CHAPTER SIX

BATTEN CLAMPS

MAY

“Sarah? It’s Kayla.”

“I know your voice, honey. How’ve you been feeling?” 

“I’m doing better.”

“Are those vitamins working?”

“Hmm?”

“The vitamins. Are they--”

“I lied. I’m not doing better.”

“Oh, Kay... The stomach again? Anxiety? Do you need me to come over?”

“No. Well, yes. I think I’d like you to come over.”

“What can I bring? Tea again? The boys are at the theater and Janie’s at a sleepover. We can have a girls night.”

“I’m sorry we didn’t have a party this year.”

“I was wondering about that, but we didn’t want to intrude if you had plans without us.”

“No. We didn’t have plans. Hyde barely remembered it was my birthday.”

“Did you get my card?”

“You’ve been good to us, Sarah.”

“Honey? You sound--”

“I know. I think...”

“Kay? Are you there?”

“I think we need to talk.”

“Of course. I’ll be right over. Let me grab the tea--”

“No. No tea tonight. Just come over. And we’ll talk.”

“I’m leaving now.”

*  *  *

A year ago--just a year ago--Kay and Hyde invited the Carmels to her birthday party. They planed to invite their old city friends, but then Kayla decided to pare it down to new acquaintances. They had a new life now, and while she would never lose touch with her old coffee group or bible study, those friends were gone now.

Hyde was on the riding lawnmower that b-day morning; shirt off, buff, white as a Michigan Christmas in May. Yard work was one of the few chores he complained about. He hated grass stains. He hated work clothes. He hated machinery. But last week’s letter from the association scared the crap out of him! He and Kayla weren’t familiar with suburb covenants, and with all the unpacking and decorating they completely forgot about the length requirements for grass. The letter was signed by Jaxon Silverman, the same man who showed them the lot and explained the benefits and joys of suburban living. He was also the man who left the massive gift basket on their porch this morning, pulled tight in yellow cellophane with a card that read “Welcome to the Neighborhood and Happy Birthday to Mrs. Reid!”

When Hyde was finished with the yard, Kayla watched him drive the mower across the street, through the Carmel’s front yard, and to the back of Will’s stables. When Hyde walked through his own front door (taking intentional care to wipe his feet on the new welcome mat) Kayla kissed the sweat off his naked shoulder and said, “You smell like grass.”

“I know,” he growled.

“Oo, Mr. Grumpy-pants today?”

“I’m gonna shower. Wanna join me, birthday-girl?”

“Dirty!” She slapped the same shoulder she kissed. “We have company tonight!”

“Mmm, maybe when they leave?”

“I’ll tell you what.” Kayla slipped her hands into the back of Hyde’s jeans and thumbed the belt loops. “You set up another man-date with Sarah’s husband--”

“Aw, Kay! I like the man, but that’s--”

“--and we’ll do that thing we normally save for your birthday.”

His eyes popped open. “Really?”

“Weally,” she said.

“Pwomise?”

“I pwomise.”

Hyde bared his teeth beneath an exaggerated smile and rubbed his nose against hers. “I’ll see what I can do.”

She pulled her hands out of his pants and spanked his butt as he walked away. “Have a nice shower.”

“I’m going out for a bit when I’m clean,” he called from the bedroom.

“I thought you took the day off!” she called back.

“For supplies. For my wife’s birthday!”

“Oh! Well, that’s acceptable! Can I give you a list?”

He groaned. “Yes, dear!”

Kayla danced to the kitchen, then grabbed the edge of her new granite bar like a ballet barre, bent forward, and lifted her leg. 

The kitchen was absolutely, unbelievably, spectacularly gorgeous. It sparkled. It had a dishwasher! And a working garbage disposal and a fridge that smelled like rain instead of cheddar. She didn’t have much to clean before the guests arrived, but there was plenty to unpack. Heck, she’d be unpacking until next year at this rate! The engraving machine would have to go. It looked like some high-tech arcade game standing against the living room wall, right beside the kitchen bar; not the ideal place for such a bulky, messy machine. It was heavy, nearly as tall as she was, but she could drag it into the closet by herself. Why did her parents buy her such a massive present while they were in the middle of a move?

