Killing Johnny Fry

by Walter Mosley

  “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.

  “I‘m so sorry,” I said turning to the side.

  Aleeda heard the pain in my apology. She touched my neck and said, “That‘s okay. It happens sometimes. It‘s good at your age to be able to achieve such a thing."

  “Maybe you shouldn‘t touch me, though,” I said. “I mean, men my age don‘t usually get touched by women as beautiful as you."

  She grinned and removed her hand.

  “The doctor will be in in a moment,” she said, and left again.

  I spent the next little while trying to think my erection away. But it was just as if that was its natural state.

  Dr. Tremain was a short and stocky white man who gave off an aura of physical and emotional strength. He was mostly bald with gray hair around the sides and he wore silver-rimmed glasses.

  “That a gun in your nightie?” he asked.

  “I can‘t explain it, Doctor,” I said. “Aleeda looked at my wrist, and it stood up like a soldier."

  “How old are you now, Cordell?"

  “Forty-five."

  “Then I‘d say you‘re cured."

  “My hand‘s even bigger."

  He studied the swollen mitt, pressing it here and there and asking me how it felt.

  “Nothing broken,” he said after a while.

  “Shouldn‘t you x-ray it?"

  “Nah. Soft-tissue damage is all. Does it hurt?"

  “Now and then it throbs,” I said. My erection was still going strong.

  “I‘ll give you some Percocet samples I have. And also an antiinflammatory. That should get the swelling down pretty quickly. If it‘s still giving you trouble after the weekend, come on back."

  He looked down at my stubborn cock and laughed.

  “And cover that
thing up,” he said. “It makes me feel like an old man."

  I walked home again. It took two hours.

  Somewhere along the way, my erection eased up. It was still excited, larger than usual, but at least it wasn‘t pressing against my pants. On the way I bought a rib-eye steak at the Gourmet Garage on Seventh Avenue—that and some brussels sprouts.

  The temperature was somewhere in the nineties. I was extremely tired by the time I got home. I broiled the steak, chopped up the sprouts, and sauteed them in butter. I ate the whole meal and drank two glasses of cognac before remembering The Myth of Sisypha.

  Sisypha‘s friend Yvette came to release Mel. She was a petite, demure, white woman who was embarrassed by Mel‘s impotence. She didn‘t say a word to him, just cut his bonds and left.

  He turned off all the lights in his house, then sat by the window looking up at a half-moon. When the night turned to dawn, Mel picked up his briefcase and stumbled out the door. From there we saw him at work and then home again, sitting in darkness and staring at the waxing moon. Then he was at work again, and then at home.

  The next morning, as he walked out the door, the phone rang. He stopped but didn‘t go toward the phone. It rang a dozen times and then stopped. Mel stood there staring at the phone, and soon it began to ring again. Still he didn‘t move to answer it.

  The fourth time the ringing started, I believed that I would go crazy with the tension.

  This time Mel picked up the receiver but didn‘t say anything. For maybe thirty seconds he held the phone to his ear, staring out with a blank expression on his face.

  Then Sisypha‘s throaty voice was heard.

  “I know it‘s you,” she said. “I know you have to go to work. Go on. But after, come home and shower and wait. I‘ll send someone. Do everything he tells you."

  The film showed Mel in his cubicle again. A woman in a rose-colored dress came to sit in his visitor‘s chair. She asked him if anything was wrong. In a surprisingly normal voice, he said, “No, Angela. Why would you think that?"

  “You haven‘t spoken a word to anyone and you‘ve worn the same clothes for four days straight,” she said. “They‘re all wrinkled and . . . a little ripe."

  “My wife had to go visit her mother,” he lied. “She sprained an ankle or something and needed Sissy to do chores and some, some cooking."

  “I hope she‘s okay,” Angela said.

  “Oh yes,” he assured her. “She‘s coming home tonight. This was the only clean suit I had, but now everything‘s going back to normal. Sissy‘s a great housekeeper and a wonderful wife."

  Angela smiled and Mel did too. But when she rose and turned away, Mel‘s face became somber and blank again. Angela glanced at him and frowned, but he didn‘t notice.

  That evening Mel came home and showered as he had been asked to do. He was sitting in the chair by the window wearing his suit pants and dress shirt. The front door was open. After a meditative moment of silence, an effeminate young redheaded man came in. He was wearing ochre-colored hot pants and a violet 37 silk blouse. Under his arm he carried a canvas tarp wrapped around a long and slender bundle.

  The younger man approached the elder. After a moment or two, Mel looked up. He took a deep breath but said nothing.

  The young man put the tarp on the floor and rolled it out. Inside were six metal poles, all of which were almost a yard and a half in length.

  The young man went to the sofa and pulled it out into a bed.

  “Lie down on your back,” he said.

  After a moment‘s hesitation, Mel complied. The young man took up one of the poles. I noticed that there was a manacle attached to either end. He locked the manacles around both of Mel‘s wrists while he lay passively. Then the man repeated the process with Mel‘s ankles. I then saw that the nearly catatonic husband was wearing his socks and shoes.

  The redhead took two of the four poles he had left and screwed them together, making one long pole. He repeated this process with the two remaining poles. These longer poles had bolts in them that attached to holes drilled toward the manacle ends of the arm and leg restraints. When everything was attached, Mel was splayed out on a rectangular rack. He couldn‘t move very7 much, but then again, he wasn‘t trying to move.

