DITW 13-14: Gurgling In Black Mud

Kimmy came out of their apartment dressed for work, seven o’clock in the morning. Josh sat in the Qashqai and watched, hoping she wouldn’t see him parked on the street running along the front of their apartment building. It would be a terrible start to the already awful morning. But Kimmy didn’t see him, strutting stone-faced to her Leaf and unlocking it with the fob. He waited for her to get it started and pull out of the lot, head the opposite way from him, off to hit the 401 and get into work. Get to work for Devlin Stone.

He watched her dot on his Find My Phone, seeing her loop the clover leaf and get on the highway before he pulled into the parking lot and went up to their apartment. Last night he’d gone and booked a room at the Best Western on his credit card.

What was Kimmy thinking, walking to her car this early morning? Her face had been unreadable. What had he expected? Had he expected her to stumble her way to the car, perhaps fall against it for a moment before gathering herself? Maybe he’d expected her not to go at all.

And that was it. The most satisfactory answer. That’s what he wanted. He wanted his wife to sacrifice this job she loved for the sake of their marriage.

Wasn’t their marriage worth it?

But no, he watched his wife get up the next morning after the tragic end to their marriage (I mean, wasn’t it?) get dressed and made up and get in her car and drive to work for the man who’d slayed them. Who’d taken his mighty ten-inch battle-axe and cleaved their union in two.

Pregnant.

Pregnant, he thought, getting under the shower stream. Just yesterday he’d fucked Kimmy in here. Put his dick in her ass even though she’d shown him the worst things that had gone on behind his back this summer.

Done it because you asked her to.

Yeah, but so what?

What did you think it would look like?

None of it mattered. Kimmy was pregnant. Kimmy was pregnant, and, yeah, it would most likely be his baby.

This was what he’d thought, up all night staring at the ceiling of the Best Western’s hundred-thirty dollar a night room. Kimmy was pregnant with his child. They should be celebrating.

But what?

Kimmy had let a demon into their marriage. She’d betrayed them. She’d ruined them with her lust and her betrayal. Yes, somehow, he’d sexualized the betrayal, but that wasn’t his own doing. Forces had worked together to make that happen. Had worked behind the scenes to mold his thinking into that awful shape. That was the somehow. It wasn’t a mystery.

And yet, alone in that bed last night in the sterile hotel room, all he could think was that he might be a father. As much as he’d like to offload the responsibility to others, the thinking was his. Maybe they’d pointed him in the direction, but he’d taken the steps. He’d even encouraged it.

He might be a father.

If the baby wasn’t his, Kimmy and her devil offspring could go fuck off into the mountains and never come back. But what if he was a father?

The how of their marital repair eluded him. It would elude anyone. How would one come back to a marriage after such devastation?

With his hands spread on the tiled wall below the shower head, he let the spray cascade over his back and neck. Eyes shut tight, he could picture a perfect baby. A beautiful creation wailing at the surprise dawning of a mortal existence, looking for love, looking for care. A product of his own loins and a product of the woman he loved. And who swore still loved him. Birthed from her canal.

A deep canal where a man whom he hated had stuck his oversized hose and irrigated Kimmy’s fields with his healthy fertilizer.

The hands on the wall turned to fists, and he beat a wet and angry rhythm.

What should be the grandest elation he’d allowed to pervert into the starkest betrayal.

It was Devlin. It was Amy. . . . It was Kimmy.

But it was him, too.

In the closet now, he began to dress for work. Kimmy had taken the suit she’d bought him and hung it back up again. Did she care for him, or care for the degeneracy the suit stood for?

He’d spent last night at a motel because he didn’t want to go to Meyer’s in the state he was in. What had happened between him and Kimmy was too big to even understand. If he couldn’t understand it, how could he sit with Meyer and try to talk it out without revealing the grandest shame a man could endure? And he’d walked into it willingly. Had set himself up for such a devastation.

Later, combing his hair in the mirror, he realized despite his wifely condemnation, he was going to work, too. He’d condemned Kimmy, but here he was, sneaking into his own apartment so he could get showered and ready for work.

His reflection showed a stark image; a man with dark eyes and hollowed cheeks; a shell, ready to crack.

But there were things he knew; things that gleamed in the rubble of their marital rubble. Kimmy would have to earn her way back. He couldn’t crawl to her. She would never respect him again—and she shouldn’t.

Kimmy would have to prove her devotion.

But what if she was pregnant with your own perfect little baby?

Nothing mattered but Kimmy’s return.

But with an unfortunate meeting of his own gaze in the mirror, he envisioned Kimmy and Devlin together and the baby was theirs, and Kimmy looked in Devlin’s black eyes, and though he tried as hard as he could to fight a monstrous surge of bereavement, he couldn’t stop the tears.

* * *

Tami presented her with missed messages as soon as she got in to the office. “Mr. Stone wants to meet with you and his lawyer.”

“Devlin?”

Tami said, “No. Stone senior. He’d like to know when you’re available.”

Kimmy shook her head. “Not this week. What else?”

Tami said, “Mr. Stone—I mean Devlin. He said he wants to see you at lunch.”

“Okay. Where?”

Tami looked up, unsure. “He said you’d know where.”

* * *

She waited till after noon just so Devlin would worry how he mattered. He was in his apartment, two cocktails ready.

She said, “I can’t, I have to go back to work.”

Devlin said, “Boss says you can take the afternoon off.”

