DITW 15-2: Panic Attacks in Rome

That fucking picture.

The picture that swooped in from out of nowhere. No warning he would receive it, and no warning that the photo’s content could even be a possibility.

He could see it in his mind’s eye as he stared up at the ceiling in the hotel room he’d booked for Meyer’s birthday. He could see it with his eyes closed, too. So he lay sleepless and staring, hands behind his head, gawping at ghosts floating above him on the eggshell white ceiling cum movie screen while Meyer snored hard enough to swallow his own tongue. The the way things were. The way they were now. All that could have been. All that could be.

Kimmy Chang. Her name right in the newspaper. Print edition. Saturday special. Not Kimmy Waters. Kimmy Chang. Six-foot tall supermodel Kimmy Chang in a Santorini-blue satin dress, big V cutout on the chest, straps over lean shoulders, her little titties cupped in the shimmering blue bustier, the photographer’s light casting shadows in the cups and edges of her collarbones and long, swanlike neck. Hair pulled back. Her glistening skin. Pampered. She looked pampered.

And that fucking million-dollar smile?

He brought his knees together in a clamp and crunched his stomach against the existential pain coursing through his veins, his heart just a pulsatile pain machine, sending hurt-poison into every part of his being. 

Why did it fucking hurt so much?

Because she was yours, dipshit. She was yours and now she’s not.

How bad would this night be without the benzo and the beer and the Irish good-stuff? Insufferable. Insupportable.

Five miles outside Cabo, ten o’clock at night, exhausted after an amazing day blatting across the baked landscape and he’s getting into his tent, ready for forty winks, but wanted to check his messages. What a mistake. A message from Steve.

The fucking man Kimmy was with in the picture. How? Like really, fucking how?

Thank god for Lorazepam. Thank god for tonight’s drinks. The hurt and dread were rarer now. And thank god for Meyer. Thank god for the times with Sophie when she’d stay with him and Meyer.

Sophie insinuated there were nights where Aunt Kimmy cried and closed herself in Hyun’s bedroom. It was clear Sophie didn’t want to spill the beans, that someone, probably Kimmy, had told Sophie not to talk about it. Kimmy was gone from Stone. She hadn’t lied about that.

Josh growled from sleepless frustration and whipped down the covers, laying bare-chested in the nighttime city light. His mind raced, but at least the fight or flight only simmered under the wonderful wooly weight of the benzo. His hand searched to the side table, looking for the familiar shape of his phone, Meyer sputtering away in the next bed over. Swiped open, right to screenshots he’d snapped of the texts with Kimmy from back in the day. Wonderful little snippets of things she’d texted him in her departure’s aftermath. Statements he’d often ponder.  

The time he’d first heard Sophie drop a vague remark about her Aunt Kimmy crying, he’d texted Kimmy, and, not wanting to rat out his adorable little niece as a tattle-tale, he’d offered up the blanket reminder that no matter what had happened between them, he would always be there for her. He’d told her that if she ever needed help he would do whatever he could to make things right for her.

She’d texted him back.

Kimmy: Stay away, Josh. I hope it won’t be forever. But it should be for a while. I want to earn you back.

Yeah, right. She wanted to earn him back. Uh-huh.

One time she’d texted she was irredeemable. Another time she texted she wanted redemption.

And poor Sophie. Sophie told not to talk about Kimmy’s mental state, Kimmy with no job, all alone, then moved in with Hyun—just like he knew she would. Sophie saying cryptic things around her other-week men because she wanted reassurance from her dad and from her Uncle Josh that everything would be okay with her Aunt Kimmy. Then total radio silence from Kimmy. Sophie said Kimmy wasn’t living with Hyun anymore, she’d got an apartment downtown. He’d texted her. In those weeks, Kimmy had been a mess. Emotional and sensitive. Their text-based convos were sometimes heated. He could tell she was afraid. He encouraged her to get professional help, but he didn’t think she ever went. 

Josh: I don’t want to find any happiness in your suffering.

Kimmy: I deserve it.

Then more radio silence. Longer. But who gave a fuck? By then he was in Rome and crushing it. At least for a while he was. Then came the times where it was difficult to swallow. He’d passed it off as an infection. Then he was home, and—hell, yeah—he dated. 

“Fuck,” he sighed, wishing he could just sleep. Instead, he was huddled under the cover to block out the light of his phone so he wouldn’t disrupt Meyer’s snoring.

Yeah, that was what set it off. It wasn’t an infection, it was his whole body tightening with a fight-or-flight response. Smack dab in the middle of the day he’d have these attacks where his body was convinced fucking Michael Myers was tracking him down with a machete. He’d be at work shitting-his-pants afraid, hands shaking, guts twisting, but with no reason. The reason took some time to figure out. It wasn’t an irrational fear of fictional Michael Myers and his machete, it was Devlin Stone with his erect horse cock. 

But that was still irrational.

And in time, he also came to understand that it wasn’t even Devlin anymore. It was Kimmy. It was lies and it was betrayal.

It was too much.

When Kimmy was giving birth to Colleen at St. Joseph’s in the city, he was seven-thousand clicks away curled up on a Rome hotel room floor, heart racing out of control. He was far from home, all alone, scared out of his mind by imaginary threats. He’d even gone mute. Gabrielle knocked on his door in the morning, tried to help him present himself, but he couldn’t even talk. She said, “You’re a dad, Josh.” Gabrielle had sent flowers to Kimmy in his name.

“Turn off your phone, dickhead.”

