Chapter 2: The Lunch Hour Feed
The fundraiser thing was a museum gala. Arthur stood beside Eleanor in a rented tuxedo that smelled vaguely of starch and other men, holding a flute of champagne that had gone warm and flat in his hand. She wore a black dress that clung to her in a way that felt like a public broadcast of what he’d seen in the window. She laughed at something a donor said, her hand lightly touching the man’s sleeve. A perfect, chiming sound. Arthur watched the man’s eyes drop to her neckline.
“You’re quiet tonight,” Eleanor murmured later by the cloakroom, checking her reflection in a polished brass panel.
“Long week,” he said.
She smiled at her own reflection, not at him. “Tell me about it.”
He didn’t.
The camera arrived three days later in a plain brown box, buried under a layer of biodegradable packing peanuts. He’d ordered it from his office, the transaction hidden between legitimate invoices on his corporate card. A tiny, high-definition thing with a wide-angle lens and night vision. Marketed for home security. For peace of mind.
His hands didn’t shake as he opened the box. They were steady, precise. Accountant’s hands. He read the instructions twice, then tucked them away in the filing cabinet with his old tax returns.
Installation was a matter of fifteen minutes on a Tuesday afternoon. Eleanor was at her studio, teaching a late hatha flow class. He told her he had a dentist appointment. The house was empty, humming with its own silence. The lemon cleaner smell was faint today, overwhelmed by the scent of rain coming through an open window.
He chose the top corner of their bedroom wardrobe, on Eleanor’s side. It looked down at an angle, capturing the bed, the nightstand, the patch of carpet where Mark had dropped his jeans. He anchored it between a hatbox and a folded cashmere sweater, its dark eye peering through a gap in the carved wood. He used the app on his phone to check the view. The feed was clear, disturbingly intimate. He could see the faint pattern of the duvet cover, the novel on her nightstand, a single earring she’d left on the dresser. He felt a strange, disembodied calm.
Now, in his cubicle, the hum of the office was a distant white noise. The framed photo of Eleanor, taken on a beach in Cornwall years ago, smiled her old smile beside his monitor. The light from the single window was a pale, institutional gray.
His door was locked. A first. He’d twisted the little knob until the mechanism clicked with finality. The laptop was angled sharply away from the glass wall that looked out onto the bullpen.
The app window was open. Live Feed - Bedroom.
It was empty. A still life of waiting. The digital timestamp in the corner glowed: 4:18 PM.
He minimized it, pulled up a spreadsheet, and began mechanically checking figures. His focus was a brittle thing. Every few minutes, his eyes flicked to the taskbar. Nothing. The Henderson account blurred into nonsense. At 4:35, his phone buzzed.
Eleanor: Sticking around the studio to plan the fall schedule. Might be late. Don’t bother with dinner for me.
His thumb hovered over the keyboard. He typed: OK. Drive safe.
He hit send. Then he opened the live feed again. The empty room stared back.
5:47 PM. The office was emptying out. He heard the goodbyes, the shuffling of bags, the distant ping of the elevator. He remained, a statue in his cubicle. The cleaning staff arrived, the clatter of their cart echoing down the tiled hallway. He didn’t move.
6:13 PM. The shadows in the bedroom on screen lengthened. The automatic night vision kicked in, painting the world in ghostly greens and blacks.
6:55 PM. A key in the front door. A distant thump from the speakers on his laptop. Eleanor’s figure passed through the frame, dropping her yoga bag. She was alone. She changed into sweats, scrolling through her phone, face illuminated by the cold glow. She left the room.
Arthur released a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. His shoulders ached. He should go home. Perform the evening. Make tea. Ask about her day.
He didn’t move.
7:30 PM. She returned, brushing her hair. She climbed into bed, opened her book. Read. The ordinary rhythm of a thousand other nights. He watched her turn a page. The fascination was a cold pit in his stomach. This was worse, in a way. The banality of her solitude felt like a greater betrayal than the act itself. This was the person who came home. The person who existed between the betrayals. She looked peaceful.
His phone rang, sharp and loud in the silent office. The caller ID flashed: Home.
He stared at it. The live feed showed her, still reading, the landline handset on her nightstand. She reached for it without looking, put it to her ear.
He swallowed, swiped to answer. “Hey.”
“Hey.” Her voice was warm, soft. A performance for an audience of one. Her. “You’re still at the office?”
“Yeah. Henderson. It’s a monster.” He watched her on screen. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
“You sound tired.”
“I am.”
A pause. On screen, she dog-eared a page and closed the book. “Well, don’t be too late. I’m already in bed. It’s cozy.”
“I will.”
“Love you.”
The words hung in the dead air of the office. On the green-tinted screen, she placed the phone back in its cradle, then reached over and turned off her lamp. The room plunged into deeper shadow, the night vision adjusting, outlining the shape of her under the covers.
“Love you too,” he whispered to the empty office.
