Jazz Moon by Joe Okonkwo Read Free Book Online

with Mr. Kittredge’s orders, and rarely with anyone else’s.
    â€œI’m sorry about that, sir,” Ben said when he returned with the correct food.
    â€œAre you all right, Benjamin? You seem rather out of sorts.”
    Ben looked away.
    â€œThere is something wrong,” Mr. Kittredge said. “Well, sit down, dear boy. I’m happy to listen.”
    â€œSir, thank you. But I’m not allowed to do that.”
    Kittredge’s face reddened. “No, of course not. I wasn’t thinking.”
    Ben started to leave the table. Kittredge stopped him.
    â€œOh, Benjamin.”
    The Englishman handed him the Keats book. His hands were smooth, his fingernails buffed and manicured. “Please have it. We can’t sit and talk together here, but I’d like to do something for you. Perhaps this will cheer you a little.”
    Ben accepted the book. “Thank you, sir. I’ll use it well and often.”
    In a dream world he would have sat at that table and confided in Mr. Kittredge about this thing. But in a dream world this thing wouldn’t have existed. It wouldn’t have poisoned his anniversary the previous evening.
    A week had elapsed since that night at Teddy’s, its shade hanging large and chilly. Silence consumed the apartment. Angeline hadn’t once sat on his lap while he labored at the typewriter. The shade towered largest and chilliest in their bedroom. But they went to dinner for their anniversary and Ben unveiled a new poem, reciting it between the main course and dessert.

    â€œIf you’ll love me, I’ll pick all
The fruit in the garden,
Serve it to you
On a golden platter,
Then fall asleep
In your arms,
Enthroned on a pedestal
Of light while a rainbow
Snuggles between us . . .
    Â 
    But only if you’ll
Fall in love with me.”

    â€œIt’s . . . beautiful, Benny. Thank you,” she said. But her bloodless smile and tepid kiss she tapped on his lips betrayed that this consolation prize insulted her.
    Back home, they undressed on opposite sides of the bedroom, eyes evading each other. Ben battled the discomfort. He set her down on the bed.
    Concentrate .
    She twitched and writhed as he strove into the familiar regions of her body. But he couldn’t get aroused. He concentrated. He groped himself. He prayed. But he stayed soft as cotton.
    â€œShit!” he said, dismounting, leaving Angeline disoriented and still aroused.
    Her eyes shot down to his groin and her expression degraded from concern to horror. She crouched over him to take him in her mouth, but he threw up a hand in refusal. She retreated to her side of the bed. She began to cry. He closed his eyes and he clenched his dick and he concentrated again. When lukewarm fantasies of wifely intimacy failed to ignite him, he did the unthinkable: He summoned a vision of Willful Hutchison.
    Sugarfish Pond; Willful naked in the water; his luminous brown body. It worked. He mounted Angeline again and began to drill, the image of Willful the engine that powered him as he thrusted as hard as he could, his face buried so deep and rough in her neck, the next morning a bruise would show.
    Angeline groaned her satisfaction as a pinprick of lightning struck somewhere at the base of his dick. He concentrated to keep Willful firmly in his mind’s eye, but the image blurred to a smudge and reemerged as Baby Back. The pinprick bloated. Ben ruptured. He lay collapsed on top of her. A heaving, sweating mess.
    â€œThat’s my Benny. You ain’t going back to being that way, ” she said with the relief of a woman who has rescued the paradise of her marriage. “No, sir. My Benny keeps his promises.”
    In the morning Ben lay awake. Angeline lay blanketed across his body, motionless, at peace. As if the tumult of the previous week was an inconvenient memory.
    Sunday morning.
    Ben remembered Sunday mornings in Dogwood. A day for church and, supposedly, for rest, but