Killing Johnny Fry (4 page)

“You sound funny,” Joelle, my lover of eight years, said. “Are you sure that you‘re okay?"

“Great. Are we still getting together this weekend?"

“Of course we are. Don‘t we stay together every weekend?”

“I just . . . well, I just didn‘t want to take anything for granted.”

“You can‘t take me for granted, L,” she said sweetly. “I‘m your girlfriend. Why would you even think such a thing?"

“It‘s just waking up from such a sound sleep, I guess."

For a while then, the line was silent. The darkness began to form into shapes that were foreign to me. I knew that if it were daytime, I‘d understand the shadows and spaces, but at night, slightly inebriated, it was as if I were in another person‘s space.

“L?” Jo asked.

“Yes, honey?"

“Do you ever drop by during the day?"

Yes. And yesterday I was up there watching you get fucked in the ass by Johnny Fry and his big red condom.

“If I did, you‘d know it,” I said. “Either we‘d see each other or I‘d leave you a note."

“Oh."

“How come, honey?” I asked innocently. “Would you like me to call before I come over?"

“No. Of course not. It‘s just that . . ."

“What?"

“When I got back from my meeting in New Jersey, I found the door open."

“Huh. That‘s odd. Could you have left it open?"

“Yeah. I kinda had my hands full when I left, but you‘d have thought someone would have seen it and closed it for me."

I wondered if she was trying to make fun of me. For an instant I hated her—fully and completely. Then it passed. She was just worried, and I . . . well I couldn‘t bring myself to mention her infidelity. It just wouldn‘t come out of my mouth.

“I better get to bed,” I said.

“Call me when you get down to Philadelphia?” she asked. “YOLI know I want to know where you are."

“Sure thing. Bye."

I meant to get up early and take a taxi to Penn Station, but I didn‘t set an alarm or anything, and I was pretty drunk. When I woke up it was dark and I thought I had made it in time, but it was just that the shades blocked out the midday sun. It was 11:30 in the morning. I had already missed my meeting.

When I went into the living room, I realized that one of the pillows from the futon had fallen on the phone; when it rang in the morning, the ringer had been muffled, and I hadn‘t heard it from my bedroom.

There were four messages on the answering machine. All of them were from Jerry Singleton, my main translation agent.

“Cordell,” the first message started. “I got a call from Norberto down in Philly. He says that you‘re late for the meeting. What‘s going on?"

By the fourth message he was threatening to cut me off, saying that I wasn‘t the best or the cheapest translator he could find. He told me to call him before the end of the day or he‘d make sure that I never worked for anyone in New York or anywhere else.

He was so angry that it made sense in an odd way that my hand had swollen to almost twice its normal size. The knuckles were spread painfully apart, and that reminded me of Jo and Johnny Fry; him spreading her rectum with his wide erection.

For a while I tried to imagine making coffee or breakfast, but soon I realized that neither was possible with my injury. There was a small diner two blocks away that served breakfast all day long.

I was already dressed and so I just went out the door, forgoing the usual lockup. As I started down the stairs, I heard a door on an upper floor open.

By the time I was halfway down the block, she called after me, “Cordell."

Sasha was wearing a purple dress that was mid-thigh in length and matched her purple and white polka-dot high heels. The bodice showed her generous cleavage, and she was wearing makeup.

“Wow,” I said.

“What?” she asked as she came up to me.

“You‘re gorgeous. Down to the shoes."

It was the right thing to say. She took my arm and pulled me along.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“Ultimately to the doctor,” I said, holding up my bloated hand for her inspection.

“Oh my God,” she said. “That‘s terrible. You should go right away. I‘ll come with if you want."

“I‘d rather you had breakfast with me,” I said. “I was going over to Dino‘s for some food."

She smiled and hugged my biceps with her wrist and breast.

As we walked, I tried to remember if I had kissed her the night before.

The young Latina waitress took us to a booth in the window. She set down our menus and we told her that we were ready to order.

I usually have Egg Beaters with turkey sausage and decaffeinated coffee, but that noon I ordered Dino‘s special chocolate chip pancakes with maple-cured bacon, and a beer.

