Killing Johnny Fry (23 page)

The woman named Brenda put a hand in the crook of my elbow, stopping me. She brought her fingertips together under my chin and turned my face. I thought that she was going to ask me a question, but instead she just stared into my eyes, looking for something.

After a moment she said, “Go on,” and we continued our slow walk.

“Nothing else to say,” I said. “She was my girlfriend and my only friend. There‘s nobody in my life I could talk to about this. I mean really talk to. Someone who knows me."

“That‘s why you called Cindy?"

Just the mention of Cynthia made me nervous and lightheaded.

We were passing a little bistro called Trente-Sept. It was closed, but they had a small wooden bench out in front, chained to the metal bars that protected their glass door. I took two uneven steps and then fell onto the bench. I was breathing hard. My chest was quivering.

Sisypha sat down next to me, her warm thigh pressed up next to mine. She put her hand to the side of my face, molding her palm to the dimensions of my jaw.

“Did you, did you do something?” she asked.

“No. No, I didn‘t do a thing. They didn‘t even see me. I just walked away.” I hesitated. “He was so big. It made me feel like nothing."

“And you‘re afraid she‘ll leave you if you tell her you know?” Sisypha asked.

The tone in her voice was gentle. I turned toward her. She was gazing at me with deep concern.

“I feel like I don‘t have any skin or bones and all that‘s holding me together is her. If she leaves, I‘ll fall apart. A big pile of blood and guts on the ground."

Sisypha took her hand from my face and laid it across my bruised knuckles. There was no sexual tension between us. I felt as if there was nothing separating us at all.

“Will you tell her?” she asked.

“I don‘t think I can."

The thought of killing Johnny Fry seemed ludicrous to me then. He didn‘t matter, not at all. Nothing mattered except for that bench and the feel of Sisypha‘s hand on my pain.

“Why not?” she asked in a whisper.

“Her uncle,” I said.

“What about him?"

“He raped her . . . a long time ago, when she was a kid. He died, and she needed something . . . something I don‘t have."

“Lots of people have it hard when they‘re little,” Sisypha said.

“That‘s not your responsibility."

“That‘s what Cynthia thinks. She said that everybody is responsible for themselves."

“Damn right,” Sisypha said with surprising emphasis. “A black woman taking a white man up in her ass, and her man comes in on it? Her black man? She should expect a bullet."

“Yeah,” I said, still whispering. “But don‘t you see? When I saw them together, I knew somewhere deep inside that she needed more than I had. I never even suspected what was going on in Jo‘s mind. Johnny saw her one time and knew how to get there.” Sisypha‘s indignation melded into wonder.

“You knew that?” she asked.

“Yeah. I knew. And I hated them both, Johnny especially, but at the same time I knew, I knew they weren‘t afraid to go after what they needed. And so when Jo took me and made me do what johnny had done to her—” “She what?"

“But don‘t you see,” I said to the sex worker, “I couldn‘t have gotten there by myself."

“So why are you so upset? Shouldn‘t you be happy that you know all this now?"

“Yeah, but I‘m not. I quit my job and started a whole new life. I‘ve had two lovers. But . . ."

Brenda caressed my hurt hand with both of hers.

“Are you giving up?” she asked.

“I don‘t know what you mean."

At that moment a white stretch limo pulled up to the curb in front of us. I expected someone to get out, but the big Lincoln just sat there as if waiting for us.

“Are you running away from life?"

“I have no life to leave,” I said. “There‘s nobody there."

“But it‘s her fault that you feel like that."

“If there was a hunger deep inside you and, and, and then one day you saw what you needed, would someone you love hold you back from that?"

“They‘d want to,” she said. “They‘d want me to be with them."

“But you‘d already be gone."

Sisypha/Brenda gasped and put her hands over her lips. Again I thought she was going to ask me something but she didn‘t.

“What?” I asked.

“I want to ask you for something, Cordell. But it‘s too soon."

“What is it?"

She smiled and stood up.

“Shall we go?” she said gesturing at the car.

