DITW 10-10 Wrought

Too much flesh for a woman wearing a dress. Had she worn shorts? Maybe the picture was taken in Cayman. The day she wore the bikini.

Devlin was a cold manipulator and he would be a fool to believe anything he told him and anything he sent him. But the closeup photo of Kimmy’s inner thigh was all he could think about.

His boss Harmeet had summoned him to the office mid-morning, the first day back after the trip to Rome. He’d heard nothing on the weekend.

Ah, the weekend.

A time of rest and recuperation. Except he spent his weekend twisted in agony, wanting to move on with the best person in his life, and instead simmered an anxious pot of roiling hate and lust. The hurt applied by his enemy showed his enemy’s indecency. A true barbarian, fond of kicking someone when they were down.

The picture of Kimmy’s thigh was all he could think about—but he’d said nothing. Texted nothing in return to Devlin, made no mention of the bullying taunt to Kimmy. Suffered alone and in silence. Just the way he liked it.

Harmeet looked amped today, like he had good news, though he said nothing to Josh about what prompted the good mood, he hoped it was good news about the trip to Rome. He leaned back in his squeaky office chair, crossed a leg, showing off a sliver of his dark, hairy calf. They made chit chat about the trip, talking about the travel home and how it would take a while to get used to being back in Canada. It was odd how he was here alone. None of the others who went to Rome were present.

Harmeet said, “You were like a rock out there. Just a hunk of lead.”

Josh nodded, not knowing what it meant.

“You didn’t give them anything, you didn’t take anything from them. You sat and listened and only asked questions when you had to.”

Harmeet could mean this as a bad thing, that he was disengaged, and yeah, there were times he’d checked out, but the way Harmeet jabbed his hand, all five fingers, beefy gold ring on the middle one, reminded Josh of coaches giving half-time pep talks. He nodded again—checked out and thinking how another man took a picture of the inside of his wife’s naked thigh. What did the rest of the photo show?

Harmeet shrugged a shoulder, saying, “You saw some of those other execs. Even some from the main office. Too effusive, too ingratiating. I know these guys’s office is in Rome, and you might think they’re passionate Italians, but these people are Saxons. They think that kind of bubbly TikTok personality is for kids or imbeciles or people setting a trap. They don’t trust it.”

He shook his head no. Those people didn’t speak with affectation and didn’t gush. Harmeet continued, and Josh nodded along.

The unexpected benefit of the illicit photo Devlin sent was it swayed any anger Josh had sent Kimmy’s way. This was the man he was dealing with, and that meant it was the man Kimmy dealt with.

The best thing for him to have done was to stand up when this began and forbid his wife from involving herself with the worst human being he’d encountered in his life. He’d thought back then that interjecting himself would be inappropriate. That telling Kimmy no she couldn’t accept the job offer would be telling her how she could and couldn’t live her life. Something a man shouldn’t do. But it had nothing to do with stopping his wife from working. It had everything to do with protecting his family. That was something he’d failed at.

It was like he’d forgotten all the times Devlin had tormented him back at Dalton High—and even before high school. It was like he’d forgotten what a cruel piece of shit Devlin was.

But he hadn’t forgotten. The passing years had so buffered him from that torture that he thought it was safe to believe a man like Devlin could change.

Harmeet was pointing a stubby finger his way.

“Someone there actually mentioned you, Josh. Wanted to know your name again.”

Josh nodded.

With his hate flowing but redirected, the flesh in that sleazy picture of his wife’s inner thigh had been tempered from lust and sex and infidelity to that of sympathy. To the flesh of the tormented. Kimmy no different from him. That inner thigh flesh was the inner thigh flesh of another victim of Devlin’s bullying, his manipulations, his games of deceit and betrayal. Devlin had used Kimmy like a puppet, making her arms and legs and mouth move in the patterns most likely to cause Josh intense and humiliating harm.

“I’m going to move you up on the team for the next stage,” Harmeet said at last, leaning forward again and resting his forearms on his desk. “I know you can handle it. I want you there.”

* * *

Monday after lunch, she met Devlin out front of the office building, Devlin waiting for her in his Mercedes with the motor idling. A meeting downtown this afternoon, entered on the calendar a week before Josh found her panties in Devlin’s couch. She got into Devlin’s roadster, briefcase in her lap, doing up her seatbelt without saying a thing to him. Buckled up, she looked straight ahead like he didn’t exist. He stared at the side of her face. She said, “Let’s get going.”

Devlin cocked his head, pretending to be amused, as if he thought her anger to be petty. He said, “Monday morning and you’re still mad.”

She still said nothing and checked her watch, reminding him this appointment had a start time.

Devlin put the car in gear and headed out from the office and onto Yonge Street, heading downtown. “How was your weekend?”

She said, “Sensational.”

“That’s good to hear. How’s Josh? How was his trip?”

“Josh is... Yeah, he’s good. We don’t need to talk.”

“You and Josh?”

“You and me, Devlin. Any last-minute information before we meet with these guys?”

