Killing Johnny Fry (3 page)

In all this time there wasn‘t the obligatory come shot: the man ejaculating on the woman‘s breasts or ass. But Ari was getting more and more excited. His hands were shaking, his eyes were pleading for something. Sisypha began smiling at him.

“Do you want me to make you come?” she asked.

“Yes.” The word tore from his throat.

She grabbed his erection, sneered, and then slapped it hard. He screamed in pain.

“Still?” she asked.

“Yes,” he replied in a subdued tone.

She slapped the erection again, this time with even more force.

“Still?"

I unzipped my pants with my left hand, and the thick, squat erection sprang forth.

“Please,” Ari begged.

“Sisypha, what is this?” someone said.

For a moment I believed that it was Ari trying to reassert his dominance. But the camera shifted, and I could see Mel standing at the door, carrying his briefcase, wearing his wrinkled suit.

Mel was a stocky guy with a receding hairline and a slightly protruding belly. He was white with gray eyes. We looked nothing alike, but certainly I saw him filling my role in this fiction.

Mel began yelling and gesticulating wildly. He kept saying that he was going to call the police, which of course made very little sense since no crime had been committed. Sisypha tried to stop him, but he pushed her down and picked up the phone. At that point Ari slapped Mel, knocking him to the floor. And, with his penis still more than half erect, he used a conveniently placed roll of electric tape to lash Mel to a chair. Before Mel was aware enough to scream, Ari used the tape to cover his mouth.

Sisypha tried to calm Mel, but he still struggled against his bonds, making muffled screams.

Then Ari placed a stool before the one Mel was tied to and sat, pulling Sisypha onto his lap. He positioned her so that she was facing her husband and entered her with his enormous erection.

I decided now that Sisypha was indeed an exceptional actor. Every time that Ari thrust into her, she gasped and responded with a groan of pleasure. But at the same time she would look into her husband‘s eyes with shame just as convincing. Finally Ari lost control and fucked her with abandon. She couldn‘t keep from having a powerful, uncontrolled orgasm. When Ari was ready to come, he made her get down on her knees to lick the thick white fluid as it flowed down the hard, snakelike veins on his erection.

I tried to stroke my own erection, but my hand hurt too much, and so I couldn‘t bring myself to orgasm even though I wanted to in the worst way. My breath was coming fast, and when I looked into Mel‘s pleading eyes, I wanted to cry along with him. After all, wasn‘t I in the same position as he? Forced as I was to see my lover groaning and writhing in the embrace of another man?

When Ari had experienced his last spasm of ecstasy, Sisypha fell away from him and begged Mel to forgive her. She hadn‘t meant to hurt him; she would never have exposed him to her wanton nature on purpose.

But Ari got between them and sneered at her entreaties.

“He likes it, Sissy,” Ari said. “Here, look.” And with that he ripped the buttons on Mel‘s pants.

A stubby erection poked out.

“See,” Ari said. “He likes it. He‘s excited to see you get fucked by my big cock. He wants you to get down on your knees and do to him what you did to me."

Sisypha gazed into Mel‘s eyes. His stare was frightened and unsure. Tentatively Sisypha got down on her knees before him. As she began sucking and stroking the stubby erection, he stared at her with a tender gaze and bucked his hips to show her how good it felt.

I poured myself another glass of cognac, drank it down, and poured another. I was Mel. I was Mel. Impotent, restrained, submissive.

But at least he was loved by her. At least she had come back to him.

Then Ari got down on his knees behind Sisypha. When he entered her, she let out a passionate groan that made me try again to stroke my erection with my injured hand. But the pain was too great. I couldn‘t pleasure myself and so I watched helplessly while the big Greek stud hammered away at Sisypha. She twisted and pressed back toward him. N o w and then she‘d raise her lips from her captive husband‘s erection and yell, “Fuck me! Fuck me harder!"

Tears were streaming from my eyes. My erection strained so hard that the tight skin shone brightly in the plasma glow, like dark glass.

Then the big Greek stood up from behind the dark-haired girl. His erection was so hard that it tilted upward despite its crookedness, great length, and girth. It was literally dripping from the excited juices of his lover. Ari stood over the woman dangling the erection in Mel‘s face.

