My name is Darryl Johnson, and right this minute I’m in jail. Serving time for… well, I’ll get around to that part of the story in time. But let me tell you how it began.
The day everything came apart started like any other day for me. I stood over the wastebasket, opening the day’s mail. Bill, bill, judgment, subpoena, final notice. Yup, next to the garbage can is the place to be when you open the mail I get. After the mail ritual, I checked the paper for celebrity stories, to see if there was any chance of securing any new “customers” today. That’s when I noticed that two native sons would be coming into town. Boyd and Floyd King, who were fraternal twins. My old “buddies.”
I’d known the Kings since we were all five. They were my best friends until sometime in high school, when they started to change on me. Well, OK, I guess I was changing too, but that’s beside the point.
You see, we were about six when we found out what the phrase “renaissance man” meant, and we all thought it sounded like a cool way of living life. Instead of picking one little cubbyhole to spend your life in, do it all, and be good at all of it, too. Like all kids that age, we had ideas about art, and writing, and all the things we wanted to be when we grew up. The big people around us all said tht they wanted to do and be those things too, when they were little, and we could see that none of them were doing them. We all promised ourselves, and each other, that we wouldn’t let that happen to us.
And we kept the promise, for the most part. The three of us wrote, and drew, and painted, and when we were old enough we took snapshots that professional photographers told us could sell for lots of money if we got serious about it. But they didn’t know that we were already serious. I knew by junior high school that at least one of the twins would go on to become a major star, if not both of them.
But time has a way of altering our plans. We said we would do it all, but by the time we were seniors in high school, each of us had more or less settled on a specialty, though none of us had put aside the promise of remaining lifelong Renaissance Men. Boyd wrote fiction and poetry, while Floyd concentrated on music.
And he could do it all. He wrote songs, played a dozen different instruments, and could arrange just about any song in any style you could imagine. You wanted to hear Handel’s Messiah as reggae? All you’d have to do is ask Floyd, and consider it done.
I liked writing and music equally, and split my energies between both. I wrote on my own, and also collaborated with Boyd on a few things. And with my music, also, I wrote solo and with Floyd. Being naive, though, I had a habit of leaving my writings in the notebook (or on the computer) of whichever twin I had been collaborating with. I didn’t give it a second thought, but evidently they both did.
You see, Boyd took a story I had written that won a prize in school, changed some telling details, and shopped it around under his own name. Wouldn’t you know it, he found a publisher, and put my story out. My story, under his name. No byline for me, no money, no nothing. I was mentioned in the acknowledgments, but that wasn’t the kind of credit I wanted for what I had written.
The book Boyd King had supposedly written, I Am NOT Contrary, went on to become a New York Times bestseller, while I was still dealing with school. Of course, by that point, I wasn’ t writing music with Floyd any more, and was unable to get back from him the stuff we had written together. In short order Boyd hit the market with two more bestsellers, these written without any contribution from me.
I still felt cheated, though. He had made his reputation off writing that wasn’ t all his. Part of that reputation belonged to me. But I had no way to prove it; I didn’t have printouts or even handwritten copies of anything we had written together. The whole situation had me so wound up I came down with a case of industrial strength writer’s block. Couldn’t write a thing for months. I went to college, though, and took a bunch of liberal arts courses. Also took up a couple of things that I figured could make me some money down the line, but I’ll get to those later in the story.
I wasn’t nearly as surprised as I would have expected to see Floyd’s debut album (Big Floyd’s Funhouse) on store shelves halfway through my first semester of college. Bart had used his incoming royalties to finance his twin’s entry into the music business. They had actually worked out a one-shot deal with a distributor, and put together a record company to put out Floyd’s CD. But when it turned out to have four of my uncredited songs on it, I slipped into a deep funk again. My grades slipped, I couldn’t get a good night’s sleep, I was just lost for a while.
Then, I guess, their consciences must have started working on them. Either that, or someone told their lawyers that they were taking credit (and money) for other people’s work and that there might be trouble if something wasn’t done. I wonder who would have told their lawyers something like that…
Anyway, I got a call from Floyd, wanting to see if I had any songs that maybe he could record for his followup CD. He acknowledged that it was wrong for him to have hijacked my songs without my OK, but he did this without actually apologizing. I noticed, and though I didn’t say anything, I didn’t forget. No, I definitely could not forget that these former best friends of mine made their reputations with stuff I had produced and wouldn’t have acted to set things straight if they weren’t afraid of a lawsuit.
But instead of pouncing on Floyd, instead of slamming the phone down in his ear, turning down any hope of a reconciliation, I held my anger in check. Of course I had songs for my old buddy Floyd. I did, too, top-flight stuff. If the plan in the back of my head was going to work, I’d have to do everything I could to seem forgiving and guileless.
