Killing Johnny Fry (32 page)

“Do you feel it, L?” she asked again, again pushing the button and releasing the current on me and in me.

It was a little less this time, or maybe I was getting used to it. She licked her tongue against the head of my cock, causing a crooked arc of electricity between her mouth and me.

“Feel that energy going through you, L? That‘s how I felt all those years with my uncle; all those years I kept from going back. It was sweet torture. I could have stopped it but I didn‘t. First I was worried about my family, and after that, after that, I just, I just didn‘t know the way home."

She climbed up on my cock and fucked me, turning on the juice at odd moments that I couldn‘t predict. She felt the current too. It went through me right up into her. Something about the shocks kept me from coming even though I felt it deep inside. The electricity was going all through me, pulsing through my middle and up the shaft of my elongated cock.

I felt like I was coming but I couldn‘t. I couldn‘t stop fucking either. And all the while Jo, a woman I realized now that I‘d never known, kept asking me if I felt it.

“Do you feel it, baby? Is this what you wanted to know?"

That went on for over an hour, until finally she got off me and pulled on my dick with both hands. Because she used both hands, I knew the shocks wouldn‘t come. Something in me relaxed, and I experienced an orgasm that was more powerful than any single feeling I had ever known. Five minutes later my body was still jittering and twitching.

“That‘s what it has been like for me, L,” she whispered. “That‘s why I can‘t break it off with John Fry. He makes me feel like that, and I need it, I have to have it or I‘ll die."

I tried to say something, but the shocks were still in me.

A few minutes later, Jo got up and went to her bedroom, closing the door behind her.

After a while I went to her door but found it locked. So I gathered my clothes and dressed slowly, hoping that Jo would come out to say good-bye. But when my shoes were tied and she hadn‘t shown, I went out of her apartment and her life.

Down on the street, I sat on a bench next to the wall that separated the traffic from the park. I had my hand on the pistol in my pocket. Every now and then, I shuddered from the memory of her shock treatments.

I did feel what she showed me, and I knew that it was too much. I had to leave her, because I couldn‘t beat her or do to her what she had just done to me.

I looked up and saw Johnny Fry walking toward her building.

“johnny,” I called.

He stopped and recognized me. I waved him over, and he came.

“Hello, Cordell,” he said. “How are you?"

“I feel like a rat that just swam across a river,” I said. “Alive but weak and not sure why I did it."

Johnny sat down next to me.

“She needs me, Cordell,” he said.

A spasm went through my spine and I shifted on the stone bench.

“Yeah,” I said. “She needs something."

“You‘re a good guy, Cordell, but Joelle has a really dark side. I don‘t know what you guys were doing Up there, but you haven‘t seen the half of it. She‘s a demon on wheels. You‘re lucky you got somebody like me to take her off your hands."

“So you say,” I said. “So you say."

“Are you telling me that you want her when you know everything about us?” he said. “You know, sometimes I was with her from Sunday night to Saturday morning. If you guys had children, they‘d all be mine."

“That has nothing to do with me, Mr. Fry.” I was enjoying his attempt to turn me from Jo. He was at the disadvantage, and that was fine by me.

“What do you mean?” he asked. “Do you still plan to try and be with her?"

“I have no plans, John. She told me that she was gonna show me something and then you were gonna piss on her and fuck her in the ass."

“You have no right to talk about her like that,” he sputtered. “No right. She‘s got something beautiful in her. She‘s becoming something wonderful. You have no right to talk about her like that."

“But you have the right to fuck her while she‘s talking to me on the phone. You have the right to come on her lips while I‘m going on like a fool in French or Spanish."

“You don‘t understand how we feel,” he said.

I took out the pistol, holding it in the flat of my hand.

Johnny froze when he realized what I was holding.

“I understand,” I said. “I understand what you think. I got this gun to shoot you with. I took it from Brad Mettleman, thinking that you should die because you made me inconsequential . . ."

Johnny grabbed the pistol and pointed it at me.

He jumped to his feet and cried, “You stupid motherfucker! You don‘t know what it means. I should shoot your fuckin‘ ass right here in the street. You stupid asshole. You dumb fuck. You don‘t have any idea what it f-f-feels like to be with her—the real her. You don‘t know what she is. She‘s like the sun. She‘s, she‘s, she‘s . . ."

I put my hands up. I wanted to smile, but the depth of Johnny‘s feelings actually touched me. He was in love even if Jo was not. He was lost in the web of her uncle‘s abuse more than she was.

“I threw away the bullets, John,” I said.

“What?"

“All along the way I threw them into trash cans. I knew I couldn‘t kill you. I knew I could never have her back."

“Halt!” someone shouted.

Johnny turned quickly and the pointed pistol turned with him. We saw the policemen at the same moment. They opened fire, hitting Johnny Fry seventeen times.

Holland Dollar met me at the police station that evening. They were only questioning me this time.

I told the police most of the truth: that my girlfriend called me over to tell me that she was going to have an open relationship with Fry; that I waited for Johnny to tell him that I knew everything and that I was unhappy about their cheating; that he pulled a gun on me and threatened me but that I didn‘t think he intended to shoot.

It was mostly true. Mostly.

For some days after that, I sat in my third-floor apartment wondering if I had killed Johnny Fry. I examined my motives and my heart. I can‘t say that I didn‘t hate the man—the lessons he taught me were not anything I ever wanted to know. He humiliated me and laughed at my impotence, but in the end I had not planned to take his life.

My pistol was empty, and I didn‘t expect him to be at Jo‘s. If she had come out of that bedroom, I was going to give her the pistol as a symbol of how deep my feelings for her ran.

And in the street I didn‘t expect the police to come or, for that matter, Johnny to grab the gun from my open palm.

I had no idea that he feared my influence on Jo.

In a court of law or just the judgment of common sense, I would be found innocent of having committed any crime.

But there was one moment that I could not explain away. When the first shot hit John Fry, he let out a little grunt of surprise and maybe pain. In that brief instant I felt a moment of satisfaction and hope. There was something inside me that rejoiced at his impending demise. I hadn‘t called the cops, but neither did I yell out for them to stop. It would have made no difference if I had tried to save Johnny, but the fact that I didn‘t try meant, in a way, that I
leaned toward
killing him.

Seeing his death in this light, I am guilty for remaining quiet when I could have spoken up. He would have died anyway, I‘m sure, but that doesn‘t exonerate my inaction.

I haven‘t spoken to Joelle again. Maybe she hates me, maybe not. She‘s called, but I never listen to the messages. I erase them as soon as I hear her voice.

I talk to Cynthia about
once
a week, and Sisypha has been to see me three times in as many months. She really wants to be my sister. And even through all the guilt I‘m feeling, she fills me with happiness.

I have been seeing various women—sexually. Linda and Monica, Lucy and Nina too. Lucy‘s show was a big success. Her foundation made more than $300,000 and funded a home for African children who have been orphaned by endless wars and AIDS.

Monica‘s daughter, Mozelle, has been accepted to the Lycee Franc ais.

I know that I haven‘t been a good person in all of this. I have done most things wrong and come out okay anyway. But I try to tell myself that there‘s always time for redemption and that sometimes even the worst decisions turn out to be just fine.