My Best Man

by Andy Schell

  “I appreciate your chivalry,” I tell Nicolo, “but I don’t need protection from Amity.”

  He raises his arms in surrender. “You are free to love Amity or anyone else.” Then he lies back on his elbows, stretches his legs out, and crosses them. “Including me.”

  For someone who is moving so slowly with me, I’m shocked that he says it . and profoundly exhilarated. “Your permission is noted,” I tell him, softening. “So when does summer school end?” I ask. It’s now late July.

  “Middle of August,” he answers. “Then one more semester,

  and I’m a journalist,” he states proudly, biting into his turnover. “Just like your father,” I say.

  “That’s right.” His head rises more proudly still while he chews. “Where do you want to go to work?” I ask.

  “Argentina,” he answers before swallowing. No hesitation.

  If he goes to Argentina, I’ll lose him. I instantly have a new motivation to get my share of the Ford windfall: to hold on to Nicolo. I know from family friends that American dollars can buy a person (or a couple) residency of any country. I could go with him. “Why go back?”

  “The political climate is changing. I think I can return to make a difference.”

  “What if they disappeared you? You’re Gianni Feragamo’s son. Surely they’ll have it out for you.”

  “My friends say it is different. The disappearances are ending. The country is opening up again. Raul Alfonsin, a lawyer who believes in democracy, is our new president. Argentina will be a democratic country. Of course, I can hear my father’s voice. “For how long?” he would say. “Democracy does not last in Argentina,” he would say.”

  “So why go?”

  “I do not want my father’s and sister’s deaths to be for nothing. If Argentina is to change, it must be documented and written about.

  My English is good now. I can reach more people through both languages. But,” he laughs sadly, “I may never make it back. I don’t even know how I’m going to pay off all these loans I owe to the university.”

  “You’re schooling yourself on loans?” I ask, sipping the iced coffee, letting it take a dent out of the humid Texas day.

  “It took all of our money to come to America. I’ll owe close to fifty thousand dollars for school. That’s a lot of tips for an awkward waiter,” he laughs, seemingly unworried.

  Shit. Now I’m really determined to get the money. It’s a drop in the bucket for me if my ship comes in. I’ll finish paying off my student loans and his. Help his mother financially if she needs it. Live six months out of the year in Argentina with him, as long as he’ll live six months of the year with me (and Amity?) in some place like California. I’m falling in love with this beautiful man, fully clothed. As I plot our future, a student in Wrangler jeans and a cowboy hat walks by, his boots clomping on the sidewalk. Nicolo follows him with his eyes. “Aha,” I say. “You’re into cowboys.”

  “SI, senor. I used to fantasize about the gauchos,” he growls sexily. “They are such an image. What is the word?”

  “Icon?”

  “Yes. Icon. I loved them as a boy. Only my aunt, Angelica, understood the depth of my attraction. When I was thirteen she sent me a poster of three gauchos mounted on their horses on the pampas. I still have that poster today.”

  “Well,” I announce, “we have something in common again. When I was a boy, I loved horses. My parents bought me a pony when I was nine years old. He was large for a pony, about fourteen and-a-half hands, more like a small horse. I boarded him at a stable a few miles outside the city. I loved him more than anything or anyone. I’d saddle him up and ride the dirt roads of the countryside. I’d race the wheat, and sometimes I’d win.”

  “What was his name?”

  “Cinnamon.”

  “So you are a gaucho, and Cinnamon is your range horse?” “Not anymore,” I answer wistfully. “Your horse is retired?” he asks.

  “Yes,” I answer simply, not wanting to dive into details.

  “But you can still sit a horse, my friend, no? It’s like riding a bicycle. Once you know how, you can always ride.”

  “True. How do you know?”

  “I ride too. Aunt Angelica gave to me a horse of my own. He waits in Argentina.”

  “Maybe someday we’ll ride together,” I offer, aching for the opportunity.

  Nicolo answers, “Perhaps in Argentina.” “Perhaps.”

  “Harry! Where have you been?” Amity shouts.

