Killing Johnny Fry

by Walter Mosley

  “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.

  “Put it back,” she sobbed. “Put it back."

  I did as she said, and she hissed at me, “Don‘t take it out again or I‘ll slap your face."

  We kept that up for over an hour. I withdrew my erection twice more, and both times she sat up and slapped me. I hardly felt her blows, but that doesn‘t mean she didn‘t hit me hard.

  Whenever she hit me, I threw her down and gave her what she wanted.

  Finally, Lucy put her hand back against my navel and said, “I can‘t do it anymore. I‘m sorry."

  I raised up and took her into my lap. She put her head on my shoulder and brought her knees to her chest.

  “I have needed that as long as I have been alive,” she said. “I. needed a sweet man to get down and nasty with me. I needed you."

  I couldn‘t force even one word from my throat. Lucy had taken all my passion. It was odd, because there
was no notion of orgasm for me in our struggle.

  It was, in a way, a conflict—a battle that seemed to fulfill some forgotten rule.

  “You‘re a child,” I whispered.

  “And you fucked me raw,” she replied.

  “I‘m twice your age."

  “And your dick is still hard."

  She got down on her knees in front of me, pulled off the condom, and clenched the hard thing in her hand. She poured half the bottle of massage oil on it, ruining the futon and letting it spill off onto the floor, but I didn‘t complain. She jerked on me almost halfheartedly, looking at me with a careless expression that a stranger might have handing you a package that you dropped.

  But all that deep ass-fucking had had its effect on me. I became aware of a rumbling. At first I thought it was a subway underground or maybe an earthquake. But then I realized the shuddering was inside me. My diaphragm was moving in and out. Before I could identify the feeling, I jumped to escape it. I tried to get to my feet, but my equilibrium was gone. I fell to the side, landing on the floor.

  Lucy was laughing. She hadn‘t let go of my slippery erection. She gripped it as hard as she could, and the semen started gushing while I called out in fear.

  Ignoring my fright, Lucy was saying, “That‘s right, baby. Give it to me. Let me have that.” And then, “Look at it come."

  I looked down at my cock clinched so tightly in her grip. The ejaculation seemed to be going on forever. This also scared me. I felt that I had somehow lost control.

  “You can come again, baby,” Lucy said. “Come on. I didn‘t come all this way for you to give out on me."

  Sweat was dripping from her face. Her visage was one of ferocious exultation. Seeing her in this half-feral light, I came again and called out again. Spasms went all through me, and I jittered on the floor in a fit worthy of epilepsy.

  “Wow,” Lucy said when my convulsions subsided. “I‘ve never seen a man lose himself like that before."

  I shook my head and tried to grin. Who knows what I looked like?

  “Get up and carry me to your bed,” Lucy commanded.

  And even though I didn‘t know if I could stand anymore, I made it to my feet and hefted her in my arms.

  When we got into bed, she turned me on my stomach and licked my rectum with loud relish. It wasn‘t sex but just to show me that she was willing to go as far as she wanted me to go.

  We lay next to each other for hours, spent but unable to sleep.

  “Don‘t you feel like you might die?” she asked late into the night.

  “Yes,” I said. “Sure do."

  “Doesn‘t it feel wonderful?"

  “And scary."

  “You don‘t have to worry about me, L. I don‘t want anything from you but that you do it to me for hours and then come so hard that it shakes the floor."

  “But don‘t you wonder what makes us need this?” I asked.

  Lucy didn‘t answer the question because she had fallen asleep. In my living room at three in the morning, I called a number that I knew had no phone attached. When it rang, I was certain that Joelle‘s computer was not online.

  I signed onto her Freearth account using my plasma TV as the screen.

  There were three e-mails that she‘d received and read from JF1223, and two responses from her.

  JJ,

  I know that in the past I wanted you to leave Cordell. I see now that you can‘t. I am willing to share you. I have given up Bettye. I will never see her again. Even if you don‘t ever come back to me I won‘t see her. That is my gift to you—my sacrifice.

  If you forgive me, I won‘t complain about Cordell again. I won‘t get in the way of your loving him. But please don‘t abandon me. Don‘t leave me like this. It‘s just as if we were making love and just about to come and you stood up and walked out of my life without a word.

  You are everything to me. You are my heart. I cannot smile or sing or do anything else without you.

  I love you,

  JF

  This e-mail, titled “Lost,” was not answered.

  His next communication, “Found,” read:

  JJ.

  For the last two hours I‘ve been sitting here in front of the computer waiting for your answer. I know you‘re online. I know you read my message. It‘s been strange sitting here waiting for you. I‘ve been thinking about you, about how you always told me that you couldn‘t stop yourself from being with me. You said that you didn‘t want to be with me but you couldn‘t pull away. That‘s some powerful stuff.