On cue, the driver‘s door opened, and a tall, extremely handsome Asian man got out. There were a few strands of gray in his shoulder-length black mane. His face was completely without emotion. He wore a driver‘s uniform and cap and had very muscular hands.

“This is your car?” I asked Sisypha.

“Of course."

“How did he know how to find you?"

“I carry a small device that he can track. All I do is tell him when to pick me up. He appears wherever I am.

“Miss Landfall,” the driver said in greeting.

“Yes, Wan,” she said. “This is my guest—Cordell."

He nodded and opened the door.

We climbed into the backseat facing forward. The seats opposite were taken by a couple, a man and woman. The woman was white as anything, from her platinum hair to the satin slip she was using as a dress. The man next to her was as black as a blindfolded vision of midnight.

“Caesar, Inga,” Sisypha said in greeting. “This is my friend Cordell."

Caesar‘s white teeth were a shock next to such black skin. I thought that his eyes were probably white too, but the sunglasses he wore hid them.

Instead of saying anything, Inga pulled down her bodice, exposing two very firm and upstanding breasts.

“I like a dick between my tits while I‘m getting fucked, Cordell,” she said with a sneer.

The car moved from the curb.

“Uh-uh, no,” Sisypha interjected. “I have no intention of smelling your pussy all the way to Brooklyn. If you want to ride with us, Caesar and you both have to keep it in your pants."

“Snap!” Caesar shouted.

“I don‘t have any pants on,” Inga said, looking me in the eye.

She couldn‘t have been more than twenty-one. But her eyes were much more experienced than I would ever be. There was power in her.

I was glad that Sisypha had interrupted. Sex had brought me to that car, but I wasn‘t interested in Inga. She was only flesh, and I had come to believe that I was looking for something else.

I turned to my hostess. “What were you going to ask me?"

“Later,” she said, patting my hand. “Maybe."

On the ride over, Caesar talked about his African ancestry. His people had been nomads two thousand years ago, and their history had been, he claimed, passed down unbroken since that time.

“Seventy-six generations back,” he said. “My ancestor lay with Julius Caesar. All of the firstborn male children in my lineage bear his name."

“And what brings you to the Sex Games?” I asked.

The big African cocked his head as if trying to discern an insult.

He took off his glasses, showing that he wore bloodred lenses over his eyes.

“Sex,” he hissed. “Long, hard campaigns in the bedrooms of the most beautiful people in the world.” He reached around Inga and took her breasts into his large hands. She closed her eyes, transported by his touch.

“The games,” he continued, “are the only reason I don‘t drive a knife into my belly."

“Oh God,” Inga moaned. “I can feel him even when he‘s not inside me."

The red-eyed black god grinned at me, and my mind wandered back to Mel. Was I in for the same treatment?

I was slightly worried that I might have taken the same wrong turn as Mel, but I was more concerned that I had made that turn on purpose. Maybe Sisypha was right. Maybe I was looking for punishment the same way Jo had done with Johnny Fry.

Once again, silently, I committed myself to killing Johnny Fry.

The block-square warehouse that Wan brought us to was in the middle of a whole district of warehouses. Now and then you saw a homeless man walking his shopping cart down a vacant street, but otherwise the area was dead.

The green metal front door opened as we approached it. Two women—one white, the other brown, neither
one
wearing a stitch—smiled at Sisypha and hugged her.

We all walked down a long, dusty hall to a rickety old platform elevator that had an uneven floor made from planks of wood. Wan worked the lift while the naked young women chattered at Sisypha.

I didn‘t listen because I was trying to control my breathing.

I was petrified. All the tranquility and calm I‘d gained from the decision to kill Johnny Fry was gone. People were touching each other and looking frankly at me. The man next to me had red, red eyes and counted his relations all the way back to Imperial Rome.

The lift came to a stop, and Wan rolled the door open.

The huge room we came into was filled with light of every color. There were at least three hundred people in there, either sitting in the twelve-row-high collapsible bleachers or milling around the circular platform at the center of the room.

Almost everyone was scantily clad, even the older and fatter among them. In one corner, I saw a man and a woman having slow, serious sex on the floor. Just beyond them, a man was on his knees giving another man oral sex.

