Killing Johnny Fry

by Walter Mosley

  “You smell her pussy on my cock?” he asked the man. “Does that get you excited?"

  Mel tried to move his head away but at the same time Sisypha started whimpering and working her hand and tongue very fast. Mel couldn‘t help himself; he had to come while Ari waved his erection in front of his face. And even though there were tears in his eyes, I could tell that Mel was having a very powerful sexual experience.

  In that moment I imagined his life. Fie woke up every day and took a bus to work. He came home and laughed at the same stories, watched the same TV shows, had sex once a week in the same positions, congratulated himself for being liberal and liberated when actually he wasn‘t any different from any anchovy sealed into a flat tin with a dozen others just like him. His wife loved him the way she‘d love a six-year-old boy, smiling at his innocence while he pretended to be a man.

  Ari was still laughing at Mel‘s weakness when Sisypha jumped up and pushed him away. Her anger was palpable and a little scary. The big man knew that he‘d crossed a line and so he put his clothes on.

  “You know my number when you need a real man,” he said, buttoning his shirt and going out the door.

  I was so relieved to see him go that I actually sighed. I poured another shot of cognac and drank it down in one gagging swallow.

  My erection was waning.

  I expected to see Sisypha untie her husband, for them to realize that they loved each other and then to make love.

  Or maybe, I thought, the camera would now follow Ari to some other hotbed of sex at his home or some club.

  I wasn‘t concerned because even though I had been unable to have an orgasm I felt spent, as if I had some kind of transcendental experience. I had seen many brilliant movies in my time, but nothing ever moved me as much as that first scene of The Myth of Sisypha. Not The Bicycle Thief or The World of Apu or Tokyo Story. No movie ever talked directly to me before. No movie had ever pulled the heart out of my chest and laid it beating at my feet.

  I was finished with this film. Mere sex could not move me as much as Mel‘s demolition at the hands of his wife and her lover.

  But the next scene had nothing to do with sex. Sisypha pulled the stool even closer so that she was sitting only inches from her husband. For a long time she stared into his eyes. I noticed that the right side of Mel‘s face was red and slightly raised, as if Ari had really struck him.

  “If I take the tape from your mouth, will you scream?” she asked him.

  He nodded, and I wondered if he understood the question.

  “You will scream?” she asked again to make sure.

  He nodded again.

  “If I untie you, will you try to hurt me?” she asked then.

  After a moment‘s hesitation he nodded, a bit sadly.

  “Do you love me, Melvin?"

  Nod.

  “Do you hate me too?"

  Nod.

  “What can we do?"

  Melvin hung his head and shook it slowly. Whereupon Sisypha got up and walked from the room. Mel looked after her and for a long time there was no action at all, just Mel looking at the doorway through which his wife had gone.

  And then Sisypha appeared at the door carrying a small baby-blue suitcase. She knelt down in front of him and closed up his pants, a loving gesture.

  “I‘ll call Yvette and tell her to come untie you,” she said. “I‘ll get in touch in a few days to see what you‘re thinking."

  That was it for me. I started crying and couldn‘t stop. I fell from the futon onto the floor and sobbed. Mel‘s impotence struck a chord at my center. He didn‘t want to hurt his wife but he would hurt her. He didn‘t want to scream but he had no choice. The decision was not his to make. Sisypha was the one in charge, the one making decisions. Through her passion, through her clear eyes, she made her choices and followed them.

  I punched the ALL OFF button on my universal remote. The room went black, and I stayed down on the floor. Somewhere in between bleats, I drifted off into sleep.

  Even though my excitement had gone unslaked, I dreamt about violence instead of sex. I was Mel, and when Sisypha asked me if I would hurt her, I shook my head and stared out with innocent eyes. But when she cut off the tape, I grabbed her by the throat and squeezed with every ounce of my strength. I could feel my fingers popping and the muscles in my shoulders straining. I exerted so much force that I was panting, but I wouldn‘t stop. I intended to choke the life out of Sisypha. She would stop breathing for all time.

  But no matter how much I pressed, she just looked back at me, surprised and distressed at my lie.

  “ I ‘m sorry,” she said to me. “But I needed more than you were willing to give."

  “I loved you,” I cried.

  “You still love me,” she said with empathy that I detested. “Even if you could kill me, that wouldn‘t stop you from loving me."

