Pipes and Protocols

I fix pipes for a living. Forty-four years old, twenty-two years married to the same woman, and I still crawl under sinks on a Saturday morning. My knees hate me. My back hates me. And my wife? My wife runs a tech company I can't pronounce half the departments of.

Bertha's been running NexusWare nine years now. Started the whole thing at thirty-three out of our garage, if you can believe that. Now she's got a penthouse office downtown and a schedule that doesn't include me. Weekends especially. Hackathons, she calls them. She'd fly out the door Saturday morning with a duffel bag and a grin and I'd sit home with the dog watching reruns.

Well. This Saturday I got bored of that.

I threw a six-pack in the truck, an IPA thing she likes, and drove downtown like a man delivering pizza. No call. No text. Just showed up. Sue me.

***

The lobby guy had a tablet and a lanyard and a face full of doubt.

"Sir, are you on the participant list?"

"I'm the CEO's husband," I said. "Bryan Gibbs. She's expecting me."

She was not expecting me, but he didn't need to know that.

He typed some things. Made a call. Made another call. Then his shoulders dropped and he waved me through like I was a health inspector.

"Sixteenth floor," he said. "Elevator on the left."

The building was all glass and steel. Exposed ductwork up on the ceiling, the kind I'd usually be quoting a job on. I took the elevator up with my little six-pack swinging and stepped out into noise.

Holy hell, the noise. Music thumping low. Keyboards clattering like rain on a tin roof. Whiteboards covered in scribbles. Twenty-somethings everywhere, all hoodies and energy drinks and huge eyes.

And there, in the middle of the glass-walled bullpen, stood my wife.

Bertha Gibbs, forty-two years old, CEO, boss of everyone. She had her sleeves rolled up and her hair in a messy knot and she was pointing at a screen and laughing. She looked ten years younger than she did at home. That stung a little, I won't lie.

I walked in and set the six-pack down on the nearest desk with a thud.

"Beer delivery," I announced.

Heads turned. Bertha turned last. Her face did this thing, this flicker, surprise and something else, something quicker, gone before I could name it. Then she smiled wide and came at me with her arms out.

"Bryan! Oh my god, you came!"

"Thought I'd see what all the fuss is about," I said into her hair. She hugged me hard. She smelled like coffee and, underneath, some fancy soap I didn't recognize.

She pulled back and held me at arm's length, looking me over.

"You're wearing your work shirt."

"I came from work."

"On a Saturday."

"Pipes don't care about calendars, honey."

She laughed, that real laugh, and something in my chest loosened up. Maybe this was a good idea. Maybe.

Then a man came over. Tall, dark hair going gray at the temples, dressed better than anyone else in the room. Glasses. Soft hands, I could tell from ten feet away.

"Bryan, this is Franklin Byrne. My architect. Franklin, my husband."

"Architect, like buildings?"

"Software," Franklin said, and stuck his hand out. Firm grip. His eyes stayed on mine a half beat longer than comfortable.

"The one who built the whole system," Bertha said. Her hand came up and landed on Franklin's shoulder. Just settled there, casual as anything. Her fingers squeezed. Possessive. I know my wife's hands. I know what they mean.

"Three years of the man," she said, squeezing again. "I'd be lost without him."

Franklin looked down at her and smiled. Not a coworker smile. I'd seen that smile before, just never pointed at my wife in a room full of people.

Well. Almost a room full of people. Half of them had headphones on and the other half were staring at screens like the screens owed them money.

"Beer?" I offered the man. He took one, thanked me, popped it with a hiss.

"He's good," Bertha said to me, patting Franklin's shoulder once more before letting go. "You'll like him."

I didn't know yet that I'd like him in a way I'd need a minute to understand.

***

Bertha got pulled into a meeting, some crisis with a demo. She kissed my cheek, told me to wander, told me the fridge in the kitchen had better beer anyway, and vanished into a glass box with six pale geniuses.

So I wandered.

I passed the kitchen. Passed a nap pod, which is apparently a thing, a plastic egg with a mattress in it. Passed a wall of sticky notes that said nothing to me. I was looking for the bathroom when I heard it.

Moaning.

Low, throaty, unmistakable. The kind of sound a woman makes with her mouth full and her mind elsewhere. Coming from down a short hall, past a door propped open with a fire extinguisher.

I should have turned around. I want that understood. A decent husband turns around.

I walked toward it.

The hall ended at a big observation window. Dark glass on one side, and through it, a server room. Blue lights. Racks of machines humming away, blinking like a Christmas tree gone insane. And in front of the window, lit by all that cold blue light, two figures.

One was Franklin.

The other was my wife.

Bertha was on her knees.

On the concrete floor of a server room, knees planted, head bobbing, and Franklin stood over her with one hand braced on the rack and the other buried in her hair. His head was tipped back. His mouth was open. His pants were down around his thighs.

I stood there with my warm beer sweating in my hand and my jaw somewhere around my shoelaces.

I should mention I'd never seen her like this. Not once in twenty-two years. Bertha at home was quick, quiet, lights off more often than not lately. This woman on her knees in front of the window was somebody else. She had both hands wrapped around him, working, and she pulled off him just long enough to look up and say something I couldn't hear. Franklin laughed. She grinned and went back down on him, slow, taking her time, and the moan that came through that door was hers, muffled and shameless around a mouthful of cock.

Twenty-two years. And she'd never.

I couldn't move. I want that on the page because it's true. My feet were nailed down. My heart was pounding and my face was hot and, God help me, the front of my jeans got tight. Fast. Faster than it had in years.

