Killing Johnny Fry (28 page)

“What happened?” Jo asked.

“She‘s dead. I think he is too."

“That‘s terrible."

“Yeah,” I said. “But I need you to tell me something, honey."

“What? Oh my God. It‘s so awful about your neighbor. What did you want to ask, L?"

“Were you ever gonna tell me about Johnny Fry and you?"

The silence lasted a minute, maybe more, and then she hung up.

I cradled my own phone and sat back to figure out my life from that moment on. There were many women to choose from: Linda Chou, Monica Wells, Lucy Carmichael. I had my new profession as a photographers‘ agent. And I had to consider this thing about Africa. My reasons for starting the charitable organization were selfish and cynical, but I knew for a fact that I could change. I had the powrer of forgiveness. And if I could forgive joelle, why not forgive me too?

I went to the foyer and retrieved the paper bag. In it I found my stolen pistol, the box of ammo, and a pink envelope that smelled
of
patchouli oil. The envelope contained a red capsule and an index card that had a note scrawled on it in unruly cursive.

Dear Brother, Brother. That sounds so wonderful to say. For so many years I wanted to write to Man (that‘s my old brother‘s name) but I couldn‘t. He tried to apologize after what he did to me, but even though I felt sorry for him, I still couldn‘t trust him. And family has to be people you can trust.

My girlfriends told me to tell the police—I could never do that to my brother. But now it doesn‘t matter, because after just one night, after all these years of looking, you are my brother and I am your sister. And we will look after each other.

I called Cynthia to thank her for you. She said that she knew we would get along. She‘s a very wonderful woman, and one day, when you come to stay at my house in Santa Barbara, we‘ll go to see her and her girlfriend.

Don‘t lose yourself to an errant lover, Cordell. Don‘t use this gun to solve your problems. Forgive her. Understand her. Make her understand that she hurt you . . .

I‘ve put all my numbers and my people‘s numbers on the back of this card. Call me soon. Call me Sister. And never forget that I will love you when everyone else has turned off their lines.

Your sister,
S

p.s. The capsule I enclosed with this letter is one of the designer drugs I use. It will help you if you have a serious problem and need to think it through. Only take it when you have a good long time to consider the alternatives.

I was still thinking about forgiveness when the phone rang.

“Hello."

“How long have you known?"

“You remember the day your door was open?” I asked, “and you asked me if I had been there?"

I waited for her to reply, but she didn‘t.

“I came in and saw you in the living room with him. You were on the couch and, and on the floor."

“You watched that long?” she asked.

“At first I was mesmerized, shocked. And, and then, when I was leaving, I heard you cry out, and I thought something had happened . . ."

“Oh no,” she murmured. “No. Why didn‘t you tell me? Why didn‘t you try to stop us?"

“I wasn‘t thinking. I had walked into your house—the only reason I did was because you had told me you would be in New Jersey, and I had to go to the toilet. But I came in on you and Johnny. It wasn‘t my house. But I wasn‘t even thinking that. I just wanted to get away. Away."

“And so when we ran into Johnny at the museum, you knew?"

“Yeah."

I was thinking that Sisypha, my adopted sister, was probably crazy. She lived in the shadows of our society. There she made up her own laws and rules of conduct.

“I‘m so sorry, L,” Joelle said. “I never meant to hurt you like that."

“I know."

“I always made him wear a condom,” she said. “I made him get an STD test."

But even though Sisypha was crazy, she was closer to me than I had ever been to Joelle. We, Joelle and I, were like two stones that had rolled up next to each other after an avalanche brought on by an earthquake—we shared a common ground, but that was just about all.

But a force as sure as gravity had brought me to Sisypha.

“L?” Jo had been talking.

“Yeah?"

“I asked you what you wanted to do now."

“What‘s there to do, Jo?"

“I broke up with John that afternoon, after we met at the art museum."

“Because of Bettye?"

In the silence on the line, I thought that there would be hard times with Sisypha. She would ask me for understanding in a world that scared me to death. With her I would use drugs and enter into violence. My sexuality would be called into question every day . . .

“Because of you, “ J o said. “Because I want to be with you."