Kimmy threw her bag to the couch and lifted her head, arched her back, showing great poise. There was a delightful unsureness Devlin tried to conceal from her. It showed in his posture and the ingratiating display of having prepared drinks for her arrival. The last time they'd been together, reality showed Devlin the error of his ways; Josh had launched a chair at him and there was nothing Devlin could do about it. Though Devlin would never admit it outright, his path, his machinations, had crumbled, had not only shown his mistakes to her, had shamed him. He wanted it to go without acknowledgment, wanted to maintain the facade, keep pretending they were enjoined in a scheme and that he had all the say. His father owned the company, after all.

Devlin brought both glasses over to the low table, set them down and sat beside her, looking at her. She said nothing.

He said, “Are you going to keep me in suspense?”

She looked his way, bored, uninspired. “About what?”

Devlin smirked, then assumed an expression like hers, leaning forward and retrieving his whisky drink, sipping it.

She said, “How’s you eye? You’re wearing makeup?”

Devlin set his drink down and sat back again, hooking his arm over the couch’s seat back, his hand near her face. He steadied his eyes on her. “You’re toying with me,” he said.

She raised her chin, examined his face. “That’s a good match with your skin tone. I can still see you have a black eye, though.”

“Playful and bitchy,” Devlin said, then chuckled, looking across the room. His eyes returned to hers. “I think that means you have good news for me.”

She said, “Did you learn your lesson?”

“If I tell you I did, do I get a treat?”

“Tell me and find out,” she said.

Devlin rubbed his chin, breathing in a long, relaxed drag, scrutinizing her with narrowed eyes. “Why don’t you tell me what you want? Let me know how you would play this game?”

“You make it sound like it’s a mystery. Like I didn’t tell you to leave Josh to me.”

Devlin’s lips pursed, and he looked away.

She said to the side of his face, “Are you still fucking Amy?”

He regarded her like it was a crazy question. “No.”

“You’re playing games with me.”

“I’m not,” he said.

She said, “I see how you play games, and I see how they end up. If you play games with me, you will regret it.”

Devlin nodded, looking down, trying to maintain some masculine composure even though she treated him like a scolded child. “Amy might have fucked with Josh. Amy doesn’t like him.”

“Might have?”

He met her eyes. “No, she did. I didn’t ask her to.”

“What did she do?”

“I mean, she’s in England. All she did was send him some texts.”

“For your benefit?”

“I did not ask her to do any of it.”

“Then why would she if you’re not fucking her?”

Devlin looked up, amused. “I’d say she would like for that to be the case.”

“That you were fucking her?”

“But I’m not,” he assured her.

“It’s hard when she’s so far away, I suppose.” She kept her eyes on him.

Devlin said, “Even when she’s here, it’s not like that. Not for a long, long time.”

“She can’t just stop thinking about you,” she said.

Devlin chuckled, raising an eyebrow. “Jealous?”

She didn’t smile. “Do I look jealous?”

In an obvious effort to appear more honest, Devlin shifted where he sat, speaking with his hands moving in earnest gestures. “I didn’t ask Amy to do anything. I talk to Amy, I tell Amy what’s going on, and Amy does crazy shit. She’s a loose cannon.”

“You had no idea? . . . I know you did. You’re just bragging to your old psycho friend who hates Josh, telling her all the crazy mean shit you’re doing.”

Devlin stared at her and she knew what he was thinking: he wasn’t doing it alone.

She said, “You’re a liability.”

He nodded, shrugged a shoulder. “I won’t talk to her anymore.”

She shook her head, eyes narrowed. “How can I trust you? When you do something so stupid like talking to Amy, when you go and make moves behind my back? . . . How could I ever trust you?”

Devlin didn’t know what to say, his mouth moving around, brow low and mean, wanting to fight back, defend himself, but they both knew he had nothing.

“They were supposed to work out, weren’t they? Isn’t that it? You expected different results?”

Now Devlin’s eyebrows rose, and he looked at her with arrogant charm; still the methods of the spoiled schoolboy.

She said to him amused but plainly: “You failed.”

Devlin rolled his eyes but couldn’t deny it.

She said, “You think you’re so great, and you don’t realize I just watched you brag and grandstand your way into showing me the goofiest air ball in history. That’s what it’s called, right? Like not off the post or the rim, but like not even close.”

Devlin backed away, unamused, smile gone. His eyes darted around the room, his brain parsing all the things he wanted to say and all the things he couldn’t say and trying to find something.

She put on pressure. “Well?”

He said, “I think I hit the rim.”

She chuckled and shook her head. “I’m not impressed by men who hit the rim.”

Devlin’s irritation was restrained, yet still plain to see. He fidgeted, assumed all the mannerisms of a man who didn’t know when he was beat. She waited him out, waited for the tics and aggravation to pass, and he at last faced her, calmed, but eyes still dark and angry. He said, “So what now?”

She crossed her legs, leaned closer, the two of them half-facing on the couch. Her hand went on his knee, then stroked higher to mid-thigh. She had his attention.

She said, “You betrayed me. Caused me harm.”

“I didn’t betray you,” he said, eyes turned down to her hand moving higher now.

“You caused me harm.”

Devlin was silent, eyes still watching her hand as it rested at the seam of his thigh and hip, the heft of his large genitals pushing against her purlicue.

She said, “Do you deny it?”

“I . . . It’s not what I wanted.”

Her hand moved again, now going to his fly, searching out the tab and tugging it open in four tries. She slipped her hand inside and found his unshielded flesh growing turgid. She played fingers over his balls, found his cock head and teased it before taking his penis out and letting it hang from the open fly.

“But that’s what happened,” she said, petting his manhood, smiling at him.