Killing Johnny Fry (8 page)

“Let‘s go to brunch at the art museum,” she said. “Come on. Let‘s get dressed and go."

Outside, the stress released. It was beautiful, not a summer day at all. More like late spring or early fall. The light through the trees in Central Park was dappled and dancing. The breezes had a hint of a chill to them.

Joelle‘s mood lightened when mine did. We talked about a line
of
silk T-shirts that one of her clients wanted to market. She thought that he should have them placed near jewelry that complimented the fabric.

I didn‘t understand, and she spent half our walk through the park explaining what women thought when they considered buying any garment.

“It‘s like when a woman is considering a boyfriend,” she said.

“What does that mean?"

“There are a lot of aesthetic issues a girl has when she wants to hook up,” she said.

“Like what?"

“Well,” she said. “You know most sisters want a black man. Some younger African-American women will settle for a white guy who can think black if he has to."

Like Johnny Fry,
I thought.

“And then there‘s how tall he is compared to her . . . in heels,” she said. “And there‘s how he smells."

“You mean no funk?"

“That depends. Some girls like a guy who smells like a guy. Others want sweet or spicy, and still others want no scent at all. Those women don‘t really like men too much but they feel they have to have one . . . for appearances."

“Like a necklace with one of your T-shirts,” I said.

“Exactly."

“What do you want, Jo?” I asked.

We were somewhere near the middle of the park. She put her arm around my waist.

“I‘m happy with what I have,” she said. And then she whispered, “Is it still hard?"

“Yes, ma‘am."

She let her weight loll to the right and pulled me toward a thick clump of trees and bushes next to a stone bridge.

The leafage partially hid us, but someone could see . . . if they were looking.

“I know how to make it go down,” she told me.

“How?"

“Take it out."

To her Surprise, and mine, I unzipped, allowing my hard-on to jut out from my pants.

“Oh God,” she whispered. “It looks even bigger than last night."

I remembered Sisypha slapping her lovers‘ hard things and wondered if even that would daunt my obsession.

Jo was wearing a tan skirt and a multicolored striped T-shirt that didn‘t make it down to her navel. She looked around quickly and then hiked the skirt up and turned her back to me while pulling her panties to the side.

“Are you ready?” she said.

Before she could finish the three words I was in her. She moaned loudly, “Oh God yes."

I almost lost my erection then. I was sure that someone would have heard that. I imagined being arrested for lewd behavior in a public place. But then another thought came to me: Johnny Fry and Joelle had stood in this very same spot. He had pulled her into this semisecluded space and fucked her while people walked over the bridge and on the path less than five feet away.

When I realized this, I began humping her, grunting like Sisypha had with Mel. Just when I was about to come, I spun her around and pushed her to her knees. She took the head of my cock into her mouth and my whole world turned into a grin. I was at the verge of ejaculation when I looked up and saw three Asians, a young man and two young women, on the path staring at me. I smiled at them and then experienced a violent teeth-grinding orgasm. My eyes opened wide, and my mouth could barely contain the smile. The three pedestrians stared at me in wonderment.

Jo was tugging at my pulsing erection, squeezing it and licking the come as quickly as it sprouted from the head.

After she was finished, she looked up at me and smiled, then grinned.

She stood up, pulling down her skirt, and took me by the hand. We walked past the giggling Asian girls and their friend. Jo gave them all a toothy smile.

We didn‘t talk anymore until we got to the museum.

Jo‘s uncle, Bernard Petty, was a landlord in the Bronx and Brooklyn. He owned more than fifty buildings and other properties, making him one of the few black businessmen in New York who was worth more than $100 million. Every year Bernard bought a patron-level membership at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Jo‘s name.

There were lots of benefits to the membership. The trustees‘ dining room for instance, which was for members only, and a lounge for high-level patrons to relax in. You never had to pay an admission fee, and every show was on display for members when the museum was closed on the Monday before the official opening.

Jo took us up to the dining room, and we were greeted and put in a window seat that looked out over the park.

While I sat there going over the menu, Jo stared at me.

“What?” I asked.

“Who are you?"

“Cordell Carmel, translator."