“You smell her pussy on my cock?” he asked the man. “Does that get you excited?"

Mel tried to move his head away but at the same time Sisypha started whimpering and working her hand and tongue very fast. Mel couldn‘t help himself; he had to come while Ari waved his erection in front of his face. And even though there were tears in his eyes, I could tell that Mel was having a very powerful sexual experience.

In that moment I imagined his life. Fie woke up every day and took a bus to work. He came home and laughed at the same stories, watched the same TV shows, had sex once a week in the same positions, congratulated himself for being liberal and liberated when actually he wasn‘t any different from any anchovy sealed into a flat tin with a dozen others just like him. His wife loved him the way she‘d love a six-year-old boy, smiling at his innocence while he pretended to be a man.

Ari was still laughing at Mel‘s weakness when Sisypha jumped up and pushed him away. Her anger was palpable and a little scary. The big man knew that he‘d crossed a line and so he put his clothes on.

“You know my number when you need a real man,” he said, buttoning his shirt and going out the door.

I was so relieved to see him go that I actually sighed. I poured another shot of cognac and drank it down in one gagging swallow.

My erection was waning.

I expected to see Sisypha untie her husband, for them to realize that they loved each other and then to make love.

Or maybe, I thought, the camera would now follow Ari to some other hotbed of sex at his home or some club.

I wasn‘t concerned because even though I had been unable to have an orgasm I felt spent, as if I had some kind of transcendental experience. I had seen many brilliant movies in my time, but nothing ever moved me as much as that first scene of
The Myth of Sisypha.
Not
The Bicycle Thief or The World of Apu
or
Tokyo Story.
No movie ever talked directly to me before. No movie had ever pulled the heart out of my chest and laid it beating at my feet.

I was finished with this film. Mere sex could not move me as much as Mel‘s demolition at the hands of his wife and her lover.

But the next scene had nothing to do with sex. Sisypha pulled the stool even closer so that she was sitting only inches from her husband. For a long time she stared into his eyes. I noticed that the right side of Mel‘s face was red and slightly raised, as if Ari had really struck him.

“If I take the tape from your mouth, will you scream?” she asked him.

He nodded, and I wondered if he understood the question.

“You will scream?” she asked again to make sure.

He nodded again.

“If I untie you, will you try to hurt me?” she asked then.

After a moment‘s hesitation he nodded, a bit sadly.

“Do you love me, Melvin?"

Nod.

“Do you hate me too?"

Nod.

“What can we do?"

Melvin hung his head and shook it slowly. Whereupon Sisypha got up and walked from the room. Mel looked after her and for a long time there was no action at all, just Mel looking at the doorway through which his wife had gone.

And then Sisypha appeared at the door carrying a small baby-blue suitcase. She knelt down in front of him and closed up his pants, a loving gesture.

“I‘ll call Yvette and tell her to come untie you,” she said. “I‘ll get in touch in a few days to see what you‘re thinking."

That was it for me. I started crying and couldn‘t stop. I fell from the futon onto the floor and sobbed. Mel‘s impotence struck a chord at my center. He didn‘t want to hurt his wife but he would hurt her. He didn‘t want to scream but he had no choice. The decision was not his to make. Sisypha was the one in charge, the one making decisions. Through her passion, through her clear eyes, she made her choices and followed them.

I punched the ALL OFF button on my universal remote. The room went black, and I stayed down on the floor. Somewhere in between bleats, I drifted off into sleep.

Even though my excitement had gone unslaked, I dreamt about violence instead of sex. I was Mel, and when Sisypha asked me if I would hurt her, I shook my head and stared out with innocent eyes. But when she cut off the tape, I grabbed her by the throat and squeezed with every ounce of my strength. I could feel my fingers popping and the muscles in my shoulders straining. I exerted so much force that I was panting, but I wouldn‘t stop. I intended to choke the life out of Sisypha. She would stop breathing for all time.

But no matter how much I pressed, she just looked back at me, surprised and distressed at my lie.

“ I ‘m sorry,” she said to me. “But I needed more than you were willing to give."

“I loved you,” I cried.

“You still love me,” she said with empathy that I detested. “Even if you could kill me, that wouldn‘t stop you from loving me."

I stood up in a rage and shouted, “I‘m leaving you!"

