DITW 14-9: Odyssey 4 (Patreon)

Down near the water, Josh popped the top on the beer in the dark and took a swig. It wasn’t what he was expecting. “What is this?”

“Some pumpkin ale. Perfect for the season,” Karina said. “You don’t like it?”

“I just wasn’t expecting it,” he said and took another sip, this time ready for it. “No, it’s good. It’s real good.”

All either of them could see was the dancing silvery sheen on the lake’s choppy surface. Far across the lake there was a jagged tree line, then starry night above. Karina was silent, but he figured he knew why she wanted to talk to him. He said, “Did Meyer tell you what’s going on?”

Karina said, “A little. He said you were staying with him, and it wasn’t the first time in the last couple weeks.” She stepped ahead, going to the left of the black line of the dock extending out into the water. Steve was right, the dock was incredibly long. He could make out she was slipping her shoes off, then walking bare foot in the sand. A little off to the left, there was an outcrop of rock, a massive bulge of Canadian Shield the lake water crashed against. He followed her, watching her prance from the shore to land on the rock, take a few steps and sit down. He did the same, keeping his shoes on. It was already too cold with his shorts on.

The spot where they sat was large enough that the center point remained dry despite the rough water around them. They both sat cross legged, facing out to the lake. Karina turned to speak, realized they weren’t close enough to be heard without raising their voices over the water, and scooted closer to him until their thighs touched. She sipped her beer, stalling for time. He wasn’t in a rush. She could not say a thing about Kimmy and he would be happy about it. He was going to have another beer after this one, maybe some marshmallows, if Meyer didn’t eat them all. Get another burger off the grill, then another beer, then he was going to retire to the hot tub.

At last she spoke. “I’m sorry, Josh. I . . . I should’ve said something.”

“Something about what?”

Karina shook her had and sucked on her lower lip. “At Tiffany’s party, I was there, I saw, you know, I saw Kimmy and Devlin.”

His stomach turned and he grunted, looked out over the water.

“It’s not that I’m sorry about,” she said, looking at his profile now, getting him to look her way again. “I’m not just saying platitudes. What Kimmy did wasn’t right, but she’s my friend and I trusted her to do the right thing and tell you and make everything whole again. And . . . And she told me she did.”

He nodded, mouth squished to one side, skin crawling at this talk of the very thing he’d gone all the way north of Tweed to escape.

“Yeah, she told me,” he groaned. “At least I think she did.”

Karina was quiet again, and he got the sense she regretted bringing this thing up. She plucked at the beer tab, nervous. “Kimmy told me she would tell you what happened, and then I saw her at yoga, and, uh, she told me she squared it with you, and I knew she didn’t, but I . . . I let it go. I’m a coward. I was too afraid to call her on it, press her, and then she started the new, uh, job, and I didn’t see her anymore.”

“Yeah, but you came to that party at the Dragon. You saw us there. Everything was fine.”

She scrunched her mouth up. “I didn’t think it was. But I thought you were man enough to figure out your own marriage.”

“And now you realize I’m not and think you should have said something?”

She laughed. “No, don’t be stupid. I’m trying to be real here. I feel like I failed you, and it was because I chickened out. Kimmy said it was square and I said okay.”

“Wait a second, what really happened then? She said she and Devlin got in a fight. That Devlin said something he shouldn’t have and then they kind of ended up fighting for real, and then the fighting became...”

Karina said, “Yeah, that’s right. That’s what happened. Then there was more.”

He growled in frustration and rubbed his brow. Karina said, “Forget it, Josh. It doesn’t matter. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

He said, “No, I know. Then they maybe started to have like real sex or something?”

“Let’s forget the details. It’s not important. She started a fight with Devlin and then they wrestled and it got weird. Like real weird. Then they disappeared and . . . I don’t think they had sex. But...”

