Killing Johnny Fry

by Walter Mosley

  “I‘ve always wanted to get one of those,” Lucy said. “I never saw one before."

  “Why not?"

  “Those places creep me out."

  “You could get your boyfriend to buy you one."

  “Billy‘s sweet,” she said. “But he‘s very straight about sex. He calls himself a feminist, and I love him for it, but I don‘t think that watching people having sex is necessarily misogynist."

  The way she caught my eye, her statement seemed more like a suggestion.

  “Well,” I said. “I could go back to that store and buy you something, and the next time we meet I could, uh, give it to you."

  “Could we watch some of this one?” Lucy suggested.

  Instantly my heart felt as if it were trying to squeeze out every last drop of blood it held.

  No was on my tongue. She was a child. I‘d feel like I was child molester. I had a girlfriend . . .

  I turned on the disc and reversed to the place where the black man came to the table in the cafe. Lucy jumped up to turn off the lamp. Then she sidled up next to me and poured us both a glass of Burgundy.

  “This is Stewart,” the black woman was saying, “a friend of mine. Is it okay if he joins us?"

  “Sure it is, Julie,” Sisypha said. “Maybe we should go up now."

  “Hi,” Stewart said to Mel.

  The two men shook hands. They were both the same height, five eight or so, but Stewart was thin and dark where Mel was chunky and pale.

  They walked out of the restaurant and across the street. In continuous reportage the camera followed them into a doorway and up some stairs.

  Then the scene changed, and they were coming into an apartment. julie shucked off her dress as soon as she came in the door. She had a beautiful dark body.

  Her skin was the color of extra-dark blueberries.

  “Take off your pants,” Sisypha said to Mel.

  Lucy grasped my finger.

  When Mel refused, his three companions descended upon him. They were very patient, almost gentle, as they took off all of his clothes, talking to him as concerned adults would to a small child.

  “That‘s it,” Sisypha said as she pulled off his T-shirt.

  “That didn‘t hurt, now did it?” Julie asked after she‘d peeled off his pants and boxer shorts.

  Julie and Stewart went to the sofa and began making out.

  “I want to go,” Mel said to Sisypha, who was holding him away from his clothes.

  “Let‘s just watch for five minutes,” Sisypha whispered. “After that, if you want to, we can leave."

  Mel was confused. He wanted something from his wife and he was amazed upon seeing Stewart‘s massive thing.

  Julie was on her knees before the long, hardening erection. As she licked and pulled on it, it got thicker and straighter.

  Lucy was squeezing my finger and breathing loudly through her nose.

  Mel became aroused and put his arm rather clumsily around his wife‘s neck.

  As Stewart entered Julie from behind, I leaned over to kiss Lucy‘s neck. She kissed me full on the lips, and I stuck my tongue in her mouth.

  “We can‘t do it,” she told me between kisses. “I promised my boyfriend I wouldn‘t."

  Julie groaned like a man through my subwoofer.

  For a while I lost the thread of the film. I had worked off Lucy‘s gossamer blouse and pulled down her tube top. Her breasts sagged, but the thick, pink nipples were hard and upstanding. When I sucked one, a little fluid came out and into my mouth.

  Lucy groaned like Julie and I looked up to see Stewart pressing his big thing into her anus.

  “Look,” I said to Lucy.

  Her response was to take my erection out of my pants. She formed her thumb and forefinger into a snug ring for the head of my cock. She lifted that ring up and down keeping it on the head. It tickled and drove me crazy.

  “Deeper,” Julie cried.

  “Don‘t touch it,” Sisypha told Mel. She was pulling his hand away from his erection. “Just watch and let the excitement build."

  I started bucking up and down about then.

  “Do you want to come?” Lucy asked me.

  “No."

  She pinched the big underside vein on my penis, and I yelped in pain.

  “That‘s what I have to do with Billy all the time,” she said. “He always comes too fast."

  She made her fingers into a ring again while Stewart spread the cheeks of Julie‘s buttocks apart and she screamed. He was putting his entire thing into her and then pulling it fully out. He did that again and again, slowly.