“I thought you meant you don’t talk to Josh. I thought that was surprising. I thought you’d have a lot to talk about.”

She put her fingers through his roadster’s door handle and fantasized opening it at the next light and walking away from it all. But she wouldn’t do that. As much a relief as it would be, she’d worked too hard to give up on this just because she should have known better than to sleep with the worthless Devlin fucking Stone.

“I’m glad you guys are talking.”

She shook her head. Bit her tongue. Then spoke even though she’d sworn to herself she wouldn’t say a thing to Devlin outside of business. “I had one rule. One rule, Devlin. Don’t hurt Josh. We can’t go back. So get on the DVP and let me think. You don’t have to talk.”

“Do you want the radio on?”

“Fine.”

He didn’t turn the radio on. He said, “Who wants to go back when we’re moving forward so well?”

“More cryptic bull shit,” she said to no one, just thinking out loud.

As if all-knowing, he said, “No one hurt Josh, Kimmy. He’s not hurting.”

And she thought of him on Saturday morning, a fragile eggshell man, sleeping in the sunlight, looking at peace from the devastation she’d wrought. How his eyes were empty and lifeless, how she’d stolen his soul, how she’d betrayed the only man that mattered, and cracked their priceless marriage into a hundred pieces. She held their lives together in her hands now like a shattered vase, and any small unfortunate movement could have the shards misaligning, the former perfect shape crumpling, none of the broken edges touching, the whole thing tumbling to the floor to break into a thousand shards more.

The tears came, and she’d thought she’d cried herself empty this weekend. She hid in her hair and opened her purse, took out a tissue and dried her eyes.

Devlin said, “Are you crying?”

She shook her head no, but couldn’t speak.

“I don’t want you to cry, Kimmy. We were a good team. We had magic together.”

You fucking ruined it!

He said, “Should we cancel the meeting?”

She scoffed. “What?”

“Are you going to be okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“I can pull over.”

She snapped her purse shut, glad of Devlin’s arrogance pushing away her sadness with pure hatred. “You can’t bully me like you bully Josh.”

“Because I care if you’re crying? I thought that made me compassionate. Apparently, it makes me a bully now.”

“It’s your tone. Your tone reveals your subtext. No one wants to challenge you on it, no one would dare to because they’re afraid of you. I’m not afraid of you.”

He drew a deep breath, his lips pursed. He let it out. “That’s why we had magic.”

“We don’t have magic anymore and you want to blame me because you think it’s fun to taunt someone with obvious untruths.”

Devlin chuckled, not mean or rueful, but amused. He said, “Kimmy, Kimmy, Kimmy. Wow, that gets me so hot. That’s every reason right there I wanted you in my life. Fuck, you are amazing.”

She turned to look at him for the first time, watched the sun slanting through the sunroof and lighting a line across the muscled ridge of his jaw. “Then why did you treat me like dirt? Why did you push me away?”

He shook his head, looked over his shoulder, changing lanes, saying, “I keep telling you I’m not the bad guy but you don’t listen. Everyone says I’m the asshole—but all I’m trying to do is grant everyone’s wishes, make everyone happy, make a good living, and bring dreams to life.”

She rolled her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose.

Devlin said, “Are you crying again?”

“No.”

“Are you going to cry at the meeting?”

She looked over at him again, and this time his eyes met hers. He showed a small sympathetic smile. Then he said, “Are you going to fix your hair?”

“What do you mean?”

“You used to do it so nice. Pulled back, all shiny. This doesn’t look very professional.”

“It’s the way I used to wear my hair. It’s the way I wore it when you hired me.”

“I used to love walking into meetings with you behind me. It made my fucking dick hard the way the people we’re meeting would dart their eyes your way. My killer Kimmy. Kimmy Chang. You scared them. My black-eyed shark, my red-lipped blood drinker.”

“I’m not your fetish, Devlin. I’m not your exotic dragon lady you found in the Orient. So don’t fucking tell me how to do my hair or how to dress, or wear heels because you like heels.”

He drove in silence for almost a full minute before he said, “Did you tell Josh you’re with me today, that we’re driving downtown together, that we might even be out late tonight?”

“No. I didn’t.”

Devlin shook his head in slow wags, sighing. “Bad Kimmy. Bad, bad Kimmy.”

* * *

It was after seven when she finally got home, coming in the front door of their apartment, tossing down her keys, then lurching forward and holding the edge of the table under the photo of the Lungshan Temple. Her breaths came in shudders. Even home held no reprieve from her misery. Her hands trembled, and the tears pushed forward like water against a dam.

The apartment was dim, no smells of cooking, no TV on, no video games, none of her cherished comforts. She’d taken them for granted and traded them for wicked sex with a wicked man.

Flats slipped off, she wiped at her eyes with the backs of her hands, coming around the corner to the family room and finding Josh sitting at the kitchen pass-through, paperwork spread out, pen in hand, his expression grim. He said, “Hey.”

“Hi.”

“Do you want to have a seat?”

Her heart thudded and her lips wriggled. “Why?”