DITW 13-6: Promises

All she could think, seeing Devlin struggling on his hands and knees, attempting to rise as quickly as he could, was it was the polar opposite of his favorite way of standing: hands on hips, legs shoulder-width apart. A boy posing as a man. Josh had reduced his ill-gathered merit to its truest form.

But she hated seeing it. Hated seeing Devlin harmed. It didn’t matter if he deserved it or not.

“Josh,” she said, her voice just whisking air, scolding her husband with a sound of disbelief. She still couldn’t believe he’d done that. What had he done?

Josh looked proud of his work, standing curled forward, hands balled at his sides, looking for a fight. His face was the color of a fire hydrant.

Devlin stood up, his back to them, staggered one step forward, hand clutched to his face, the other looking to steady himself on the bed frame. He turned, already talking, “All right, all right, cool it, Josh. Jesus, dude. Okay, that was too far. I knew it as soon as I said it.” He pulled his hand away and looked for blood on the palm. There was, but not much. His brow above his left eye showed a ragged gash, like a Harry Potter lightning “S”. It was a pale yellow in the centre, the “S” itself drawn in blood, and already beginning to bruise out of the perimeter. Below his eye there was another red mark, two lines going left right, two going up down, like a hashtag. Devlin leveled a finger at Josh. “But if you ever try to come at me with a chair again, I will put your fucking lights out for good.”

Josh wheeled, and grabbed the back of another chair, his body stretched out, elastic, ready to propel this chair at Devlin even harder than the first. Devlin put up a hand and drew up a knee to protect his privates. Josh had caught him in his most vulnerable attire, his robe hanging off one shoulder like a sexy pinup model, the flaps open, his big dick shrunken with fright.

Kimmy shouted Josh’s name and thrust herself at him, getting between him and Devlin and putting her hands out in the path his next chair-throwing might take.

Josh looked past her at Devlin, nostrils flared like a Pamplona bull, hate in his ever-placid eyes. She could feel rising sorrow for his transformation.

“Don’t, Josh,” she said, getting her hands around him, grabbing his arms above the elbows. They stayed like that, both hunched over, him holding the chair, her holding his arms. She said, “It’s enough. You almost broke the window.”

Josh glared at Devlin. “Who gives a fuck about a window? I’ll break every fucking window in this room if I want. I’ll throw his stupid ass out on the street below if I fucking want.”

Devlin laughed at him. “You couldn’t do it, you fucking pussy.”

“Today I could, you piece of shit. Today I could. I could do it ten times in a row, you want to fucking see?”

Josh’s arms were like steel cables in her grip. He was tense and iron, and he would try to do it if she didn’t stop him. She hated to see Devlin hurt, but she would die if she saw anything happen to Josh.

Josh pulled his arms from her grip and hauled the chair back again like he would heave it at Devlin.

“Don’t. Please, don’t, Josh. Let it go. He’s a piece of shit. Okay? He’s not worth it. He doesn’t matter.” She stepped into the chair’s path, shaking her head, trying to get his attention, trying to break his gaze from shooting hate at Devlin.

Josh stood straighter, his cabled neck relaxing, his face still contorted with rage, heaving breath. He tossed the chair back down on its wheels with a tremendous clatter. “Take his side, Kimmy. Defend that piece of shit. That’s all I expect of you.”

Devlin said, “You’re the piece of shit, Josh. Say it to me without a chair.”

She turned her head over her shoulder. “Shut the fuck up, Devlin.” When she turned back to Josh, he had stepped away, rubbing his brow, walking to the table.

He growled, low and animal, a sound of pain and awful misery. It grew louder, like a wounded beast, almost becoming a howl before he launched himself at the table like a madman, like a mental patient, snarling and yelling, taking both arms in wide sweeping crescents across the table, back and forth, back and forth, clearing it of all the paperwork she’d set out for a man who wouldn’t show to today’s supposed business meeting. Papers scattered, books and binders flopped and bounced, pens skittered; Josh cleared it all, doing it like a symbolic act, dispersing all of his wife’s carefully laid plans like a startled charm of winter finches, sending them flitting up into the sky, away for good.

He never stopped moving, whipping around, finding his jacket, snatching it up, rising from the floor and coming in an abrupt face-to-face with her. She startled and flinched with fright.

He sneered. “Don’t worry, Kimmy. You’re not worth it either.”

Then he stomped past her and ripped open the door. He strode into the hall and disappeared. She was glad the door closed on hydraulics and he wasn’t able to slam it behind him.

