(Complete) Devil In The Waters, Book 2, Chapter 8

In the kitchen opening a bag of Zesty Cheese Doritos, Steve joined Josh, looking to pop the first beer of the night. Meyer was working on convincing sleepy Sophie to pack it in for the night, go have a lie-down on her Auntie Kimmy’s bed. Sophie was tired but amped. One soda pop and that cute little girl was all live-wire energy, boogying away for her dance game, loving all the attention and getting laughs from her Uncle Josh, whom she adored. But Soph was on the precipice edge of a big fall, standing on that cliff edge of hearty uncompromising sleep. About a second away from falling face-down on the couch and being carted to bed. Meyer was putting smart choices in his daughter’s repertoire, sweet-talking adult logic to a kid who wanted to party still.

“Am I crazy, or is Soph the cutest kid you’ve ever seen?” Steve was at his side, both of them watching Meyer’s daughter listening patiently to her father’s reasoning.

Josh said, “I know. She’s so adorable.”

“You guys trying again?”

“Me and Kimmy? It’s on the table. Kimmy’s thinking about working too.”

Steve put three bottles of Heineken on the counter without making them rattle, alcoholic beverages at the ready for when Sophie went to bed. Josh poured Doritos from the bag to a big serving bowl. Steve said, “I gotta get a girlfriend.”

Josh laughed; Meyer took Sophie by the hand walking her past the pass-through, winking, joyless Sophie surrendering and wishing Josh and Steve a polite good night, both of them leaning over the counter, singing ‘Night Sophie, waving, getting a little smirk from her. Josh went through the roster of the available girls in their age group who worked with them at Swanson, but the numbers were slim. Steve shot them down. Josh told him to join a gym or something, take up a hobby he’d like a girl to have. They popped the tops on their beers and took swigs.

“Hey,” Steve said, “whatever happened with that thing with Kimmy?”

“What thing with Kimmy?”

“You know, where you said she was with that guy when you were passed out. The guy from high school, at your guys’s reunion.”

And just like that, his evening went grim. He hid it from his face, but shrugged for Steve’s sake, like it was nothing, not like the big weight on his back he sometimes pretended it wasn’t. It was hearing someone else bring it up out of the ether, talking life into a thing he could sometimes say was just his imagination. It had been shoved to the back of his closet, but now it toppled forward and landed on his toe. “Imagination is funny, you know how it is.”

“Good,” Steve said, taking another swig. “I hated to think something like that could be real.”

“You were the one who said—”

Meyer appeared on the other side of the counter, reaching for his Heineken and saying, “What could be real?”

Steve didn’t want to say, so he plugged the bottle end in his mouth and drank, leaving it to Josh. Josh waffled, said, “Uh, this thing I told him . . .” Then couldn’t finish.

Steve swallowed, looked to Meyer who popped his own beer, standing on the other side of the counter looking perplexed and maybe a little left out. Steve said to Meyer, “Your cuz is a worry wart for no reason.”

Meyer nodded, chuckled, drank.

Josh said, “It’s nothing. Kimmy . . .”

Meyer was interested, leaning elbows on the counter top.

Steve said, “Josh went to that high school reunion.”

Meyer said, “Yeah, I know. He drank too much, passed out. He told me.”

Josh said, “When I was out, Kimmy maybe got in, like, a fight with someone.”

Meyer tried not to laugh, then saw Josh was serious. “You mean like a fist fight?”

“Yeah.”

Steve said, “With a guy.”

Meyer said, “What guy?”

Josh said, “You remember Devin from my high school?”

“No . . . Maybe. Jock or something?”

“Right.”

Meyer said, “Why did she get in a fight with this guy?”

Steve said, “Kimmy wouldn’t tell him.”

Meyer said, “That’s weird.”

“No, she did,” Josh said. “Eventually.”

Steve said, “Oh yeah? You didn’t tell me. Why?”

“I can’t say. It’s Kimmy’s biz. I don’t want to talk about it, guys, can we just play some Modern Warfare, please?” He nodded his chin to the TV where the menu for Sophie’s dancing game still swirled.

“Yeah, yeah,” Steve said. “So it was a fight? Not something else?”

Meyer said, “Something else?”

Josh waved the conversation away, grabbing the bowl of chips and his beer.

Meyer said to Steve, “Something else, something else? . . .”

Steve said, “Told you your cuz is a worry wart.”

On the couch, Meyer was still interested. “Josh, you think it was something else?”

“I don’t want to talk about it. Look, Kimmy and I worked it out. It was nothing. Well, no, not nothing, but Kimmy and I dealt with it.”