  After my afternoon ritual with Nicolo, I’ve decided to confront her about the money involved in her last failed relationships. And with the fact that I’ve heard she’s been bragging about my inheritance, in numerical detail. I won’t tell her I smelled her perfume on the will

  I’ll wait to see if she confesses. “I was with Nicolo,”

  I answer.

  “Oh,” she says, forcibly enthusiastic. “Great!” Grite.t She adopts a strained expression whenever I mention Nicolo, and I realize she finds him a threat. I’ve got to be careful how I approach this. “Amity, I want to talk to you about something …. “

  “Not now, babe,” she says excitedly. “We’ve got to get Jackie to the airport. They’re trying to fire her!”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “We’ll explain on the way!” she says, jumping up and down. “Fire up the Beamer!”

  She rushes me out the door, I start the car, and we drive three houses down to pick up Jacqueline, who comes flying out the door wearing a ridiculously large hat and carrying a cigarette in hand.

  “I hope it’s OK to smoke in your car, Amity,” she pleads, trying to get her hat inside the car, “because I’m just really freaked out. I’m just freaked out because they’re trying to fire me, and I really need to smoke when I’m freaked out.”

  “OK, girl!” Amity yells. “We get it. You’re freaked out. Put the damn cigarette in your mouth!”

  Amity explains that, while she and Jacqueline were flying together a couple of weeks ago, a muscular guy from Austin with gorgeous long hair came on strong to Amity, but she convinced him that her friend, Jacqueline, was the girl he wanted because, Amity explains, I had asked her to keep her dalliances to a minimum, and she’d decided that any guy who comes on to her, she’d pass on to Jackie, and haven’t I noticed what an effort she’s making? Amity explains that after speaking on the phone, Jacqueline and the guy arrange a date, which happens to be on a day when Jacqueline’s scheduled to work. Since lunch with a muscular guy with gorgeous long hair is preferable to passing out bags of dry-roasted peanuts to the irritable traveling public, Jackie decides to call in sick and go to Austin. And given that she’s flying for free on a “pass,” she feels the need to disguise herself since she’s officially supposed to be sick. She goes to the airport in her “date clothes,” but upon her head she wears a humongous, wide-brimmed black hat the hat she’s wearing now. It’s similar to the style of hats Joan Collins wears on Dynasty, though it’s even more outlandish than anything Alexis Carrington Colby would wear. While she walks through the terminal, I picture the hat knocking people over, downing pay phones, clearing shelves in gift shops.

  Jacqueline jumps into the conversation to add that, in tandem with the hat, she wore a huge pair of dark glasses that were so dark she accidentally walked into the TV monitor near the gate podium, as well as the podium itself. At check-in, when the agent asked her to say her name, she whispered it. And when the agent asked her to repeat it, she merely whispered it again, she said, so that if any

  other airline personnel were boarding the flight they couldn’t identify her.

  Apparently, after Jacqueline secured her boarding pass, the ticket agent called down to the main offices and told them an off-duty flight attendant, with an awning on her head and goggles on her face, was acting awfully peculiar while about to board a flight. Jacqueline was allowed to fly to Austin, but when her supervisor checked it out, her illegal travel was exposed, and subsequently she’s been summoned to th
e airport to be fired.

  So now she’ sin Amity’ scar, smoking like a wet log in a campfire, knocking her hat against the roof, waving her cigarette like a baton. “What am I going to do? Gila is going to fire me!”

  Gila is the meanest of all the supervisors. When a flight attendant class graduates, they assign the marginals and potential troublemakers to Gila. She’s known as the Gila Monster. Her fingernails are sharp as knives and always painted bloodred. Her makeup is so perfect her face looks like a mask as if she’s a player in the Stewardess Kabuki Theater. Likewise, her hair is so immaculate and over sprayed it’s a crash helmet. She used to work for another airline, and she was actually a stewardess on a flight that crashed into a residential area in Florida during thunderstorms. She was the only flight attendant who survived, and the rumor is she got up and walked away because of that helmet of hair.

  “She’s going to fire me, man!” Jackie whines.

  Like the time the cop stopped Amity and me in the brand-new Beamer, Amity slams into save-your-ass mode. “Girl, listen to me good.”

