Killing Johnny Fry (14 page)

He smiled. He was a young Asian man with brownish skin, maybe Vietnamese or Cambodian.

“I‘ve loved you all that time,” she said.

“But couldn‘t you love me and someone else too?"

“No,” she said with absolute certainty.

“What about kissing someone?” I asked. “Could you kiss a man?"

“Why are you asking me all this, L?"

“Robert."

Fear etched its lines into her face. I realized that I had never seen Jo really frightened before. But I could tell by those well-worn furrows that dread was no stranger to her.

I felt a pang of guilt. I‘d thought that Jo was strong and unaffected by anxiety.

“My, my doorman?"

“Yeah. Him."

“What did, what did he say?"

The guilt in my heart was replaced almost immediately by a feeling of dominance and malice. The Rolling Stones‘ song “Under My Thumb” came into my mind. My mouth salivated over her trepidation.

I swallowed and smiled. I waited.

“What did he say?” Jo asked.

“Nothing."

“Then what does he have to do with anything about me?"

“He didn‘t want to let me up to your apartment."

“What?"

“Most of the times I come to your place on the weekend, Robert is there at least once. He sees me and waves for me to go up. When I knock at the door, you‘re always busy and take a while to answer. That way I know he hasn‘t called you."

“So?"

“But today, on a Monday, I come to him, and he says, wait. And when I ignore him, he calls you immediately."

Passion was completely gone from Jo‘s face. She stared at me with real concern.

“Is that all?” she asked.

“I figured that you had a weekday boyfriend, and Robert was worried that he was Up there with you."

“But no one was there,” she said.

“Robert didn‘t know that."

“Is that why you made me take my clothes off in the doorway?” she asked. “So my secret boyfriend couldn‘t get away. So you could fuck me while he hid in the closet?"

“I took you there because whenever I see you, I lose control. You are the most beautiful woman I‘ve ever known and you have been the only woman in my life. No. No. You have been the only person in my life. My only friend. Really the only one I can talk to. But, obviously, I never knew anything about you."

“What do you mean?” she said. “You know everything about me. You‘ve met my mother and my sister, my friends. You know about every j o b I do."

“But I didn‘t know how sexual you were. I didn‘t know that there‘s something you‘re frightened of."

“ I ‘m not afraid of anything,” she said defiantly.

“Why didn‘t Robert want to let me up?"

“I have strict rules that nobody comes up on weekdays without being announced,” she said. “Not my uncle. Not my housekeeper."

“And not me."

“I never said anything to Robert about you, L. You never come during the week. Robert was just trying to do his j o b ."

I didn‘t want her to confess about Johnny Fry. I wasn‘t ready for that kind of confrontation. All I wanted was for her to squirm a little.

I tried to smile, but instead, a spasm of pain rippled under the top of my skull.

“What‘s wrong?” Jo asked.

“My head. It really runts."

“Are you seeing things?"

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Things floating in front of your eyes, lights?"

“No,” I lied.

If her life was a secret, so should mine be.

“If you need to go home,” she said. “I‘ll wait until tomorrow.”

“At three?"

“If that‘s when you want me."

I felt that last sentence in the center of my heart. It was a small expansion, a swelling of passion. She made herself into an object for me. It wasn‘t unlike me standing in her bathroom holding my half-swollen cock as if it were some kind of philosopher‘s stone.

“It‘s just that I didn‘t get much sleep last night,” I said.

“Why not? Your headache?"

“I had a visitor."

That afternoon Jo‘s usually calm visage was like the New England weather. It went from cloud-filled to light to stormy in quick succession. My mention of a late-night visitor piqued her jealous sky.

“Who was that?” she asked.

“Enoch,” I said dryly. “Enoch Bennett."

“Who‘s that?"

“You remember I told you about the woman who lives a couple of floors above me?” I said. “Sasha."

“Not really."

I told Jo about my adventures with Sasha and Enoch. Meeting them on the street, dragging him to the bed, the late-night visit and the confession about incest.

“Sasha once told me that her mother and she were feuding over something—I‘m not sure, but I think it was a man,” I said. “Maybe she‘s getting back at her mother through her brother."

“When he woke up, do you think he‘d forgotten what he did?” Jo asked. The worry lines had returned to her face.

“No. I‘m pretty sure that he remembered the act, just not the confession."

“That‘s too bad,” Jo said. “Forgetting something like that would be best."

The woman who had been thrashing about on the floor in masturbatory orgasm just an hour before now seemed years older and fragile to the point of breaking under her own weight.

“What‘s wrong, Jo?” I asked. It was the first time I had been truly concerned about her in days.

She poured a glass of wine and downed it; poured another. When that glass was through, the rigidity in her limbs released a bit.

“You were right when you said that I haven‘t told you everything about me, L,” she said. “I have one secret, a secret that I‘ve never told anyone before."

“What‘s that?” I asked in a whisper.

“You asked me about why I‘m so sexual lately,” she said.

“Yeah?"

“It has to do with Enoch."

“Enoch? How do you know him?"

“I don‘t know him,” she said. “But I know what he‘s going through."

“What do you mean?"

“Do you remember . . . “ she said, and gulped. “Do you remember I told you six months ago about nay Uncle dying?"

“Your uncle, um, uh, Rex?"

“Yes."

“Yeah. I remember."

She hadn‘t said more than a few words about her father‘s half brother, Rex. There was a letter from her aunt Jemma telling her that he had died in their home in Hawaii.

“When my father died, Rex put us up in an apartment in Baltimore. I was fourteen, and he told my mother that it was time for me to learn an instrument. He taught piano before getting into the roofing business. So I‘d go over there three days a week and take lessons . . ."