The worry on Meyer’s face bothered him. And he hated to have his cousin thinking bad of Kimmy. “It’s fine, Meyer, I mean it, really. Kimmy and I . . . this week we’ve never been better.”

Meyer looked unconvinced but knew he had to let it go. Steve broke the uncomfortable silence with some eager pre-game hype man talk, firing up Modern Warfare. Then farting. Meyer laughed.

But Josh was thinking now how Kimmy’d been out of sorts when they got home. How she’d wanted the car today. Why? So he wouldn’t show up at home at lunchtime unannounced? Had Devin been here today, fucking her on their bed? Kimmy was all tired out, had to have a nap in the afternoon and recover from the big-dick pounding Devin gave her. Her demeanor when he’d arrived home replayed in his head and now he attributed guilt to everything she did and everything she’d said. Couldn’t hang out and talk with them for too long, the guilt was so strong, Kimmy not able to meet his cousin’s eyes knowing what she’d done today with another man, how she’d betrayed Josh . . . 

Or it was nothing.

This was over. It was supposed to be behind him. But the all-consuming thoughts returned.

Five minutes later, he’d excused himself from the room to go to the can, sitting now on the toilet so he could fire up Find My Phone . . . 

*** 

With the hatch of the Qashqai open, headlights from behind beamed her shadow over the cargo area. She tossed in her purse, her bag, then slammed the hatch door down as the headlights careened sideways and the car pulled up to stop. She turned. It was Devin.

He sat low in his Mercedes, his big frame filling up the cockpit, elbow on the door sill. Smirking at her, his cheek dimpled. “Told you fifteen.” The depth of his voice made the words decipherable even over the music coming from his stereo.

She was sure to show her unimpressed face for a long beat, waiting for him to turn the stereo down. When he did, she said, “I don’t know if you’re looking for a gold star or what . . .”

But if she thought she had him, she didn’t. He said, “I get a gold star from you it won’t be for finishing fast.”

She chuckled, not at the joke—it was juvenile—but at his ability to disarm. She could rail now, tell him he’s a pig, but it was probably what he wanted. She said, “What do you want, Devin? It’s late. I’m on my way home.”

“Not even nine, Kimmy,” he said. “Not late. Night’s just getting started.”

“Maybe for you, Devin, but I was on my way home. I appreciate you coming by, but I think if anything needs to be said between us in the future, we can do that by text. But I don’t even see a reason for that.”

“You don’t?”

“Do you?” She crossed her arms, leaned her butt against the back of the Nissan.

He didn’t answer, dipping his head out of the reddish light from the gym’s wall-mounted sign way above and behind her. She swore he was ruffling his hair, checking himself out in the rearview mirror. When his face reappeared in the open car window, his dashing smile was wide. “Give me five. We’ll go up the road, find some place serves a half decent Scotch, and I’ll tell you all I can offer.”

“I know what you offer.”

His smile faltered. Returned. “You don’t want it?”

“Don’t need it, thanks.”

He raised his eyebrows, made an interested sound in his throat. “Go back home. Back to your apartment. Back to the firm making what you make. Sleeping in the same bed, waking the same, never knowing the could have beens.”

Was he talking about a job or not? “Your first year psych 101 shit doesn’t work on me, Devin. Nice try, though. I mean it.”

He laughed heartily, freely, a quick head toss back. “You’re a diamond, Kimmy,” he said.

“I am a diamond.”

The humor left his face a moment. His eyes traveled from her sneakers, up her yoga tights to her face. He smiled again, eyes narrowed. “You’re like a diamond in a greasy cardboard box someone brought home from the grocery, you in that apartment. So much. So wasted.”

“I’m not wasted, Devin.”

“You know you’re not going to make baskets.”

“I’m not. I’m stopping.”

“So what are you going to do? Back to immigration? Linoleum floors, fluorescent lights, two weeks a year, hoping you have enough for Cuba?”

“Work is more than what you bring home.”

“Really?” He laughed now, watching a car coming behind, waiting to see if he’d have to move aside from the lane he was blocking, but the car pulling down an aisle on the prowl for a parking spot. “Your level of expertise, sitting five days a week, all that potential. To do what? Help someone get a leg up here? Die on your sword if you want, Kimmy. You’re too smart to fall for what you call my bullshit. But. But . . . you’re too smart to think I’m wrong, too.” He showed a snide flash of a smile, his eyes hidden in the shadow of his door frame, teeth lit in gym-light red.