“Why were you with him?” I asked, and then I said, “I want you to understand that I have gone past being mad about this. I want to know why you did it, but I‘m not asking so I can have ammunition against you. I only want you to tell me because we should tell each other the truth."

“Are you going to leave me, L?"

“I don‘t know what we‘ll do,” I said. “For eight years you‘ve been my only friend and family. My mother is lost to me, my siblings feel nothing for me. You have been my only friend.

“But in all that time I barely knew you. Here the most important event in your life was a secret. I don‘t blame you for not telling me. I don‘t think you owe me any such thing, but it just throws light on how empty our connection has been."

“You must have secrets,” Jo said, defending herself. “You could have had lovers."

“You‘re right. Of course you are,” I said. “But not something like that. My secret was that I was completely oblivious to the emptiness and shallowness of my life. I was living in a hole and calling it a home. The secret I was keeping I kept from myself too."

“There‘s nothing wrong with you, Cordell,” she said. “It‘s me."

“Yes, I know. It is you. But that doesn‘t exonerate me. Part of the reason I didn‘t confront you was because without you, I‘d have nothing. My days and nights would have been empty, alone."

“Is that why you had such wild sex with me?” she asked.

“Definitely. And not only you. Since the day I saw you with him, I‘ve had sex with three women in the flesh and one over the phone."

“Who?"

“It doesn‘t matter who,” I said. “What matters is that I‘m telling you the truth while you‘re still lying to me."

Joelle spoke in silences. Her whole life had been one of mum regard. Whenever I got near her truth, she clammed up. I felt bad for her while at the same realizing that whenever she was quiet, my mind went back to Sisypha.

My most precious possession was her desire to be my sister—not whether we ever spoke again, but the wish she gave voice to. It opened up a door inside me. It was the offer that mattered, not her ability to deliver.

“What did I say that was a lie?” Jo asked.

“Not a lie in words,” I said. “You did break up with John Fry, but you‘ve spoken to him since then, haven‘t you?"

Silence.

“Were you really expecting your sister when I called just now? Did you call anybody else before you called me back?"

“Please, L,” she pleaded. I could hear the sobs behind her words. “I can‘t do this all at once."

“Then call me back when you‘re ready to talk,” I said.

“Don‘t get off."

“You lying to me will never get you what you want, Jo. The only thing it can do is destroy the little we have."

“I won‘t lie."

“Then answer my questions."

“I, I can‘t. I can‘t say something like that to you. All I can say is that you are the centerpiece of my life. Without you I would go out of orbit and crash and die. You being in my life is what holds me in place."

It was my turn to be quiet. I knew that Jo was trying to get out of the sexual tangle she found herself in. I knew that her life might really be threatened. But all I could think about at that moment was Celia: her milk running down my face, her contorted, satisfied look as I licked the air below her breast.

I had always been afraid to find out what my desires were. It was easier to be with a woman like Jo who kept her life in sensible compartments, who had secrets that were ground-shaking but who never wondered how the world shifted in me.

“I don‘t want you to die, Jo,” I said. “But if you can‘t tell me that you need something from a man that I can‘t give, then how can we talk?"

“You don‘t know that,” she said angrily.

“Am I wrong? Can you at least tell me that you didn‘t call Johnny? That you won‘t see him again? That you don‘t need to see him?"

This time she only took thirty seconds or so to respond. In that time I wondered what it would be like to see Celia, to know that she was with many men, and probably women, but always came home to me. Was that any different from me with Jo and Johnny?

“I can‘t tell you but I can show you,” she said.

“I don‘t understand."

“Come over to my place, and I‘ll show you how I feel."

“I‘m a little busy for the next few days,” I said.

“With your new girlfriends?” she said, in a derisive tone that I didn‘t think I deserved.

“No,” I said. “Just some people I have to see and, oh yeah, I quit being a translator. Now I‘m a photographers‘ agent. I have a client that I sold to a Midtown gallery. I have to work on that."

“You quit? When?"

“They day I saw you."

“But how will you live?"

“As best I can. I‘ll come to your place in two days,” I said. “In the afternoon. If you need to talk or want to talk before then, all you have to do is call."