  I stood up in a rage and shouted, “I‘m leaving you!"

  “You can‘t leave me,” she said. “Not unless I let you leave. But as long as I want you, you will be tied down in that chair, and I can have as many men as I want and you will be silent. And you will like what I do."

  I wanted to say no; in my mind I did say it. But the words I spoke were entreaties. “Please,” I begged. “Please don‘t leave me. Don‘t take your love from me."

  “You belong to me” was her reply. “I‘ll never let you go and I won‘t leave . . . this time."

  “Thank you,” I said, hating myself for the weakness I showed.

  The floor must have been cold, or maybe it was the liquor, maybe it slowed my circulation or something, because then I was floating in the polar seas amid giant icebergs that were crashing into each other. The sounds of the shattering mountains of ice frightened me more than anything. Every time one glacier rammed into another, I shuddered and rolled myself into a ball so that I could sink below the weaves and be safe from the exploding debris.

  But I had to surface in order to breathe. The cold air hurt my lungs, and the crashing got louder and louder, until finally I woke up, shivering.

  I thought my dream was coming from some loud, late-night TV show but then I realized that it was the telephone ringing in the darkness. I tried to get up but I‘d forgotten about my injured hand. I grabbed at the coffee table, pulled away in pain, and fell forward, hitting my chin on the hard corner. The phone stopped ringing just before the answering machine would have picked up.

  I may have passed out for a moment or maybe I was just drifting back into sleep. Then the phone was ringing again. The digital clock on the cable box read 3:12. I got to my feet using my unsteady left hand for leverage. I banged my shins on the coffee table and kicked over the cognac bottle. The phone went silent, again before the machine would have picked up. It had started ringing for the third time when I finally got to it.

  “Hello?” I said in a simpleton‘s voice. “Who is it?"

  “It‘s me, L,” a woman said.

  I knew that I knew the voice and, knowing that I couldn‘t place it, I knew I was drunk.

  “It‘s late,” I said more in explanation than complaint. “After three."

  “I called the Roundtree Inn,” she said, and I realized that it was Joelle on the line. “But they said that you hadn‘t checked in."

  “Philadelphia,” I said, remembering that I was supposed to go down on the five o‘clock train. I had a meeting at eight in the morning with an agent for a consortium of Spanish businessmen that needed translators in New York. My agent had gotten me the gig. It meant a whole new world for me if I made the right impression.

  “What‘s wrong, Cordell?” Jo asked, almost as if she loved me.

  As if, I thought, and then I wondered why I thought that. Then I remembered her and Johnny Fry on the couch and on the floor. And wasn‘t I tied to a chair?

  “Cordell?"

  “I was going to the train station,” I said. “In the afternoon . . ."

  “I thought you were on a noon train?"

  “They didn‘t
have first-class, and I wanted to write on the way down, on my laptop. Anyway, I was leaving my house and suddenly I got weak, dizzy. I tried to turn around, to go back home, and I fell."

  “Are you all right?” she asked fearfully.

  “Yeah. Yeah. I just hurt my hand, but when I got in, I realized that I had a fever. Real high. One oh two. I guess I‘ve been sleeping since then. Sleeping."

  “Do you need me to come over?” she asked, a little halfheartedly, I thought.

  “No, honey. I took some Tylenol and I had a bottle of vodka.” I had taken ibuprofen and cognac. That phone conversation was the beginning of many lies I was to tell.

  “Since when?"

  “What?"

  “Since when do you have a bottle of liquor in your house?"

  “Oh. I bought that a while ago. You know, uh, one day I walked home from up in your neighborhood. I passed this little liquor store. They had all this Russian vodka in the window and I decided to buy . . . some."

  “Are you drunk?"

  “No. Not at all. I was just dead asleep."

  “Maybe you should go to the doctor, L. Maybe you‘re really sick."

  “I don‘t think so,” I said. “I mean, I feel cool now. Just weak after the fever. I‘ll be, I‘ll be fine in the morning. Get up early and hoof it down to Philly for my meeting."

  “So you‘re okay?” she asked. “I was so worried when you hadn‘t checked in. I thought you were just late and I fell asleep. But when I woke up, just a little while ago, you still weren‘t registered."

  “Nothing to worry about,” I said, feeling almost normal. “I‘m sorry I didn‘t call. After putting ice on my hand and taking those Tylenol, I just fell right out."

  “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."