“I know all this. It’s okay,” he said, waving his hand like it was nothing even though it hurt like crazy. And Karina knew nothing of the scab which she picked. That Amy was in on it, that Devlin woke him up in the tent and taunted him with his Kimmy-wet cock. That they’d all worked him over like a chump and beat him down and humiliated him. He huffed with psychic pain and changed the subject, saying, “Kimmy said Devlin started the fight.” He squeezed his nose and held his breath against an oncoming feeling of terror.

“No, Kimmy started it with him. Started the fight. She goaded him. She wanted to fight. We all saw it. Devlin thinks he’s the master of all he surveys and Kimmy can just talk circles around him and make him dance. It was pathetic.”

He let his nose go and took a deep breath, let it out. “It’s hard to believe. I mean, I believe you. If you’d told me a few months ago, though, I don’t think I would have. I’m sure I wouldn’t have. I can see it now. I can picture what you’re telling me.”

“Devlin’s not innocent, you know? That’s not what I’m saying.”

“I didn’t think you were.”

“It was like Kimmy wanted what happened to happen. She created it. Devlin is an easy mark.”

“You think she marked him? Think she did it all on purpose?”

Karina chuckled. “I don’t know. I don’t want to say bad things about my friend.”

“So you do think that?”

“Let’s just say she got everything out of him she wanted.”

Josh sighed and could hear the tremble in his breath. “That’s for sure.” His heart felt like a lead weight in his chest.

“Anyway, Josh, I let you down. I was a coward. I guess I let Kimmy scare me into silence or something. She is my friend. I do love her. I believed her when she told me that she made everything right with you. That she told you the truth. But that’s stupid. She wouldn’t tell you the things I told you now.”

“That’s not fair. Those things that are true now weren’t true then. Not yet. They hadn’t bore fruit.”

“Maybe not. But if I had told you what I saw, maybe it wouldn’t have gone this far.”

“Yeah,” he said, nodding. Then: “Wait. How far? What do you mean?”

“Well, where we’re at now. You’re staying with Meyer and Kimmy’s with Devlin.”

He groaned and set his half-finished can of beer on the cold rock between his legs then rubbed his face and smoothed his hair back. “It’s way more complicated than that.”

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. I’m not prying. I said my piece.”

“You don’t even need to apologize. It’s . . . Kimmy’s not with Devlin. She’s staying with Meyer’s ex-wife right now. Staying with Meyer’s ex and their daughter. Kimmy is not with Devlin.”

Karina said nothing in return and he looked aside at her to see her features lit up in silver light, confused, brow knitted tight. He chuckled and said, “Kimmy’s not with Devlin, if that’s what you thought.”

“I guess I assumed.”

He shook his head and sighed, picked up his beer and swigged it again. “Kimmy hates Devlin. She wants me. She wants me back. It’s me who left.” He looked at Karina and was embarrassed by the measure of pride he couldn’t conceal. Like the failure of his marriage wasn’t on his shoulders, the dreaded weight of your wife’s infidelity crushing down your self-respect. While it was Kimmy’s infidelity that had rung demise’s bell, it was he who had the say, who had the judgment. He could choose to return to Kimmy or could choose to leave her. “Kimmy wants me back. Kimmy wants me to return.”

Karina didn’t smile or say anything, and in her silence he heard the unspoken, and just now realized it. Kimmy knew her mark. Knew how to place people where she wanted, knew how to say the things that would have them rushing to please her and fulfill her own wishes. Devlin was an easy mark for a devil like Kimmy. Did he really think he was any less easy?

The pride he’d felt washed away and now all the fun of the evening went with it. The realization of his own artless trust had been the plug pulled from a drain, and now all the good will and happy feelings were swirling down to the town’s sewer system, charging him a flow rate he didn’t want to pay.

He looked out at the lake and said, “Fuck.”

Karina bowed her head, maybe regretting her role in deflating the purpose of the evening. She got even closer to him, their thighs already touching for warmth, now leaning her shoulder against his, her head inclining his way. She said, “You’re still in charge, Josh.”

He nodded, scowling, trying to puff himself up. The night had been going so well and he didn’t want the good feelings to leave. “I’m still in charge,” he said.

