She knew I had a girlfriend but never asked if this was okay. It wasn‘t her j ob to worry about Jo‘s feelings. She had an itch, and I had knees to bend.
It wouldn‘t be my fault when I killed Johnny Fry . . . The moonlight was resplendent, but that radiance would have come to nothing if Lucy‘s skin were not there to receive it . . . In her dreams Lucy had been in a desert dying of thirst, when a stranger, an enemy of her people, let‘s say, stopped on his camel and gave her a gourd filled with ice-cold water . . . Somewhere Johnny Fry refrained from masturbating so that he could come in great gushing spurts down Jo‘s clenching throat. . . Somewhere Jo was shivering in anticipation of returning to the arms of the man who made her feel that even love was commonplace . . . And at some moment in the past I was reaching for a knife, walking down through time in order that I might arrive at the proper instant where he is sleeping next to my woman . . . Her first waking sensation would be his warm blood on her skin. And when she rose in shock, the only thing left of me would be a door slamming on the sham of both our lives . . .
I jerked from the sleeping-pill-induced stupor; the door slamming seemed almost real.
Almost real . . . I was coming to reality. So far my life had been a dream, a wan thought about someone named Cordell Carmel. A brief imitation of manhood in a world that took everything from me before I knew what loss was. I was coming to be real, a knife in my hand and blood ready to spill . . .
The next morning, Lucy woke up to the feeling of my engorged cock sliding into her still-oiled rectum. She took in a great gulp of air and exhaled, “Oh, oh, oh, oh."
I was hard and cold, taking deep satisfaction in her writhing rapture.
This time it was me moving back and forth; it was me finding those sweet spots and pressing them home.
Lucy grabbed on to my biceps and dug her fingernails in. I fucked her harder then and she screamed but did not try to stop me.
Fifty minutes later, we were showered and powdered, sitting at the breakfast table with French roast coffee brewing by the sink. We were fully dressed, ready for the civilized world. She apologized for making me bleed. I told her that it was worth every drop.
Now we sat at the table going through her responsibilities to the gallery. She would choose fifteen photographs to put on display and decide on what kind of frames to use. I would stay on Ms. Thinnes and make sure that the contract would come by Friday.
I wrote her a check for $5,000.
“This is the advance,” I said, handing the note to her.
“You don‘t have to give me all this,” she said.
“Take it. It‘s the beginning of your life as a photographer, and anyway you‘ll need it for the accountant."
“What do I need an accountant for?"
“In order to convince Ms. Thinnes to take the photographs, I told her that you had your own foundation to help the orphaned children of Darfur. Instead of selling the pieces for twenty-five hundred dollars, she‘ll be charging six thousand, three thousand of which will be going to your foundation."
“Per picture sold?” she asked.
“Per picture sold."
A blank expression folded over Lucy‘s eyes. She stared at me with her mouth agape. The water percolating on the kitchen counter was the only sound.
“That was my dream,” she said haltingly.
“If the dream is strong enough, it comes real,” I said, thinking that the same was true for nightmares.
Lucy stood up over me, her hands unconsciously balled into fists.
“That was my dream,” she said again. “I can save children, support a small orphanage. I could, I could . . ."
She put her arms around my head and plopped down into my lap. She began crying. I couldn‘t understand the things she was saying through her tears.
Nor did it matter what she said. I hadn‘t set up the notion of the charity for any good reason. I simply knew that making the white patrons of that gallery feel that they could assuage their guilt meant that I would make out. I was a sham and a liar, no matter what good came from what I‘d done. That young white child cared more for Black Africa than I did. She cared more for my people because I had no people. All I had were the echoes of lost heart and fading images that I now knew were never love.
But even that didn‘t matter anymore, because now I was dedicated to the slaughter of Johnny Fry, the man who took my fantasy of manhood and mashed it into pulp.
Lucy went off to the bank. She asked if she could spend the night again, but I told her that an old man like me needed to take time off between sessions like we had.
“I have to rest up,” I said. “You know I got twenty years on you."
“That‘s not all you have on me,” she replied.
I hustled her out the door so that I didn‘t drag her back to my bed.
After that I called Linda Chou, Brad Mettleman‘s receptionist.
“I was wondering if I could come over and talk to you after five,” I said, knowing that Brad left the office every day at four.
“Of course,” she said brightly. “I work every night until seven or later."
Outwardly my daily life seemed to be the same. I had the same apartment, and me being home at noon was nothing new, seeing as I hadn‘t had a day j ob in many years. I wore the same clothes, used the same phone, Jo was still my girlfriend—in name. My life, to anyone looking in, was just as boring and mundane as it had been in all the twenty years that led up to that day.
But inside there was a new man—not a better man by any means. I was no better but I was different because I was going to commit a murder; that set me apart from all those other common lovers that Jo talked about walking down the street.
I sat there on my oil-soaked sofa feeling gravity working on my bones. I was a force of nature now. I was ready to take the ultimate step. The plan was already in play, and I hadn‘t even left my apartment.
Time was passing, but I felt unhurried and calm. I wasn‘t eager for love or sex or success. I had it all or I would never have it—either way, there was nothing for me to desire.