Sasha ordered chicken soup with matzo balls and talked about her younger brother, who was coming for a visit all the way from California for the weekend.

“Enoch is a genius,” she said nonchalantly. “Everybody has been telling us that since he was two. He gets As on everything and aces all his tests. He‘s thirty and has never held a j ob or gotten a degree, but still my father says that I should be more like him."

“A genius?” I asked and she laughed and touched my good hand.

“Have you ever found out that somebody you were with was with somebody else?” I asked without expecting to.

Sasha looked at me with her large dark eyes. She took a deep breath and that lovely cleavage rose.

“You mean somebody told you about it other than her?"

“I mean I walked into her apartment and saw him sticking his dick in her ass.” I had
no
idea that the words were going to come out of my mouth. Immediately I felt ashamed.

“ I ‘m sorry,” I said. “I didn‘t mean . . ."

“What are you sorry about?” Sasha asked taking my left hand in both of hers. “It‘s her that should be sorry. What did she say?"

“She didn‘t see me and I, I left."

“Are you going to call her?"

“She called me last night. I wanted to say something but I couldn‘t. I just couldn‘t.” I felt like crying. I held my breath to keep the tears at bay.

“That‘s so fucked up,” Sasha said. “I mean, she probably didn‘t mean for you to see it but . . . how long have you guys been together?"

“Eight years, just about.” I released the breath and the sorrow moved off

“She should have told you. But now you have to face her. You have to tell her that you know."

“Has that ever happened to you?” I asked.

Sasha let go of my hand and sat back against the orange Naugahyde bolster. She looked down into her soup for half a minute or more.

“When I was fifteen, I had this eighteen-year-old boyfriend,” she said. “Ray Templeton. He had jet-black hair and a big, strong chest. He‘d dropped out of high school a long time before to work in a garage. It was his dream to one day become a NASCAR racer. I was really in love with him, even though my parents told me that he was too old and a loser.

“One day I was going to surprise him. I had knitted him a sweater and I wanted to bring it to his garage. So I went home to change and when I got in the house, I heard my mother crying out ‘Oh God, Oh God, Oh God‘—like that. I thought she was in there with my father and I was totally disgusted, but then I heard him groan, and I realized it was Ray in there with my mom."

“What did you do?"

“I went in and screamed at them. I yelled and threw a lamp down. Ray jumped out of the bed to calm me down, but I just got madder, ‘cause he had a full erection. Finally my mom started begging me to forgive her, and I ran off. I ran out the front door and around the side of the house because I didn‘t want anyone to see me crying.

“I was sitting out there for a while and then I heard my mother shouting ‘Oh God, Oh God‘ again. For a while I thought I‘d just wait until they finished, but they just went on and on fucking for fucking hours."

The hardness of her face made Sasha look like a totally different woman. She was taking in deep breaths, and her ears reddened.

“So what did you do?” I asked.

“I left. I went to see my friend Marie and asked could I stay there for the night. My parents didn‘t know any of my friends, and so I just waited until the next day and then I went to my father‘s office and told him why I wasn‘t home."

“Damn,” I said. “Damn. So what happened then?"

“He divorced her. Moved out the next day. First we rented an apartment, and then I went to live with cousins in Brooklyn, and Enoch went with my father."

“What did your mother say?"

“I never talked to her again. She went down to North Carolina with Ray for a while. I knew that because his sister told me. But then he played the same shit on my mom and she went out to Los Angeles to work in makeup for Hollywood. Every once in a while she tries to get in touch, but I won‘t talk to her. She‘s a cunt and I hate her."

And she did—I could tell.

I was amazed by the amount
of
destruction that Sasha laid out around her. Her father‘s life and her brother‘s as well as her mother‘s.

I thought about Sasha running out and her mother, who probably hadn‘t ever had sex like that before, unwilling or maybe unable to turn away from the teenage mechanic.

“Do you hate me now?” she asked.

That made me laugh, and laughing felt good.

“ No , “ I said. “How could I hate you? You haven‘t done anything to me. You haven‘t tried to hurt me."

“I like you,” she said with real feeling in her words. “The only reason I haven‘t come knocking on your door is because you said about your girlfriend and you seemed to want to be with only her."

