DITW 14-19: Odyssey 14

“So Glenn tied Amy to the bed,” Kimmy said, “and then came out and did that sales pitch, going through all that bullshit with me?”

“It’s not bullshit.”

“It’s psychopathic. . . . And, yeah, if it’s real, you treat it like bullshit.” Kimmy jabbed her hand at Devlin while she talked, astounded he wouldn’t see things the way they were. “You gave me a sales pitch to sign paperwork. A letter of intent that I would serve as your counsel. But you give the moment no reverence, nothing of value. You treat everything like a game. Like everything revolves around your dick.”

Devlin’s lips pursed and then a slow smile began to spread. He said, “I’ve never seen you disrupted like this. Never seen you so emotional. I don’t know what to make of it.”

“Don’t try to turn the tables on me, Devlin. I’m not stupid.”

“Kimmy,” Devlin said, strolling back to the bed, turning, then sitting down beside Amy’s naked body. “I hired you for fun. I hired you because I knew you could do the job I wanted you to do, but I also hired you—yes—to fuck around with Josh’s head.”

“It’s juvenile, Devlin,” she said, announcing each syllable to emphasize the importance of what she was saying, to slow it down so he could understand it.

“You did it, too. I wasn’t alone. I wasn’t by myself. Sometimes, when I’d lost interest, it was you who renewed it.”

Amy said, “Can someone untie me? You guys are so boring.”

“Shut up, Amy,” Devlin said over his shoulder and Amy chuckled.

Devlin continued, the daylight falling on his broad shoulders and lighting up his glossy black hair, Amy a moving flesh landscape behind him. “Don’t act like I’m fucking up. Don’t act like what I’ve done here is something crazy.” He looked over his shoulder at blindfolded Amy, then back at Kimmy. “You were the one who fucked me in Cayman while Josh sat at the house waiting for you to come back. Was that juvenile? You don’t get to pick and choose. You don’t get to align everything in your favor when you’ve been complicit from day one.”

Kimmy chewed her cheek, raising her chin in defiance. She cocked a hip and put her hands on her waist.

“You wanted me because you wanted a job. I know it. I said it to you a hundred times. You’re a lawyer, you work at an immigration place. You’re worth so much more. And after that party you were gonna go home and you were gonna make cat baskets for a bunch of lisping cat daddies with disposable income. What does that do for anybody? It doesn’t do anything for you. You fought with me at Tiffany’s—you were fighting to get out. You were fighting to get away, to get out from under the burden of a pointless existence. And I gave you everything. As much as I could. Not to toy with you but because you deserve it. You can do anything. Anything you want. You’ve got the drive, you’ve got the intelligence, and look at you”—he turned to speak over his shoulder—“you can’t see her, but holy shit, Amy. As tall as me in heels, thousand-dollar shoes, jet-black suit.” He faced Kimmy again. “Prada, right?”

She clenched her jaw, nostrils flaring, crossing her arms and staring back at him. “Yes.”

Devlin spoke over his shoulder again, but kept his eyes on Kimmy, sly smirk tugging up the corner of his mouth. “When she walks into a boardroom, you should see everybody’s face. She scares them shitless.”

Amy scoffed and said, “Whoop-dee-doo.”

Devlin said, “Seriously, Kimmy. Don’t go off the rails on me. I didn’t fuck Amy. I’m not going to fuck Amy. That’s Glenn’s job.”

Amy said “Where is Glenn?”

“So don’t listen to Amy,” Devlin said. “She’s here and she’s tied to the bed for only one reason.”

“And what’s that?”

Now Devlin smiled again. He patted his hands on his knees, then stood. He removed his suit jacket and tossed it to a nearby chair. Then, with his eyes on Kimmy’s, he unbuckled his belt and withdrew it in one quick snap from the belt loops. “I told you. I brought Amy here so you could punish her.”

Amy said, “Here’s where she runs out of the room.”

Kimmy ran the tip of her tongue across her upper lip, back and forth, back and forth, eyeing Devlin and then Amy’s naked body. She looked at Devlin’s eyes, looked at his hand holding the circled loop of his belt.

And Amy was right. The urge to flee was massive.

In her mind, her feet had already skittered out of the room, but only by sheer force did she keep them planted on Devlin’s bedroom carpet. The moment dragged on. Her staring, Amy wondering what was going on, and Devlin smiling, holding out his belt.

Kimmy said, “What am I punishing her for?”

“You know what she did.”

“Do I? Do I really know?”

 “Come and ask her,” Devlin said, presenting the belt once more with an eager gesture.

Kimmy uncrossed her arms, stepped toward the bed, looking at her high-school friend laid out with hands above her head, naked from head to toe, except for a sleeping mask across her eyes. She said to Amy, “What am I punishing you for?”

“There’s nothing to punish me for. I didn’t do anything.”

Devlin flicked his belt and it snapped against the sole of Amy’s foot. Amy’s leg jumped and she tucked it underneath her, laughing and rolling on the bed.

Devlin looked at Kimmy and held the gaze, and Kimmy felt an uncomfortable connection to him in that moment. Devlin’s words echoed: Amy’s a psychopath. And Amy was. Kimmy had always denied it, because it was cool to be Amy’s friend. Now she licked her lower lip, then reluctantly held out her hand. Devlin put his belt into her grip, smiling wide, light gleaming in his dark eyes that shone blue in the the daylight spilling into his bedroom.

