Killing Johnny Fry (7 page)

“Hold on."

While waiting, I practiced flexing my right hand. The anti-inflammatory was doing a good j o b on the swelling. I could get my fingers down far enough to make my hand seem somewhat like a bear‘s paw. There was still some pain, but it only served to make me feel hopeful, somehow.

“Hello?"

“Lucy?"

“Mr. Carmel."

“L. Everybody calls me L."

“I didn‘t expect to hear from you for a while,” she said.

I explained that I had spoken to Brad and that he said he was too busy to take on anyone for at least a year. Lucy thanked me in a downcast tone. Then I told her that he suggested I try to represent her work.

“I told him that your work was too important to ignore. He said if I felt that strongly, he‘d introduce me to the right gallery owners, which would give me an edge."

“Really?” she asked.

“Yes. He‘s faxing me today about the gallery owners. Maybe you could come over tomorrow evening and we could go over the approach we‘ll take."

“No kidding?"

“I think your work is very important,” I said, feeling every syllable. It was important; important for me to make a living.

“What time should I come?"

“I have a pretty busy day,” I said. “What about eight?"

“My boyfriend‘s supposed to come down this weekend,” she said, and then paused. “But I‘ll tell him that something‘s come up. This is so great."

I nodded and then said yes.

“See you tomorrow night,” I said. “Bye."

After that I ordered six yellow roses to be delivered to Linda Chou at Brad Mettleman‘s office. On the note I had them say,
Tm sorry if I was rude. Cordell Carmel.

I left my house at three and went to my favorite little Italian bistro on the Avenue of the Americas near Houston. I sat Out side in the hot sun eating fresh mozzarella, eggplant, avocado, and fried calamari. I had hours to kill.

I usually showed up at Joelle‘s house around seven. She liked to work on Friday mornings and straighten up in the afternoon.

I was in no hurry. I realized at some point during the day that our relationship was over. I wasn‘t upset about it. I didn‘t even plan to tell her that I knew about her and Johnny Fry.

Everything was new. I‘d quit my job, had two women I could at least pursue, and I had at least two years in which I didn‘t have to earn a dime.

I laughed out loud. Johnny Fry‘s big red dick had set me free.

I didn‘t feel a thing for Joelle anymore. I didn‘t even want to see her, but I figured that I should go to her house and tell her so. I‘d tell her the truth:
I just don‘t love you anymore.
That‘s all I had to say.

“A glass
of
red wine, please,” I said to the waiter, a young would-be actor named Jean-Paul.

He smiled at me, and I smiled back. It was a new life. I was free for the first time that I could remember. I sat there watching women go by dressed in the scanty clothing they put on for the summer heat. I was thinking about Sisypha. She could be any woman walking down the street, and no one would ever guess what she was like or what she was doing at home. You‘d look at her and think,
There goes a nice-looking woman. Wedding ring. Probably has two kids and no orgasms.

I decided that one day I‘d meet Sisypha and ask her something that would catch her attention.

I grabbed a cab at 6:20. The Pakistani cabbie took me to Joelle‘s building on Central Park West. Jorge, a middle-aged, half-bald Dominican man, was at the front desk. He waved me by without announcing me.

I dreaded the elevator car reaching her floor. It wasn‘t that I felt bad about having seen her and Johnny; it was that I didn‘t want her anymore. I didn‘t want to see her or talk to her or to pretend to care.

When the elevator stopped and the doors opened, I waited a moment, took a deep breath, and then stepped out into the hall. I was planning to break up with her before we ate. I‘d sit down in the living room, and when she offered me a drink, I‘d say, “I have something to talk to you about, J o . “ I wouldn‘t call her honey or sweetheart or darling—never again.

She opened the door and smiled. Her copper-brown skin and dark hair were glowing, literally. She had on a knee-length brown skirt and a green T-shirt that hugged her slender figure. When I looked at her, I felt nothing. I mean, I noticed that she was glowing, of course, but that held no attraction for me.

The thought that Johnny Fry had been there in the afternoon crossed my mind.

She opened her arms to welcome me, and I reached down and pulled the T-shirt up over her breasts, as it had been with Johnny two days before.

“L!” she yelped.