As the minutes clicked by in bright-red numerals on the digital clock of the cable box beneath the plasma TV, my thoughts began to evaporate. They winnowed down to words: murder, life, sweet, sex. The words were solitary and meant little in my mind. They were the moments before sounds. And later on they weren‘t even that.
Waiting, waiting, waiting.
When the telephone rang, I jumped to my feet. My mind had become so disconnected that the jangling sound seemed impossible.
“Hello?” I said, stunned by the intrusion.
“Hello,” a sultry woman‘s voice said. “May I speak to Cordell please?"
“That‘s me."
“Hi. My name‘s Brenda. I was asked by a friend of mine to give you a call."
“Who‘s your friend?” I asked. I was calming down back into the meditative state of my previous reverie. The woman‘s voice was low and sensual like the interior of my newly attained serenity.
“Cynthia,” she said.
“Cynthia who?"
“Her last name is Cook, but she doesn‘t give that out on the dial-a-friend line."
“She . . . she asked you to call me? Why?"
“She thought it would be good if we talked."
“Why?” I asked.
“I don‘t know. All I know is that she called me up and said that you needed to speak to me in order to work something out."
“I don‘t know you, do I?” I asked.
“I don‘t know you,” she said rather mysteriously.
I was perturbed, because the serenity I‘d reached after deciding to kill John Fry was being tested by Cynthia‘s betrayal.
“She didn‘t do anything wrong,” Brenda said as if reading my thoughts.
“Why‘d she give you my number?"
“Because she said that you were going through a rough time and she thought you‘d like to talk to me."
“Why?"
“Listen, Cor
dell, if you don‘t want to get together, we don‘t have to."
“Get together? I thought you wanted to talk,” I said.
“I don‘t want anything,” Brenda said flatly. “Cynthia called, said that you might get something out of a little meal together, and asked me to give you a ring. I know almost nothing about you other than your name."
Something about the way she put words together gave me pause. I felt as if we had talked before but I knew we had not. Maybe Cynthia knew something that would help me. Maybe I wouldn‘t have to kill Johnny Fry if I spoke . . .
“When would you like to meet?” I asked.
“I‘m only in town for a few days,” she said. “Tonight at ten would be great for me."
“Where?"
“Michael Jordan‘s Steak House."
“At Grand Central Station?” I asked.
“See you there at ten,” she said, and hung up.
I put the phone down and slipped back into the trancelike mood of disconnectedness. Brenda‘s call left me like a dream. It was less than a memory. I didn‘t need Cynthia‘s help. All I needed was to kill Johnny Fry—not because that would get Jo back; Jo was lost to me now. To her I was a house pet, while Johnny Fry was what she craved.
No. I was killing Johnny Fry because he was a parasite that had burrowed under my skin. He was an infection that had to be dug out and crushed, a fat white larva filled with sickly yellow puslike blood who believed that my flesh would sustain him.
My hands were numb, and so were my lips and toes. My breath came slowly as I sat there . . . waiting.
When the digital clock read 4:09,1 stood up and went out of the door.
On the street everything was just fine. I was walking one step after another on numbed feet toward the subway.
In the underground train I sat next to a young black woman who was writing in a French workbook, solving the conjugation of verbs.
When she did one wrong, I interrupted her and told her the correct past tense. She thanked me and went on working, but after a while, she turned away from her book.
“Are you from another country?” she asked.
I wondered if she had ever read the novel.
“No,” I said. “I‘m American, from San Francisco originally, but I‘ve lived here in Manhattan for over twenty years."
“Oh,” she said, smiling, nodding almost dismissively. She was darker than Jo, both shorter and thicker. Her lips were large and well formed. If you looked very closely, you could make out the most lovely freckles on either side of her nose, these just slightly darker than her deep-brown skin.
“I was thinking that you were from a francophone country because you helped me."
“Language major,” I told her, “at UC Berkeley."
“Wow. I‘m studying French at City up in Harlem. I want to live somewhere else than here in America.” She sighed and glanced out the subway window into the swift darkness.
“Why?” I asked.
“To find a good black man."
“There aren‘t any good ones here?"
“Uh-uh,” she said, her upper lip curling in disgust. “All the men I meet are either dogs, on the down low, dealin‘ or doin‘ drugs, or expect me to pay for dinner and the rent."
“All men are dogs,” I said. “Frenchmen included. And Africans and Jamaicans and even Pygmies, whatever language they speak."
The young woman grinned, and the train began to slow. I became worried that the next stop was where she‘d get off. Her smile made me want her to stay.
“Is this your stop?” I asked.
She was about to say something then refrained. Then she said, “No. Is it yours?"
“No."
She smiled while people moved all around us. The car was very crowded, and we were pushed closer to each other on the light-blue plastic bench.
“So learning French won‘t help me?” she asked, as the warning bells rang and the doors stuttered because of people holding them open to get in and get out.
“It‘ll make you smarter,” I said. “But knowing things is often worse than not knowing them."
“I want to know things,” she said, looking up into my eyes.
Her red-and-yellow blouse opened a bit, allowing me to appreciate her cleavage. I tried not to be obvious about looking, and she didn‘t turn away.
