Devil In The Waters 10-2

Kimmy stood at his hotel room door.

Four-thousand miles from home, across an ocean, a whole other continent. There could be only one reason she was here.

“Oh no,” he croaked, wincing, tortured, falling away from the open door and stumbling into his room, his insides, viscera, heart and soul, all choked by an ache wringing him dry of his already diminished spirit. “Why are you here?”

Behind him, Kimmy’s voice, just a gentle whisper calling his name. The whisper followed him, lashing at his back like the crack of a whip. He spun around, lurching forward, hands clenched in fists, growling at her through clenched teeth. “I said, why are you here?”

Kimmy stepped into the room, still eclipsing her body with the half-open door, shielding her from his anger, her narrow eyes now wide and trembling. “I had to come,” she whispered.

His shaking fists raised above his shoulders, he roared at the ceiling in agony, “Why are you here?” Then the fists hammered down on his thighs and he twisted away from her in torrential rage.

“I missed you,” she cried behind him, her voice rising from a whisper now to a warbled plea. “I missed you, Josh,” she said, her renewed statement breaking into breathy sobs.

He spun around again to face her, his back to the wall next to the sunny window. Kimmy couldn’t come near him. Too afraid. Standing now inside his room, the door closed, her back to it, hand on the lever, ready to bolt to safety if she had to.

And why?

They stared at each other from across the narrow room, both of them backed against walls. He grimaced and beat the back of his wrist against his forehead, voice thick with heart-wounding, lamenting, “Why— why did you have to come here?”

Kimmy covered her mouth with both hands, her eyes glistening wet, flooding, tears spilling her cheeks. She could barely form words, her voice a tightened squeak. “I missed— I missed you so m-much.”

“Aw, Kimmy,” he cried, and beat his thigh with another fist, then recoiled, pivoting to the side, staggering past the window, wishing his room had another exit so he could run far, far away from what his wife’s presence meant.

Kimmy called his name again, coming deeper into his room.

The panties that had betrayed her lay in a crumpled ball in the corner where he’d thrown them, and he lunged for them, snatching them up from the floor before Kimmy saw them, before the panties revealed to her his own shame. He faced her, the panties clutched to his stomach. Kimmy stood at the foot of his bed, only a half-dozen feet away. Her hands were open, reaching to him, wanting him to come to her because she was afraid of what he might do if she went nearer to him. Tears narrowed her black eyes, head cocked at a pleading angle as her pouting lips mouthed the word, “Please.”

He raised his fist toward her and opened it. Showed her what he hid. Her balled panties unfurled to drape over his held out palm.

When Kimmy saw them she buckled and howled in silent pain, folding in two with both hands between her knees. He stepped toward her again. “Why, Kimmy? Why did you come here?”

Still hunched over, she said, “I missed you, Josh. I missed you so much.”

Slowly, she stood upright before him, face to face and close, crying, wiping at her cheeks with hands half hidden in the sleeves of her cotton sweater.

The woman revealed to him when he’d opened his hotel door wasn’t the Kimmy Chang he’d left at home. Not six-feet tall in expensive heels, not with black-lined eyes and blood-painted lips. Not with the superior stare of a woman born with cold dragon’s blood.

This Kimmy looked like the woman he’d married. No heels, only canvas lace-ups. Cotton pants, cotton sweater. Her hair wasn’t slicked back in a high-gloss bun, revealing the sharp angles of her jaw, her long swan-like neck. Now her hair was clean but tousled, framing her angelic face in waves. She wore no makeup. She looked like she did when she was in high school. She looked how she did when he fell in love with her.

He shoved the panties into her face, making her recoil. But she stood her ground, leaning away, features pinched, eyes closed, snuffling for breath as he mushed them into her mouth and nose.

He insisted on knowing: “Why, why?”

Kimmy’s shoulders shook with her crying.

He let the panties go and they fell to her chest, stuck on her sweater’s fabric for a moment before tumbling to the hotel room floor.

“There’s only one reason,” he said, his brow heavy with the weight of extreme sorrow, his cheekbones aching with the desire to burst into tears at this revelation.

“No,” she whimpered, shaking her head.

“You should have stayed at home. You should have stayed at home, Kimmy.”

“I couldn’t,” she said, unable to make eye contact. Then, a tiny whisper: “Don’t leave me, Josh.”

“Kimmy, don’t! Don’t say that.” He turned away and put his arms on the wall, hanging his head.

“Josh, please...”

He wheeled to face her, furious she couldn’t see what her arrival meant. “Kimmy, stop. Please, why? Why, Kimmy?”

She didn’t know what to say, looking up at the ceiling and still crying, her face beaming with hurt. “I don’t know...”

