Killing Johnny Fry (21 page)

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."

“I sure didn‘t.” The smile came up in her brown face like light on the darkness of morning.

“So I figure if we meet for dinner, then you could get to know me better, and the next time I‘m sad, you could pat my arm."

“Is that all you want?"

“Right now I‘m just happy standing here with you."

“Tonight?” she asked.

“Tomorrow."

“Where we gonna eat?"

I gave her the address of the Italian bistro on Sixth.

“What time?"

“Seven?"

“Okay. I‘ll be there.” She put one foot in the street, but the light had turned red again. A speeding car honked, and I grabbed her by the arm, pulling her back on the curb.

Instead of thanking me, she asked, “Do really know that woman, that Marie Tourneau?"

“Yes, ma‘am."

The light turned, and I let go of her arm.

We walked together to my subway entrance and there we parted. She was halfway up the hill toward the college before she looked back. I waved at her, and she laughed out loud, doubling over.

“I thought you were coming at five,” short, sweet, and light-olive-hued Linda Chou said to me at the third-floor office door of my old-time friend Brad Mettleman.

She unlocked the door when I knocked. I could see that she had recently reapplied her ruby-red lipstick and the razor-thin eyeliner at the outer edges of her eyes.

She was twenty-five, no more, and thin. Not malnourished like the children in Lucy‘s pictures but wiry like those old men and women who outlive their children while existing below the poverty line on farms perched at the outskirts of rural America—where people still thrill when they think about God and sin and George Washington.

“Sorry,” I said. “Really. I was on the subway . . .just thinking . . . and then it was One hundred thirty-fifth Street."

“You went all the way up there?” Her eyes could get wide.

“I‘m sorry,” I said again. “First I‘m rude and then I make you wait."

“That‘s okay. The flowers were nice. You wanna see ‘em?” She smiled and let her head slide to the side a bit.

She took the sleeve of my tan jacket in a playful grip and pulled me from the entrance area into the larger room that contained her reception desk.

The yellow roses really were lovely. Their long, trimmed stems stood straight in a slender glass vase, unadorned with the usual green flummery that so many talentless florists use.

“They fit you,” I said looking at her.

She bit her lower lip, and I regretted having to meet Brenda, whoever she was, later
on.

“What did you want, Mr. Carmel?"

“Why don‘t we sit down?” I suggested.

There were two guest chairs in front of her Arts and Crafts oak desk. She sat on one while I took the other. Our knees were only inches apart.

My life would end soon, I knew that for sure. I could kill Johnny Fry, but I doubted that I would manage to get away with it. The police would arrest me or shoot me down; the court would sentence me to death or life.

It‘s funny how none of that bothered me. I guess I was kind of crazy. And I loved it that every moment I spent seemed to be filled with so many of the glorious details of life.

I could almost hear Linda‘s heart pounding with interest.

My nostrils flared, and she smiled for me.

“I made a deal with Ms. Thinnes to represent Lucy Carmichael‘s work,” I told her.

“You did?” Linda‘s eyes and mouth made three perfect circles. “She‘s really hard. Brad‘s only had two shows with her in the last twelve years."

“I appealed to her political side,” I said. “I told her that Lucy had a foundation for the orphaned children of the Sudan. It seems that Ms. Thinnes likes to think that she can make a difference."

“That‘s kinda cynical, isn‘t it?” Linda asked, crossing her legs. She was wearing a mid-thigh bright-orange silk dress that had the outlines of yellow fish drawn here and there. The hem fell in just such a way as to make you feel that you were seeing more thigh than she was actually showing.

The look excited me, but it was the word,
cynical,
that caught my attention. Not the word, exactly, but the challenge it held. She was confronting my contempt of the elder Ms. Thinnes‘s intentions.

This reminded me of my father.

I had a momentary glimpse of him in the living room of our apartment on Isabella Street in Oakland, California. I had told people I was from San Francisco for so long that I sometimes forgot our little back-of-the-building apartment on Isabella.

My father was sitting in the ratty old maroon sofa chair that he‘d found in the street in the rich white hills that lay between Oakland and Berkeley.

