DITW 14-8: Odyssey 3

With a pillow in Hyun’s lap to hide what her hand did, Kimmy tried to explain to Hyun what she’d done. Hyun resisted, worried Sophie would catch them sitting too close on the couch together. Kimmy patted and squeezed Hyun’s pussy over her cotton pants, and Hyun succumbed to pleasure, lashes fluttering, eyes looking lost.

“Don’t . . . We can’t . . .”

Kimmy’s hand retreated, and a wavering image of self-reflection came over her. Sex had conjoined with badness. Sex had conjoined with supremacy. Sex was control. Wickedness was sex. She squeezed Hyun’s thigh as an awful rising of guilt sickened her stomach. She withdrew the pillow from Hyun’s lap and held it in her own now, easing away from Hyun, going to her corner as if an unseen referee had ordered her to do so. A time out. A time to cool off.

Hyun approached, face filled with worry that she’d disappointed her with that stark refusal. But that wasn’t.

“I’m sorry, Kimmy. Not when Sophie’s home. I can’t . . .”

“I corrupted you.”

Hyun looked puzzled, taken aback, and Kimmy couldn’t look at her, instead gazing across the room, toward the hall where Sophie could have appeared and witnessed her aunt and her mother together.

“No, no, you didn’t.”

Kimmy nodded, then shook her head, capricious emotion twisting her. She said, “You make me see myself.”

Hyun slumped, silent, determined to understand, but not knowing what to say.

Kimmy looked her way. “See the parts I don’t like.”

“What parts don’t you like?”

She shrugged and bit her lower lip, considering it. “I don’t know if I don’t like it, I just . . . I . . .”

Hyun said, “Whatever you did, it’s okay,” and put her hand on Kimmy’s forearm.

“Devlin’s dad owns the company.”

“I know.” Hyun’s thumb stroked Kimmy’s forearm.

“The man’s only around fifty-five. He built the company himself. He’s not going anywhere. And he’s not going to retire when he’s sixty-five. He’s not the type.”

Hyun nodded, still thumb-stroking.

“Devlin knows this. Devlin wishes he was his dad. Or at least wishes he was the same kind of man. No, he thinks he is the same kind of man. But he’s not. He’s not like his dad at all. He’s just a spoiled, rich white man living on the laurels of the empire’s real caesar. You know what I’m saying?”

“He resents his dad?”

Kimmy shook her head. “Not smart enough to resent him. Dumb enough to think of himself as an usurper.”

“He wants to overthrow his dad?” Then Hyun considered something worse and gasped. Kimmy looked at her, and Hyun asked the mortifying question with her eyes only.

“What are you thinking? Like, you mean get rid of him? . . . No, Hyun. He’s not brave enough to try. Too afraid he’d end up in jail, I’m sure. No, he has different dreams. He wants to make something of himself, but he doesn’t want to do the hard work. He just wants to swindle his dad. I think he thinks his dad would let him get away with it if he got caught. . . . Ah, I don’t know what he thinks,” she said chuckling, trying to put into words Devlin’s plan.

Hyun relaxed a little, but still sat poised with tension. “So, what did you do?”

“Devlin hired me so he could fuck around with Josh. He’s fucking . . .” She laughed, recollecting it. “He’s got a control kink or something. Who knows? He . . .” Now she looked at Hyun and realized this eroded her own elaboration on her role with Devlin Stone and Josh’s involvement. But maybe that didn’t matter anymore. And maybe if Hyun saw her for what she was, maybe Hyun would let her go. “He wanted me to work for him so he could mess around with me. . . . He likes that I’m married to Josh. He gets off on belittling other men.” She shrugged, hoping that was enough of an explanation for Hyun, because she didn’t know much more to say about it. Devlin’s dick got hard as a rock knowing he was putting it inside another man’s wife. And Josh was filet mignon, the finest of cuts, prepared for him over a decade, like feeding Kobe cattle excellent beer and massaging their flesh as preparation for the most decadent indulgence. Only Josh wasn’t fed beer and rubbed down; no, the man she loved was beaten and humiliated and bullied into subjugation. “But Devlin didn’t figure on me being a valuable asset to the company. Once he discovered that I had value to Stone Brokerage, he eased me into a scheme. And since he thought I owed him, and that we were a team, that my loyalty would be his.”

“What did he ask you to do?”

She looked at Hyun, smirking. “Oh, he didn’t ask me to do anything. I mean, other than work with him when he broke away from his father.”

“Oh, I see. I think.”

Kimmy steadied her eyes on Hyun’s. “Do you want my confession?”

Hyun showed a fearful gaze, a wild-eyed look of retreat; but she stayed on the couch.

Kimmy’s heart rate picked up, and she licked her lips, ready for the first time for someone to hear her most secret sin. “I stole money.”

Hyun whimpered and looked away. “Kimmy . . .”

“I stole a lot of money.”

Hyun stared holes in the couch seat, shaking her head, looking like she might cry. “You could go to jail for that. Are you going to go to jail?”

“Devlin has all these companies. Numbered companies. Shell companies. I think his dad knows about some of them. Maybe he got the idea from his dad, I don’t know. Anyway, I find he’s got these companies and they’re all doing business with each other, and some of the transactions are legitimate, but I chased down some of these other more scurrilous ones. They don’t go anywhere but to a Cayman company, and they just sit there. A little more digging and I see there’s more than one.”

“But you didn’t do this? Devlin did this?”