It was almost noon when I walked out the front door of my building. I don‘t know if they were waiting there or if they‘d just arrived when I was leaving.

“Cordell Carmel.” The big cop that came into my apartment earlier was standing there with two uniforms. One of these was a black man.

“Yes?"

“We‘re taking you to the station for a talk,” he said.

“What‘s your name?” I asked him, as the black cop put handcuffs on me.

“Detective Jurgens,” he said, quite civilly.

When the cop standing behind me went through my pockets, I was relieved that I‘d left the pistol upstairs.

They locked me in a room that had a faint odor to it. Actually it was a combination of scents. There was something chemical, acrid, and then there was a stale smell that hovered between vomit and sweat. The final element that bound the stench was sweet like vanilla flavoring. It was this sweetness that fouled the chamber. It reeked of a cover-Up; the attempt to hide the truth of that room.

It wasn‘t a big space, and there were no windows. By that time my feet were also manacled. So I sat in the straight-backed chair behind a table with a heavy black phone on it. Jurgens had read me the story about my rights, and now I was alone.

But I wasn‘t afraid. I was used to jail cells.

I had been to see my father in jail many a time. He‘d get arrested for drunk-and-disorderly and fighting, mainly. He was a brutal man, but my mother loved him as a god incarnate. If he was in the room, her eyes rarely left him. If he was gone, she‘d sit in his chair by the phone, waiting for him to get in touch. That‘s why I was so surprised that they‘d never married.

He was always friendliest when they had him chained and behind bars. He‘d smile for me and ask about my day. He‘d say that he was sorry I had to go through this and ask me to forgive him.

Once, when he was in for thirty days, he told me that I was a bright boy and he wanted to see me in the university. That‘s the word he used: “university,” not college. I was only nine, but from that day on I applied myself to schoolwork, and when I was admitted to U C Berkeley, I went to visit my dad, Carson Carmel, at Soledad Prison, where he‘d been sentenced for twelve years for manslaughter.

“What the fuck I care about some school?” he said to me after I proudly told him about my admission. “Did you bring me the fuckin‘ cigarettes?"

All those years of hard work to make him proud, only to realize that my father hadn‘t cared past the moment he told me that he wanted to see me in the university.

That was my life, I thought, in that small interrogation room, years of unconscious darkness marked by scattered flickerings of light.

After what seemed like a very long time, Detective Jurgens and a sergeant, Jorge Mannes, came to see me. Sergeant Mannes was slight of build and painstakingly neat. During the thirty-minute interview, he found seven pieces of lint on his dark suit. He removed every one, placing them in a plastic wastebasket that sat in the corner behind him.

“Did you have anything to do with Sasha Bennett‘s death?” were the first words out of Jurgens‘s mouth.

“No."

Mannes smiled. He had red-brown skin and a razor-thin mustache.

“Did you know her brother?"

“Last Friday I helped her bring him up to her apartment. He was drunk, and she couldn‘t manage him."

“Did he say anything?"

“That he loved his sister,” I said, thinking that I loved my father. I would have traded places in Soledad with him if I could. I would have taken on the cancer that killed him without a second thought.

“You ever see him again?” Mannes asked.

“He came down to my apartment that night, really in the early morning, about two I think."

“What for?” Jurgens asked. He seemed not to want Mannes to talk.

“He was drunk, more so than before. He was upset."

“About what?” Mannes asked quickly, to be a part of the case.

I hesitated. I didn‘t owe Sasha anything. But I didn‘t want her to seem like a bad person. She had been mangled by life like I had, and Jo and Sisypha. She wasn‘t someone to be blamed.

“Speak up,” Jurgens said.

“He had had sex with Sasha. I guess they‘d been doing that since they were kids, and he didn‘t know how to stop."

“Except with a pistol,” Mannes said with a sly grin.

“If we check her cunt, do we find you or him up in there?” Jurgens asked.

I tried to leap at him, but it was futile. I couldn‘t even turn my chair over.

“Maybe both,” Mannes said, smiling.

They rose together. At the door Jurgens said, “Hang out here for a while until we know what‘s what."