Killing Johnny Fry (18 page)

“Huh. What would you like for breakfast?"

“I better rush, honey,” I said. “That vinegar book won‘t translate itself."

When I stood up, she walked into me, putting her hands on my chest.

“You aren‘t going to leave me?"

“No. Why do you ask?"

“George Leland,” she said, looking down, pressing her forehead against my chest.

I lifted her chin and kissed her nose.

“You had just heard about your uncle, right?"

“Yes, but—"

“There hasn‘t been anybody else since then, has there?"

“ No , “ she said. “No one."

“What can I say, when you told me about George, I got so excited I couldn‘t stop. It was like you found my switch and jammed it to the
on
position."

“So we‘re still together?"

“Yeah. Sure we are,” I said. “Till death do us part."

Back at my apartment, I was trying to figure out how to extricate myself from the unerring call of death.

Death followed me, a silent but sure companion. Cynthia had told me that Jo was responsible for what she did. And it was obvious that she was still considering being with Johnny Fry.

It wasn‘t that I had it in mind to kill Jo or Johnny or anyone else; it‘s just that there I was with the knife in my hand. Murder rose up in my heart when I thought of the intimacies between them.

I knew that I had to break it off. I had to stop seeing her.

I picked up the phone, intent on calling her. But all that I had in my mind was her name—her name and his. I put the phone down and concentrated, finally recalling the phone number. I picked up the phone again.

“Hello,” Joelle answered.

“Hi, honey,” I said, my tongue as fat as a cow‘s cud.

“Hi, baby,” she said.

“I wanted to tell you something."

“What‘s that?"

I cleared my throat and shook my head vigorously.

“It‘s about what we were talking about the day before yesterday."

“What about it?” Jo asked.

“Maybe you need a break from me,” I said. “Maybe this thing about your uncle means that you need time to figure things out. You might need therapy or someone other than me."

“That‘s so sweet, L,” she said. “No, baby, you‘re what I need. You‘re proving that right now by showing me real love. You care about my needs over yours."

How little she knew. I was trying to save myself from murdering her, and she was thanking me. I wanted to speak up, but the words were buried under a lifetime of numbness. My emotions were like lava flowing under a fallow landscape. I was filled with rage and impotence too.

“L?"

“Yes, Jo."

“I thought you‘d drifted off."

“No, honey. I‘m right on course."

A week before, I was barely alive and didn‘t know it. I didn‘t know what sex was or what love was. I didn‘t understand hatred or desire. I had no notion of the bloodlust that thrived in my heart. If only I could have turned around, walked back through the days to the time I was supposed to be on that noon train to Philadelphia.

Standing in the kitchen with a knife in my hand. How did I get there? Shouldn‘t a sane man remember the steps that brought him to the brink of murder?

I was sitting on the sofa in front of the great plasma screen. I thought maybe Sisypha had an answer for me. I reached for the remote control, and the phone rang.

Stop,
the jangling bell screamed.

“Hello?"

“L?"

“Oh. Hi, Lucy,” I said.

“You sound funny."

“I‘m anything but funny,” I said.

“Are you okay?"

“Sure. Sure. Fine. My heart‘s beating hard. The blue in the sky is no longer just a memory.” I was speaking freestyle, the way I had been writing in the coffee shop.

“What does that mean?” she asked.

“You know when you look at something you‘ve seen a thousand times,” I said.

“Like this cup sitting on my desk?” she asked.

“Yeah. Like your cup. If you‘re just looking for something to drink out of, you glance over at it, you think you know what you‘re looking at, but you don‘t really."

“Why not?” she asked, obviously taking my words quite seriously.

“Because the cup is in your mind,” I said. “A kind of imperfect memory—or maybe an ideal memory. You‘ve probably never looked at that particular cup very closely. You‘ve owned it and used it for years but you never noticed the little bump near the base of the handle or the place where the glaze bubbled up and left the clay underneath uncovered."