The smell of the room was strong with the odor of sweat and a cloying sweetness too.

I began sweating. All the sex and stories I had experienced before that moment were mere fairy tales at kindergarten recess. This was more serious than I believed I could take.

“Here,” Sisypha said to me. She was handing me a little pink pill.

“What is it?"

“Something that will keep that paleness out of your face.” She smiled and made a kissing gesture.

When she moved away, I saw the young man yanking on his partner‘s cock. The standing man began to ejaculate, and three women standing around them applauded and cheered.

I swallowed the pill and asked, “Where are we sitting?"

“This way,” Sisypha said.

She led me to a table near the platform. After I was seated, I put my head down into folded arms, waiting for the drug to do something, anything.

Amid the milling throng, I heard sporadic moans and grunts. There was the scent of sex in the air.

I didn‘t raise my head for a very long time.

I could tell that more and more people were coming in by the sound of footsteps and the rustle of clothes. But the louder sounds were subsiding. By this I assumed that people were getting seated in the bleachers.

Not only was my head buried in my hands, but my eyes were also shut tightly. Everything I had experienced since seeing Jo and Johnny Fry together came down on me. I couldn‘t see the light for the darkness in my mind.

“Come on,” Sisypha said, her cool voice like a tender hand at the back of my neck. “You‘ll be okay now."

I raised my head, realizing that though the fear was still in me, it had somehow been muted.

The seats were all filled with men and women ready for a show.

“What‘s it gonna be?” I asked.

“It‘s like the Olympics,” Sisypha told me. “They come here to find out who‘s the best."

“The best at sex?"

“Kind of,” she said turning to me, her café-au-lait face as beautiful as the memory of childhood.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“Sex is all kinds of things. For some men, it‘s their mothers, and for a lot of women, the father is the ideal. I know men who won‘t even look at a woman unless she‘s got tremendous boobs. She might not have brushed her teeth in a year, but if he can put his head between her tits, she‘s got him for the night.

“There‘s all kinds of obsessions and perversions, and this series of contests is how we say what is the best among them.

“For instance, this morning we had to choose who had the biggest cock among all the contestants. That‘s a hard call."

“Why?” I asked. The drug had hold of me by then. “All you need is a ruler."

“Some guys have long ones but they aren‘t very thick,” she explained. “Others have big ones that never get really hard. A guy could have a two-pound salami, but if it can‘t stand up, it loses points."

“I see,” I said.

I put out my fingers to touch her cheek lightly.

Her face hardened, and she said, “Don‘t touch me unless I invite
it..
“

I pulled my hand away and put it under the table.

“What is the next contest?” I asked to cover my embarrassment.

“Cock fight,” she said.

“What does that mean?"

“You‘ll see."

The lights went down, and a spotlight hit the back end of the slightly elevated platform. The six blocks of seating stood in arcs of three—one arc before and the other behind the raised dais.

The man who stood in the beam of light was the same man who bound Mel in
The Myth of Sisypha.
He was wearing purple hot pants and a red velvet shirt that had generous sleeves longer than his arms. His red hair was cut into a Mohawk that looked like wind-tossed wheat at the tips.

He raised his arms, and the red sleeves fell down to his elbows. You could see that he wore a ring on every finger.

“Sluts and pimps,” he cried. The crowd cheered. “Harlots and masochists, molesters and molested, fuckers and fucked, welcome, welcome, welcome . . . welcome to the main event."

He bowed so low that his forehead nearly touched the ground. His crop of hair actually did brush the floor. People jumped to their feet and hollered. They threw flowers and kisses. They bared their breasts and cocks and asses to him. They danced in place. There were flaming cigarette lighters held high in praise.

One woman was actually weeping. Many were laughing.

The sex clown waited for the cheers to subside. The derision in his scornful gaze somehow transformed into praise. I thought about Sasha looking at her brother‘s blubbering sorrow. That, I realized then, was her love for him.

“This is it,” the sex clown cried. “This is the main event. . . the cock fight."

Another round of exuberant cheering followed this claim.

Again the clown waited.