“Oh shit!” she yelled out loud, then grabbed her mouth at the expletive. 

“Everything okay?” Hyde asked from the bathroom.

“I’m fine!” she yelled back, then said to herself, “Almost forgot...” On the bar next to the machine sat her first successful stone with one of her favorite phrases. “Go Confidently in the Direction of Your Dreams. Live the Life You’ve Imagined.”

What a silly thing they did that night. It was Hyde’s idea to show off his equipment, to prove that he knew his business and to show Will that his mean comments were unfounded. It was her idea to make the hoax inspirational.

Nothing came of it though. Hyde said that the speakers probably didn’t even work at that distance. Since the intended goal was to prove his technical know-how, he couldn’t exactly tell William that he tried to show off and failed; that would be embarrassing! And Hyde had a delicate ego. Kayla had asked if it was a good idea to tell Will the truth that night, but Hyde said they should wait until they knew if the speakers actually worked.

Kayla considered the consequences of leaving the stone out for the party. If Will did hear her voice, the phrase would probably encourage him talk about it and they could laugh and tell him about the joke. If he didn’t hear her voice, he would just think it was a pretty phrase. She decided to set it on the coffee table, just to see what happened. (Two weeks later, Kayla would bury the stone by the hose reel at the side of the house. Five months later, she would still wake up in the middle of the night, absolutely certain that William Carmel was outside digging.)

Hyde left for the store. By the time he returned, the engraving machine was squeezed in the closet, three boxes of books and trinkets were unpacked to the living room shelves, and Kayla finally located the stack of board games that Hyde stashed under the guest-room bed. 

She offered to help unload the car, but he refused. “The birthday-girl gets to relax. Put your feet up. Work on your puzzle.” 

So Kayla did just that. It was her day, after all, and she would work on her thousand-piece Van Gogh as long as she wanted!

Crepe-paper streamers were first out of the bag. Hyde balanced on one of the folding chairs from the puzzle table and taped long, swooping strands of yellow and orange across the house. The stereo system (the first thing that Hyde unpacked and assembled) played Kayla’s music; a perfect blend of pop and show tunes. Les Mis, Phantom, Legally Blonde, Wicked; she knew them by heart and belted every lyric. She was a better dancer than she was a singer, but Hyde rarely complained. 

The Carmels came. The Carmels left. Kayla threw her arms around her husband and said, “I can’t believe you planned another date! And what about Janie? She was cute! And what a good little dancer!”

“I want to know how they can afford house payments if he plays music at a piano-bar. Does she even have a job?”

“Good investments?”

“Must be.”

Looking back on the timeline of events, Kayla would come to the conclusion that her “symptoms” began in bed that evening. William’s stage was a disease after all; the kind where the infected don’t even realize they’re sick until it’s too late. She wore her black underwear; the lacy, revealing kind that she would never wear during the day because they gave her wedgies. She even trimmed her bikini line.

When Kayla crawled in bed that night, she intended to make love to her husband. 

Nobody could say she didn’t try. 

“How does he hate sports so much?” Hyde asked, shedding his khakis to a wrinkled puddle at his feet. “He looks so rugged.”

“Gay!” Kayla shouted, then hid the lower half of her face beneath the covers.

“Baby, don’t say that.”

“Maybe he is! Either way, they’re our new best friends so we have to love them.”

Hyde stepped to Kay’s side of the bed and studied her body’s lump under the comforter. “Yeah, I like them too.” He gripped the bottom of the blanket and slid it off the bed, leaving Kayla exposed in her lace underwear.

“Sexy panties? What are those for?”

“I dunno. I guess I was out of plain cotton.”

Hyde slipped his thumbs under the elastic strap of his whitie-tighties.

“Baby! The lights are on!”

Hyde straightened his arms, pushing the underwear to his thighs.

Kayla covered her eyes with her bare arm. “No no! I can’t see that!”

“Do you remember the other night?”

Kayla had mixed feelings about “the other night,” but rested her arm across her stomach and nodded innocently.