  “Have you ever done that?” Lucy asked.

  I nodded because if I spoke, I knew even her pinches wouldn‘t stop me.

  Stewart pulled his thing out of Julie and said, “Come over here,” to Sisypha.

  The young woman got down on her knees before him as Joelle had done with me. Almost immediately the man came in great gobs over her face, into her hair, and on the floor behind her.

  When he was finished, he put on his pants and shoes. Wiping her face off with her sweater, Sisypha linked her arm with Stewart and said to Mel, “We‘re going back to Stewart‘s place. You stay here with Julie."

  “But . . ."

  “Don‘t question, honey. Do what I tell you to do."

  A look came into Mel‘s face. It was same expression he had when he finally submitted to her dildo.

  My own erection subsided. I was still excited, but somehow I identified with Mel so closely that I felt like I was also Supposed to obey her.

  I turned off the DVD player, leaving us bathed in the blue light of the plasma screen.

  “My God,” Lucy said. “I‘ve never seen anything like that. She was so strong. And he loved her so much."

  Love?

  “Did I hurt you?” Lucy asked me.

  “No. Why?"

  “You lost your erection."

  “Will you stay with me tonight?” I replied.

  “I can‘t fuck you,” she said, shaking her head in the most fetching manner. She was still holding on to my cock and kissing me.

  “That‘s okay. I just want to . . . you know."

  “Come?” she suggested, an impish smile on her swollen lips.

  “If you promise to wait until the morning,” she said.

  “Like Mel?"

  “Yeah.” She grinned and kissed me.

  At that moment the blue light went out. Lucy and I stumbled through the dark apartment to my bed. We lay side by side and every now and then she‘d reach out to make sure I was hard.

  In darkness she told me about her life in Westport, Connecticut, and her family. Her stories were bland, and I‘d begin to nod off now and then. But whenever I did, she‘d give me a feathery touch, ‘ and I‘d awaken.

  Finally, however, I fell asleep.

  I dreamt about the lunch with Johnny Fry, Bettye, and Jo. Instead of the cloaked suspicions of our real lunch, we were all talking honestly, expressing how we really felt about each other.

  “I‘m heartbroken because you love him,” I said to Jo.

  “I don‘t love him but I need him,” she replied.

  “ I ‘m just the better man,” Johnny added.

  It was that moment, in the dream, that I began to hate Johnny Fry.

  “I got a bigger dick,” he said.

  “And he knows how to use it,” Bettye said with a vehement nod.

  “And he‘s not afraid of living life,” Joelle said. “He takes control and doesn‘t worry about what somebody might think."

  I was the somebody she referred to, overthinking every situation.

  Fury overtook me. My body was thrumming with rage. I felt myself shaking. I felt the whole world quaking. And then I woke up—fucking. Lucy was straddling me, her face, only7 inches from mine, contorted with orgasm. She was saying something I couldn‘t understand, lifting one hip and then the other and then coming down hard, her ass slapping against my pelvis.

  “It ‘ s . . . so . . . fuc
king . . . thick . . . “ she was saying. And then she frowned and twisted her lips as if some metamorphosis was transforming her very being.

  I wanted to ask her if it was okay to be doing it, but instead I came so powerfully that even though my eyes were open, I still couldn‘t see a thing. Her haunches were pounding down machine-like against me. She was shouting something in my ear.

  It was a perfectly clear and potent sexual experience. I gripped her arms, shaking her, because I was shuddering from the power of the orgasm. It was like some kind of spell. Sounds came out of my mouth that made no sense. I‘m pretty sure that I ejaculated again, but that was the least of my feeling. My left calf went into a charley horse, but I didn‘t even respond to that.

  If you had asked me at that moment what was happening, I would have told you that my whole life‘s aim was to be in that room, under that woman, not knowing the difference between pleasure and pain.

  Finally the ache in my calf became overwhelming. I hopped up and walked around to work it out. When the pain abated, Lucy sat up and took my half-hard cock deeply into her mouth and ran her tongue over my balls.

