Yes, Mr. Mayor (A Hotwife Tale)

1

The doorbell rang while I was washing my hands. Laura shouted something from the kitchen I didn’t catch. I dried them off on my jeans and went to answer it.

The man on my doorstep was tall, Black, wearing a suit I could never pull off. He had the kind of smile that made you feel like you’d already agreed to something.

“Hi there,” he said. “Sorry to bother you. Damon Ellis.” He thrust his hand out. “I’m running for mayor and trying to meet as many residents as I can before November.”

I shook his hand, and then he held up a flyer next to his face.

“ELLIS FOR MAYOR” in red and blue, a photo of him at a podium, looking earnest and capable.

It was the kind of shot that focus groups probably spent three hours choosing.

The real thing was better. The photo couldn’t do the shoulders justice, or the ease with which he stood on a stranger’s doorstep like he’d been invited.

“Oh,” I said, relieved after the stun wore off of expecting one thing and getting something else entirely. “I thought you were selling solar panels.”

He laughed. A good laugh, easy and real. “No, sir. Just myself. Which is harder to sell, if I’m being honest.”

“Who is it, honey?” Laura was coming up the hallway.

She was in sweatpants and an oversized T-shirt, her hair up in the kind of clip that meant she wasn’t expecting company.

“You’re Damon Ellis!” she said before I could answer.

“Oh my god. I’ve been following your campaign. Please, come in; we were just about to eat. There’s plenty.”

I looked at my wife. I had never heard her express an opinion on local politics. I wasn’t sure she knew who the mayor was now, let alone who was running to replace him. Yet here she was, ushering Ellis into the kitchen, apologizing for the mess, and asking him about his platform.

I stood in the hallway, holding the flyer like a man whose evening had just been rerouted without his input.

“Greg, open the wine,” Laura called over her shoulder.

“None for me, thanks,” Ellis said from the kitchen. “Can’t risk it. I’ve got four more blocks tonight.”

“Of course,” Laura said. “Greg, get him a soda.”

I got him a soda. I opened the wine. I sat down at my own kitchen table and watched my wife become someone I hadn’t seen in years.

It wasn’t that Laura was flirting, exactly. She was animated. Leaning forward, asking questions, laughing at things that weren’t quite jokes. Her plate growing cold in front of her.

Ellis was talking about infrastructure spending, and she was rapt. Infrastructure spending. I’d been married to this woman for twenty-two years, and I’d never once seen her get excited about a culvert.

Ellis was good at this. I could see why he was running.

He listened like he meant it, asked follow-up questions, remembered your name.

He had the build of a man who worked out without talking about it, the kind of physicality that a good suit showed off rather than concealed.

I was forty-seven, soft in the middle, and sitting across from him in a T-shirt with a barbecue stain.

Laura walked him to the door. I trailed behind.

She agreed to put up a yard sign, hand out flyers at the gallery where she worked three days a week, maybe make some calls.

Ellis thanked her like she’d offered to donate a kidney.

Then he shook my hand, firm and brief, turned back to Laura to thank her one more time, and was gone.

The door closed.

Laura was flushed. Her eyes were bright.

“We should put the sign up tomorrow,” she said.

“Might annoy the Hendersons.”

“The Hendersons can cope.”

I didn’t push it. I poured another glass of wine and cleaned up the kitchen while Laura talked about Ellis’s stance on public transit. I nodded in what I hoped were the right places.

When we went to bed, I reached for her, and she let me.

I found myself working harder than usual.

Using my mouth on her longer, paying more attention to the sounds she made, trying to find the moan that meant she’d actually let go.

She came, or seemed to. Her hand tightened in my hair, and she shuddered and said my name.

But there was something held back in it, something polite, and I lay there afterward wondering if she’d been thinking about me at all.

Laura was curled on her side, breathing softly. I stared at the ceiling and thought about the way she’d leaned forward when Ellis had talked. The way her plate had gone cold.

It was nothing. A charismatic stranger had livened up a dull Tuesday evening. That was all.

I almost believed it.