DITW 15-14: A Thousand Voices and an Effigy

He stayed overnight. Then he stayed every night for a week.

On the first Sunday, he’d gone back to his apartment and packed a few things, telling Meyer he didn’t know what he was going to do yet, but he was in love with his baby and he had a lot of lost time to make up for. Meyer’d said and what about Kimmy, and he’d took a deep breath and held it. He didn’t know. He said, “I want to be in that house with my daughter.” If living with his daughter meant living with Kimmy, that’s what he would do. So despite only packing a single bag for the next week, it was kind of unsaid between him and his patient cousin that their roommate love affair would now end. No more late-night movie binges, no more video games to the dawn’s early light, no more cracking beers and shooting the shit. Meyer would be all alone again. It was too bad things hadn’t worked out with that girl Quinn. Josh had really liked her.

Josh bid Meyer farewell, and although they both knew they’d see each other all the time, the last six months with Meyer had preserved Josh’s sanity, and he hoped he’d been good company for Meyer.

He stayed with Kimmy in Kimmy’s house, bought for them. His house. He stayed in Kimmy’s bedroom. His bedroom. They went to work, and they came home and they had dinner with Hyun and Sophie and Colleen. They watched TV together. All of them. Having the larger group in his house made the transition of living with Kimmy once again a little easier. There hadn’t been much pressure on having things to say or working things out anymore. There were chores and there was a baby, and there was always something to do. Then they went to bed together and went to sleep.

They weren’t intimate during the week, though he’d considered it twice.

That changed on Friday.

#

On Friday, Josh went home early from work. The first week back at Swanson had been a wild success. He’d come back home to the gang at Swanson and found them exactly where a guy like himself would want them: missing Josh Waters and needing his return, and the return of his expertise. At lunch on Monday, Harmeet ordered pizza for a lunchtime party, welcoming his return. And the best part of his return was how it felt right. He returned to Swanson healed. It would take some time to figure out how it happened. One thing was for sure, coming home from work every day to a beautiful home in Unionville, and his wife and his incredible baby certainly aligned all the facets of his broken psyche. Nothing about it felt wrong.

Since he’d come home early, it meant he could care for Colleen and Hyun could spend time with Sophie before she delivered her to Meyer for the week. And Hyun had an evening class tonight. Josh had thought about it a lot. Last night trying to sleep and today at work. Tonight would be the first time he and Kimmy had an evening together. Just the three of them.

Hyun took Sophie out for dinner and would head to class after she dropped Sophie at Meyer’s, so Josh said his goodbyes to Sophie and told her to say hi to his dad. Hyun and Sophie left.

Now it was him and his baby.

He fed Colleen in the kitchen, still wearing his suit pants, the jacket and tie off. Putting her on a high chair like his dad had done with him. Breast milk was in the fridge, and he warmed the bottle in a saucepan, bringing it to body heat temperature. After she was fed, he walked around the main floor with his daughter, looking out all the windows with her, telling her how leaves changed color and they fell from the trees but that they would return the next spring, better than ever. Then it was upstairs for a nappy exchange, getting her into clean diapers, and taking her to the crib so he could get in the shower and clean himself up.

In the shower, his mind wandered to the evening ahead. It was him and it was his wife and it was their baby. A real family. It was exciting.

And another thing: they would have sex tonight. He and Kimmy would re-engage in the intimate arts. He could feel it in his bones. One bone in particular, already responding, preparing for the duties ahead.

Only thing was, the more he thought of being with Kimmy, the more frightened he became. Not scared of the Kimmy of old, but scared to reunite with the Kimmy of before. The mild-mannered one. The kind one. The one he married. That Kimmy made him feel uncomfortable now. He wouldn’t know how to act with that one. The Kimmy who’d set him on fire last year and burned him to a crisp...? Now that one excited him. He knew how to behave with that one. That Kimmy took the lead and told him to do what she wanted. Lied to him when they both deep down knew she was lying. That was the Kimmy he wanted to have sex with.

But that was something he knew to keep to himself.