  “My God that‘s good,” she said.

  “What happened?” I asked her.

  “We did it."

  “But the lights were off . . . and, and, and I was asleep."

  When Lucy smiled, everything, everything I had been feeling, fell together. She was laughing at me the way someone who cared would laugh. She saw my insecurity but wasn‘t fazed by it.

  “I woke up about a half an hour ago,” she said. “I guess I was feeling a little guilty about Billy and decided to go. I turned on the light to find my clothes. You were lying on your side but I could see that you still had an erection. For some reason I thought that was sweet. So then I started to feel guilty7 about walking out without telling you. I whispered in your ear, and you turned on your back but didn‘t wake up. Then I thought I‘d pull on your hard-on and that would get you, but all you did was to start to move with my hand.

  “ I ‘m really sorry. It‘s never happened before, but you were just lying there and all I had to do was get on top."

  She pulled on my arm, and I sat there beside her.

  “So listen,” she said. “I had a complete STD test before I got together with Billy. He did too. We‘re both fine.” She sighed. “Do I have to tell him about this?"

  “I haven‘t had an STD test in six years,” I said. “But I haven‘t had sex with anyone but my girlfriend in nine years. So I guess it‘s okay."

  “What about her?” Lucy asked.

  I was thinking about Johnny Fly‘s red condom.

  “She‘s safe. Nothing to worry about,” I said.

  Lucy sighed and then squeezed my arm. “I think you came twice."

  “That second time I felt like I was having an epileptic fit. I thought I was gonna die."

  “I never felt anybody come so hard,” she said. “It‘s like you held me so tight that it made me feel that I was you."

  A feeling of desperation entered through my shoulders. I worried that this would be the last time I‘d ever have with Lucy or anyone like her. I didn‘t want her to leave. I didn‘t want to return to the emptiness that had been my life.

  I suppose the despair showed in my face.

  “What?” Lucy asked with a smile. “What‘s wrong?"

  I took her by the shoulders and turned her around so that from the waist up she was on the bed and her knees were on the floor. Then I got down on my knees behind her.

  “What?” she asked again.

  Lucy had rounded buttocks that were young and quite firm.

  I kissed the crack and ran my tongue from the top to the bottom, letting it waggle a moment in the few pale public hairs that protruded.

  “Ooo, that‘s nice,” she said.

  Then with my thumbs I spread the cheeks apart.

  “What are you doing, L?” It was the first time she called me that.

  Her anus was small and pink with just a touch of gray at the aperture. I ran my tongue around the puckered eye and she gasped.

  “Oh my God."

  I pressed the tip of my tongue at the center and she reached back to touch my shoulder.

  It was that touch that stayed with me for hours. Lucy‘s fingers caressing my shoulder, holding me in place, telling me, wordlessly, to stay right there.

  Then she moved her hand, got a firm grip on her right buttock, and pulled it almost violently so that her anus opened an eighth of an inch.

  I had only intended to kiss her lightly, hoping that I was the first to kiss her in this way. I wanted to be her first in something. I wanted to be something in her eyes.

  But I was a little shy about putting my tongue inside her. I held back.

  “Kiss it,” she hissed. “Stick your tongue in me."

  I still held back.

  But then she moaned in anticipation and I realized that even me holding back was having sex with her; that I was in some emotional way already inside her. I pressed my tongue down and kinged with my head so that I felt her rectum give. I kept kissing her like that, my whole face between her buttocks. She was pressing back against my mouth, rolling from side to side.

  “Oh yeah, baby. That‘s what I need,” she moaned. “I need you. I want you."

  I pulled back for a moment, and she shook her head against the bed, saying, “Don‘t stop. Don‘t stop. Please don‘t."

  I went back to kissing her anus and pressing my face into her posterior. After long minutes of her moaning and goading me on, she crawled fully onto the bed and grabbed me by the arms. She was trying to move me. At first I didn‘t understand what she wanted but then I realized that she wanted to position us in the “69” position, only with her turned around with her back to me.