He watched the still shape of his sleeping wife for twenty more minutes. Then he closed the laptop. The lid shut with a soft, definitive click. The cubicle was dark now, lit only by the city’s ambient glow through the window. He sat in the darkness, the photo of the beach in Cornwall just a smudge of grey.
The next evening, he didn’t leave at five. He ordered delivery to the office, a soggy sandwich he didn’t taste. The spreadsheet was a prop. At 7:02 PM, movement on the feed.
Not just Eleanor.
Mark filled the frame. He came in not with secrecy, but with a casual ownership. A hand on the small of her back, guiding her into the room. He was laughing, saying something Arthur couldn’t hear. Eleanor was smiling, a different smile—wider, unrestrained. She pushed him playfully, and he caught her wrist, pulling her in.
Arthur leaned closer. The hum of the laptop fan was the only sound. He turned the volume up, but there was only a faint, muffled rustle.
Mark kissed her. Not a hello kiss. A deep, consuming thing. Her hands went into his hair. Arthur’s breath shallowed. His own fingers were numb, resting on the cool metal of his desk.
What followed wasn’t the frantic, shadowy ballet from the rain-streaked window. This was slower. Deliberate. A ceremony. Mark sat on the edge of the bed and pulled Eleanor to stand between his knees. His hands, those big, certain hands, slid up her thighs, under her skirt. He was talking, looking up at her. Arthur could see his lips move. Could see Eleanor’s head tilt back, her eyes closed, a slow nod.
Arthur’s heart was a frantic animal in a cage of bone. The humiliation was a heat up his neck. But his hand moved from the desk to his own lap. A traitorous, magnetic pull.
On screen, Mark laid her back. He took his time. His mouth was on her stomach, her hip, the inside of her thigh. Places Arthur had touched with apology. Mark touched with a lazy confidence. Eleanor’s back arched off the bed, a silent cry. Her hand fisted in the duvet.
Arthur was paralyzed, watching his own replacement perform a masterclass in his wife. The details were高清, cruelly sharp. The sweat beading on Mark’s shoulder. The specific way Eleanor’s toes curled. The quiet, murmured word Mark said before he finally entered her that made her legs wrap around his back and lock.
There was no throwaway efficiency here. This was the main event.
Arthur’s own touch was frantic, shameful, a miserable echo under the desk. He was a ghost in the machine, jacking himself off to the proof of his own obsolescence. The rhythm on screen was a brutal, driving metronome. Mark’s body covered hers, possessive, complete. Eleanor’s face was turned towards the camera, her expression one of shattered, absolute pleasure. It was a face Arthur had never seen. It belonged to someone else. It belonged to Mark.
He came in shuddering silence, a weak, pathetic spasm into a fistful of tissues from the box on his desk. His eyes never left the screen. The act there was still building, reaching its peak.
Mark’s back tightened. Eleanor’s mouth opened in a soundless wail. The stillness that followed was profound, a collapse into a single, tangled form.
Arthur sat there, spent and hollow, the cold air of the office chilling the sweat on his temples. On the screen, they were motionless. Then Mark shifted, rolling to the side, but keeping an arm draped over her. He said something. Eleanor laughed, a breathy, shattered sound, and swatted his chest.
They were talking. In his bed. In the post-coital haze.
Arthur slowly cleaned himself up, methodically, like tidying a crime scene. He balled the tissues deep into the wastebasket under a stack of paper.
He didn’t close the feed. He watched as, after ten minutes, Mark got up, naked and utterly unselfconscious, and walked to the en-suite. He heard the ghost of the shower through the laptop speakers. Eleanor lay there, staring at the ceiling, a small, sated smile on her lips. She stretched, a languid, cat-like movement that screamed of physical satisfaction.
The shower stopped. Mark returned, a towel slung low on his hips. He dropped it, dressed in his clothes from the floor. He leaned over, kissed her deeply one more time, said something that made her smile widen and nod. Then he left the frame. A moment later, the distant sound of the front door closing.
Eleanor stayed in bed for a long time. Then she got up, pulled on his discarded t-shirt—Mark’s t-shirt—and left the room.
Arthur finally moved. He closed the laptop. The cubicle was a tomb. He looked at the beach photo, at the younger, happier version of the woman now wearing another man’s shirt. The momentum was no longer a passive wave carrying him. It was inside him. A deliberate, cold current.
He wasn’t just watching his life unravel anymore. He was cataloging it. Documenting the evidence. The spreadsheet of his own disgrace.
He powered down his computer, gathered his coat. The walk to the elevator was steady. The drive home was conducted in perfect, mechanical silence. He knew what he would find: the bed vaguely rumpled, the air smelling of sex and someone else’s shower gel, and Eleanor, wearing that shirt, perhaps already asleep.
He knew what he would do: walk in, kiss her forehead, say nothing.
The game had changed. He was no longer just the audience. He was the archivist of his own annihilation. And he would be back at his desk tomorrow, the spreadsheet a blank canvas, the live feed a window he could no longer bear to look away from.