“Wow. Really?"

“Why wouldn‘t I?” Sasha asked. “You have those big beautiful lips and those long fingers. Anyway, I like a man who you know wants to be looking at you but then he gets kinda shy."

For a moment or two I forgot how to breathe.

“I‘d like to see you too,” I said. “But can you give me a few days to work this shit out in my head?"

“Sure. My brother‘s gonna visit anyway. Maybe we could go out for dinner or something next week."

She took my injured hand in both of hers very gently, moving the tips of her fingers around the swollen knuckles.

“That would be nice,” I said.

I must have looked down because she touched my chin so that I‘d look back into her dark eyes.

Slowly she began to increase the pressure of her caress. Outside people were walking. In the booth next to us an old couple was arguing about something having to do with a cousin. My hand, especially between the knuckles, began to throb with pain.

“Do you like pain, Cordell?” she asked, staring into my eyes.

My hand was hurting, but I didn‘t pull away.

“Does this hurt?” she asked me.

“Yes,” I whispered.

“You can trust me.” She squeezed harder.

My shoulders rose in response.

“All you have to do is pull away,” she said, a demure smile on her lips.

I closed my eyes and let my head nod slightly. My breath became a staccato like huffing, and my neck shortened like a penis in the cold.

Suddenly Sasha let go of my hand. I opened my eyes to see her still gazing at me.

“Why didn‘t you yell at them?” she asked me.

“I don‘t know."

“Go
on,” she said, dismissing me. “Go to the doctor, and next week we‘ll see what else you like."

“I‘ll pay,” I said.

“No. I‘ll get this one,” she responded. There was no room for argument in her tone.

When I stood up from the table, I stumbled, almost fell. Outside I looked back into the restaurant and saw Sasha waving at me, smiling like she always did.

Walking down the street, I realized that I was afraid of my neighbor. She had gripped my injured hand with a good deal of force. She was trying to hurt me, daring me to pull away.

After a few blocks I realized that I was jogging down the street.

Dr. Charles Tremain had been my physician for more than twenty years. I had gone to him for fevers, headaches, and sporadic checkups. This wasn‘t the first time I‘d just dropped by the office on 69th Street between Madison and Lexington avenues. His receptionist, Maya, smiled when she saw me, and then reacted in shock when I showed her my hand.

She put me in a private room right away. There the new young nurse from Ghana, Aleeda Nossa, told me to take off my clothes and put on a pale-green paper robe that lay on the examination table.

“But I‘m just here for my hand,” I explained.

“Dr. Tremain wants you to take off your clothes,” she replied.

She was a lovely young woman with exceptionally dark, almost blue-black skin and large almond-shaped eyes. Maybe twenty-five, maybe thirty. Her figure was extraordinarily full, but she was not at all big or heavy.

“Mr. Carmel,” she said expecting me to disrobe.

“Can I have some privacy?” I asked.

She smiled fetchingly and sashayed out the door.

I quickly disrobed and put on the pastel paper gown. From the doctor‘s window I could see rooftops for three or four blocks. There were small gardens and barbecues, tables and chairs set out for the uptown summer residents. Two men, stripped down to their waists, were building a fence between two abutting roofs. A small dog leashed to a doorknob was leaping up and down, probably barking at them.

There was an anatomy book on a small table in the corner of the small room. I picked it up, but before I could open it, Aleeda returned with an electric thermometer. She touched my shoulder and placed the tip of the gauge awanesh gently in my ear.

“Ninety-eight point four,” she said after no more than ten seconds had passed. “Close enough."

“It‘s my hand giving me grief,” I told her, holding it up for her to see.

She caressed my wrist so softly that I hardly felt it. Her eyes grew large and worried.

“Oh my,” she said and my heart thrilled.

With her fingertips she traced my swollen knuckles as Sasha had done. Then she looked at me and asked, “What happened?"

“Fell."

We stared into each others‘ eyes a moment, and then she looked down.

“Mr. Carmel,” she said, as if I had somehow insulted her.

I hadn‘t realized until I looked that I had a full erection pressing up against the paper. It wasn‘t only hard, but there was also a growing wet spot at the place where the head was raising the flimsy gown.