Her nipples were both hard and plump, darker brown than her copper mounds. I took one in my mouth and sucked it hard and then licked the other one. A satisfied hum came up in my throat.

“L!"

I Wrapped my arms together just below her butt and raised her so that I could rub my face against her breasts.

“Oh my God!"

I brought the flat
of
my bruised hand up under her skirt from behind, curling the fingers firmly against her vagina. She moaned then.

“Close the door,” she gasped.

I kicked the door shut and pushed Jo to the floor right there in the entrance hall.

“Let‘s go to the bedroom,” she panted.

“No,” I said as I pulled off her panties.

She was working my zipper down.

She got my erection out and stood up with it firmly in her grasp. She pulled hard and I followed. She brought me to the couch and sat on the back rest, guiding me inside her. I was so excited that I didn‘t realize at first that she was positioning me in exactly the same place that Johnny Fry had stood. I worried for a moment that I‘d lose my excitement, but then a passion overtook me, and I began to buck in and out of her as hard as I could. I didn‘t feel anything. I was numb. All I could hear was Jo shouting, “Oh! Oh! Oh!” and the slapping of our flesh in staccato rhythm.

When I came, I was bucking so hard that I came out of her. She grabbed my cock, keeping up the rhythm by pulling back and forth.

“Keep coming,” she told me, and I did. “Don‘t stop."

Even after I stopped ejaculating, my thing was still hard and I was moving back and forth. Jo pulled me to the other side of the couch and got down on her stomach. She put her hand in her mouth and then slathered her anus with her own saliva.

“Fuck my ass, Daddy,” she cried. “Fuck my ass with that big hard dick."

Daddy.

I grabbed her arms and held them out so that she was pinioned a little like Mel was in the film. Then I plunged into her. She cried Out and grunted in just the same way she had with Johnny Fry. She bucked up against me and cried, “Deeper.” And when I pressed harder, she called out in pain as she had done with her other lover.

I ground away at her, and she writhed under me. In my mind I was in
The Myth of Sisypha,
and in Jo‘s mind I was Johnny Fry cuckolding myself.

When I came, it was like my whole being went into orgasm. There was no local feeling, just an overall ecstasy.

Afterward we lay there quivering. I imagined that Jo‘s passion came from getting me to behave just as her lover had done. I was shivering from an emotion I‘d not experienced before, at least not since adulthood. It was a loathing deep in my heart. It was hatred so profound that I couldn‘t even locate what or who it was that I despised.

Was it me I hated, for playing such a fool? Or was it Jo, for making me jump through hoops like a goddamned dog? Maybe, like with my orgasm, it was everything that I hated: the moon and stars, gods and maggots.

“You‘re still hard,” Jo said.

I was lying on my back in the Sunlit room. My erection was standing straight Up. And even though the only feeling I had was revulsion, I reached for Joelle‘s arm.

She rolled away from me, laughing.

“You can‘t come in me again Until you wash off,” she said. “I could get infected if you don‘t."

I grabbed her arm and dragged her to the bathroom. Yanking a towel off the rack, I said, “Wash it off fast."

Giggling, Jo used soap and cold water. I relished the bracing chill over my balls and down my inner thighs. The cold renewed me and staved off the revulsion in my mind.

“My God,” she said.

“What?"

“I thought if I put cold water on it, it might go down and give me a break."

“Does that work with your other boyfriends?"

“I don‘t have any other boyfriends,” she said playfully.

I pulled her from the bathroom to the bed, propped up the back side of her knees with my arms, and plunged into her pussy this time. She gasped and stared into my eyes.

“Have you ever let another man fuck your ass?” I asked her.

“Never,” she said shaking her head and staring me in the eye.

“Not even once with your first boyfriend, Paulo?"

“Not ever. Only you. Only you. Only you."

Every time she said it, I pressed into her as far as I could, and she gasped, keeping her eyes anchored to mine.

“You love me?” I asked, my voice cracking a little.

She put her hands on both sides of my face and said, “There‘s you and only you."

And then for a while I lost my mind.

We were on the bed and then on the floor. At one point she ran away from me, but I caught up with her in the kitchen and made her wash dishes in the sink while I fucked her from behind.