In the quiet, dreadful aftermath, all she could hear was the fast beating of her heart.

All her plans had been scattered. All she’d built had been broken. Josh had stomped through her city like Godzilla. The city deserved the destruction. She couldn’t argue that, but it could have been a very fine city. If Devlin weren’t in the room with her, she would have burst into tears. Maybe she was happy for his presence. Surrendering to the painful mourning that cloaked her now would be her doom.

When she stepped toward the door, thinking maybe, just maybe, if she ran to her husband right now she could preserve their marriage, Devlin said behind her, “Don’t follow him. You’re not his mother.”

She turned to watch him walking past the foot of the bed and going into the bathroom. She followed him in. Devlin bent over the sink and splashed his face with cold water. Kimmy looked to the right, to the toilet where her sweet husband had tossed his cookies after she thought she could lure him deeper into sin by comparing his cock with her lover’s. Then Devlin self-propelled his cum all over himself, like popping the top on a champagne bottle to celebrate the end of their marriage.

She leaned on the door frame, crossing her arms. “This could have been so much better. This could have been the best thing for Josh, for me. For you, too. But you had to make it weird. Theatrical. You had to try to humiliate him. For no reason. You’re going to regret it. You know that, right?”

Devlin scoffed and stood up, face dripping. He bowed his head so she could see the growing knot right on his brow. “You see this shit? You see what he did to me?”

“Why the fuck would you say something like that to my husband?”

“That was too much,” he admitted, snatching a towel from a wall-mounted ring. He buried his face in it.

“Too much? Devlin, you have no idea. No idea at all. Amy told you about that?”

Into the towel, he said, “What, the miscarriage? I don’t know. Maybe. Somebody did. Not a big secret. One day you’re pregnant, one day you’re not. You don’t have a kid...”

Now it was her considering kneeling before the toilet. She’d slept with this man. “I should have let him throw you out the window.”

“He’s the one going out the window, Kimberly.” He dropped the towel and gave her a macho stare.

“It’s not high school anymore, Devlin. You should seek help. Go talk to someone. I’m not trying to insult you or trying to be funny. There is something wrong with you.”

“We’re building something, Kimmy. We talked about this.”

“Not about this. Not about today. No, wait a second. We did. I told you not to ever do something like this.”

Devlin licked his lower lip like he tried to detect swelling, eyes shifted to the side. He leaned on the tiled countertop, all glossy black.

She said, “It gets your dick hard to push people around, to manipulate them. You and Amy.”

“That Amy stuff was bull shit,” he said and tossed the blood-pink towel into the bathtub. “Look, that was a tantrum he threw. He can’t hack it right now. It got heated. Why the fuck did you want to put our dicks together, anyway?”

“I didn’t see you flinch. You didn’t think twice about it.”

“He’s your husband. You know him better.”

“Then why did you allow this to happen? I told you a dozen times to leave it to me. And you spring this on me, here in this hotel room? I’m here for Benny Chan and Josh walks in.”

“Like I said, you were taking too long.”

“Yeah, and I guess you were right because look how well this worked out. You’ve got a boulder on your forehead, a broken chair in a Stone LLC booked room, and my marriage is over.”

“It’s not over. You’re so dramatic.” He opened the tall glass door of the shower stall and turned the water on, putting his hand under the spray. “We can save this. And trust me, please: your marriage is not over. That guy needs you.”

“He went to you behind my back and you brought him here.”

“By text, Kimmy.”

“He said he went to your apartment.”

Devlin exhaled through pouted lips, found the water a satisfactory temperature and doffed his robe to the floor. He stepped into the stall and got under the spray face first, the water hitting his chest, his face turned up. “Your husband was on the hook. He—”

“You sent him pictures of me. Did it behind my back. Did it with Amy.”

Devlin shook his head no, like she would believe anything this betraying bastard would say or imply ever again in the future.

“Do you realize how badly you fucked things up? Do you know what you’ve done?”

“Kimmy,” Devlin sighed, like it was exasperating having to deal with her when she didn’t see the whole picture the way he did. “It’s almost good that Josh acted this way. He got it out of his system and now we can get down to the way this is going to work.”

Devlin splashed water on his face, then slicked his hair back. “I need you. You need the job. Even better than needing it, you want it. You want it bad. There’s too big a future ahead of us.”

Now she was the one laughing, though nothing was funny anymore, nothing in the world. She waited him for her to look at her, and she said, “Devlin, you’re going to wish you never met me.”