“No. Cordell would have never done what you did in the park just now. Cordell would have giggled and made a joke and pushed me back on the path. Even if he could have kept it hard enough to start something, he wouldn‘t have finished it, not like you did with those people watching."

“So you think I‘m not me?"

Jo‘s eyes widened to take me in. Then she shook her head and turned her attention to the menu.

I rested my head in my hands because I was dizzy again. All of that sex and cuckolding and uncontrolled passion was taking a toll on me—a toll I would have gladly paid every day of the week.

“Hi,” a man said.

I looked up, and there stood Johnny Fry. He was wearing faded jeans and a white T-shirt tight across his broad, if pale, chest. He had brown leather sandals
on
his feet and lightly tinted yellow sunglasses propped up on top of his blond head. Next to the white man stood a coal-black woman with wild hair and nearly Caucasian features.

“John,” Joelle said a little bewildered.

“Hey, Joelle, L. How you guys doin‘? This is Bettye. She‘s from Senegal."

“Hello,” the beauty said putting more emphasis than any American would on that “o."

“What are you doing here?” Jo asked.

“My family has a membership, and Bettye wanted to see the Egyptian art. What are you guys doing?"

“Having a little brunch after sex in the park,” I said.

Bettye‘s eyes widened, but a shadow crossed Johnny‘s face. I knew I was right, I knew he‘d had sex with her in the park too, I just wanted to be sure.

“He‘s kidding,” Jo said, but there was an impish look to her.

Maybe, I thought, Johnny felt he owned Joelle sexually. Maybe he was jealous of his lover‘s boyfriend. All of a sudden I was enjoying myself.

“Why don‘t you guys join us?” I said.

“Oh I don‘t know,” Jo and Johnny said as one.

“Come on.” I stood up and took Bettye by the arm. I guided her to the chair next to me and gestured for Johnny to sit beside Jo.

The move was slick, I must say.

“Well okay,” Johnny said. He pulled out the chair next to Jo and sat.

She looked very uncomfortable. It was no longer a surprise to me that I felt aroused by her discomfort.

“You look beautiful, Joelle,” I said. “I love you."

That burnished her coppery skin.

“Oh. That‘s so sweet,” Bettye said.

“Are you living in New York?” I asked the dark-skinned Senegalese woman.

“Teaching at NYU,” she said, nodding with a certain amount of reserve.

“What do you teach?"

“Physics."

“Oh?"

“Does that surprise you?” she asked with a playful smile. Her white teeth were made even more brilliant by the blackness of her skin.

“I guess I never think of women in physics."

“I was trained in Cuba,” she said. “In Cuba girls excel at math and science, not the boys."

I realized at that moment that I was losing my mind. I had just had semipublic sex in the park. I was sitting across from the man having an affair with my lover. And I was staring into his date‘s eyes with longing because in Cuba the women outstrip the boys in science.

“Honey?” Jo said.

“Yeah?"

“You‘re staring."

“I‘m just amazed that girls excel in physics in Cuba, because it‘s always been reported in America that boys‘ brains are more set up for that kind of work."

“Oh no,” Bettye said with wide-eyed assurance. “It is not true. It is only that men in your country do not want women to be smarter than them."

“It‘s not that they‘re smarter,” Johnny Fry said with a smirk. “It‘s that girls have a different intelligence. Girls are good at, um, I don‘t know, uh, art."

“Oh,” Bettye said with great emphasis. “And is that why so many of the physicists in Cuba are women?"

“Must have to do with communism limiting how boys feel about themselves.” Johnny Fry was quite handsome. When he smiled, you could see how women would want to make allowances for his chauvinism.

“You‘re a fool if you think that,” Bettye said, giving him no slack at all.

“I‘m just kidding, honey,” he said. “You know me, I can‘t even do long division."

When he called Bettye “honey,” Jo stiffened a bit.

“What‘s your last name, Bettye?” I asked then.

“Odayatta,” she said. “And yours?"

“Carmel. Cordell Carmel."

“It is like poetry, your name."

“Thank you."

“So, Bettye,” Jo said. “How long have you been here in New York?"

A year.

“And when did you and John meet?"

Bettye turned to him, the question in her eye.

“About three months ago,” she said. “Yes."

