DITW 14-25: Odyssey 20

The world around her seemed nothing like the world she’d escaped. Out here in the daylight, the general population walked and talked and laughed, up and down the sidewalks, in and out of shops, across walkways; cars on a million errands, trucks delivering, and school out at three-thirty, kids up and down, young ones, older ones up to petty no-good. The school bus stopped in front of her again, red stop sign flapping out, lights flashing. Then a gaggle of little people in coats disembarked, laden with books and bags and school projects, rushing to their waiting guardians, ready to be shuttled to warm homes.

It was all behind her now. The bridge burned. She’d thought she could eke out more time, play along until she was better situated. But no more. Not when she saw herself reflected in the amoral theater playing out in Devlin’s apartment this afternoon. Any play actor with a soul should be ashamed to take a bow. No accolades were warranted, only chagrin. The time for stratagems and expedients evaporated. But to call what she’d done a moral turn would be laughable.

And yet . . . Maybe it was. Or at least a turning point. She could play it as moral.

As the bus’s stop sign flapped closed and the lights shut off, the bus burping out a plume of black smoke and lurching up to speed once again, Kimmy swiped through the contacts in her phone, found the number for Aaron Berg, Esquire.

  *

The day had shown him unexpected kindness. He’d thought he’d face scorn or avoidance at work today; that he would see a lot of people at Swanson avert their eyes when they saw him coming, pretend they didn’t even see him. Then they’d whisper behind his back after he’d passed. But that wasn’t what happened. Gabrielle and Samara and Steve were the only sources of the weekend’s event which his workplace would get access to. And it would seem like his three friends—intentionally or naturally—had a much better perspective on the weekend than he did. No one knew the blackness growing in his chest; no one knew the extreme and bottomless evil of his wife’s infernal torments. No one knew he’d watched his high school bully fuck her. No one knew his wife had held up her boss’s massive dick against his mere mortal dick. And that his wife got off on it. What people had heard through the grace of Steve and Samara and Gabrielle: Josh got wasted and fell off the dock. They’d had to call an ambulance, and he’d even had to fly by helicopter to Peterborough. Hypothermia. It had been bad. And yet, Josh came to work on Monday like nothing happened. Some at work, he considered, might even think Josh Waters was kind of a crazy badass.

But now here he was back at home, alone in the apartment, the surprise and relief of the day’s good treatment already beginning to fade. Kimmy should be home, but she wasn’t. That could mean Kimmy was held up at work, or it could mean she had her legs in the air and Devlin fucked her deep with that massive dick Kimmy loved. Kimmy didn’t hang with the mortals anymore. Mere mortals didn’t do it for her.

Yet the power Kimmy had over him had eased its grip somehow. He’d heaped so much value on their relationship that the idea of loss or failure would always break his heart and fill him with dread, furrow his brow. In the weekend’s aftermath, numbness occluded all those sharp feelings of loss. And yet, here he was, in his apartment, the home he shared with his wife, and the simple observation she wasn’t home came to him with an immovable payload. The depth of her betrayal no longer hurt, but it still burdened him.

Tonight, they would talk. Talk for real. 

Kimmy wasn’t getting away with her crimes anymore. There were no equivocations or excuses he would consider. Their relationship would rattle back onto their shaky track. If it didn’t, he had the newfound fortitude to leave for good. What she’d done for herself—and told him she did for him—held no value in their relationship. No promises of a house were worth what she’d done. And filling that house with babies he could doubt were his own? Untenable. How could he have ever permitted this slide into madness?

He slipped his tie out of his collar and walked to the family room, turned on the TV, and then went to the window. His heart sank, and the dread flashed on his dashboard like sudden engine trouble. His stomach ached and his balls ached. Kimmy was home, long leg stretching out of her open car door, setting a heel down on the asphalt.

“Come on, Josh,” he said to himself. “You have to do this.”

  *

She found Josh waiting for her in their kitchen. Just home, obviously, wearing a suit, tie off, collar open, shoes still on. They didn’t speak while she slipped off her shoes in the foyer, then stepped into the kitchen. They were face to face, neither of them smiling. A tension enriched the air between them; a heavy, unbroken silence waiting for the crack of a gunshot that would make them both jump.

She said, “How are you feeling?”

“Pretty good.”

“How was work?”

“Better than I expected.”

She nodded. She asked him about Gabrielle and Samara and Steve and what they said and Josh told her they were all laughing about it, like what had happened on the weekend to him was no big deal. The relief Josh found in their laughter hurt her heart. He’d almost died, and the bright side was no one knew the depths of his despair. Maybe not even Josh himself. Josh’s bright side was that his wife’s torture and betrayal went still undiscovered. Josh held shame’s mighty weight on his shoulders like an impossible burden. She was the one who shamed him. 

  *

Kimmy looked as beautiful as ever. But tired. Worn out. Her eyes were heavy and shone only dully; her shoulders drooped. He felt no sympathy. Actually, maybe even enjoyed a certain victory. Hoping it was all the bad she’d done coming home to accumulate in her psyche. This beautiful woman’s husband had almost died on the weekend and it was all her fault. Wasn’t it? Maybe Kimmy deserved the weight of that blame, even if the facts weren’t supportive. He asked her how her day at work was, the question heavy with the summer’s torture and his wife’s refusal to quit the job that put her side by side with Devlin Stone.

“Not good,” she said with a strange uplifting tone.