She nodded. “Devlin’s compiling money on the side. He’s squaring away some Chinese investors who want some easier routes through Canada, we’ll say. Like not through Stone Brokerage.”

Hyun shook her head, brow furrowed in puzzlement. “There’s a lot of detail you don’t care about. The detail doesn’t matter. I diverted funds from Cayman.”

You stole the money.”

“Yes. I guess.”

“But why, Kimmy? Why would you do that?”

She laughed. Not because it was funny, but because it was tragic. What would she tell her? That when her mom was dying, and the world was rotten and everything she’d been promised was dissolving before her that she’d found a little thrill in shoplifting. The more trivial, the better. The more nonsensical the better. How sometimes it would have been more exciting to be caught than to actually steal. To walk out of Shoppers Drug mart with lifted items was exciting, but wow, if anyone would have caught her? They’d find Ex-Lax or Geritol or men’s shaving kits or any kind of thing that a teenage straight-A student wouldn’t have. She would have cried to her dad how this was all a mistake and how she would never steal and he would know his daughter wouldn’t steal those things. They had money. He was a business owner. His daughter would never do that. When you’re dead inside, there’s nothing more electrifying than fighting for chaos, fighting for the natural demise of everything we know, or eroding the ramparts of civility, of lying and cheating and then begging forgiveness and watching everyone around you fall into place because they can’t stand disorder. Everything must be whole. Everything must make sense and be right. But nothing makes sense. Nothing is right. Everything is shit and life is unfair. She sniffed, prepared herself to phrase this for Hyun in the right way, the ameliorating way, then snuffled a small laugh. She said, “For the thrill.”

“Oh, Kimmy,” Hyun sighed and her forehead fell into her palm, her elbow on the back of the couch. She looked adorable; a sweet little bird broken by the reality of hard glass that looked just like bright blue sky.

She reached up and stroked Hyun’s hair away from her porcelain cheek, smiling. “At first, I did.”

Hyun said, “Can you give it back?”

“Not really,” she said. 

Hyun was astounded. “You spent it?” And then, horror of horrors: “No—the clothes! The clothes you bought me?”

Kimmy nodded, smiling.

Hyun was mortified, her features pinched into a silent howl of pain.

Kimmy said, “Don’t worry. They were business expenses.”

“What? Business expenses?”

“I want them to come after me. I want them to try to say I stole the money.”

Now Hyun was blank, her eyes devoid of thought, just staring at her.

“I took the money, but I didn’t keep it. I didn’t hide it in my bank. I spent it. I spent it right from Stone. I bought things I deserve. I want them to ask me about it. I want them to try to say I stole it. I can’t wait for them to do it.”

Hyun’s head shook from side to side in a mix of horror and disbelief.

“I’m the best thing they’ve got going.” She shrugged, smirking. “I’m in complicated relationships. You can’t define love. They can’t, that’s for sure. They wouldn’t dare to try. I bought my lover the most beautiful clothes. I bought them so she looks good when I bring her to a function. I bought my husband a suit because he deserves to look as good as the boss’s son—the boss’s sone who has seduced me, using his superior power as leverage. What will they say then? Nothing. Not a thing. They won’t know what to do.”

Hyun’s wide eyes roamed the room as she sought some solace in this torrent of chaos, an inexperienced rafter pitched from a kayak and looking for a safe stretch of shore before the rapids consumed her. Kimmy smiled and offered her a hand. 

“I stole the money from a thief. How about that, Hyun? Yes, I did it at first for the thrill, but maybe after a while I did it for vengeance.”

Hyun’s mouth worked around, wanting to say something, maybe wanting to condemn her, maybe wanting to cast her out of the home she kept with her daughter, but she could come up with nothing. Her hand trembled in Kimmy’s.

“I bought clothes for me. But only to wear to work. I bought clothes for my unbelievable girlfriend, who makes my heart feel so good. I bought my husband a suit so he could hang out with my boss, go to the ball game with my boss and his friends. My boss who stepped over too many lines to count. If anything, it was Devlin’s poor leadership that led me astray.” Now she showed Hyun an innocent face. Did it for as long as she could before she chuckled. She pulled Hyun’s hand so Hyun came closer. 

“They’re not going to send me to jail, Hyun. They’re not going to do anything.”

  *

Now dry and wearing a sweatshirt and shorts, Josh sat by the campfire down the slope of grass, halfway between the hot tub and the shore and the dock. The night sky was clear and stars twinkled above. Despite that beauty, the smoke chased him and even with his hood pulled over his face, he had to abandon the fire, the other fire-sitters laughing at him. One of Quinn’s friends, one of the nurses, saw him coming her way and showed him the sign of the cross, one finger over another, warding him away like he was a vampire. “Keep you and your smoke away from me,” she said, laughing. Someone else called him Josh the Smoke Magnet. For that particular insult, he stumbled to stand behind her despite her protestations, and sure enough, the billowing smoke column ambled their way, and she screeched with laughter and jumped away. Meyer threw a marshmallow at him and hit him right in the forehead. Steve fell off his log from laughing too hard. Someone passed him an ice cold beer can.

He thanked them, then saw it was Karina.

He said, “You out of the tub?”

“For now,” she said. “You going back in?”

He nodded. “In a bit,” he said.

But now, despite his lovely inebriation’s dulling effect, he detected a somberness from his old friend. “You okay?”

She smiled though, saying now, “Yeah,” and angling her head to the side. “Come down to the lake with me.”