Killing Johnny Fry (9 page)

“I tried that. He has meetings all day."

“Can‘t you stay?” She had that pleading tone in her voice that I never turned down.

“I can‘t,” I said.

Surprise and a little suspicion etched its way into Jo‘s face. I‘m sure she was about to try her plea again, but just then the phone rang.

Jo went off into the kitchen, casually closing the door as she went.

The moment the door was shut, I jumped up and pressed my ear to the crack.

“Hello?” Jo said. “Oh, it‘s you. I can‘t talk now. . . No . . . I don‘t care what you do . . . No. Not tonight. . . You have a girlfriend. . . Yes. In the park . . . Uh-huh. Yeah . . . He‘s my man and I‘m with him . . . No . . . I have to go . . .I have to go . . . Call me next week . . . Friday . . . No, Friday . . . Good-bye."

She hung up the phone with a loud bang.

By the time she was coming back through the door, I was on the couch again, looking bored.

“Who was that?"

“Johnny Fry."

“How did he have your number?"

“You remember I gave him my card at Brad Mettleman‘s party. He called me a few times when he still thought that he was going to cut an album."

“What did he want this time?"

“He wants me to help him market those Senegalese wood carvings."

“Oh. Are you going to?"

“No. He‘s a con man. I‘d probably never even get paid."

I stood up then. “I better be going."

“Please stay the night,” she begged. “Please."

“I have to meet this guy."

“Then come over after the meeting."

“It might be a working meeting, Jo. It could go very late."

“Will you call me?"

“Sure. Definitely,” I said. “And if it‘s early enough, I‘ll drop by . . . I mean, if you don‘t mind."

“Of course not,” she said. “You know you can come here any time you want."

I left Joelle‘s house at about 3:00 that afternoon. The day was still beautiful, and so I walked again.

People up and down the street smiled at me, said hello. There was a stiff breeze blowing and I felt relieved that Jo had broken up with Johnny Fry. Because that was surely what happened on the phone. She wouldn‘t talk to him until Friday, all the way at the end of the week.

I stopped at the Gourmet Garage and bought smoked whitefish and a prepared vegetable salad. Down the street from there I bought a bottle of white Burgundy from the Cellar.

There was a list of galleries that exhibited photography in the fax machine when I got home, that and a handwritten note from Linda Chou:

Dear Mr. Cordell Carmel,

I received the roses you sent. They‘re beautiful. You really didn‘t have to, but I‘m glad you did. Please call me if you have any problems with these gallery owners. I‘m really the one who talks to them most of the time and I‘d be glad to give any assistance you might need.

Sincerely,

Linda Chou

There was hunger in her words. Before that early evening I might not have understood Linda Chou‘s hankering. But now I‘d seen it in Jo and Johnny, in Bettye and myself.

I realized that I had gone through my whole life starving and I never even knew it. I was angry at Jo and Johnny, but the real source of pain for me was that I had never known how empty and unfulfilled my life was. The sum total of my forty-five years was little more than the atmosphere within a hollow husk of a shucked snakeskin.

My woman was unsatisfied by me.

My work could have been done by almost anyone with high school French and Spanish.

My passion could be contained in a span of a few minutes a week.

And all this time I was completely unaware of my penury7.

At 8:06 the buzzer sounded.

“Hello?” I said pressing the SPEAK button. Then I pressed LISTEN. Just that little bit of pressure shot lances of pain through my injured hand.

“It‘s Lucy."

“Third floor,” I said.

I held the DOOR button longer than necessary because the pain it caused felt right, even good. It reminded me
of
Sasha and of Jo having her ass reamed wide, begging for more; it made me shiver with sexual excitement.

I didn‘t expect to have any amorous dealings with Lucy, especially now that Jo had dropped Johnny. But she was young and beautiful, and I had been starving for love even though I hadn‘t known it.

“Hi,” she said, coming in the door.

She wore a diaphanous turquoise blouse with a white tube top underneath and a short-short pleated white skirt. She kissed me at the corner of my mouth and smiled.

“You look great,” I said.

“Thanks. And thank you so much for trying to help me. It means a lot that you believe in the work and also about the children."