  That way she could turn her head to the side to perform fellatio on me while I could give my attention to her backside.

  That lasted a little while, but she was so excited that I was infected by her passion. I came again. She didn‘t stop kissing my erection, though, and after a few moments it started to tickle, and I rolled away on my back.

  She turned over and smiled at me.

  “That was great,” she said. “Nobody ever did that to me before."

  “I never did it to anybody before,” I said.

  “Really? It felt so good. Why did you even think about it?"

  “I want to be special to you, Lucy."

  Lucy got a leg over me and straddled my belly. She let her bright hair fall down around my face, making a glistening blond tent of hair. The come on her breath smelled like mung bean sprouts.

  “Are you satisfied?” she asked.

  “Very."

  “You‘re the best lover I‘ve ever been with,” she said. “I never even knew I could feel like that."

  I didn‘t know if she was lying or just trying to make me feel good.

  “Will you stay the night?” I asked.

  “Will you hold me?"

  “Of course."

  “Billy never holds me after sex."

  I wrapped my arms around her, and she slid down to my side.

  Lucy and I made love in the morning before we got out of bed, and again in the shower, and once more in the living room when she was fully dressed and saying good-bye. The last two times I was too spent to come. My sex was aching, but I would have fucked until I bled if she hadn‘t pulled away and put on her clothes.

  I asked her what she was feeling, and she said, “I don‘t know. I‘ve never done anything like this. But I guess we have to learn how to get around it. I mean, we can‘t be doing this all the time if we‘re going to stay with our lovers."

  “ No , “ I said. “I guess not."

  I kissed her good-bye and told her that I intended to spend the whole week talking to gallery owners about her photographs.

  After Lucy left, I decided to rein myself in. It was too much, what I was doing. Between the DVD, seeing Jo and Johnny, and Lucy (not to mention my supposed upcoming date with Sash
a), I was way off track.

  Even worse than all that, I had pissed off my agent and I hadn‘t even called anyone else for a real job , the job I was qualified to do.

  I wasn‘t an art agent. I wasn‘t the kind of guy who threw everything over and then started out doing something completely new.

  I wasn‘t a Don Juan or a Casanova.

  It had only been a few days, and my life was nearly a ruin.

  My first thought was to call Joelle and discuss what had happened with her. Joelle was the only person I was really close to. My father was dead, my mother was nearly in her second childhood, and both my siblings, brother and sister, didn‘t like me very much.

  Joelle was the only one I could talk to. But when I thought about calling her, I remembered her grunting to the syncopation of Johnny Fry‘s thrusting hips. I thought of her looking into my eyes and saying, there‘s only you.

  But I did pick up the phone.

  I did punch in her number.

  “Hello?"

  “Hi, Jo ."

  “I thought you were going to call me last night, L?"

  “I told you,” I said. “The guy from Philly came. He didn‘t leave until nearly one. I thought you‘d be asleep."

  “It‘s almost two now. Where have you been all morning?"

  “I just finished the first draft of the translation,” I said.

  “What was it?"

  “A booklet that goes with a hundred-year-old bottle of balsamic vinegar. It‘s about the family that makes the shit. They need the first draft by Tuesday, and I still have to go over the edits."

  “Vinegar?"

  “Yeah. Ain‘t that some shit?"

  “Are you going to come over?” she asked sweetly.

  “Either I‘m gonna sleep and then wake up to work or I‘m going to work until I drop. Either way I won‘t be much company."

  “I don‘t care,” she said. “You could just come over and come to bed with me."

  It was so nice the way she said it, so inviting and friendly. But when I wasn‘t with Jo, I had little feeling for her. There was no chemistry on the phone this time. And if I thought about her lies and deceptions, I felt like slamming my fist into another wall.

  “You could go out with one of your other friends,” I suggested. “You haven‘t seen Ralph Moreland in a while."

  “I‘m not interested in anyone but you, Cordell Carmel."