“You‘re right,” she said. “I‘m looking at it right now. I got it at a pottery sale in Northampton when I was spending a semester at Smith. I think of it as a blue cup, but now that I look at it, only a part of it is blue. The other half is a sea green. And the green has tiny gold flecks in it."

“You could probably spend the whole day looking at that piece of pottery and you‘d come up with something new every few minutes. There‘s probably a whole novel in there."

I thought to myself that this was just college stuff, the kind of thinking that kids discover—or rediscover—the first time they‘re away from home. But it meant more to me. I felt what I was saying to Lucy. I‘d skimmed across the top of things my whole life, never-looking deeply, never knowing what it was that I experienced—what it was I had missed.

“I called to talk to you about something,” Lucy said.

“Sure,” I replied. “The art galleries . . ."

“No,” she said. “No. I don‘t expect you to get anywhere with them for a while yet."

I was about to contradict her, but she went on. “It‘s about the other night."

“Oh?"

“I wanted to talk to you about what happened."

“Sure,” I said, thinking that maybe this would distract me from my morbid thoughts. “I hope you aren‘t too upset with me."

“Oh no,” Lucy said. “No, not at all. I‘m surprised that it happened with someone so much older than me, but I‘m not upset with you. I was hoping that you didn‘t think I was some kind of slut."

“I think you‘re some kind of wonderful,” I said, feeling foolish at expressing my feelings through the lyrics of an old-time song.

“Me too."

“You what?"

“Billy came to see me the other night,” she said. “He spent the night, and I realized that he has no idea about women and the way we feel. He‘s a nice guy, and I have a lot of love for him, but he‘s never really touched me. Do you know what I mean?"

“Like looking at the cup?"

“Yeah,” Lucy said. “You have to listen to me, L. I‘m very, very embarrassed by how I‘m feeling. I have always believed that men and women are equals and that we have to treat each other in some kind of egalitarian manner. But that night I wanted Billy to ravish me, and all he did was go through the motions. I, I slapped him . . ."

“Why?” I asked.

“I don‘t know. I was on top, and he was looking up at me with this puppy-dog grin, and I lost my temper and slapped him. And when he whined and asked me why, I slapped him again."

I covered my mouth to keep her from hearing my laughter.

“What happened then?” I asked.

“He didn‘t know what I was talking about. I told him that I wanted passion. I said I wanted him to hurt over wanting me. I wanted him to hit me back. I kind of lost my mind. And then I realized that I wanted him to be you, Cordell."

“Me?"

“I . . .1 want you to start up from where we left off. I need you to listen to me,” she said. “I don‘t think I could say these things to anybody face-to-face. That night when we were together, I could see you in the mirror on your door."

I tried to think of where we were and what she would have seen, but failed.

“I don‘t remember,” I said, “where the mirror was in relation to us."

“You wouldn‘t have seen it,” she told me gently. “Hold on a second."

A muffled sound came over the phone a moment, and then she was back again.

“My supervisor wants me to do something, but I told her I need to finish this call,” Lucy said.

It surprised me that she was sitting at a desk at work talking so seriously about sex.

“I have always had a big butt,” she said. “I never liked it, and I have done exercise my whole life to make it smaller."

It really wasn‘t so big, but I liked hearing about it. Lucy‘s voice was a lifeline leading away from my sinister thoughts. I would have begged her not to have gotten off the phone right then.

I was a year shy of twice her age, and I felt every minute of it. But somehow we were equals on the telephone. Not even equals. Lucy was the leader, the more articulate
of
us peers. She was leading me to where I wanted to be, but I doubt that she had the slightest notion of the power she wielded.

“When I looked into that mirror, I didn‘t feel like that any­more,” she was saying. “You know why?"

I smiled because the breath was stuck in my lungs for a moment. I had to cough before saying, “No."