“Waiter,” Johnny said. “Excuse me."

A man of the Far East, maybe Sri Lanka, maybe Tibet, came over to the table.

“Yes, sir?"

“We‘d like to order,” Johnny told him.

“Oh no,” Bettye said, fluttering her hands. “I‘m not ready."

The young brown man bowed slightly and moved away.

“Johnny and I were to go away this weekend,” Bettye was saying to stiff-faced Jo. “To Sag Harbor. But then I realized that I have a dinner with the university president tonight."

“So, John,” I said. “What business are you into now?"

“Um, what?"

“Are you in a new business? Brad told me that you were thinking of some kind of import thing."

“Oh yes,” Bettye said brightly. “John is going to be importing Senegalese carvings. The people of the village I‘m from are the best at making them."

“Wow,” I said. “So you guys are going into business together."

“Yes,” Bettye said.

“You ready to order yet?” Johnny asked no one in particular.

For the rest of the lunch, Joelle and Johnny were almost completely mum. Bettye talked about how nice Johnny was to her. On her birthday he bought her a silver mesh necklace from Tiffany‘s.

“Jo has a necklace just like that,” I said. “I think you got yours from Tiffany‘s too, didn‘t you, honey?"

“Yes."

“Yeah. Amazing that you guys both have the same thing. Isn‘t it, John?” I asked.

“Some coincidence,” he agreed.

I had a great time seeing the lovers squirm.

I told Bettye that last week I would have been jealous of her romance with Johnny, “But now I‘ve fallen in love with Joelle all over again. I can‘t get enough of her."

“We should go,” Jo said then. “I have a headache."

On the walk across the park, we were mostly silent. Joelle was deep in thought, and I knew why. Even though she had a steady, long-term boyfriend, her erotic and romantic identity was tied to Johnny Fry. He wasn‘t supposed to have another girlfriend.

I could imagine how their conversations went.

“Do you still sleep with him?” Johnny would ask.

“It‘s nothing,” she‘d say. “Once a week on a Saturday night or Sunday morning. He sticks it in and then he‘s finished. It‘s nothing like what we have."

Maybe she told him that his was bigger and better and that he was a real man where I was just a hapless sort of guy.

“But maybe he has a girlfriend,” Johnny might ask. “Do you think he‘s safe?"

“He hasn‘t been with anybody else,” she would have told him.

I was sure this was true. Suddenly I was enraged
and
aroused. The juxtaposition of emotion and sensation threw my gait off. My feet crossed, and I fell down in the middle of the asphalt path.

“L,” Jo yelped.

I had held my hurt hand close to my chest and so fell on my right shoulder. I wasn‘t hurt. I wasn‘t even thinking about falling. It was Joelle telling Johnny that I was a meek brother who wouldn‘t have even thought of being with another woman while she was drinking down his come in a city park.

“Are you okay?” she asked me.

“I don‘t know,” I said.

She took my arm and tried to pull me up, but I stayed heavy on the ground.

“Are you all right?” a tall white man asked me.

He wasn‘t young, sixty or so, but he was a weight lifter. The blue wifebeater he wore was pulled tight across his chiseled chest muscles. He gripped my left biceps, and suddenly I was airborne. Then I was standing.

“Thank you,” I said.

“No problem,” the man said. He walked on, pro Lid that his endless hours
of
repetitions had turned out to have some worthwhile purpose.

“Are you okay, L?” Joelle asked me. There was concern, even a rare show of worry, in her eyes.

She hooked her arm around my waist and supported me the rest of the way home. Her brooding and somber mood turned to anxiety for me.

In the apartment she helped me to the couch and took off my shoes. She made lemonade and kept checking me for fever.

“You should go to the doctor,” she said more than once.

“I told you, I was just there. He said I‘m fine."

“But why did you fall?"

“I haven‘t had that much sex in . . . ever, like you said,” I told her. “ I ‘m just light-headed over you."

But even while I said these words, I was thinking about her belittling my manhood to the white man Johnny Fry.

“You should stay here tonight,” she told me.

“I cant."

“Why not?"

“The guy I stood up in Philly is in town. He has an all-day conference and needs to see me about that job."

“See him tomorrow,” Jo said.