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

It took two-and-a-half hours on the train and subway to get back to Ajax. Twenty minutes to get to Swanson, fifteen to get home. While he was walking in the apartment door a few minutes earlier than if he’d just been coming home from the office on a normal work day, he felt heavy, dragging his feet as if he’d walked all the way back from Toronto.

No lights were on and at first he thought Kimmy wasn’t home. The apartment was bright, but the sunlight this time of year was coming from the other side of the building, making their home seem dim. Kimmy had been sitting on the couch, and she rose now, came around to meet him.

“Is the power out?”

She said it wasn’t, frowning.

“No lights are on, you’re sitting on the couch with the TV off . . .”

“I was waiting for you,” she said.

“For what?”

Kimmy stopped, put a hand on the wall to steady herself as she slipped her feet into leather ballerina flats. He watched her skinny and shapely legs work below the hem of her army green shorts. She said, “Let me buy you a beer.”

There was something odd about the statement. Part of it was never in his x number of years with his wife had she ever greeted him coming home by offering to buy him a beer. And there was a certain camaraderie in buying someone a beer, and oftentimes a sentiment of lessening a blow, or helping someone delivered bad news.

He asked, “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah,” she said, drawing down a droopy cotton cardigan to drape over her narrow shoulders, bare in her black spaghetti strap top.

“I don’t really feel like I want a beer.”

“Let’s go out.”

“I don’t think I’m ready for a beer.” He intended because his body was still in recovery from Tiffany’s party and not prepared to wage even a minor skirmish against alcohol right now. But there was dread rising up inside him, and the truth was he wasn’t ready for bad news of any kind. “Can we just stay in?”

“Please, Josh,” she said, shrugging on the cardigan.

“I spent the whole afternoon traveling, I just want to relax now I’m home . . .”

“One beer, Josh.”

“Don’t we have beer here?”

She passed him back the keys to the Nissan. They did have beer in the fridge. Kimmy wanted to go out somewhere public, somewhere her husband wouldn’t make a scene . . . 

***

 In the car, his hands went cold on the wheel and he didn’t press Kimmy on the reason she wanted to get out of the house. He let her tell him how she was just cooped up in the apartment and she needed to get out. She’d skipped the gym the other day, he figured, and hoped there was truth to it. But he couldn’t shake the feeling there was a deep talk coming between husband and wife entering strange and shaky marital ground.

By the time he parked out front of The Fox and Dragon just down the street from them in old Ajax he knew what it was. Amy’d talked to Kimmy.

The Fox and Dragon was an English style pub in a conglomerate of imitation Tudor style English homes made to look like they were from the countryside; red brick first floors, stucco and square beam on the second floor. Kimmy and he bypassed the front doors, instead entering under the brick archway that led to the pub’s patio, sequestered in a courtyard faced by boutique shopping that had run dry a decade ago, the once luxury brands now replaced with more moderate hair salons and casual clothes shops. There was a step up to the Dragon’s raised patio, its edges lined with cast iron railing painted black and hung with Jamesons pennants. There were only a handful of tables taken out of the fifteen, and Kimmy aimed for the one furthest from any other patrons, sitting down with a leg tucked beneath her under the shade of a huge black Guinness umbrella popped open over top. Josh waved to a waitress headed back inside to make sure they were acknowledged and the girl smiled swishing back inside, ponytail bobbing. He sat down opposite Kimmy, chair pulled out from the table so they were practically facing each other. He assumed a pose he usually held when on the toilet—back hunched, elbows on knees, hands clasped together in front of him.

He said, “So what’s up?”

“It’s nice to come out, don’t you think?”

There was positivity in her tone, but he could read the trouble in her own eyes. When he registered it in her gaze, she saw him process it. Now they both knew.

He said, “Just tell me what’s up.”

“You met with Amy today.”

“Amy called you?”

Kimmy nodded, her expression held solemn as she studied him.

“I met her for coffee.”

“For coffee, Josh? Come on . . .”

He rubbed his chin and let Kimmy’s dark eyes stare into him, her steady gaze unnerving. When Kimmy was happy, she had a fun beauty. She was quick to smile, and she had a pretty mouth. Between her knowing eyes and her smile it was a toss up for her greatest physical feature. A smile on Kimmy’s face did something profound to him that was impossible to translate. It manifested in a weird personal joy—like your face was a mirror held up to hers, or her happiness shone into you; and there was something deeper, too, like an appreciation. An appreciation the way someone open to art would feel standing before a powerful masterpiece and seeing in it, finally in person, what they believed was the artist’s truth. But there was also the obverse, and though it was rare, this stony look from his beautiful wife brought out her exotic darkness, and the effect was chilling. Kimmy became unreadable.

“Maybe I embarrassed myself,” he said, looking down at her bare knees.

The answer seemed to surprise her because she raised her eyebrows and cocked her head.

The waitress strode toward them, smiling while she armed herself with a notepad and pen. “Can I get you guys a drink to start?”

Kimmy’s mouth eased. She looked to him saying, “Have a beer with me, Josh.”

He gave in, and they both ordered a pint of Newcastle and the waitress checked on her other tables before heading back inside.

“Amy called me.”

“I should have figured.”

“What were you thinking?”

“It seemed like it was a reasonable thing to do—meet with one of your friends. I . . . knew I wanted to talk about Tiffany’s. I didn’t think . . . I’d sound so obsessed or whatever.”