We never met face-to-face, though. I sent Floyd MP3’s of a few songs (copyrighted, of course), and they wound up as the first four singles from his second CD, which took the world by storm. So many people have many talents but give in to music-industry pressure to stick to singing, or rapping, or playing one instrument. Floyd wanted the world to know he could do it all, and he succeeded. Wildly. It didn’t hurt that a major label had licensed his contract from the distributor of Floyd’s first CD. The new CD went five-times-platinum, and I made barrelfuls of money. I knew all along that songwriting’s where the real money is.
Then Boyd began calling, and emailing, and faxing me. He asked me if I would be interested in having any of the stories we had written together submitted to a publisher. I told him I couldn’t even remember what we had written together, and he told me he knew, and that he’d FedEx’d the notebook and diskettes to me. He did, I got them, and picked out the ones I wanted to submit. And naturally, since they had his name as cowriter, they were snapped up after a fierce bidding war. We made more buckets of money. The twins spent theirs the usual way; big houses, fancy cars, flashy clothes, expensive vacations, the whole bit. I spent mine a bit more discreetly. I bought a house, of course, but not a mansion or anything near it. Bought one car, and an Isuzu Rodeo at that. Didn’t buy any clothes I woudln’t have bought during any of my earlier jobs. Was never much of a vacationer. I did have something I was spending quite a bit of money on, though, but this was an investment. Back in high school I had begun tinkering in robotics, but now that I had some bucks to work with, I invested in a couple of robotics companies. I was much more of a hands-on investor than they were used to, it seems, and they didn’t really appreciate a stockholder putting in his two cents on everything. So I bought the company and cleaned house. Pretty soon I had a robotic assistant in my office and another at home. Before long I had mechanized or computerized just about everything you can imagine, and plenty that you probably can’t.
But for a young guy with all this money, I was still pretty much a homebody.
If it had been just the money I was after, I supposed I could have buried the hatchet with the Kings right then and there. By this point, I had already made millions from my collaborations with the two of them, and money was beginning to trickle in from the robotics company. But still, there was the question of their reputations being built on foundations I had helped to build, without any credit or proper acknowledgment. No, if I was going to teach them that lesson, I could only do it by bringing them down completely. Back to where they were before they took what rightfully belonged to me.
During the recording of Floyd’s first CD, he had dated this gorgeous dancer he met at a friend’s video shoot. She was supposed to be his date at the release party for his second CD. But she canceled, only to show up at the party, his party, arm-in-arm with the president of the company that had picked up his contract.
She was only a gold-digger, but he was truly and deeply in love, or so it seemed to me. He was truly out of it for the whole promo tour, though the CD’s sales didn’t suffer one bit because of it. I decided it was time to put my plan into motion. Right after the end of the promo tour I arranged for him to meet Jessica, who I described as a “cousin of a cousin of a cousin,” though I told him we had in fact known one another before our mutual relatives had mutual relatives. Or something like that, I forget.
Floyd was smitten, and took Jessica everywhere. And I suppose if it had been someone else introducing Jess to me, I’d have been smitten too. She was about 5-9, 135 pounds, caramel-colored skin, with wavy light-brown hair down to her shoulders, a beautiful figure (38C-23-36), a lively personality, a quick wit, and a beautiful smile. Every chance Floyd got, he asked me how it is that I could introduce someone like Jess to him when I didn’t have a girlfriend myself. I usually put him off with some banality or other that was usually true, though I couldn’t tell him the real reason I didn’t keep Jessica for myself…
With Jess as his inspiration, Floyd wrote some truly moving songs for his third CD, but he postponed the recording dates and took Jess on an around-the-world vacation. What I didn’t know until after they got back, because neither of them told me, is that they were secretly married before they left. That really threw a monkey wrench into my plans, or so I thought. *How could she do something so stupid?* I kept asking myself over and over. He was bound to find out her true nature, and then I’d be sunk. I’d be worse off than if I had let the twins keep all that their take-the-money-and-run attitude had kept me from rightly getting. Once the newlyweds returned from their trip, Floyd breezed right through the recording process. Once he finished recording, we, that is, Floyd and I, finally met face to face, for the first time since Boyd took my stories back in high school. We were understandably nervous, but the presence of Jessica loosened us both up a bit. That, and the button-front halter she almost wore, with only one button holding it over her generous endowments, giving a breathtaking view of both her cleavage and her toned waist. I noticed, to my amazement, that absolutely nothing about her behavior seemed out of place for a newly-married woman. If I hadn’t known better…
After an hour or so, though, Floyd’s beeper went off. Some last-minute meeting with record-company people. He apologized profusely for having to leave. Jess asked him, “Aren’t you coming back for dinner?” He said he was, so she suggested that she could stay with me, and give us a chance to catch up. He agreed, pecked her on he cheek, and left.
As soon as Floyd had climbed into his Benz ML55 and closed the door behind him, I started on Jess. “How could you marry him?” I railed. “Do you know how risky that is? He’s bound to find out something we don’t want him to know.”
