed. Ghennozus. She always remembers that character for some reason. I never really think of him anymore. He was one of the first characters I created and actually managed to give life to in a game though. Back when we wer only 19 years old and she still had no implants and no lip work and -- somehow -- not a single tattoo. In Owensborough. That god, god awful town. “I guess you could say that, sure. Avalon’s whole story revolves completely around Ghennozus, and this one around her, so yeah, sure.”
“Whats her name?”
“She’s called Marinella in the novels.”
“How many levels are in the game?”
“100 levels there will be at launch.” I said.
“Wow. In Avalon only 40. Simpler times.”
“Indeed. And the whole quest every player is on revolves entirely around finding Marinella you see...”
“To do what?”
“To help her take back control of the games world, which is called Amethyst like the games title.”
“I see. Who has she lost control of it to?”
“Some evil guy called Miolnor.”
She laughed; I wasn’t facing her but I heard her taking another hit . “So it’s pretty basic. Man versus woman really.”
“I guess. I don’t know how to describe the friggen thing. You gotta see it.”
“Well maybe I’ll come in later to see.” she said, “For now I’m tanning. Tomorrow is gonna be pretty big for me.”