I remember moments of that evening, but there‘s no continuity; only snatches of sex here and there. I was crying. Jo was crying out. I was hurting. She was digging her nails into my thighs.

And then it was very late at night. We were both in the bed. The covers were off, and I was cold. Jo was asleep under the sheet. I was relieved that my erection had finally diminished. My testicles ached, as did my jaw and calves.

Lying there in the early hours, I went over what had happened. Jo had made me act out her lover‘s moves. When she looked into my eyes, she was telling
him
that she loved
him.
And I couldn‘t stop myself. It didn‘t matter that all I felt was hatred. It didn‘t matter that I wanted to leave her.

She had me by the balls, and as much as I hated her and me and Johnny Fry, I needed to be with her more.

I laid there on my back, waiting (for what I don‘t know), while she slept and night moved across the city. I couldn‘t get up and leave like I wanted to. I couldn‘t wake her and tell her that it was through. I was miserable and obsessed, in love with something I didn‘t understand.

While I was lying there, I remembered a line from Bob Dylan‘s song “Isis": “Isis, oh, Isis, you mystical child. / What drives me to you is what drives me insane."

The moment those words came into my head, I began to laugh. I laughed so hard that I got out of bed and went to the living room so as not to wake Jo. There I rolled on the floor, giggling and chortling. Mr. Dylan had given me a key. Maybe I didn‘t know how to open the door yet but I knew there was a way to understand.

The next morning found me bathed in sunlight through Joelle‘s big windows. I was rolled up into a fetal position with a thin loose-knit shawl draped over me. I remember breathing deeply and then realizing that the window was open.

She was sitting in her favorite chair reading a book. She wore a short pink slip, and her mane of brown hair was tousled.

“Good morning,” she said, sunlight glistening all around her.

“Hi."

“Why are you sleeping out here?"

“I woke up and, and I was restless so I came out here not to bother you."

When I stood up, she said, “Oh, no, no, no."

I looked down and saw that I was stiff as a diving board.

“Honey, I‘m raw,” she said, “. . . everywhere. I can‘t. At least not till tonight."

“I think I just have to go take a piss,” I said even though that was only half of it.

I went to the toilet and then got my pants off the hall floor. I put them on to hide the erection and then went back to the sundrenched room.

“I won‘t be bothering you tonight either,” I said, taking a seat on the sofa across from her.

“Why not?"

“I have a lotta work to do. The last few days I‘ve really slacked off."

“Let me see your hand,” she said reaching out.

Her touch was light and very exciting to me. It made me want to forget about Johnny Fry, but I couldn‘t.

“Boy,” Joelle sard. “You fell right on the knuckles."

“It‘s much better now. Two days ago I couldn‘t close my fist.”

She kissed all four knuckles and said, “I love you."

“Don‘t say that."

“Why not?"

“Because if you say it, I‘ll be on top of you again. I can‘t help it. I feel so strong about you."

“What is it, L? How come all of a sudden you‘re so, so sexy?”

“I don‘t want to lose you,” I said, and I had to hold back from crying.

“Oh.” Jo came across to the sofa, put her arms around my head, and kissed me. “Baby, I‘m not going anywhere."

“But don‘t you get bored?” I asked. “I mean we‘ve only been having sex about once a week and I don‘t even remember the last time we went on vacation."

“That doesn‘t matter,” she said. “Is that what you‘re worried about? You think some big stud‘s gonna take me away from you?"

“Don‘t men . . . “ I stalled. “Don‘t men come on to you all the time?"

“No.” At least she didn‘t look me in the eye when she said it.

But her lying didn‘t make me mad, it made me desperate. All I wanted was to peel off that slip and hammer my hard thing home. The feeling was so strong that I bit my lip. My neck was quivering.

Joelle put her hand against my forehead.

“Are you still sick?” she asked.

“Naw. Uh-uh. I‘m just a black man besotted with a woman."

“Do black men get smitten differently than white guys do?” she asked flirtatiously.

“I don‘t know,” I said thinking of Johnny Fry whispering his base desires while he took her on the floor, his huge erection much deeper into her than I could ever go.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked, her shoulders coming up defensively.

“I want you."

There were maybe three moments of agonizing tension, and then Joelle jumped up.