Killing Johnny Fry

by Walter Mosley

She looked at me with trepidation and suspicion.

  I smiled and took her in my arms. I was excited from the moment I saw her. Her fear of my rejection was like gasoline on the flame.

  From the hug I lifted her into my arms and carried her into the den.

  The den was a narrow room with a big brown couch and a small TV and stereo system on shelves. I sat down on the sofa, positioning her between my knees. I unbuttoned her trousers and pulled her pants down to her ankles. She was wearing green thong panties. These I also pulled down.

  “Shouldn‘t we talk about yesterday?” she asked.

  I turned around and sat her on the sofa. Then I stood and let my pants drop.

  When faced with my erection, Jo took it in her hand and lifted it. I thought she was going to take my testicles in her mouth as Sasha had done, but instead she put her nose into the crease between my hard shaft and loose balls. She breathed in deeply through her nostrils.

  “I love the way you smell,” she said.

  I took a condom from my pocket.

  “Put this on me,” I said.

  “Why?"

  “It cuts the feeling a little, and I want to fuck you a long time."

  Joelle grinned and did my bidding. Then I got behind her on the sofa and plunged right in. She was very wet and I think, judging from her song, she came right then.

  With my injured right hand, I reached over and took both breasts into my grasp. Then I wound my left hand in her hair and pulled hard. The whole time I was sliding in and out of her at a very slow pace.

  I waited for her second orgasm before speaking.

  “Have you had any other lovers since we‘ve been together?” I asked, fucking her at the same slow pace.

  “No,” she moaned.

  “Never?"

  “Never."

  “Have you ever wanted to? Is there any man you wanted?"

  “No."

  “Never?"

  She began pushing back against my cock. She didn‘t answer.

  “Never?” I asked again.

  “Once."

  “When?"

  “Six months ago."

  “After your uncle died?"

  “The next day or, or maybe the day after that."

  “Who was it?"

  “A man,” she said, and then she gasped as I pulled on her hair. “George Leland."

  “The Italian tie importer?"

  “Yes."

  “He wanted you too?"

  “Yes."

  “Tell me,” I said, pushing all the way inside.

  She grunted twice and then said, “I was there one night, talking to him about presentation,” she said all in one breath. “It was late. We had two drinks. And he, and he, he kissed me."

  “On the cheek?” I said on a slender breath.

  She shook her head and said, “Down my throat."

  “Did you like that?"

  She nodded and pressed back against me. Her thighs began to quiver.

  “What happened then?” I asked.

  “I kissed him for a while and then I pulled away. But he grabbed my hand . . ."

  “Why did he do that?"

  “To show me how hard he was."

  “Did you hold on to it?” I asked. My breath was coming faster.

  “It was very, very big, long and thick. He asked me, he asked me if I wanted to see it."

  “Is that what you were thinking about while I was talking to you about the man standing behind you?” I asked.

  She nodded, pulling her own hair as she did so.

  I was fucking her faster now, with short punctuated strokes.

  “Did you want to?"

  She nodded.

  “Did he take it out?"

  She shook her head, no.

  “No?” I asked, both relieved and disappointed.

  “No, I . . . I got down on my knees and unzipped him."

  “Did you suck it?"

  “No. I told him I wouldn‘t."

  “What happened then?"

  “He made me lie down on top of him fully dressed. I even had my stockings on. I squeezed his thing between my thighs and he moved it back and forth."

  “Like I‘m doing to you right now."

  “No,” she said. “He wasn‘t inside me. He was too big."

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “He came doing that. It was all over the back of my dress and in my hair."

  I pulled her hair again.

  “And did you come?” I asked.

  She went silent, and I began moving in and out very hard and fast.

  “Did you come?"

  “Yes,” she shouted, and she came then too. “I came and came and came."

  And I did too, so hard that we fell off the couch and onto the floor. I couldn‘t stop humping her. I was pulling mightily on her hair and yelling out, “Like this, like this, like this?"

  “Yes,” she said. “He kept coming and every time I felt his cock pulse against my clit, I came too."

  My orgasm had run its cycle, but I couldn‘t stop humping her. My half-hard erection came out, but I kept rubbing it against her ass. She pushed back against me and reached behind to caress my head.

  Then she stood up and pulled me to my feet. She got down on her knees and took my penis in her two hands. The condom came off, and she wrapped the dick between her palms.

  “He was still excited after all that, and so I got down like this and started jerking him off.” She held on to me and moved her whole body in a slow and rhythmic rocking manner. “It had a big purple head that was so shiny that I could almost see my reflection.” She worked faster. “He kept begging me to let him inside me, but the more he begged, the harder I pulled. Finally he put his hands on my shoulders and I knew he was going to come. I held his shaft next to my ear, and when he came, I could feel the come splashing down on my ankles."

  I came again even though I didn‘t expect to; I didn‘t even want it. But from force of will she made me.

  I sank down on the floor beside her and we hugged, two tired comrades after a rough journey over treacherous and uncharted terrain.