She bounced off the Nissan lightly, arms still crossed, went to the Mercedes’s open window, peering inside his expensive car, all the gauges and dials, polished walnut and leather. “I tell you what, gold star. I’ll give you that five minutes if you use it to give it to me straight. For once, I’d like you to talk like you’re not dancing around something.”

*** 

All she wanted was some straightforward communication. This wasn’t sex. This wasn’t an affair. Tell me what you mean. Is there a job, or is all this a ploy to get me to open my legs? Because it won’t happen again . . . 

They were in his Mercedes, a stupid thing for her to do, but it was too late now, sitting on the leather bucket chair next to Devin, rocketing into Ajax proper. She wore her yoga tights, a tank top, a fleecy jacket and sneakers. Devin wearing most of a suit. Pants and belt, dress shirt, no tie, cuffs unbuttoned, sleeves rolled up. His forearms were hairy. Black hair. Muscular too. More than in high school. Mature muscle. 

Devin said, “Where’s there a bar around here?”

“I don’t know,” she said, shifting in her seat, looking around to get her bearings, thinking of the places out by the 401, all filled with too-young people, then thinking of the Dragon. Not far from where they lived, though. Pictured sitting at the bar, Josh, Meyer, and Steve coming in for a drink, seeing her there, the shock on her face. But, no. Not with Sophie. Sophie in bed, it was past her bedtime, they wouldn’t bring her nor leave her at home. Call a sitter so they can go to the bar? Those three playing Modern Warfare, beers in the fridge, stomachs full of pizza, looking to go out of the apartment for a drink? Not in a million years . . . 

“Turn right up ahead,” she said, “then a left. I’ll show you. There’s a pub . . .”

“Place where we can talk?”

“So you do want to talk?”

“Kimmy’s telling me she wants to hear it straight, doesn’t want to dance anymore,” he said aloud like to himself. “Let’s sit down, see what I say . . .”

“Why don’t you show me some respect? You say I’m so much better than all those girls from high school, yet you talk to me like I’m one of them. Like I’m some bimbo who’s going to eat out of your hand.”

“I don’t talk to you like that.”

“You do, Devin. Everything is like you want to get in my pants.”

He turned his face to hers, mocking an uh-oh expression, the passing streetlights flickering on the ridges of his cheekbones.

It was surprisingly comical. Not arrogant for once, but personable. She laughed. Then he did too. She said, “That’s all you want? Get in my pants? You really are an asshole.”

He laughed still, eyes on the road, a calmness loosening his features, still in the joke, even enjoying her messing with him. “Your pussy is just a piece of pie in the bakery, Kimmy.”

The tone of his voice was calm, unprovocative. Not teasing her, maybe even in a way saying he didn’t want to get in her pants. He did, though. It was clear by his actions. And of course that he had already gotten in her pants. But if sex was only a piece of the puzzle, what was the whole picture?

*** 

There was fear walking from Devin’s Mercedes to the Fox & Dragon she’d encounter Josh and Steve and Meyer. Or maybe another acquaintance. But there was no one. Late on a Tuesday night who would they run into? No one in Ajax knew Devin. Few people in Ajax even knew her, and she lived here. Maybe someone from the building? 

It didn’t matter; they saw no one on the street, and she got ahead, scanned the windows of the Dragon as they passed under the brick arch, coming to the empty patio. Inside the pub were no faces she knew. Only a half dozen patrons total, none of the crowd looking like people she would associate with.

They took seats at the very end of the bar so they could be alone, the nearest patrons congregated clear at the opposite end of the bar. She got on a stool, hooked her sneakers on its rung, swiveled and watched Devin take his spot next to her. His eyes were down low, and when he sidled next to her, sitting open, fucking man-spreading with his knees out wide like a pair of wings, he said, “What do you do at the gym? Yoga or something?”

“Gym stuff. Treadmill, weights. I do yoga once a week.”

“It’s working.” He put a hand on his hip, suit jacket open, white shirt tight against his hard belly, waving to the bartender.

She said, “What, were you checking me out the whole way here? I knew I should have let you walk out front.”

“Yeah, but you had to keep an eye out for people you knew,” he said, and before she could interject the bartender was there. Devin said, “Best Scotch?”

The guy nodded, assessing Devin, taking it all in. The expensive watch, the stare, the expensive suit, the build . . . If Josh were so brusque, the bartender would come back at him passive-aggressive. This guy just smiled, said, “Oban. Not the highest shelf in the world, but you can’t tell me it’s not great.”

Devin said, “Two doubles,” and the bartender got to pouring.

She said, “Think I’m a Scotch drinker?”