“You can‘t leave me,” she said. “Not unless I let you leave. But as long as I want you, you will be tied down in that chair, and I can have as many men as I want and you will be silent. And you will like what I do."

I wanted to say no; in my mind I did say it. But the words I spoke were entreaties. “Please,” I begged. “Please don‘t leave me. Don‘t take your love from me."

“You belong to me” was her reply. “I‘ll never let you go and I won‘t leave . . . this time."

“Thank you,” I said, hating myself for the weakness I showed.

The floor must have been cold, or maybe it was the liquor, maybe it slowed my circulation or something, because then I was floating in the polar seas amid giant icebergs that were crashing into each other. The sounds of the shattering mountains of ice frightened me more than anything. Every time one glacier rammed into another, I shuddered and rolled myself into a ball so that I could sink below the weaves and be safe from the exploding debris.

But I had to surface in order to breathe. The cold air hurt my lungs, and the crashing got louder and louder, until finally I woke up, shivering.

I thought my dream was coming from some loud, late-night TV show but then I realized that it was the telephone ringing in the darkness. I tried to get up but I‘d forgotten about my injured hand. I grabbed at the coffee table, pulled away in pain, and fell forward, hitting my chin on the hard corner. The phone stopped ringing just before the answering machine would have picked up.

I may have passed out for a moment or maybe I was just drifting back into sleep. Then the phone was ringing again. The digital clock on the cable box read 3:12. I got to my feet using my unsteady left hand for leverage. I banged my shins on the coffee table and kicked over the cognac bottle. The phone went silent, again before the machine would have picked up. It had started ringing for the third time when I finally got to it.

“Hello?” I said in a simpleton‘s voice. “Who is it?"

“It‘s me, L,” a woman said.

I knew that I knew the voice and, knowing that I couldn‘t place it, I knew I was drunk.

“It‘s late,” I said more in explanation than complaint. “After three."

“I called the Roundtree Inn,” she said, and I realized that it was Joelle on the line. “But they said that you hadn‘t checked in."

“Philadelphia,” I said, remembering that I was supposed to go down on the five o‘clock train. I had a meeting at eight in the morning with an agent for a consortium of Spanish businessmen that needed translators in New York. My agent had gotten me the gig. It meant a whole new world for me if I made the right impression.

“What‘s wrong, Cordell?” Jo asked, almost as if she loved me.

As if, I thought, and then I wondered why I thought that. Then I remembered her and Johnny Fry on the couch and on the floor. And wasn‘t I tied to a chair?

“Cordell?"

“I was going to the train station,” I said. “In the afternoon . . ."

“I thought you were on a noon train?"

“They didn‘t have first-class, and I wanted to write on the way down, on my laptop. Anyway, I was leaving my house and suddenly I got weak, dizzy. I tried to turn around, to go back home, and I fell."

“Are you all right?” she asked fearfully.

“Yeah. Yeah. I just hurt my hand, but when I got in, I realized that I had a fever. Real high. One oh two. I guess I‘ve been sleeping since then. Sleeping."

“Do you need me to come over?” she asked, a little halfheartedly, I thought.

“No, honey. I took some Tylenol and I had a bottle of vodka.” I had taken ibuprofen and cognac. That phone conversation was the beginning of many lies I was to tell.

“Since when?"

“What?"

“Since when do you have a bottle of liquor in your house?"

“Oh. I bought that a while ago. You know, uh, one day I walked home from up in your neighborhood. I passed this little liquor store. They had all this Russian vodka in the window and I decided to buy . . . some."

“Are you drunk?"

“No. Not at all. I was just dead asleep."

“Maybe you should go to the doctor, L. Maybe you‘re really sick."

“I don‘t think so,” I said. “I mean, I feel cool now. Just weak after the fever. I‘ll be, I‘ll be fine in the morning. Get up early and hoof it down to Philly for my meeting."

“So you‘re okay?” she asked. “I was so worried when you hadn‘t checked in. I thought you were just late and I fell asleep. But when I woke up, just a little while ago, you still weren‘t registered."

“Nothing to worry about,” I said, feeling almost normal. “I‘m sorry I didn‘t call. After putting ice on my hand and taking those Tylenol, I just fell right out."