Brain is the only defense a niggah has,
he was saying in the reverie. Only he was saying it very fast, as he always did, and the words blended together.
White man love ya. White man hate ya. It‘s all the same. ‘Cause you know he ain‘t evah gonna feel like you. Uh-uh. No, no. Not even for a minute. Write man ain‘t nevah gonna know you and so he won‘t evah do nuthin‘ you want on purpose. He cain‘t. So you got to think like him and find out what it is in his mind that he‘s thinkin‘ so you can get him to do sumpin‘ and make that sumpin‘ what you want too.

“Yeah,” I said to Linda. “You‘re right. I gave her a chance to think that she could help the people of Sudan by throwing money at a white girl who had been there. I got her to agree to charging six thousand dollars for Lucy‘s photographs."

“Six thousand?” Linda said. “Dog."

“Lucy thinks she can help people too,” I said, with a smile on my face that might have seemed sad.

“You don‘t think so?” Linda asked, uncrossing her legs and leaning forward with her elbows on her knees in a masculine pose.

“You‘re very pretty, Linda Chou."

“Is that the answer?"

“No,” I said. “I g u e s s . . . I guess I don‘t believe that we, I mean none of us, understand how far down the pain goes for others. We think things and believe other people think like us. We feel things and think other people feel like us. But we‘re just making it up most of the time. Our beliefs are like the dust falling on mountains, like sunlight at the bottom of the sea."

My words surprised both of us.

“That‘s kinda heavy,” Linda Chou said, and I smiled.

“Have you ever been in love with somebody and then broke up with them and realized that you never knew who they were?” I • asked.

“Yes,” she said with renewed interest.

“You look at them and wonder what could you have possibly been thinking when you got together? How could you kiss them or talk to them? They were never what you thought they were."

Linda was biting her lip again.

“What does that have to do with the people in Darfur?” she asked honestly expecting an answer.

“It‘s like humanity was a body,” I said, thinking that I wanted to get on my knees and bury my face in her orange and olive thighs.

“Not some people over there and some others over here. I hurt my hand the other day. I was in pain, and even though the doctor looked at that, he had to consider everything about the injury. For instance—why had I fallen? Did I have fever? Was there an obstruction in my brain? If I‘d had an infection, he wouldn‘t have injected my hand. That would have hurt too much. We are a system, all of us, but we don‘t think like that. We blame and feel sorry for and ignore. That‘s why I have no faith in the intentions of people. People are blind and even worse, they don‘t know it."

“Not you,” Linda Chou said, and I didn‘t know if she was making fun of me.

“Will you go out with me sometime?” I asked her.

“Out where?” she asked back.

“I don‘t know. Dancing?"

“You like to dance?” she asked.

“I‘ve never been dancing in my life. I sure don‘t know how. But you look like a dancer to me, and I‘m willing fall down a few times."

“But then, what if you have a fever or a tumor?"

“I‘ll die dancing,” I said. “What could be better than that?"

Linda laughed very loudly. I think she was nervous because the conversation took her off guard with its intensity. I remembered how Lucy had arched her body when I entered her as she slept. She wanted what was happening, but at the same time it was too much.

“Okay,” she said. “When?"

“Not tonight. I‘m meeting someone about business later on. But the day after tomorrow would be fine."

“Okay,” she said, giving in with a shrug and smile. “I‘ll find a place and you can pick me up here at nine."

“I have to go to the bathroom,” I said then. “Do you mind if I use Brad‘s."

“No. Go on."

Brad‘s office door was frosted glass. Linda could have seen me moving around through it if she stood up to look. But I didn‘t close it anyway. I walked into the large, modernist office and went to the bathroom door. I leaned in, turned on the hot and cold water so that they made a lot of noise, then I got down in half-lotus and opened Brad‘s bottom drawer.

I knew he kept an unregistered pistol in there. A .32 caliber gun that he bought from a junkie client of his. He told me that he bought it to give the guy something to eat with and to save him from killing someone else or himself.