He leaned a forearm on the padded edge of the bar saying, “I think you like nice things. I think you’re interested in what a good Scotch tastes like.”

“I’ve had Scotch before.”

“Indulge me. You want something else?”

“Scotch is fine,” she said.

The bartender set low glasses with an inch of amber whisky in the bottoms. Devin lay down a twenty and a ten and waved off change. He picked up his glass and held it out. She collected hers, met his, they touched glass. Devin said, “To the beginning,” and sipped his Scotch.

She tasted her Oban, hid a grimace, set the glass down on the chipped bar counter’s Newcastle coaster. “The beginning of what?”

He said, “The beginning of something incredible.”

“This is what I’m talking about, Devin,” she said, her voice edged with irritation. “Treat me with respect. I don’t like this double talk and innuendo. It’s not me. I’m not one of those girls. You want to begin something with me, you’re going to make it clear. Do you understand?”

He flashed that mean smile. Mean but gleeful. “More I talk to you, Kimmy, the more I know I found a killer. Someone like me.”

“I’m not a killer, and I’m nothing like you.”

“You don’t even know,” he said, smug. Like she wasn’t aware yet, but he was right.

“What did you bring me here for? You still can’t say. More I talk to you, the more I think you’re just that: talk.” She sipped more Oban, prepared for it now, not minding its hot bite. Devin joined her, then set his glass down.

“Alright. You want it straight. I’ll tell you.” He paused for dramatic effect.

She regarded him with lazy, hooded eyes. “Hit me.”

“Two minutes from now I’m going to offer you a job. Lawyer job. One you’d be crazy not to take. You’re going to take it. Not tonight, but you’ll call me in a day, tell me it’s a deal. You want to talk Josh first.”

“So this is about a job after all?” A tingle of excitement began, imagining the challenge of a new endeavor, of making money.

He undid another button on his dress shirt, showing her the base of his neck, tilting his jaw so she could see the stretch from his collar bone to his ear, shaded with stubble this late in the day, the tendons and cords standing out. “Thirty minutes from now, Kimmy, I’m going to have you on a hotel bed.” He touched his neck with an index finger. “Fucking you deep. You’re going to come, you’re going to scream, you’re going to bite me here”—he tapped the finger to a spot on his neck—“Tell me I’m wrong.”

It was a surprise. She’d asked for honesty and he’d delivered it. What he wanted wasn’t unexpected. She couldn’t even be mad. That was what she knew he’d say. “You’re wrong. That’s how you offer a job? Tell me I have to fuck you?”

“Not at all. The two are separate. Work for me. Fuck me three times a week. That’s what I want. You wanted to know, so there it is. You asked if I was watching you walk ahead of me? Yes. I watched your ass, and I pictured you on all fours, my view, your ass, fucking you doggy.”

“You’re disgusting. I have to fuck you for this job?”

“No. We’re going to fuck because you want it as bad as me. Fight it if you want. Take the job, never fuck me. No big deal. I’m not trying to date you, marry you. I want to fuck you. Say no.” He touched a napkin closer, reached in his suit jacket and withdrew a fat black pen, a Mont Blanc. He scribbled on the blank side of the napkin and presented it to her, returning his pen to an interior pocket. “You have everything I want. That’s innuendo, I know. I’m talking about a smart woman, really fucking deadly smart, treading water presently but oh-so-hungry. Went to Queens, went to Western. Speaks Chinese. That’s what I offer that caliber.”

She read the number. Three-point-eight-something times more than what they paid at the immigration firm. “That’s a lot of money.” Her heart raced with the number. Knew she was worth it.

“Lot of responsibility. It’s not easy. High pressure sometimes. High stakes. I need someone who isn’t a fuck up. Kimmy Chang is goddam perfect.”

“Waters. Kimmy Waters.”

“You’re Kimmy Chang you work for me.”

“You want to see a Chinese name on your roster.”

“Not me. Everyone else.”

“That’s all I am?”

“Chinese? No. Told you about that bakery.”

She huffed a small laugh, any snide answer deadened by the big number with the dollar sign scrawled across the napkin. A lawyer. Chinese. Smart. Beautiful. Better than those other girls. And he wanted her pussy. “I’ll have to think about it,” she said, pushing away the napkin.

“You’ll take it. You’ll call me tomorrow, tell me you want it. Too smart. You just gotta talk to Joshy first.”

“I do.”

“Want me to talk to him?”

“I do not.”

“Good. I’m glad. We’re done, Kimmy, that’s it. The beginning. Finish your drink. I want to get your hot naked ass on that hotel bed.”