“Because your face was up between the cheeks of my ass,” she said; there was a slight leer in her otherwise innocent voice. “And I could feel your tongue burrowing inside me. When I saw my butt covering Up your face and I felt you pressing to get even closer, I fell in love with my butt . . .

“L?"

Again my breath was gone.

“Wow, Lucy,” I said. “Wow. I, I, I don‘t know . . . I don‘t even have words to tell you . . . Can we see each other?"

“That‘s why I‘m calling,” she said.

As she prepared to finish her thought, I became petrified. Lucy coining over to my place was all I could think about. If she didn‘t come, I‘d go out and kill Johnny Fry that very day.

Kill Johnny Fry?

“I can‘t get being with you out of my head,” she said. “Even just sitting down makes me excited. The pressure down there is you, you on your knees kissing my ass. That‘s what I want. I want it right now."

“What about Billy?"

“I don‘t give a fuck about him,” she said. “I have to have you. I don‘t have anything against Billy. For all I know, we‘ll stay together and get married and have kids. But I need your big dick in my ass tonight. There . . . I said it. I have never said anything like that to anyone . . . ever. I need you. Do you understand me, L?"

“Yes. Yes I do."

“So what‘s it going to be?” she asked.

“ I ‘m gonna get way up in there,” I said. “ I ‘m gonna open you up like a ripe fig."

“All night?"

“And the next morning too."

“I have to go to work tomorrow,” she said.

“No you don‘t."

“I don‘t have any more sick days or personal ones. I would stay but I can‘t."

“I got you a gallery,” I said. “I‘ll advance you five thousand dollars and you can quit and start to get the photos ready for hanging."

“You . . . you‘re kidding."

“Are you still coming over?"

“I‘ll be there in fifteen minutes,” she said.

She hung up the phone in my ear, but I wasn‘t angry.

An hour later, the newly unemployed office worker Lucy Carmichael was lying naked, slathered with a shiny coat of massage oil, on my futon couch. I was naked too, and my cock for the first time in years was tilting up.

I had forgotten the butcher knife and the bloodlust. I had forgotten Johnny Fry and my translator‘s dictionaries. I was rubbing my thumbs down the muscular inside cheeks of Lucy‘s ass while she whimpered with pleasure.

I had on a bright-yellow condom.

I poked my point finger down into her rectum.

“Is this what you want?” I asked her.

“I want your big fat cock,” she said. “I‘ve been thinking about it every minute."

“You were thinking about it when you were fucking Billy?"

“Yes. Yes. Yes. The only way I could come with him was to think about you."

“On my knees kissing your ass?” I asked, positioning myself above her.

“Yes. Now do it."

I sank into her like a bullet into the well-oiled chamber of a gun. The sound she made was a low roar. There was more satisfaction in her call than I could have imagined. She arched up, pressing back against me, taking the two inches I spared her. She groaned, bellowed actually, like some large woodlands creature in ecstasy over the wild.

I moved hardly at all, just hovered there above her, with my entire erection buried and hot. She moved her butt up and down in small circular motions, grunting at each small shift.

“That‘s good,” she said in a vibrating tone. “That‘s good."

Still I stayed motionless, allowing her to find the sweet spots inside her; she gasped with short breaths every time she found another place
of
pleasure. She began writhing beneath me. Her shoulders twisted and her feet kicked up. At one point she moved almost on her side, straining at my erection. “Uhh,” she groaned in a deep voice—almost bass, almost impossible. Then she named back on her stomach, pushing her butt up against me with short, fast thrusts.

“Is that what you‘ve been thinking about?” I asked.

“Yes, baby. Yes. Oh yes. Just like that. Just hold it in me and let me dance with it."

“Squeeze your butt cheeks together,” I told her.

“Ohhhh,” she replied, doing as I asked.

I pulled my cock out of her while her sphincter gripped me. She cried out m pain, the feeling thrumming through her. She flopped on the couch like a mackerel on the deck of a fishing boat.