#

Out of the shower, he found Colleen awake and babbling, and he went to her, lifted her and took her downstairs, brought her to the room with the window to the garden. She played for a while, taking things he handed to her and studied them or tossed them aside for some new object for perusal. He could get her to giggle by making the right face. And sometimes when she wouldn’t giggle at a face he made, he could get her to giggle with a tickle. It was cheating, but he liked the sound of her giggle. When he exhausted her, she fell asleep sitting up, then teetered to the side, like a sawn tree. He called out Timber and held her before she toppled. Then he took her to the side room with the main floor crib and set her in for a nap. It was past four, and Kimmy would be home in an hour or two. He could nap as well, sit down in the chair where Kimmy would feed Colleen, and drift off. In his own home. With his baby at his side.

But sleep never came. He dwelled on thoughts of reignited intimacy. It worried him now that the time was closing in. The TV watching would be easy. Making and eating dinner, also easy. But intimacy?

The idea unnerved him. The discomfort intimidated him.

When she’d tried to engage him, seduce him practically, in the garage apartment, he’d almost crawled out of his skin. Was it that Kimmy showed weakness? A weak Kimmy didn’t interest him. Not when he knew it was all an act. Maybe that was it. Dishonesty in intimacy.

Then, before he contemplated it, he was checking to make sure Colleen still napped, then sneaking back upstairs to the master bedroom. He slowed, hesitated, as the truth of his sudden quest dawned on him. But why deny it?

His finger tried along the edge of Kimmy’s dresser, going to the top drawer on the left. The one where she stored her underwear. Her panties.

Sexy things? Lacy stuff? He opened the drawer to find a disappointing array of underwear that looked to be based on comfort over sex appeal. All of Kimmy’s underthings were folded in small, tight rectangles, stuffed in neat piles along the Y-axis so she could index through them and find what she was looking for.

And what are you looking for?

A pair of green satin things. Panties she’d worn to a tryst with one well-hung sexual dynamo named Devlin Stone. 

His riffling fingers found no trace of the panties he sought. He pulled the drawer out further. Still no sign of his prize.

And that had to be for the best. Wasn’t it?

There was a box at the back of the drawer and he was pretty sure he’d hit pay dirt. This box would contain her more impressive undergarments. But as he wriggled it out of its nest at the back of the drawer, he could tell it didn’t contain underwear. Too heavy. And by the sound of it, the box contained only one thing sliding around inside. The box was long, like a box sent with flowers. Maybe Keith Stone secretly sent her flowers. Maybe she liked them and kept them preserved as a memento in the back of her underwear drawer.

But again: the box was too heavy.

He placed the box on the dresser’s top and lifted its lid. The item inside shortened his breath. He gasped, horrified. Revulsed. 

Inside the box lay dormant an enormous rubbery dildo; flesh colored, molded sack. It had to be ten inches long. A thick, veiny monster that resembled the thing that Devlin had. The thing Kimmy loved. He shoved the box away to the far side of the dresser, then with gritted teeth and angry movements, he covered the disgusting phallic effigy and shoved it in the drawer where he found it.

#

The discovery aroused him. As much as he hated it, sitting by himself in the window room with his arms crossed and muttering to himself, the arousal was real. Now tonight couldn’t get started fast enough. But with heightened arousal came heightened wariness.

Yes, he was aroused—but now had convinced himself Kimmy had left the grotesque dildo there for him to find in order to spark his arousal. When he was aroused, Kimmy was in charge and he couldn’t lift a finger to stop her. And that was his own doing.

There was one piece of his jumbled puzzle to set back in place. A thing he always shooed away or wandered around. There was no denying how it still turned him on. Not the betrayal. No way, not that. The things she did to hide her betrayal. Those fun times he thought there was a game going on, and Josh and Kimmy Waters were the only players. Those times where the things Kimmy told him were tabulations meant for a shared thrill. A husband and a wife figuring out what made each other’s darker parts tick. A thick, veiny cock about a foot long; a cock that would touch a hidden trigger, a place only whispered of in hushed tones among the mere mortals. Most of them not even believing such a place existed. But, oh yes, it existed. It did, at least, within his wife. It existed inside Kimmy. And she needed the thing in the drawer to get that scratch itched. But did she think of Devlin when she used it to make herself come? This last year, when they were apart, why would she masturbate with a huge dildo thinking of her husband? No, she would think of the man who gave her the real thing. Then maybe later, when her heart rate came back down to normal and she wished she had more help with the baby, then she would think of Josh. Her husband.

He heard her car arrive in their driveway.