“Well let‘s get to it,” I said. “I want to go through all the photographs again, and this time I want the back story on each one.

I want to know these children and this world just as if I‘d been there."

“What happened to your hand?” she asked.

“I fell,” I said.

“Are you okay? Is anything broken?"

“No. It‘s nothing. Let‘s look at the photographs."

Lucy knew every name, remembered every town and village where she‘d photographed. She knew the diseases that the children had suffered and how their parents had died. She knew the foods they ate and how much tainted water they received each day.

“You really immersed yourself in their lives,” I said.

“People are dying,” she replied. “I have to get their stories out there."

“What about magazines?” I asked.

“They buy a photograph or two, but no one wants to put much of this kind of suffering in their periodicals. And the few that do, their readers are already aware. I want to get these pictures into the hands of people who will be shocked and then want to help."

“And I plan to help you do just that."

It was well after eleven when I‘d finished taking my notes. The stories about the dying nation of Sudan were deeply7 disturbing to me, much more so than the first time I‘d seen Lucy‘s work. But, on the other hand, I was keenly aware that the suffering eased my own sexual discomfort. My worries were nothing compared to what these starving children were going through.

“I have some smoked whitefish and a salad in the refrigerator,” I offered after we‘d gone through her entire portfolio.

“Great,” Lucy said. “I haven‘t eaten since breakfast."

I put the whole meal on a wooden platter and broke out the bottle of wine. We sat side by side on the living room couch, eating and drinking.

Lucy was very good company for someone so young. She asked about translation and the specific kind of work I did.

“Mostly manuals and articles,” I said. “Even if I do a book, it‘s never fiction or even interesting nonfiction. Sometimes I translate correspondence for people like Brad. Pretty straightforward stuff."

“But I bet you find some knotty problems here and there,” she said. “Words that have double meanings and things you don‘t understand."

“I guess so. But nothing I do is nearly as interesting or passionate as you,” I said sincerely. “I mean, listening to you talk about the places you‘ve been actually shames me. What are you, twenty-five?"

“Twenty-three."

“ I ‘m forty-five, older than your father, and I haven‘t even been to Africa on a vacation. I don‘t think I‘ve ever tried to save even one life."

“Maybe now you will,” she said.

She reached over and pressed my hand.

Her elbow touched the ON button for my DVD, and
The Myth of Sisypha
came to life on the dormant screen. It was the innocuous scene where the black woman had just joined Mel and Sisypha at the cafe.

“Oh, excuse me,” Lucy said. “Let me turn it off"

She picked up the remote but hit the FAST-FORWARD key instead of STOP.

Suddenly a black man appeared, and then they were in a sitting room somewhere, and the man was leaning back on a couch while the black woman was stroking his enormous erection.

“Oh my God,” Lucy said.

I took the remote from her and turned the whole system, including the screen, off.

“Wow,” Lucy said.

“ I ‘m so sorry,” I said. “I was having problems and I was walking home and I went past one of those sex stores and I went in . . . on a whim."

“I‘ve always wanted to get one of those,” Lucy said. “I never saw one before."

“Why not?"

“Those places creep me out."

“You could get your boyfriend to buy you one."

“Billy‘s sweet,” she said. “But he‘s very straight about sex. He calls himself a feminist, and I love him for it, but I don‘t think that watching people having sex is necessarily misogynist."

The way she caught my eye, her statement seemed more like a suggestion.

“Well,” I said. “I could go back to that store and buy you something, and the next time we meet I could, uh, give it to you."

“Could we watch some of this one?” Lucy suggested.

Instantly my heart felt as if it were trying to squeeze out every last drop of blood it held.

No
was on my tongue. She was a child. I‘d feel like I was child molester. I had a girlfriend . . .

I turned on the disc and reversed to the place where the black man came to the table in the cafe. Lucy jumped up to turn off the lamp. Then she sidled up next to me and poured us both a glass of Burgundy.

“This is Stewart,” the black woman was saying, “a friend of mine. Is it okay if he joins us?"

“Sure it is, Julie,” Sisypha said. “Maybe we should go up now."

“Hi,” Stewart said to Mel.