  Many of the things you had me do to you I didn‘t really want. The spankings, the bathtub . . . But I did it all and I would do more because I love you. I love the curve of your neck and the way your eyes get tight when you‘re reading something important. I love the way you fold the towels in my bathroom whenever you go in there. And I love how you never allow anyone in a store to cheat you.

  I love your butter-brown skin and eyes that see past what I say.

  While waiting for you to answer, I‘ve been thinking about all those ways I love you. The crazy time with your uncle‘s strap and the roses you bought me the next day. I know now that I love you most because you trusted me in the most intimate and scary part of your life. And I know that if I really love you, I have to stop thinking about what I need and let you move on.

  Good-bye, Joelle. I release you from my desire.

  JF

  Jo had shared her secrets with Johnny Fry long before she‘d ever told me; that much was clear from his e-mail. And even though I knew that she was using him to work out her dark obsessions, the jealousy awakened in me felt like a fully revved engine impotent because it‘s left out of gear.

  I wanted them both dead but I didn‘t necessarily want to be the killer.

  Jo‘s first reply to JF1223 was titled “Re: Found.” For a long time I resisted opening that epistle. But finally I couldn‘t hold back anymore.

  john-john,

  I appreciate what you wrote. I know how deep the wound is. I have been bleeding from it my entire life. When I met you I needed something and you gave it to me. It was something that I had never told anyone about. It was like a tumor in my core, and you clawed it out of me. You made me whole—if only for a moment. And because of that I will always . . .

  I was going to say that I will always love you, but that would be too easy. Everybody talks about love: mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers; there‘s love of country and love of race. There‘s the needy love children have for their parents, and you can see lovers walking up and down the street of any city in the world. Love is commonplace, but what I feel for you is anything but common. What I feel for you aches deep in long-healed wounds; it bruises my thighs and eyes and flows from me like blood. If you were a deer, or I was, the other‘s blood would run freely from the wolfs fanged embrace; that wolf is the passion between you and me.

  You are a pain deep inside of me, an agony that I cannot ease. And your words, setting me free, hurt more than I can say. But if I‘ve learned anything from you, it is that I can feel the pain and survive.

  JJ

  That was when I decided to kill Johnny Fry, when I knew for certain that he had gotten closer to her than I ever could. He had given up everything just to tell her that he loved her. And she had professed a feeling for him that belittled my most powerful emotions. Jo and Johnny Fry humiliated me with the breakage of their union, and I hated him for that and hated him all the more for the demotion in my own eyes.

  I almost logged off then. What more could I gain from her second e-mail? Reading this much had already made me a second-class citizen in the province of my own imagination. But I couldn‘t turn away without reading her last communique. Maybe, somehow, this note would resuscitate my self-esteem.

  This e-mail was titled “wait."

  I wrote the last note and sent it quickly. After that, I took your shirt out of the bottom drawer and breathed in your scent, then I balled it up and squeezed it between my thighs. I
came twice and then called up the words I sent you . . .

  I can‘t end it, john-john. I can‘t say goodbye. The pain you‘ve brought into my life is the sweetest thing I‘ve ever known. It doesn‘t matter about L or Bettye. It doesn‘t matter that you‘re white and unrepentant. It doesn‘t matter that we love, actually love, other people. Even when I sit here and think of your pain at our separation, I get a feeling inside me that no cock or tongue or even having a baby could make me feel.

  I think about that time you hired that guy in Atlantic City to do me while you sat at the foot of the bed and watched. My eyes were on you the whole time. My passion was you making me submit to a stranger.

  I will go with you to Baltimore next week. I will submit to you and master you and our hearts will vomit out of our mouths. The police will find us and wonder what sick vows we took.

  Johnny Fry answered this last communication in less than a minute. It had no message line.

  i‘ll be there

  JF

  I had pocketed Jo‘s sleeping pills. There were eighteen left in the bottle. I would have killed myself right then if I hadn‘t had it in mind to kill Johnny Fly.

  Instead I took two pills and lay down next to Lucy, who slept, peacefully nude, on top of the covers. The window shade was up, and the nearly full moon shone down on her skin, making it seem preternatural—luminescent like a goddess‘s breath.

  I reached out to touch her naked shoulder but pulled back.

  I was wondering why I had to kill John Fry. It wasn‘t his fault, obviously, that Jo‘s needs were so deep and dark. He said that he did what she wanted in order to be with her. She said that she didn‘t love him . . .

  The moonlight was moving on Lucy‘s pale skin.

  I thought of the young photographer then, undulating under me in pain and ecstasy. She still loved Billy, but the need inside her negated this feeling; his needs came second to hers. She wanted something that I had, but it wasn‘t necessarily me. I gave to her the same way John Fry gave to Jo. And Jo took from him the way Lucy did from me.