Kimmy drew in a long breath, looking at some of the other patrons, crossed her arms and leaned back. “What do you suspect?”

Her question made him feel foolish. He said, “I suspect there’s something you don’t want to tell me. And that’s scary.”

She nodded and he was pleased to see it as a communication of agreement. She looked forlorn a moment, watching away from him again. “I should have told you . . .”

***

 An imaginary itch had her nails scratching at the palm of her hand. Amy was right. A Josh kept in the dark was an unhappy Josh. She didn’t want him to hurt.

He said, “Are you going to tell me?”

“Yeah,” she said, “I will,” but looked around to the door into the restaurant. “Just wait,” she said to Josh, who sat slump-shouldered in his wrinkled dress shirt with the cuffs rolled up. He’d doffed his tie in the apartment, then left his jacket in the Nissan. His body’s energy radiated defeat, his eyes showed angst. She said, “It’s not bad, Josh, it’s just stupid. And embarrassing.”

“Tell me . . .”

This time when she looked around she saw the waitress coming through the doors with two brown ales on a tray.

She returned to face Josh, showed him a weak smile saying, “I didn’t want her to walk in on what I have to say.”

Josh looked sickly as the waitress came and set their glasses on cardboard coasters beside them. The girl asked them if they wanted anything to eat and she said not yet. The waitress left, and she held up her glass to Josh and they both toasted like their ales weighed twenty pounds. They sipped.

The apartment was the more appropriate place to spin an almost-truthful tale of the party at Tiffany’s but as she’d prepared in her mind how she’d present the case to Josh, she realized her spirit couldn’t reconcile her lies being told in the place where she’d let Devin finger her until she came all over his hand. The only thing that made her heart believe she could do this was out in the sun, out in public, out at a place where they used to come when they first moved to Ajax after they married.

She said, “I told you I fought with him.”

“Say his name, Kimmy.”

She raised her eyes to Josh’s, surprised by the chagrin in his voice. “Devin.”

At the sound of Devin’s name, her husband’s mouth slimmed to a drawn line. “Tell me what happened.”

“You passed out. Amy and I stayed up, People came and went. Sometimes Devin sat with us—Amy knows him . . .”

“Okay . . .”

“But later it was just the three of us . . .”

“You, Amy, and Devin.”

“We talked about politics, and our philosophies don’t align. He wants to break up the teacher’s unions, ragging on the Liberals, and he’s doing it all in, like, this haughty tone . . .”

“You can’t be surprised. Why would you even engage him?”

It was a good point. But she was only circumambulating the truth here, anyway. “I know you’re right.” She let it hang, let Josh take it over.

He was quiet a long moment before saying, “I know, Kimmy . . . sometimes you don’t see an argument coming. The next thing you know, you’re inside it. It sometimes feels good when it’s coming and you’re not so eager to avoid it. But why would you even sit and talk with Devin Stone?—and what the hell would he say that could make you so mad you wanted to hit him?”

She drew it out, prepared herself, said: “He said woman are identified by their ability to have children.” She looked away. This was true.

Josh shifted uncomfortably, took a sip of his beer, wiped his mouth. His brow shrunk, perplexed. ”Was it a trans people argument?”

She nodded. “But what he said, it included me. He’s so callous, so arrogant. And, like, now he was defining me with this . . . disregard. Am I not a woman . . .?”

Josh nodded. He could see it now. He looked away. “I’m sorry, Kimmy.”

“I know.”

He leaned forward and touched his fingertips against her knees. She looked in his eyes. He said, “You can have children, Kimmy.”

“I know I can. In that moment I felt . . .”

“Vulnerable?”

“Victimized,” she said, tightening her crossed arms.

He bowed his head and kissed her thigh just above her knee and the move brought tears to swell under her eyes. She caressed a hand through his hair. He looked up at her and she cupped his cheek.

Josh smiled, said, “I hope you hit him a good one.”

She chuckled, wiped at an eye. “I didn’t.”

“But you fought with him?” Josh sat up, scooted his chair closer, the metal legs squealing on the brick patio. He held her legs at her knees, looking in her eyes.

“I love you,” she said, meaning it one-thousand percent. A warm cascade swelled in her heart and her love for Josh washed away all the shame she felt for what had happened. This was the man she loved deeply, and if Devin Stone thought she would spread her legs for him next week he was a fool.

“I love you, too,” he said, and the color of his eyes changed right before her. Gone was the heaviness and the hurt he’d bore. She realized Josh had been anxious about what she was gong to tell him, and the not-knowing had weighed on him almost too heavy to support.

“I’m so stupid,” she said.

“No, you’re not. You know you’re not.”

“He pulled me into an argument that didn’t even matter. Who cares what he thinks . . .?”

“No one.”

“I just wanted him to shut up.”

Josh said, “Where was Amy in all this?”

“She wasn’t there.” Her scalp tingled and she rubbed the back of her neck.

“You said it was you and Amy and Devin.”

“When it got heated, she took off.”

“Why wouldn’t she stay and help a friend?”

She shrugged.

“Some friend.”

“She should have stayed,” she admitted. But she didn’t stay. And there was more to the story. And if she wanted to armor herself against future revelations of what some people may claim they witnessed, she needed a truthful seed planted . . .