Arms hanging at his sides with the unbearable weight of his dread, he said, “You’re admitting it.”

Their eyes met and more tears streamed from Kimmy’s eyes. Her chin dimpled, her jaw trembled. She wanted to deny it but she couldn’t.

“You just killed me,” he said, his voice quiet.

“No, Josh, no,” she said, her voice rising, taking the place left behind by his diminished volume. She rushed to him, casting her fear aside, grabbing the lapels of his suit jacket. “That’s not it. That’s not it at all.”

He turned his face away, resting the back of his head on the wall.

If she’d stayed at home he could lie to himself more. He could fucking lie to himself more and more and more until he was bubble-wrapped in a fat padding of lies. The doubt, the vacillation, the uncertainty—they all clouded his vision, kept him from seeing. But Kimmy in his hotel room all the way in Rome was 20/20, 8K Cinemascope, crystal clear, high illumination.

He armed her away, broke her grip from his jacket and stepped away, showed her his back, turning to look out the window. Down on that cobblestone street below, people with better lives came and went with coffee, wine, pastries, and smiles on their faces.

In his periphery he could see Kimmy’s head bow, her neck emitting a teeny click. The tension deflated from the moment and she turned away, too.

When her footsteps receded he said, “Don’t go.” The footsteps stopped. She should go. She should get out of his life.

“I hate being without you,” she said toward the door.

He turned from the window to regard her standing near the door, shoulders slumped, head down.

For a brief second he wanted to hug her, but then pure heartache gripped him again, and his features pinched into a harrowed mask. “You should have stayed at home.”

She nodded, her shaggy black hair shaking.

He could never, ever trust her. She was here because she was guilty and if for a second he wanted to feel sympathy or some angle on happiness, all he had to do was consider his cousin Meyer was probably the world’s worst private detective and Kimmy had spotted him. Now she was here to convince stupid Josh she was a good and loving human being.

Only: what would Kimmy gain by coming here for that reason?

“I’ll go,” she said.

“Because you’re guilty?”

She stayed where she was, still facing the door.

“If you hid those fucking panties for me to find, then why are you here?”

“I told you I missed you.”

“I left on Sunday and it’s Wednesday.”

“We hardly talked last week. You didn’t want to stay in the same room with me. If I’d come in, you would go out. You stayed late at work every night. . . . You only called me on Monday to say you were here.”

She’d sown distrust, she’d sown his field with the bitter seeds of betrayal. But he wouldn’t say it. He would never say it out loud. If the words were spoken, if the words mixed with oxygen, they’d ignite, they’d burst into a fireball of total devastation, of self-immolation and utter exothermic ruin.

“I would have called tonight,” he muttered.

Kimmy turned and faced him, her face a mess, streaked with tears, features wounded by hurt, her eyes filled with pain, but she raised her chin, and though her words were weak and shaky, she said, “I never sh-should’ve hidden my underwear for y-you to f-find.”

Then they stared at each other for the longest time, not saying anything, Kimmy like a soldier at attention on a sweltering day, held upright by marionette strings, ready to crumple at any second. Such a lie. Such an obvious lie. Lying would be the only thing that would keep him alive, keep him walking, keep him breathing.

He turned away from her and looked out the window again, this time across the Renaissance sea.

“Josh, please...”

He chewed on his lower lip, trying to push away all the thoughts that wanted to jump him in the dark and kick the living shit out of him. “Everything was easier when you were home.”

A moment of silence, then: “I can leave.”

He shook his head, mouth a slim and firm line, his brow troubled lowered.

Again: “Josh, please...”

He turned, knowing this would be the moment he crumbled and fell to his knees, melting into a sobbing puddle. But nothing happened. No emotions came. He regarded Kimmy, his beautiful, smart, funny wife, best friend and companion, almost the mother of his child. A woman he’d loved. And felt nothing. No rage, no hate... no love. “I’m empty, Kimmy.”

Now it was Kimmy crumbling, looking to the heavens above the room’s high ceiling, new tears spilling, hands going between her knees, head falling forward. She emitted a tortured wail but choked it off, reducing it to quiet sobs.

He closed the distance, stood an arm’s breadth away, watching her skinny back heave for breath, finally feeling something. But feeling it for a woman he used to know. He didn’t want that woman to cry. He put out his hand like he would rest it on her back to calm her, but closed the hand and returned it to his side.

He turned and dropped to sit on the foot of the bed, hunched over and watching her cry. Tears dropped from under her black hair, twinkled in the sunlight before they fell to the carpet and melted away.

At last he touched her arm. She swayed toward him, not knowing where he was, staggering and tumbling onto her side in his lap, where he folded his arms around her shoulders and held her while she hid her face away.