They’d spent a lot of time in here doing terrible things.

This was nothing new.

She walked around the bed to the far side, getting near to Amy’s face.

“You texted my husband behind my back.”

Amy said, “I would never do that.”

“I know that you did,” Kimmy told her.

“That’s such bullshit.”

Kimmy looked at Devlin. Devlin shrugged, putting up his hands in a gesture of What are you gonna do?

Kimmy said, “And what about a picture of me?”

“What about it? What did I do with a picture of you?”

Kimmy stood looking at Amy’s vulnerable body and for the first time felt a vengeful urge to strike the belt across her. She gripped the leather in her fist. A slap right across Amy’s bare stomach. A slap across her tits. She deserved it. She deserved the sting.

“You taunted Josh. You taunted my husband to my face.”

“I did do that,” Amy said. “But I was only joking.”

“And what did you think was so funny? Pointing at my husband’s penis and saying it was so small? And what was that for? Why would someone say such a thing? I mean, you know I married the man I love. And if I love him...”

“If you love him it wouldn’t matter.”

“But you thought it might. You thought if you created the smallest measure of doubt, that my marriage would crumble. Not because you care about my marriage, but because you love the crumble.”

Amy chuckled. “That’s ludicrous.”

“Is it?”

“What kind of woman would leave the man she married because his penis was smaller than a potential lover’s? That would be insane.”

“I didn’t leave him because of that.”

Amy cocked her head, lips pursing. “You left him?”

“No. No I didn’t,” Kimmy said through gritted teeth, wringing the leather in her fists.

Devlin said, “She didn’t leave him. He didn’t leave her. You won’t believe what’s happening.”

Kimmy said, “You didn’t tell her?”

Devlin shook his head no. “It’s our secret.”

An indignant shift adjusted her stomach, thinking how she shared such intimacy with the man her husband hated. The secret they held together was a lie. That was something she could hold onto for strength, remind herself she wasn’t as bad as Devlin and Amy believed.

Amy said, “I made fun of Josh’s penis to remind you what you missed out on—because you were a chicken.”

Kimmy’s eyes moved from Devlin to Amy’s masked face. That expectant smile. Amy knowing she was wicked; reveling in it. Kimmy had envied Amy’s teenage aloofness at one time; the ease with which Amy handled life’s common misfortunes. Amy always knew what to say. And it was because Amy didn’t care about consequences. Or outcomes. She was protected, privileged. Privileged with beauty and some other thing she wielded like a two-pronged weapon along with her confidence: a sultry something, an indescribable quality that made anyone think of sex every time Amy walked or talked. She’d learned to use it to get what she wanted.

Kimmy told Amy to roll over. Amy smiled, showing teeth. “Why, what are you going to do, Kimmy?”

Kimmy brought the belt down across Amy’s bare stomach with a quick snap. Amy yelped and jumped, bringing up her knees and twisting to move her stomach away from another sting. “Ow,” she exclaimed, laughing. “Not even a warning, Kimmy? You’re cruel.”

“You’re the cruel one,” Kimmy said. “Now roll over.”

Amy deserved punishment. But this punishment was contrived, theatrical; Amy deserved ruin. When Amy rolled to her stomach, her bare ass sticking up in the air, she bent her knees and brought her feet up like her feet would protect her ass from punishment. Kimmy told Devlin to hold Amy’s feet down.

Devlin took Amy’s ankles and guided her feet to the bed so her ass was exposed.

Amy said, “Now the party’s getting started.”

“This isn’t a party, Amy,” Kimmy said, looking at Amy’s narrow waist swaying out to her generous womanly hips. Teenage boys would swoon when they saw Amy walk the halls of Dalton High. She brought the belt down on Amy’s bare ass and Amy gasped a whisking sound that slowed to a breathy chuckle in the wake of the snap’s echo. A pink swath bloomed on Amy’s perfect ass. Amy writhed in sexual frustration.

Lust spread in the room. Bringing the belt down on Amy’s ass had ignited something. Devlin’s bedroom was a salon of sexual endeavor. A place where things such as this were meant to occur. Events such as this were the reason this bedroom existed. All three of them breathed deeper and slower. All of them had switches flipped in their head that went from on-off; lusty intent now burned in all of them. Kimmy could feel it strongest because it shouldn’t exist within her at all. Nothing but chaste regret should shine in her heart after the weekend past.

The burn of shame flared on her cheeks. The two people in this room ruined her life. It took them ten years to do it, but this event began the night they invited her to Devlin’s place so they could scare timid Kimmy Chang into running home to hide from the wicked world. The promised job had been a farce. The promised parlay of her position at Stone Senior to Stone Junior for more pay and power was likely a farce as well. Soon she would have no job, no marriage. She’d been tricked into humiliating and betraying her husband. She’d corrupted a good friend, disappointed her niece, embarrassed her father, lost to her sister, and there was a good chance she would go to prison for at least eighteen months. Who would look after her baby while she was away? Would Josh even talk to her ever again?

She bent at the waist so she could speak near Amy’s ear. “You’re going to wish I ran away today, Amy. You’re going to wish you could only bully me like you used to.”

Amy harrumphed, still smiling. “I never bullied you, Kimmy.”

Kimmy looked at Devlin, stooped at the foot of the bed, his large hands gathering Amy’s thin ankles together. “Spread her legs for me.”