  Jacqueline sucks the life out of the cigarette and thrashes in the backseat.

  “Jackie! I mean it,” Amity says. “Pour some water on the fire and listen.

  Jacqueline snubs out her cigarette. I watch the master go to work.

  Amity swivels in her seat, looks Jackie square in the eye. “This is what you do. First of all, take that damn hat off!”

  Jacqueline hoists the hat off her head and wrestles it into the seat beside her.

  “You walk into that office, no hat, no glasses, just tears,” Amity coaches. “You sit down with that old Gila Monster, and you tell her you had to fly to Austin to get an abortion! You turn on those water works, girl. Get those tears going real good, and tell her your boyfriend got you pregnant, and left you high and dry!” Haw and drawl “You tell her you had no one to turn to and that you couldn’t possibly have the abortion here in Dallas because you had to protect your anon. aninom—shit. Harry, say it.”

  “Anonymity.”

  “Right!” Rot! She turns to me. “I hate that word. I shouldn’t use it.” Back to Jacqueline. “You got it, girl?”

  Jacqueline thinks about it for a second, then heartily agrees. “Yeah, that’s it. That’s what I’ll say. I had an abortion. An abortion. Yeah, I had an abortion, man. I just had to take care of it, you know. Get an abortion.”

  We pull into the employee lot at the airport and wait while she goes in for her meeting with the Gila Monster. Amity puts Culture Club’s cassette into the player, and I roll down the windows. “OK, Harry. What is it that you wanted to talk about?”

  It’s all adding up. Her out-of-control behavior, the coke, the professor, the marriage, Julie’s claims, Nicolo’s suspicions, and now this: this bogus story she’s woven with master skill for Jacqueline from thin air. “Work up tears,” she told her. “You had to have an abortion!” she told her. She’s too quick. The duplicity comes too naturally for her.

  “Well?” Amity asks. “Do you need to talk, Harry?”

  My dad channels into me again. “Not now.” Why tip my hand? Information is power. Never exit the building until your car is waiting out front, my father would say. I have to come up with a plan before I exit this charade. I turn on the radio, and the announcer’s voice says, “Today, Soviet cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya became the first woman to walk in space.”

  “Jacqueline’s been doing that for years,” Amity says, reclining her seat for a power nap.

  “Gila bought it, man!” Jacqueline says, returning to the car. “The whole thing. I took your advice, Amity, and I really cried a lot. At first, I didn’t say anything at all, I just cried. Then I told her that I needed to tell the truth, that I had an abortion. She was really concerned. I can tell she’s had an abortion herself, ‘cuz she kept telling me I could have come to her, ‘cuz, you know, she would have helped me, and that an abortion is something no woman should have to go through alone.”

  “Amen, girl,” Amity says, as if it really happened. “It’s just too scary for you to be alone.”

  Jacqueline agrees. “Right. You’ve got to have support.”

  “Is that all?”

  “She offered to help me pay for it,” Jacqueline said, taking out a cigarette. “She said she’d write me a check.”

  “Girl! Did you take it?”

  I notice the flash of excitement in Amity’s eyes. She wants Jacqueline to have taken the money.

  “No,” Jackie says, lighting her cigarette, ” ‘cuz I just would have had to pay her back, and I didn’t want to have to do that.”

  “You wouldn’t have had to pay her back, Jackie,” Amity says slyly. “What’s she going to do? Bug you for the money? “Hey, Jacqueline. Where’s my abortion loan?” No way. She’d have let it slide.”

  “I don’t want her money,” Jackie answers.

  Amity finishes with conviction. “Well that Gila Monster has been mean enough to a lot of people, and it’s time she helped somebody, Jackie. You deserve her concern and her money after all you’ve been through.”

  This is getting freaky. Like, where does the truth lie? So to speak. If I had any prior doubts about Julie’s stories of the real Amity, I don’t now. I can see the thrill Amity’s getting from playing this game. It’s Jacqueline’s life that is affected, but Amity loves moving her and Gila into position, like pawns on a chessboard, until she can manufacture the best outcome.