She was good at it. That's the part that kept hitting me. She knew exactly what she was doing. She'd twist her wrist and duck her head and he'd grunt and his hips would twitch, and she'd do it again, deliberately, like she was playing him. Like an instrument she'd practiced on.

Practiced. For a year at least, judging by the ease of it. Longer, maybe.

Franklin's hand tightened in her hair.

"Bertha, Christ," I heard him say through the door. "Just like that."

She made a happy sound. A hum. He shuddered and swore and she kept going, and I watched my wife of twenty-two years swallow every drop of another man's cum three feet from a rack of servers worth more than my truck.

Then she sat back on her heels, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and looked pleased as a cat. Franklin reached down and pulled her up and kissed her, deep, no shyness at all.

And I stood in the dark hallway with a beer going warm in my fist and a hard-on I had no plan for.

I backed up before they came out. Put a desk between me and the world, sat down, cracked the second beer, and stared at nothing.

Here's what I expected to feel. Rage. Sickness. The whole list.

What I felt, mostly, underneath everything, was a question I couldn't stop turning over.

Why did she bring her hand to his shoulder right in front of me? Why show me? Why let me find that hallway?

Because she had. Hadn't she? That flicker on her face when she saw me. Not panic. Recognition.

I drank my beer and waited for my wife to come find me, and I'll tell you straight, I was more curious than I was angry. Curious and hot and ashamed of being hot and still hot anyway.

Forty-four years old. Married half my life. And Saturday afternoon in a glass building full of strangers, I learned something about myself I never once suspected.

I wanted to see what she did next.

I didn't hear her come out of the server room. That's the part that gets me. A man my age, big as a fridge, and she snuck up on me like a cat.

"Enjoying the tour?"

I nearly dumped the beer in my lap. Bertha stood over me, sleeves still rolled, hair wrecked, that fancy soap smell under the coffee. She had a water bottle in one hand and my whole marriage in her eyes.

"Bertha," I said. Real smooth. "I was just. Looking for the bathroom."

"In the server room?"

"Got lost."

She looked at me for a while. Then she did the thing I did not expect. She smiled.

"Bryan. Honey. You were watching us for ten minutes. Your fly's undone."

It wasn't. I checked anyway. She laughed and I felt my ears go red.

"Come on," she said. She took my hand. Warm, firm, no question in it. "Franklin wants to meet you properly."

"I don't think."

"Bryan." She squeezed my hand. "Do you want to come with me? Say it out loud. I need to hear you say yes."

There it was. My wife asking me plain, waiting, giving me the whole exit ramp. I could've said no. Gone home. Mowed the lawn.

"Yeah," I said. "I want to come."

"Good boy," she said, and my dick jumped like a dog at the door.

***

She led me back down the hall, past the fire extinguisher, into the server room. Blue light everywhere. The hum of the racks so deep I felt it in my teeth. Franklin was zipping up, leaning against a rack like he hadn't a care in the world. Dark hair, gray at the temples, glasses catching the glow.

"Ah," he said. "The famous plumber."

"The famous husband," Bertha said.

"Bryan Gibbs," I said, because I'm an idiot, and stuck my hand out.

He shook it. Firm. Amused. There's a chair in the corner, one of those mesh office chairs with a broken armrest. Bertha steered me into it.

"Sit there," she said. "Watch if you want to. Don't touch unless Franklin or I say so. Got it?"

"Got it," I said.

"Words, Bryan."

"Yes. I got it. I'll sit."

She turned to Franklin and something changed in her whole body. Like a stage light coming on. She reached up and took his glasses off his face and folded them and set them on a rack, careful, like she'd done it a hundred times. Which, I understood then, she had.

"Has he ever seen you like this?" Franklin asked her. He wasn't looking at her though. He was looking at me.

"Nobody's ever seen me like this," Bertha said.

"Lucky man." Franklin's mouth did something ugly and pleased. "You know what I asked her, Bryan? First night. I asked if her husband had ever seen a woman truly satisfied. She said she didn't know."

"Funny," I said. My voice came out lower than I meant.

"It's not a joke," he said, and started unbuttoning her shirt, one button at a time, from the top, unhurried, watching me the whole way down. "Look at you. Work shirt. Beer. Sitting in a broken chair in a server room watching your wife get fucked, and you're hard as a pipe fitting. Are you hard, Bryan?"

"Yes," I said.

"Louder."

"Yes. I'm hard."

Bertha made a sound. Small. Pleased. Franklin laughed and pushed the shirt off her shoulders. She had one of those little wireless bras on, black, nothing like what was in my dresser drawer at home. When had she bought that?

"Sweetheart," she said to me, over her shoulder, while Franklin's hands went to her hips. "This okay? Really okay? Last chance."

"Yes," I said. "God, yes, Bertha, please."

"Please," Franklin repeated, soft. "There's a word."

He unzipped her slacks and worked them down her hips and she stepped out of them, barefoot on cold concrete, and she looked like a different woman. She always did, I guess, in that room. Bertha crossed to the conference table in the corner. Yes, there was a table in the server room. Glass. I don't know why. Engineers. She hopped up on it and lay back and Franklin knelt and put his mouth on her and she gasped loud, no muffling this time, no audience she cared about hiding from.

I watched a man go down on my wife six feet from my face.

She was loud. That's what killed me. Twenty-two years and I'd maybe heard her moan a dozen times, total, and here she was wailing at the ceiling with her