They broke apart, and I heard her whisper something that made him laugh. Then they were walking toward the stairs, probably heading up to his place or maybe down to a car. Either way, they were moving with the confidence of people who thought they'd pulled off the perfect crime. I waited until I heard the stairwell door close, then made my decision.
The same clarity that had guided me in the kitchen was back, telling me exactly what I needed to do. I was going to follow them. After all, a man deserves to see exactly what he's losing, right? Let me tell you something about following your cheating wife through your own apartment building at 1:00 in the morning.
It's like being the star of the world's most depressing reality show. Keeping Up With the Adulterers, coming to a streaming service near you, featuring yours truly as the clueless husband who's about to get a front-row seat to his own personal hell. I crept down the hallway like some kind of discount private investigator. My bare feet were silent on the carpet that we'd all chipped in to replace last year during the building's community-improvement phase.
Funny how community improvement doesn't cover preventing your neighbors from screwing your wife. But I guess that's not really a maintenance issue, is it? The stairwell door was still swinging slightly when I reached it, which meant they hadn't gone far. I pressed my ear against the cold metal, listening for footsteps, voices, anything that would tell me which direction they'd gone.
That's when I heard it. A soft thud from somewhere above me, followed by what sounded like muffled laughter. They were going up to the fourth floor, which was interesting because, as far as I knew, we didn't know anyone on the fourth floor. But then again, apparently there were a lot of things about my wife's social circle that I didn't know.
I eased the door open and started climbing, keeping to the outer edge of each step because that's where they're less likely to creak. Don't ask me how I knew that. Probably too many episodes of Criminal Minds during those nights when Marissa claimed she was too tired for anything but sleep. The fourth-floor hallway was identical to ours, except everything was flipped like a mirror image.
Same beige walls, same industrial carpet, same fluorescent lighting that made everyone look like they were dying of consumption. I could hear voices coming from apartment 4C, which was directly above our spare bedroom. How's that for cosmic irony? The guy my wife was cheating with lived right above us, probably listening to us argue about whose turn it was to take out the trash while planning his next romantic rendezvous with my supposedly devoted spouse.
I pressed myself against the wall next to 4C, feeling like a character in some low-budget thriller where the budget was so tight they couldn't afford actual sets. The door was cheap hollow-core construction, the kind that lets you hear everything from a normal conversation to a sneeze to, apparently, the sound of your marriage dissolving in real time. "I can't believe you live right above him," Marissa was saying. I could hear the excitement in her voice.
The same tone she used to use when we'd sneak away for weekend trips back when she still pretended to find me exciting. "Makes it more fun, doesn't it?" This was Leo's voice. Deep, confident, with just a hint of an accent I couldn't place.
Probably European. Women always go crazy for European guys, like having a different passport automatically makes you better in bed. "God, yes. Sometimes I can hear him watching TV down there, and I just think about you up here waiting for me."
I wanted to vomit or punch something or both. Instead, I just stood there like a masochist listening to my wife discuss how much she enjoyed the geographic convenience of cheating on me. "Did you bring what I asked for?" Leo's voice again, closer to the door now.