Hyde was a rock. From the little Kayla knew about things of this nature, he was slightly larger than the average bear, but it was often too much for her to handle.

“I have a present for you.”

“Present? What about the puzzles!”

“I have another present for you.”

“Where where where?”

“In the drawer of the bedside table.” Hyde sat on the cream satin sheets and rested his hand on Kay’s inner thigh. She twisted her body until she was on her elbows, then opened the drawer, fumbled around inside, and removed a smooth, purple device in the shape of a phallus.

“What in the world is this for?”

“Us.”

“Us?”

“The other night was fun. Maybe a little crazy, but I thought that could be a new beginning for us... sexually.”

Until that moment, Kayla assumed that “the other night” was a one-time thing. He was right. It was fun. But “a little crazy” didn’t exactly describe it. And what they did beforehand... with the speakers and that silly joke... (Go confidently in the direction of your dreams!)

Hyde took the device from her, pushed some invisible button, and it sprang to life with a low-pitched hum. (Live the life you imagined!)

“And where exactly do we put that?”

Hyde didn’t respond, but set the vibrating toy in the valley of her breasts and trailed it down her stomach, past her belly button and mesh rim of her panties, and then rested it against her no-no.

Pleasure of this kind was new to Kayla. As Hyde released his grip on the vibrator, leaving it pinched between her thighs in that perfect spot, the pleasure crept through her body in all directions like a hundred slow-moving bolts of lightning expanding from the center of her pelvis, through her stomach, spine and thighs, and into her extremities. And with that pleasure came the sick. It was dirty. It was wrong. It was wrong to fool their friends. It wasn’t the Godly thing to do.

Hyde was in bed now. The lights were still on. He removed the toy from between her legs, set it aside (still humming) and slid her underwear past her knees, down her ankles, to the footboard. He blindly patted the bed for the buzzing device, found it, and brought it back to her thighs. He began on the outside of her leg, tickling her like crazy and she writhed until it rounded her gracilis muscle. Hyde leaned into her neck and kissed it while the vibrator pushed closer--

(Go confidently in the direction of your dreams!)

“Maybe we should tell him,” Kayla said.

Hyde pulled back. 

“Tell who what?”

“Maybe we should tell Will what we did. Just to be safe.”

“Is this the best time to--”

“I don’t want him to think he’s crazy!”

“That’s silly. If he heard your voice, he would have said something. We are not talking about this right now.” He kissed her cheek. He kissed her neck. He kissed her bra. He pressed the buzzing mechanism gently against her wet crease. 

(Live the life you imagined!) 

Kayla squeezed her thighs together and pushed her pelvis in the air, shunning the toy and husband from her personal space. “Why would he question your passion in the first place? This is his fault!”

“Pumpkin-pie--”

“Why can’t I talk about it if I need to? Don’t you care that it’s bothering me?”

“Of course I do, but--”

“But what?”

“I thought we were having fun.”

“I want to know your plan. When are you going to get the speakers from the shed?”

“Kayla! Drop it! It was a joke. I’m sorry we did it now, believe me.”

Those last two words carried just enough sarcasm to ruin the mood. She took the toy from his hand, fumbled for the switch, and turned it off. If Hyde wanted to recapture the memories of Easter night, he was out of luck.

“What about our deal? I set up a man-date with him!”

“If sex is all you can think about right now, then I’ll do it. Tell me that’s what you really want from me tonight and I’ll do it for you.”

It was downhill from there. Hyde turned off the light. Kayla pulled the comforter back to the bed. Less than a week later, William would tell the world about the voice.

Even now, sitting in her living room listening to the sound of Sarah’s approaching footsteps on the concrete steps, Kayla knew that rejecting Hyde that night was the right thing to do.

The doorbell rang. “Kay? Open up, hon.”

Kayla removed her cell and typed a message to her husband. “sarahs here. doing it 2nite”

The disease began exactly one year ago today, and when the doorbell rang a second time and Sarah’s face peered through the glass, Kayla vowed that tonight, right now, all this crap would come to an end.