The junkie died of an overdose three weeks later. Brad made over $100,000 on the canvases he‘d gotten. The junkie didn‘t even have a girlfriend to pay off.

I put the small, unloaded pistol in the left inside breast pocket of my jacket and the box of bullets in the right. Then I went into the bathroom, flushed the toilet, turned off the spigots that looked like silver lizards, and came out.

Linda was sitting behind the desk now. She had out three legal-looking forms.

“These are the boilerplate contracts we use with all of our clients and dealers,” she said. “You should take them with you and read through them. When are you meeting with Ms. Thinnes again?"

“Saturday."

‘‘Go
over them and we‘ll talk about what you should ask for when we go dancing."

“Maybe,” I said.

“What do you mean?"

“Well . . . I wouldn‘t be a very good date if I made you work for your dinner and dancing."

“Don‘t worry,” she said, with a delicious smile. “I intend to work your butt off on that dance floor."

I walked the young receptionist to her subway stop and kissed her cheek good-bye. I looked forward to seeing her again, but I knew from the weight in my pockets that I might be dead before the time our date rolled around. For some reason, this made me laugh.

I walked through Central Park again, over to Fifth Avenue and then down. It was a sultry night, and people were out in droves. Secretaries and fat businessmen, displaced cigarette smokers, taxis and limos ferrying people from one door to another, lovers—commonplace lovers.

I stopped at a phone booth and called Joelle.

“Hi,” she said in a way that seemed she was expecting the call.

“Hi."

“Oh . . . L."

“You were expecting another call?"

“No, no."

“I could get off and call you later."

“No. Where are you?” she asked. “You sound like you‘re outside."

“I‘m on Fifth Avenue. My guy down in Philly is leaving tonight at ten from Penn Station. I‘m going down there to deliver my pages. What have you been doing?"

“Nothing. Working."

“Anybody interesting call?"

“No. I . . ."

“Yeah?"

“I have to go down to Baltimore next week. They‘re having the service for my uncle."

“So long after he died?"

“It . . . My family from Hawaii is in town and we, my sister and I, thought that it would be a good time to, to say good-bye."

“Why would you want to do that?” I asked.

“I feel that I must do this,” she said, with an odd articulation.

“I‘ll come with you,” I offered.

“No."

“I think I should. I mean, after we talked about it the other day, I feel that it has to do with me too."

“No, L. Please don‘t ask me. This is something I have to do alone."

“Oh. Okay. Well, I better be going."

“Come by after your meeting?” she asked so sweetly that for a moment I forgot how humdrum and ordinary our love was.

“Okay,” I said. “I‘ll come."

I got to Grand Central Station a little after 8:30. Rush hour was winding down, but there were still a lot of people there.

I wandered into the bookstore and looked for some novel that I could read while waiting for my meeting with Brenda. I thumbed through John Updike, Colson Whitehead, Philip Roth, and a sex book penned by a popular TV sex star. All of them had their merits, but I realized that I wasn‘t in a reading mood.

I was angry and feeling betrayed by Cynthia. And the more I thought about it, the angrier I became.

Why couldn‘t I trust anybody?

Why did everyone betray me?

I went to a phone booth and entered all the right numbers. Her phone rang three times, and a message machine came on.

“This is Cynthia. I‘m busy on a call right now, but I‘ll be happy to ring you back if you just leave a name and number."

“It‘s Cordell,” I said without inflection. I left the number of the pay phone and hung up.

Thirty seconds later, I was thinking that I was a fool to expect her to call back, then the phone rang.

“Hello?"

“Cordell?"

“You called?"

“I‘ve been expecting you. I checked the call-waiting to see if it was you, but the number was blocked, so I waited for the message. How are you?"

“Feeling a little let down by you, I guess."

“Oh don‘t,” she said. “Don‘t feel like that. I thought long and hard before calling Brenda. I knew that you needed to see her, to talk to her. I could tell."

“Who is she?"

“Someone who will help you on your journey."

“What is she? A therapist? A prostitute?"

“She‘s a very powerful woman. A woman who will understand your grief."

Grief.