The two men shook hands. They were both the same height, five eight or so, but Stewart was thin and dark where Mel was chunky and pale.

They walked out of the restaurant and across the street. In continuous reportage the camera followed them into a doorway and up some stairs.

Then the scene changed, and they were coming into an apartment. julie shucked off her dress as soon as she came in the door. She had a beautiful dark body.

Her skin was the color
of
extra-dark blueberries.

“Take off your pants,” Sisypha said to Mel.

Lucy grasped my finger.

When Mel refused, his three companions descended upon him. They were very patient, almost gentle, as they took off all of his clothes, talking to him as concerned adults would to a small child.

“That‘s it,” Sisypha said as she pulled off his T-shirt.

“That didn‘t hurt, now did it?” Julie asked after she‘d peeled off his pants and boxer shorts.

Julie and Stewart went to the sofa and began making out.

“I want to go,” Mel said to Sisypha, who was holding him away from his clothes.

“Let‘s just watch for five minutes,” Sisypha whispered. “After that, if you want to, we can leave."

Mel was confused. He wanted something from his wife and he was amazed upon seeing Stewart‘s massive thing.

Julie was on her knees before the long, hardening erection. As she licked and pulled on it, it got thicker and straighter.

Lucy was squeezing my finger and breathing loudly through her nose.

Mel became aroused and put his arm rather clumsily around his wife‘s neck.

As Stewart entered Julie from behind, I leaned over to kiss Lucy‘s neck. She kissed me full on the lips, and I stuck my tongue in her mouth.

“We can‘t do it,” she told me between kisses. “I promised my boyfriend I wouldn‘t."

Julie groaned like a man through my subwoofer.

For a while I lost the thread of the film. I had worked off Lucy‘s gossamer blouse and pulled down her tube top. Her breasts sagged, but the thick, pink nipples were hard and upstanding. When I sucked one, a little fluid came out and into my mouth.

Lucy groaned like Julie and I looked up to see Stewart pressing his big thing into her anus.

“Look,” I said to Lucy.

Her response was to take my erection out of my pants. She formed her thumb and forefinger into a snug ring for the head of my cock. She lifted that ring up and down keeping it on the head. It tickled and drove me crazy.

“Deeper,” Julie cried.

“Don‘t touch it,” Sisypha told Mel. She was pulling his hand away from his erection. “Just watch and let the excitement build."

I started bucking up and down about then.

“Do you want to come?” Lucy asked me.

“No."

She pinched the big underside vein on my penis, and I yelped in pain.

“That‘s what I have to do with Billy all the time,” she said. “He always comes too fast."

She made her fingers into a ring again while Stewart spread the cheeks of Julie‘s buttocks apart and she screamed. He was putting his entire thing into her and then pulling it fully out. He did that again and again, slowly.

“Have you ever done that?” Lucy asked.

I nodded because if I spoke, I knew even her pinches wouldn‘t stop me.

Stewart pulled his thing out of Julie and said, “Come over here,” to Sisypha.

The young woman got down on her knees before him as Joelle had done with me. Almost immediately the man came in great gobs over her face, into her hair, and on the floor behind her.

When he was finished, he put on his pants and shoes. Wiping her face off with her sweater, Sisypha linked her arm with Stewart and said to Mel, “We‘re going back to Stewart‘s place. You stay here with Julie."

“But . . ."

“Don‘t question, honey. Do what I tell you to do."

A look came into Mel‘s face. It was same expression he had when he finally submitted to her dildo.

My own erection subsided. I was still excited, but somehow I identified with Mel so closely that I felt like I was also Supposed to obey her.

I turned off the DVD player, leaving us bathed in the blue light of the plasma screen.

“My God,” Lucy said. “I‘ve never seen anything like that. She was so strong. And he loved her so much."

Love?

“Did I hurt you?” Lucy asked me.

“No. Why?"

“You lost your erection."

“Will you stay with me tonight?” I replied.

“I can‘t fuck you,” she said, shaking her head in the most fetching manner. She was still holding on to my cock and kissing me.

“That‘s okay. I just want to . . . you know."

“Come?” she suggested, an impish smile on her swollen lips.