The snoring had stopped and Meyer saw he was pining, as Meyer called it. It wasn’t pining. Who knew what you would call it. For fun one time, he’d plotted revenge. Other times he swore he’d move on, that living a grand life would be the best revenge. But that kind of serenity took months of sifting to find at last. “I was checking the weather,” he said, slipping the cover down, turning his phone off and returning it to the side table.

“Stop picking at scabs.”

He said, “Stop fucking snoring. How about that?”

“I wasn’t snoring.” Meyer rolled over to face the wall.

Josh chuckled and tried closing his eyes again, seeking sleep.

Yeah, he would go next week. Hard as it was, he would go. If only just to show Kimmy he didn’t care about her anymore. Nothing she could do now would ever hurt him. He would find enormous glory in seeing her rendered powerless over him. The thought of her trying and failing raced his heart and even brought a little smile that tickled his lips with bristly beard hair. He rubbed a hand down his facial pelt. It should go. The beard should be shorn before his visit. Although Kimmy should see him as a stranger to who she knew, a man who’d moved on—and he was. Sometimes. Other times, like when you were having a blast in Mexico and some fucking guy you used to work with shoots you a picture of your wife at some gala on another man’s arm, maybe not so much. 

And what about the showstopper, Joshy, my boy? What about the one thing in that picture—despite how hot your wife looked in it—that stole all your attention?

He rolled his head on the crisp hotel pillow, some despondency leaking through the Lorazepam’s armor. His eyes opened and roamed the room’s gray stillness.

Say it.

He mouthed the words: “She wasn’t wearing her wedding ring.”

  * 

Meyer said, “If I showed up at work with the guys I work with, and I got a hundred dollar haircut...? Jesus fucking Christ, Josh, the nicknames...? The abuse I would receive? I’d rather have a hundred dollars and my dignity. You go ahead, though. You were always the pretty one.”

Josh elbowed him surreptitiously, two men almost thirty acting like a couple of teenagers in this upscale city salon with it’s marble floors and haughty reception and ten-foot ceilings.

“I told you, I just want to get cleaned up.”

“You can get cleaned up at a barber in Ajax. Barber’s like fifteen-twenty bucks.”

“I’m not making you get one.”

“Buy me one. For my birthday.”

“I spent almost a thousand dollars on your birthday already.”

Meyer nodded his chin, “Hey, here’s your guy,” both of them regarding now a tall dude, a stylish Filipino wearing an undershirt and a skirt, combat boots, hoop earrings and an Errol Flynn mustache. The guy said, “Where’s Josh?”

“That’s me.”

Rory was his hairdresser, a funny and charming guy, and real earnest about Josh’s look.

“This jacket is amazing,” Rory said, running fingers on the wicked vintage motocross jacket he’d bought at a flea market in Pickering. Beaten to shit for decades and still dusty from Mexico, he’d hung it up behind his salon chair, not wanting to leave it in the lobby, even with Meyer watching. Then Rory was running fingers through Josh’s hair, checking out the length, wondering what he would do with such a mess.

Josh said, “I want it all gone. I’m going back to work soon.”

“What do you do?”

“Ah, just an executive.”

“You look like a writer. Or an artist, maybe.”

“Nah. Spreadsheets and projections,” he said, then regretted it, preferring to live in Rory’s imagination of who he was. That sounded like a much better Josh. “I want a good presentable haircut for work. Take off the beard, too.”

Rory looked perplexed, running his nails through Josh’s beard, watching in the mirror, then stooping to get eyes on the actual thing. “You have a great suntan.”

“Thanks.”

“Were you on vacation? Where did you go?”

“Kind of a vacation. A guy’s trip. We rode enduro bikes down to Cabo San Lucas.”

Rory had stood up to lift a sprayer but wheeled when he heard about the bikes. “Really? Amazing. How many?”

“Guys?” Josh shrugged. “A dozen of us.”

Rory’s eyebrows kept creeping up, wowed by this tale of transcontinental two-wheel glory. Then he was close again, standing behind him, touching his hair and his beard. “You look good like this. It suits you.”

“It does?”

Hands on beard again. “If I take the beard I’m afraid your cheeks will be white.”

“Ew. That’s not good.”

Rory began spraying Josh’s hair, getting it wet, combing it, studying it.

Josh played with his wedding ring, looking at his reflection, seeing his face again with his hair combed back. The beard looked good. And, frankly, the weight loss looked good, too.

A writer. Or an artist, maybe.

He said, “I want to look good. I haven’t seen someone in a long time.”

Rory loved the story’s presentation. Engaged right away. “Oh, who is it?”

A long beat. “My wife.”

Rory looked puzzled.

“Yeah. Crazy, huh? I haven’t seen her in a year.”

Rory clipped a little, lost in thought, trying to figure the best way to ask a whole series of questions. “Why are you seeing her now?”

“She’s moved on, Rory. Moved on. Bought herself a house.”

Rory stopped clipping and put a hand on his hip. “A house. Bought herself a house?”

“I suppose it’s our money, but, yeah, we haven’t really figured that out yet. We have a kid.”

Rory went back to clipping. “This is getting complicated.”

“Tell me about it.”

More clipping, Rory formulating the best approach to get more info from him and maintain the natural charm he had.

“You’re right about that, though,” Josh said, seeing his face emerging, getting tidied but keeping the roguish raconteur with a broken heart who’d rode a motorcycle from Vancouver to Mexico and watched the sun set in Baja drinking a Corona, sun on his brow and cheeks.

“Right about what?”

“I look good like this. It suits me.”