If there was anything to salvage from this summer’s debacle, it was what he brought up next, fleeing his wife’s treacherous duplicity and presenting Karina with a better angle. “You remember a time we were in high school and we were out late at night, we were walking home from a dance. Like grade nine...”

Karina hummed an affirmative sound, nodding, knowing where he was going. It would be presumptuous to think this night had the same kind of impact on her. To him, that night was a milestone night, a pivotal moment in what others in the future would describe as Josh Waters. “We were just walking along Soap street, and that kid Johnny Rumble—”

“I remember. I remember him.”

“Yeah, you remember,” he said, glad in one way that she remembered since the moment meant so much to him, but sad in another way, that that moment also probably shaped how she thought of Josh Waters. He’d had the hugest crush on Karina Brubaker back then, and she got to see him laid out and gasping for breath, beaten and robbed and doing nothing about it. “You know I went out with Rumble and Devlin a few weeks ago? We went to a ball game.”

She laughed, then looked at him. “You did not.”

“Oh, yes I did,” he said, chuckling. “Johnny Rumble’s a fucking loser.”

“Wow, big surprise.”

“Devlin runs his brain still. He’s gross. Wanted to see an Asian stripper, he says to me.”

When she regarded him, scrutinizing him, he waved her off, saying, “Long story. . . . Point is, I feel bad for the guy. He’s a neanderthal. He wasn’t blessed with an IQ over eighty. You know, some people just aren’t the same. Devlin used Rumble the way Kimmy used Devlin, maybe.”

Karina laughed. “I think Kimmy has a high IQ.”

“I wouldn’t argue,” he said. “But Rumble’s this sad sack who’ll never amount to anything. It’s Devlin who attacked me that night.”

“I know,” she agreed. “I see that. For sure.”

Now he rubbed his chin, looking out at the choppy water, hunching up his shoulders from the damp chill. “I, uh . . . A couple days ago, I snapped at Devlin. Like he, he just went too far.” Did you know Kimmy’s pregnant and the baby could be Devlin’s? “Yeah, he just said the wrong thing, and I picked up a chair, like an office chair, a fancy leather one. Heavy. Wheels on it. And I fucking wailed him with it.”

Karina lifted her head from his shoulder. “You hit Devlin with the chair.”

“Yeah I threw it at him. We were pretty close. I got him right in the face.”

She stared, not knowing if he was joking, but sensing that maybe he was telling a true story. “You did?”

He nodded. “Yeah, hit him in the face with it. And he went down hard. But he got up and did nothing. Do you know how crazy that is?”

“That you hit him?”

“Yeah. But also that he did nothing. I thought he’d kill me for sure. I just didn’t care. In fact, he could have gone and done it and I’d have welcomed it. Like it would suit Kimmy right if she got to watch me get beat to death by the piece of shit she was fucking behind my back.”

“Oh, Josh, don’t, don’t say that,” Karina whispered and touched his face. He leaned into her, empty of anguish, devoid of sorrow, left only with a leaden despondency for all that was lost and what could have been.

Karina hugged an arm around his shoulders and squeezed him tight. She kissed the top of his head. “I shouldn’t have brought this up with you. I’m sorry, Josh. I just wanted to confess that I failed you.”

“You’re fine,” he said. “I’m not mad at you.”

She kissed the top of his head again, muttering, “I shouldn’t have brought this up.”

And she was right. Everything had been fine this night. This night had realigned the misaligned. He leaned into her more, crumpling for a moment and burying his face in her hands. It felt wonderful to have someone hold you without thinking they wanted more from you or perhaps they didn’t even mean it at all. But now he shook his head, knowing these thoughts were wedging him deeper in an intractable Chinese finger trap. He sat up, pulling away from Karina, laughing now and breathing in cold crisp air. He tipped his beer back and finished it. He crushed the can in an impressive display of masculinity that got Karina to laugh with him. He said, “I need another drink.”