  “I’m just so glad it’s all over,” Amity finishes.

  I can’t tell if she means the conflict or the mythical abortion.

  “You still have your job, and this calls for a celebration,” I tell Jackie. “Let’s go to Sfuzis and drink belli nis

  “Great idea, Harry!” Amity cheers. And before we’re out of the airport drive, she pulls a little vial of cocaine from her purse and starts scooping tiny spoonfuls for everyone. I decline.

  I’m declining, big Tom.

  That evening, Amity has a date with Thomas, who has the night off from the restaurant. When he comes over, he mentions that, from the sound of it, Nicolo finds me to be serious boyfriend material. I’m so ecstatic to hear this news from someone he calls a friend that I want to dance on the ceiling. But I have to reel it in, stay cautious, as I don’t want Amity to think I’m too far in until I figure out the best direction for her and me. I smile. Tell Thomas, “We’ll see.” But I can’t quash the smile on my face, the smile that says it all.

  “I’m so happy for the two of them,” Amity chimes in as sweet as icing on the wedding cake. I’m paranoid around her these days. I know her happiness about Nicolo and me is an act. “Aren’t you?” she asks Thomas, grinding her teeth from the coke she stuck up her nose when he rang the bell. “Aren’t you happy for Harry and Nicolo?”

  “Yes,” Thomas answers. “Nicolo is my friend. I’m glad he has found someone.” “I’m glad you’ve found someone too,” Amity purrs, locking

  her arm in Thomas’s. “How do you like my dress, Thomas? As Karl Lagerfeld said himself, “Shaped to be Raped.” “

  Thomas laughs, grabs her by the waist, and pulls her to him. “We better go, darling’,” she cautions. “Our reservation is for eight o’clock. You know what happens when you’re late for dinner in Texas some hungry cowboy rides in and eats your meat!”

  If only Nicolo would. Shit, I’m getting so pent up from no sex, I’m about to pop. I call him at work.

  “I can’t go out, Harry. I’m working late,” he tells me. “But I have a surprise for us tomorrow. No coffee and turnover. No class.

  We’re skipping out for the day, OK?”

  Yes, yes, yes. Finally. “OK.”

  “Wear boots. Manana ?” he asks, his accent giving me a woody. “Manana,” I answer.

  A few minutes later, a guy comes to the door. Early thirties. Dressed in high-water slacks, a polo shirt, penny loafers, no socks, a belt that doesn’t match, and his sparse hair in one of those comb overs on his mostly bald scalp. Gotta be a pilot. �
�Is Amity Stone here?” he asks. “No. She’s out,” I answer.

  “Out? We’re supposed to be having a date tonight.”

  Yep, a pilot. Must be a new one. First officer. Doesn’t know about me. Definitely doesn’t know about Amity. “Sorry, pal. You missed her. What’s your name?”

  “Chip.”

  I’ll tell her you were here, Chippy.”

  I close the door, go into the hall on my way to my room when

  I notice the light on her phone machine blink on and hear the cassette tape engage. I can’t resist. I turn up the volume just in time to hear Kim demanding to know where she is and why she broke their lunch date this afternoon.

  Thomas. Chip. Kim. Boy, is she fucking up. Her cocaine habit is starting to wreak havoc with her scheduling abilities. This is

  crazy. I’m being a fickle bastard. A couple of months ago I thought I was in love with her. I’ve got to talk to her, confront her. Surely we can work this out. I care for her and I don’t want to see her self-destruct. Maybe I can help her change. Get off drugs. Stop lying. But do I have to marry her in order to help her? Do I have to marry her in order to help myself?.

  Maybe it’s just not worth it. Maybe I need to cut my losses, move on, live a life of poverty and freedom with Nicolo. I know I’d be happy. Hell, I’ve been living like a poor kid ever since I was seventeen. Gay too. I’ve been mostly content. I never cared about money or what people thought of me before. Why care now?

  Or is there an outside solution? The clock is ticking I only have a month and a half until the big birthday deadline. Is there some girl out there who would help me out without cleaning me out?

  CHAPTER

  NINETEEN

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