“We always say that,” I said. “We want to know things, but then one day your mother says that your brother is her favorite. One day your wife says that she‘d rather sleep on a bed of glass than with you. The doctor, the official letter, the bank. . . We want to know things, but only those things that make us happy or don‘t touch us at all."
“That sounds so sad,” the young woman—I pegged her at twenty-seven—said. “Are you sad?"
“Yeah,” I said. The feeling tingled back into my hands and feet. “I‘m very sad, I guess."
“Why?"
“What‘s your name?"
“Monica. Monica Wells."
“I‘m Cordell Carmel."
Monica held out her hand and I shook it.
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Carmel,” she said and I could hear the invitation in her voice.
I looked at the pretty, chubby little woman and wondered. I thought, very clearly, almost crazily, that a man on foot could only travel one path but that in his soul a man could be going in two opposite directions at the same time.
Here I was, bound for the execution of Johnny Fry, but at that simultaneous moment, I was on a train destined to try to get Monica Wells to smile at me.
“Only part sad,” I said.
“What part is that?” she asked.
“The one not talking to you."
“What does that mean?"
“I‘m at a transitional crossroad in my life, Monica,” I said, consciously using her name. “I‘ve been a freelance translator for nearly the whole time I‘ve lived in the city, but last week I stopped that. I also broke up with a girlfriend a while ago and I‘ve been seeing different women. It all sounds like fun but really it isn‘t. I quit my job on a whim. My girlfriend, although she won‘t say it, is in love with another man—"
“That‘s too bad,” Monica said. “Has she been seein‘ him?"
“I don‘t know. Maybe."
“Can you pay your rent wit‘ no job?” she asked.
“I got another job. It might make more money than the last one. But it‘s just, uh . . . confusing."
“Yeah,” she said. Her hand moved as if she wanted to touch my arm, but she held back.
“What about you?” I asked. “What‘s your life like?"
“I live in the East Village with my mom,” she said. “An‘ my li‘l girl."
“How old is your daughter?"
“Five."
“That‘s nice. She‘s walking and talking and going to the bathroom by herself but she does what you tell her to—most of the time."
“Yeah,” Monica said, tucking in her chin and grinning. “She‘s a good girl. She misses her daddy, but we can‘t do nuthin‘ about that."
“He left?"
“He‘s in prison."
“Oh. I‘m sorry to hear that."
“It‘s alright,” she said, raising a hand either in prayer or dismissal. “He always wanted to be runnin‘ in the street with his friends, an‘ it finally caught up with him."
“He‘s in for a long time?"
“Uh-huh. You know, that‘s why I started goin‘ back to school. I want my baby to know all kindsa people with all kindsa lives. I want her to go to a French school, what they call a lycée, here in New York. That way she‘ll have a whole ‘nother world to be thinkin‘ ‘bout."
“I know a woman who‘s connected with the Lycée Francais,” I said. “I‘ve done English-to-French translations for her."
“Is she a black woman?” Monica asked.
“No. Her name is Marie Tourneau, and she‘s there most days.
You could call her and tell her I said to come see her. She‘ll call me and I‘ll give her all kind
s of glowing praise.” “You don‘t even know me,” Monica said.
“I probably know you better than anyone giving an interview,” I replied. “I know you‘re trying to make a better life for yourself and your daughter. I know how much the school means to you. What‘s your daughter‘s name?"
“Mozelle."
“Okay then, tell me about Mozelle."
For the next ten or twelve stops, Monica talked to me about her only child. She was short like her mother and athletic like her dad—Ben Can*. She loved crayons and yellow paper and music. She helped her mother and grandmother with dinner every night and knew how to boil an egg if somebody was in the kitchen with her.
Every weekend, mother and daughter went somewhere special: the Bronx Zoo, the Museum of Natural History7, the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They rode the Staten Island Ferry one weekend after visiting the Jewish Museum downtown.
“I want my girl to know everybody‘s history,” Monica said. “Because she needs to know where we come from—all of us."
The train came to a stop at 135th Street. When Monica stood up to get out, I did too.
“You goin‘ to City too?” she asked, with maybe a hint of trepidation. After all, she didn‘t really know me—only the words I had said.
“I was going to Fifty-ninth,” I admitted, “only I enjoyed talking to you so much that I stayed on. I‘ll just cross over to the other side here and go back down."
“You got to pay again here,” she told me. “If you stay on up to One-forty-five, you don‘t have to."
“That‘s okay,” I said. We were already out of the car. “I‘ll walk you across the street and go down over there. It‘s worth the extra fare."
At the crosswalk I said, “So, Monica. We agree that all men are dogs. I freely admit that I‘m going out with many women. You know I have a job. I‘m not on the down low, or dealing drugs, or taking drugs, and if you agree to go out with me, I‘ll be happy to pay for dinner."
The light turned green, but she didn‘t step into the street.
She was quite a bit shorter than I and not nearly as stout as I had thought.
“Why you wanna go out with me?"
“Because when I told you about why I was sad, you almost put your hand on my arm to tell me things were okay but you didn‘t because you didn‘t know me well enough."
Killing Johnny Fry Page 16