  When I woke up, it was three minutes after midnight. I didn‘t remember climbing up onto the couch with Jo, but there we were, wrapped in the same embrace. I sat up and looked at her face, thinking that I had never known her, but that she was the only friend I had.

  As I stood, Jo turned over and began to snore. She was always a heavy sleeper, and once she began snoring, I knew she would stay out till sunrise.

  I lumbered into her kitchen, turned on the light, and sat in a chair by the window, thinking of everything that had passed.

  It was as if I were adrift—but not yet dying—on a lone raft in the middle of a tranquil and treacherous sea. There was no one coming to save me. There was no land in sight. But I wasn‘t yet thirsty or hungry. I was just fine there but also on the verge of death.

  It was a silly image that I couldn‘t shake. There was no saving me. But, I told myself, there was Lucy and Sasha, Cynthia, and my new profession as an art agent. I had a life spread out before me. I had hope, and Jo obviously loved me. She was afraid to tell me about her indiscretions with Johnny Fry, but that was Under-standable.

  Bleep-bleep.

  It was an odd sound but familiar too. While I sat there trying to remember what it was, it sounded again.

  Bleep-bleep.

  I walked down the long hall, past my snoring lover, into the small room, closet really, that she used as an office. There her computer sat alight. Her Internet connection was on. There was an instant message from JF1223.

  Are you there? The first message read. It was posted at 7:25.

  i” ache for you, JJ, the next message read at 8:14. These days apart have shown me how much you mean to me. Bettye means nothing now. I‘ll never see her again.

  At 10:47 JF1223 wrote, Have you thought over meeting me in Baltimore? You don‘t have to worry. I won‘t let Cordell know what we‘re doing. I know you need to be with him too. I respe
ct that.

  The second-to-last message said, My cock is aching for you too. I haven‘t even masturbated since the last time. I still remember how you strained and choked to hold it down.

  Finally, contrite, he wrote, I‘m sorry about that last message. It‘s just that I sit here every night waiting for your decision. I think about your skin and your touch. I think about you bringing me to your home that night we met at Brad‘s party. I have never been so overwhelmed by a woman. I think I would die without you.

  I sat there in front of Jo‘s computer, wondering what it all meant.

  I remembered the night she‘d first met Johnny Fry at Brad Mettleman‘s Brooklyn apartment. He had said something flirtatious to Jo when he didn‘t know that she was with me. She laughed him off, and he asked her what she was drinking.

  I told him that I‘d get her drink and I supposed that that had ended his attempt. But a while later, Brad asked me to come to his den. He‘d received a letter from a Spanish photographer that he needed to get the gist of. I read it over twice, no more, and told Brad that the artist, Miguel Rios, was willing to have Brad be his only representative in the U.S. The whole exchange between Brad and me could not have lasted more than twelve minutes.

  Twelve minutes. When I came Out, Jo came to me and said that she had a migraine coming on.

  “ I ‘m feeling it in the center of my head,” she‘d said, pointing at the place where her third eye would have been.

  Twelve minutes. Seven hundred twenty seconds, and a man she‘d never known before had convinced her to get me to put her in a cab so that she could rush home to give him better sex than I had ever known.

  The next thing I knew, I was standing in the kitchen with a butcher knife clenched in my fist. I don‘t to this day remember walking there or pulling open the drawer.

  Then I was standing over Jo with the knife gripped tightly in my hand. Her pants were off but she still wore the white blouse.

  I worried for a moment over the bloodstains that wouldn‘t come out of her shirt. Then I raised the blade. But the thought of those stains stayed with me—blood on her shirt and carpeting. Blood never washes clean; that‘s what my mother, when she was still clearheaded, used to say.

  Then I was standing in the bathroom in front of the open medicine cabinet. There was a small prescription bottle in my hand.

  Jo took the popular sleeping pill now and again when she had to work late. Something about staying up after midnight made her wired, and she needed sleep aids.

  I took two of the oval tablets and then went to lie beside her.

  I lay there next to her, staring at her face. At first I felt nothing, not hatred or jealousy or betrayal. But then I remembered JF1223 talking about her choking to keep him down. I rose up on one arm, intent on strangling her in her sleep. But the sleeping pills hit me, and I fell back, trying to rise up out of the black pit that was engulfing me.

  I awoke to the sound of Jo making noise somewhere in the house. The events of the night before came back to me in snatches and glimpses. I remembered the knife and the sleeping pills. I remembered—

  “L?” Jo said. She was standing in the doorway with the butcher knife in her hand.

  “Hey."

  “I found this in the bathroom,” she said holding the knife out to me with open palm held upward.

  “I, I couldn‘t get to sleep,” I said. “So I was going to take your cough medicine. But the bottle wasn‘t open and I couldn‘t twist it off, so I got the knife to pry it. But then I saw the sleeping pills."

  She looked at me with curiosity but no Suspicion in her eyes.

  “I sure didn‘t have that problem. I went to sleep without even turning off my computer."

  “So that was all that bleeping,” I said.

  “You heard it?"

  “Yeah. I heard something but I didn‘t know what it was. I tried to wake you up but you were dead to the world."

  “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?"