All he could do was nod. He didn’t even care how her day went. Good, bad—neither mattered. All that mattered was she went to work when she knew she shouldn’t. She couldn’t stop her Devlin addiction and if her husband’s ordeal with death’s whisper this weekend couldn’t stop her, then nothing would. “That’s a shame,” he said, silently cursing his own petty, juvenile response. There were more masculine responses, but they escaped him at the moment. The urge to lash out was strong.

Kimmy had no retort, no snide comeback. She just turned aside and put her hands on the counter, hanging her head. “Can I make us some dinner?”

“That always makes things better, doesn’t it?”

Kimmy knew what he meant. If she had no snide comebacks, she shouldn’t worry. He had dozens.

“I’m not trying to buy your affection, Josh. I just think we need to sit down and talk.”

A cold dread formed on the heels of her statement. It had the chill of finality. But it was he who’d been pushed to the brink, not her. “Now you want to talk? All summer that’s what I wanted, but everything you said was just an excuse you could use to put me in a holding pattern. Make me sit on my hands and take it. Take all the shit you heaped on my lap and told me I liked. And now you want to talk?”

Kimmy shook her head. Not with anger, but with some sad resignation. “We talked, Josh. We talked. You can’t say we didn’t.”

“I heard you talk. You never heard me talk.”

“I listened to every word you said.”

“And then disregarded them.”

Kimmy faced him. The same height, eye to eye. No eyes down on him like when she wore heels. Her eyes were lifeless. “If you want to unload on me finally, if you’re ready to get your satisfaction, today is your lucky day. I’m your punching bag, Josh.” She opened her arms to the side, showing him she was defenseless. “Beat the shit out of me. Tell me every thing I did wrong. Blame me. Curse me. Call me all the names you’ve bitten your tongue on.”

Anger sizzled in his ears. His wife was an oiled viper. She never gave him a foothold, never left an opening for him to catch her. Just when he was sane enough to settle the score, she yanked the plug and now his tub was draining. “How do you do it? How do you pull the rug out from under me every single time?”

“Go ahead, Josh. I’m telling you, today is the day.”

“I’m not doing that. I’m not going to give you what you want.”

“You know I deserve it.”

“Yeah, you do,” he said, hands stilling at his sides. For a moment, he’d thought he would get to enjoy an angry explosion. 

They stared at each other, not saying anything. He’d never felt more separate from her in his life. He felt closer to her when they were on their first date. There was a chasm between them, deep as her sins. 

Kimmy said, “Can I touch you?”

He said, “Why?”

“Because I want to.”

He squinted and frowned, trying to decipher her plan. “Yeah. Fine. You can touch me.”

Kimmy’s cheeks dimpled and her eyes grew troubled. She paused, then lifted her hands to his face, cupping his jawline, thumbing the corners of his mouth. It felt awkward, but he let her, and after a while, he warmed to her touch. 

She said, “Did you go in the water on purpose?”

He brushed her hands away, grunting and pulling back. “No, I didn’t.”

“Tell me the truth.”

“You want to know the truth? You want to hear it? I woke up in the bunkie and I thought I’d told them the truth. Told all the people at the party what you did. What you made me do.” His jaw clenched hard, his brow lowering, feeling the red heat of emotion coursing through his veins. When he spoke, he jabbed his chin toward her, saying, “I told you this, Kimmy. I thought I got so drunk I told them the real truth. The real reason they had to throw me a party. That’s why, Kimmy. I thought I told them the truth. And the truth is so bad I wanted to run away.”

Kimmy’s eyes welled with tears and the sight of genuine emotion from her surprised him. Her chin dimpled and her lips wriggled. And she didn’t look away. Forced herself to keep her eyes on his. A sudden softness formed around his heart. Like he’d gotten through to her. Like she’d joined a cult and abandoned her family, but this was the first sign the deprogramming could work. Like the woman he loved was still in there somewhere.

“I didn’t go in the water on purpose,” he said. “It would be great if you believed that I did. That would make things so much easier for me. Because you don’t seem to realize your actions have consequences. But they do, Kimmy. I didn’t go in the water on purpose, but I ran from your lies. I ran from your crimes. I ran because the shame I would feel if my friends knew?—now that would kill me. That would really kill me.”

Kimmy looked down, sighing, shaking her head. She looked up again, up past him, somewhere near the ceiling. “I thought I could do it. I thought I could do anything. But I can’t. I’m not that person.”

“Do what?”

“Win. Win everything. Clear the table and bring us victory.”

“Us?” Yeah, right.

“I was tired, Josh. Tired of the struggle. Tired facing the time it would take us to achieve our dreams. I wanted a shortcut. I wanted everything now. And it was there. Right there in front of me.”

“That’s such bullshit. You wanted Devlin.”

Kimmy stepped back, lips pursed, eyes wounded. “That’s not true.”

“You know it is, Kimmy. You went after Devlin at Tiffany’s and you know it. You fought with him because it turned you on. He turned you on. He’s everything I’m not, and I’m not enough for you.”

“You want that to be true.”

“What?” He laughed at how ridiculous her statement was. “Who would want that to be true?”

“You do. You want to think it because it turned you on.”

“Don’t,” he warned her. “Don’t do that.”

She realized the seriousness of his expression and looked away.

He said, “Tell me one reason I shouldn’t leave again.”

Kimmy looked up, eyes wet. “Because I’m the one who’s leaving.”