  The youth walked to the threshold, stopped for a moment to look at the chained man. He then turned off the light and left without closing the door.

  With speeded-up photography, the twilight turned to night.

  The light snapped on, and Sisypha was standing there.

  She‘d been pretty before, sexy and well formed, but now, wearing a very short white dress and no makeup, she was exquisite. Her golden-brown skin nearly shimmered in the fluorescent lighting.

  She took off her red high heels at the entrance, leaving them outside. Then she shut the door with a slam and walked to the side of the bed.

  Seating herself demurely, she said, “Hi, honey."

  There was a great deal of pain in Mel‘s wordless stare.

  “I‘m so sorry,” she said. She placed a hand on his chest and stared into his aggrieved eyes.

  After a while she stood up and walked off toward a door. The camera followed her into a large, well-appointed kitchen.

  She turned on a light, opened a drawer, and took out a large butcher‘s knife. She tested the edge and then took out a sharpening stone to hone it further. When she was satisfied with the sharpness of the blade, she walked back into the room with the knife held nonchalantly at her side.

  Upon seeing the knife, Mel opened his eyes wide.

  “Sisypha,” he said fearfully.

  She brought a finger to her lips and shushed.

  “What are you going to do with that knife?” he asked, ignoring her command.

  “Do you need to be gagged again?” she asked softly.

  “Put the knife away,” Mel said, almost shouting.

  Sisypha laid the knife at his side and took a bundled-up pair of white socks and a roll of electric tape from her purse. She set the purse next to Mel‘s head and then took out a black metal clip. This she put on his nose, closing off the nostrils. When Mel opened his mouth, she shoved the socks in, put a span of electric tape over his lips, and then removed the clip.

  By this time Mel was struggling mightily against his bonds. He was trying to scream, but the gag worked perfectly.

  I began to wonder if Mel was not an actor at all. Maybe, I thought, he‘d seen Sisypha in other films and met her somewhere— by happenstance. When he complimented her work, she told him that she‘d like do a film with him. He was happy, excited, but then, when the shooting started, he found that he was a prisoner of the filmmakers. Maybe he thought that they were making a snuff film and he was about to be slaughtered.

  Maybe they were.

  Satisfied that Mel couldn‘t scream, Sisypha took up her twelve-inch blade again. She lifted the cuff of the left pant leg and shoved the knife underneath, ripping violently through the fabric up past his pale knee.

  Mel jumped and gave a muffled shriek.

  “If you move, I might cut you by mistake,” she warned. There was a kind of breathy, sneering satisfaction in her tone.

  Mel went still, and she smiled.

  “That‘s better,” she said.

  This time she tore through his suit pants all the way to the belt. Mel went stiff trying not to move.

  With a feral grimace Sisypha began hacking away at the thick leather of the belt while Mel whimpered, trying to keep still.

  Once the belt was severed she moved to his white shirt and then back down to his briefs. Whatever she cut, she did with frightening force.

  When Mel‘s front was totally nude, you could see a cut on his right side and one on his upper-left thigh. He wasn‘t bleeding much, but I was sure that this was no rehearsed scene.

  Now Sisypha pulled off her white dress. She was naked underneath. Her breasts stood Up without help or plastic surgery. Her copper nipples were so large that they sagged slightly. She lay down next to her hus
band, cupping her hand around his shrunken sex.

  “Will you behave if I take off your gag?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  She worked the tape off as gently as she could and then pulled the socks from his mouth.

  “Let me go, honey,” Mel said.

  She did not reply but kept moving her hand up and down on his flaccid penis.

  “Please let me go,” he said.

  “It‘s starting to get hard,” she told him.

  “I don‘t want to, Sissy,” he said. “I want you to let me go. I promise, I promise I won‘t hurt you."

  “And I promise that I won‘t hurt you . . . too much,” she said.

  Now she was pulling on his cock vigorously, and it in turn was straining upward.

  “Please,” he said.

  She looked from the erection to his face and said, “Do you need me to gag you again, baby?"

  “No. No."

  “Because I expect to fuck this cock and to do all kinds of other things to you and the only begging I want to hear is for more."

  Mel seemed about to say something, but he swallowed the words.

  “What did you say?” Sisypha asked, in a mild but threatening tone.

  “Okay,” he whispered.

  “Okay what?"

  “Okay. I want more."

  Sisypha got up on her knees, continuing to stroke his erection. She kissed it, now and then smiling and cooing at its urgency.

  There was just enough slack in Mel‘s bonds that he could bend his knees enough to buck upward toward her mouth.

  “That‘s right, baby,” she said. “Push. Push."

  Mel‘s reticence turned to excitement. A wry smile came into his face.

  “Did you see how big Ari‘s cock was?” she asked.

  “Yes. Yes, I did."

  “The first time he fucked me, I thought he was going to tear me open. I asked him to stop but he, he just kept plowing that big thing right into me . . . All the way to the balls. Every time he did that, I could feel them bump up against my ass."

  At this point Mel started emitting a low moan.

  “I begged him, but he wouldn‘t stop. I slapped him, and he slapped me back, not even missing a beat. And then we started to do it for real. I started begging him to fuck me harder. And he did."