It was obvious where she was going.

“. . .At first it was just lessons. He was a good teacher, and I still like playing the piano. But one day he told me that he loved me and that he needed me to be his girlfriend. It was very strange. He didn‘t touch me or anything. He just explained that we were going to have a relationship where I would be like a wife to him, or else he would stop paying for our food and our rent.

“My mother had a nervous breakdown after Dad died. She couldn‘t work, and I was too young to get a job. My sister was younger than I was . . .

“My uncle told me to think about it, and if I wanted to keep my mother out of the street, all I had to do was show up in two days for the next lesson."

All of this she said looking down into her glass. Then she looked up. The face she presented was another woman completely: a beautiful woman who had been defeated by her own good looks.

“I went back on Wednesday,” she said. “He told me what to do. He, he did it to me again and again. I never saw a man who could have sex so long. Some days he would come a dozen times. If I was ever late or tried to hold him off, he would beat me with a thin leather strap and then, and then sodomize me."

I reached out and took her hand. Her tears fell on the table.

“What finally happened?"

“Uncle Bernard, my mother‘s brother, sent for us. He let Mom live in his house and paid for me and August to go to college."

“And you never told anybody about this?"

Jo shook her head and let go of my hand.

“Not even your sister?"

“No. He wrote letters for years afterward,” she said. “He wanted me to come back to him. He honestly believed that he loved me and that our relationship was somehow consensual. He told me that he needed me."

“Did you ever see him again?"

“No."

“Did he . . . damage you? Physically, I mean."

“He did love me, you know,” she said.

“No. He raped you."

“Sometimes I‘d looked forward to seeing him,” she said reaching out for my hand again. “Sometimes I‘d fight him on purpose so that he would punish me."

“He was fucking with your mind,” I said, but she wasn‘t listening to me.

“It felt good when he punished me,” she admitted. “Sometimes he‘d drink water all day and when I‘d get there he‘d make me get into the bathtub and, and urinate on me because I was so disgusting."

“It‘s lucky the motherfucker‘s dead,” I said. “If he wasn‘t, I‘d kill him."

Jo looked me in the eye right then. Her gaze was clear and innocent.

“He couldn‘t help it,” she said, shaking her head slightly. “His stepmother, my grandmother, kicked him out when he was only twelve. He went to live with his grandmother, who beat him and sold him to men and women for sex. He didn‘t know how to have normal love.

“Over the years, I learned how to deal with him. And I knew how to get him to give my mother what she needed."

“I‘m so sorry, baby,” I said. “I never knew."

“For many years, I never so much as went out on a date with any man,” she continued. “And when I did start dating, I never liked anyone. I never let them get close. Then, when I met you, I knew you were the perfect man for me. I didn‘t want what I‘d had with Rex. If I needed to be alone, you let me be. If I wanted to make love, you were gentle and kind.

“But when Rex died, something happened. After all those years, the hunger for crazy sex started to eat at me. That‘s why when you changed, I was so wild for you. I needed you to do what you did to me in the park. That‘s why when you pretended to slap me, I got so excited."

And that‘s why, I knew, she had started the affair with Johnny Fry. She needed to be abused and humiliated. She needed to be treated like an object—the object of lust.

“Do you want me to come home with you?” I asked.

“No. I want you to go home and think about what I‘ve told you,” she said. “I‘ve told you a lot. You have to think about it. And I can tell from the way you‘re blinking how much your head hurts."

“I am in pain. But I wouldn‘t leave—"

“Don‘t talk about it now,” Jo told me, bringing her finger to my lips. “Just go and come back tomorrow at three . . . if you still want to be with me."

Even though my head hurt terribly, I decided to walk. With each step on the hard concrete, I could feel and even hear the reverberations going through my body. It was like the pounding of great bass drums.

I wasn‘t walking in a straight line. I drifted from one side of the sidewalk to the other, looking at dogs on leashes and clouds in the sky. For four blocks, between 62nd and 59th, I counted the black splotches of dried chewing gum on the white concrete. I counted 292 before the headache got too bad for counting.

I went into Central Park for a while, hoping that sitting under the trees there would ease nay pain. But the headache got worse and worse. The light in the dome of my head glimmered, and flashes of imagined lightning flickered in among the boughs overhead.

When I even thought about standing, I got nauseous. I had other symptoms too: my heart was pounding, I was dizzy, and now and then my hands trembled Uncontrollably.

I hated those splotches of gum. For some reason I blamed them for my malady.

Hours later, the sun began to set. With the night, my symptoms eased up just a little. I was able to make it to my feet and stagger to a cab in Columbus Circle.

“What did you say?” the cabbie asked three times before he understood my slurred speech.

It was an $8 ride, but I gave him a twenty and told him to keep the change.

It took a quarter of an hour for me to find and work the keys on the doors to my building and my apartment. By that time, the pain in my head was worse than ever. It hurt so badly that it seemed to be making a sound, a deep humming note fluttering through the folds of my brain.

I found the slip of paper that had Cynthia‘s number on it and punched it into the keypad of my phone with great difficulty.

“Enter code or wait for first operator,” the voice told me.

It took much longer than it should have. There were flashes in front of my eyes, and momentary dark spots. It‘s a wonder that I wasn‘t frightened. I could have had a brain tumor or some parasite or virus. But the only thing I cared about was getting Cynthia‘s name into that phone.

“You have entered the wrong code,” the man‘s voice told me, and the line was disconnected.

I hit the redial button, and even though the memory held more numbers than I needed, the phone rang again. The man told me to enter the code again.

By this time pain was dripping from my eyes, nose, and mouth. When I pressed the pound key on the phone pad, it felt like the last thing I would ever do.