Jess looked intently at me, as if nothing I had just said even registered, her sparkling gray-green eyes expertly catching my attention. Then her gaze shifted downward a bit. “Looks like you’re glad I stayed,” she said.
“Always glad to have you around, Jess. You know that. But seriously, why’d you marry him?” “Better to get his trust, don’t you think?” she replied. “Besides, you never told me I couldn’t.”
I had to admit, I hadn’t thought of that. All I thought of was the two of them, hot and heavy in a romantic situation, and then she says or does something that might make him wonder what kind of situation he had gotten himself into. ”
OK,” I said, after a pause. “But be careful, OK? I don’t want you to ruin any of my plans.”
“Mmm,” she replied, stepping a little closer. “Well, I’ll tell you, I wish you had thought of a better story than me being your cousin’s cousin’s cousin. He seems to know all your family, and keeps asking who I’m related to. Pretty soon he’ll catch on, you know.”
“Then I guess I’ll have to reach my goal pretty soon.” I sighed. “Do you have any of the info I wanted?”
“Of course,” she said. “And I suppose you want to retrieve it yourself.”
“Of course,” I said. I undid the one button that held her shirtlet closed, placed my index finger between her partly exposed breasts, and began to slowly trace a line down to her navel. Her breathing deepened as she closed her eyes and moaned softly. Wanting to prolong this a bit if I could, I changed directions and started back up, tracing the line back up past her breasts. When my finger neared her lips, she parted them slightly. When my finger reached her lower lip, she parted her lips wider, so I slipped my finger inside. She responded by gently flicking her tongue all around my finger. A grunt worked itself out of me, and I noticed (too late!) that she had heard it. I tried to remain nonchalant about it, but her eyes popped open as a smile crossed her lips. She gently but firmly pressed her teeth down on my finger to hold it in place, and said, as best as the obstruction permitted, “I heard that, you know.” Then she closed her eyes again and her tongue resumed bathing my finger. After a few minutes, she seemed to stop breathing, and her tongue had stopped moving as well. I removed my finger and placed it in the center of her forehead and retraced that line down the center of her face, down her forehead and nose. She smiled and resumed her deep breathing as my finger crossed her lips and continued down her chin, down her neck, down her chest, between her breasts, and down that line in the middle of her torso. When I got to her navel, I pressed my finger into it. She seemed a little disappointed that I stopped there, as a seam appeared, that extended about three inches above and three inches below her navel, and from that line two more seams, bordering two 3×6 hatches, one on each side of her navel. Each slid inward about three inches and then inside the opening, exposing wires, circuit boards, and such. I reached inside, grasped a gold diskette, and removed it from her abdomen.
“Is it all there?” I asked.
“Not all of it just yet, but there’s plenty there for starters,” she said. “ATM PIN codes, account numbers, bank addresses, and the locations of safe deposit boxes for the deeds to Floyd’s real estate.” With a mischievous look on her face, she said, “I know that’s not really where you wanted to put your finger, though.”
“Well, no, it’s not, Mrs. King,” I emphasized, “but what can I do? You know I don’t get between married folks.” Her eyebrows went up, and I added, “At least, not like that.”
“Well,” she said, “what’s a little thing like marriage to us? You made me, remember? I wouldn’t even exist without you. That must count for something.”
“You know, for a newlywed, you seem mighty eager to cheat on your husband.”
“Who’s cheating?” she said. “I just wanna have some fun with the man who brought me into the world, that’s all. What’s wrong with that?” ”
This,” I said, holding up her ring finger, “is wrong with that. Love, honor, and obey, and so forth and so on. Remember?”
She sighed. “Look, I wouldn’t even be around to do all that if you hadn’t built me. I mean, if I had been around in an organic body before you built this one, then at least you might have a point. Then, at least, you could say that there was a person who might have chosen Floyd on her own–”
“Or maybe not,” I interjected.
“Or maybe not,” she conceded. “Either way, it could have happened. But you *built* me. OK, so you built me to fall in love with and marry Floyd, but still, you built me, and I’ve never had a chance to properly show you my gratitude for that. You shut me down as soon as you knew I was in good working order, and left me that way until we were on the way to meet Floyd.”
I turned and studied her face, her Mona Lisa smile, to see if she was serious or leading up to a joke. Finally, I said, “I wish I knew what I did differently with you, that I didn’t do with the others.”
“Others?!” she repeated. “You made others? I didn’t know about any others.”
“Probably because they’re not like you,” I said. “They do what they’re programmed to do and nothing else. When they’re with me, they don’t flirt. They just do what they’re supposed to do.”
“And you like that? That they don’t flirt, I mean.”
“Well, they’ll flirt in public,” I said, “if the situation calls for it. But not when we’re alone, like you and I are right now.”
“Was I the one flirting when you were doing your finger-skating thing just now?”
“Yes,” I replied, “you were the one flirting when my finger was in your mouth just now.”
“And just how,” she said, “did your finger get in my mouth anyway? I didn’t put it there.” Table of Contents