My Best Man (15 page)

“Creditors,” Amity mutters with contempt.

“How do you know?” I ask sheepishly as we step out of the calAmity goes to the mailbox, grabs the mail, and sorts through it. “It’s happened to me, Harry. Only once, but it sucks. That’s why I date rich guys.”

“Until now.” Fuck. I can’t believe I said that. “I mean … I

guess we’re not really dating. Which is good..” because ” “Relax, Harry. We don’t need a title.”

“I know,” I chuckle defensively. But it’s true: Life is different after that blow job. Somehow, I’m more of a man. And somehow, Amity is too. And I’m just not sure what that makes the two of us together. Am I a straight guy just because I got a blow job from a girl? Is she a gay guy just because she sucks dick like a man?

hllUy oh.;::

I read the notice. The credit company says they’ll be someone to the house again “in the near future.” Fools. Don’t know I have no future. “What the fuck am I going to do?”

“Don’t worry, Harry. I’m all lined up to go out with this bi bucks guy named Kim.”

“A guy named Kim?”

“Why not? There was a boy named Sue. Listen, Harry. Kim filthy rich and his mid life crisis is burning a hole in his pocket. needs a girl like me who can cash those checks as fast as he c write them. I’ll make sure some of those checks have your on them.”

It’s amazing. She must know my family is worth more than hundred million dollars, and she’s not only never asked me for penny, but she’s willing to help me out. But I don’t care how money he has Amity shouldn’t have to date him if she doesn want to. Besides, I can’t help but feel jealous. “You’re not some middle-aged got rocks in order to pay off my bills, a guy named Kim,” I say, disgusted. I realize what has to be “We just need to go to Kansas and meet my mother,” I sigh.

our bags from the trunk, carry them in. ‘ “What are you talking about, Harry?” Amity asks. I’ll explain later. Let’s get stoned.”

“Uh-oh,” she warns, looking at the pile of mail in her

“Just like clockwork. They always know.” ‘ I set our bags down in the house. “What?”

“You got two new credit cards while we were gone.” “Fuck!” I laugh.

“It’s like they can smell you when you’re desperate, so just keep sending you more temptation. Come on,” she pulling on my arm. “We gotta freeze these bad boys.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

She reaches into the cupboard in the kitchen and pulls out midsize Tupperware bowls, then instructs me to remove the

cards from the envelopes. She takes a piece of ice from the tray in the freezer, wets it, and sticks it to another piece of ice. “Get a couple pieces of ice and do what I’m doing,” she tells me. “What are we doing, Amity?”

“We’re freezing your assets, babe. You gotta make these bad boys unavailable for impulse purchases.” She shows me how to wet the little tower of cubes and stick the card onto it, then set each of them into a bowl carefully, credit card balanced on top, and fill the bowl until water is five inches over and under the card. “You gotta have the credit card frozen right in the middle of the block of ice so you have to wait hours before you use that card and by the time it thaws you’ve come to your senses, and you just put it back in the freezer.”

“You’re crazy,” I laugh, grabbing her around the waist and kissing her. “You definitely need to meet my mother.”

The next day, as I walk by myself through the airport terminal, pulling my luggage on my little luggage cart, I have a confidence I didn’t have before Padre Island. I feel more authentic, as if I’m finally a citizen of the world. It’s hard to explain, but I mostly go through life thinking that everyone else is stamped with APPROVED while I’m left blank. But after my tryst with Amity, I’m stamped. One of them.

After we’re airborne, a girl I’m working with says, “So you’re Amity’s latest?”

“Latest? I guess.” I’m flattered to be chosen by one of the most beautiful, mysterious women at the airline. I smile. “Yes.”

“What’s it like living with Amity Stone?” she says with half a smirk on her face.

“Everyone always asks me that at work,” I tell her. “It’s great. We’re always laughing. I love it.”

“Do you guys sleep together?”

Man, this girl isn’t shy. But then again, most flight attendants aren’t. They’ll tell you anything and expect the same. My second

month on the job I flew with a girl who shared all the gory details i of her impending divorce and said, “I haven’t had sex with husband in three years, but I’m finally having orgasms again becau I’m sleeping with my therapist, and would you mind taking a of peanuts and a Miller Lite out to the guy with the cowboy hat row eight?” “Amity says never kiss and tell,” I say, finally answering her question.

“It’s a good philosophy,” the girl agrees, “especially for

Amity.” ‘

“Hey, I know all about the professor at CCT,” I say

“Big deal.”

“I don’t know anything about a professor,” the girl

“I was talking about her first husband, the millionaire.”

“I know about him too,” I scoff. A lie. She told me she’s been married, and naturally I believed her. Does this girl have facts right? Surely this can’t be true. Why wouldn’t Amity just ,. me if she had been married?

Not an hour after I return home from my trip, as I’m totally stoned on pot, the yard boys appear. Amity, who is flying, has told me about them, and though I’ve yet to see they are legend in our household. Now I know why: they’re They bail out of a very expensive, candy apple red Chevy three of them, and they’re so beefy and muscled and naked that I expect them to turn the volume up on the “Union of the Snake” by Duran Duran is playing in the and use the hand clippers to snip off their little short shorts bump and grind in G-strings on the front lawn.

Amity says that the house we’re living in is one of the of properties owned by one of those Dallas families with a I definitely recognize, because my parents are friends of And the particular son that manages and looks over this is gay. So the yard boys he hires are like the A-list at

I go from room to room, looking through windows to check them out. I can’t stand it. I have to pull my dick out. I drop my pants around my ankles and use one hand to separate the miniblinds, the other to warm my dick.

The beefiest yard boy, the one with a buzz cut and a tattoo on his exploding biceps, is just beyond the glass. His triceps flex as he trims the grass next to the house with the weed eater. I’m apud whacker he’s a weed whacker. It’s a beautiful relationship.

I look down, past the bulge in his shorts; his legs are shaved. Hotski wow-wow. This big moose, with biceps and a tattoo, shaves his legs. It’s a mixture of feminine and masculine that sends me through the roof. Shit, he’s moving on, just as I swear I’m going to come!

My pants at my ankles, I hobble like a doped-up, perverted Easter bunny into Amity’s room to follow. I make it to the window, push the lace coverings away, separate the miniblinds. I’m stroking away when her phone rings, and the machine picks up. “Hi, honey,” the woman’s voice says, “it’s your mom and dad. We really miss you, and we’re worded because we haven’t heard from you in a while. You all right? Please call us, Amy, and let us know you’re all right. You know we’ll be there in a heartbeat if you need us.”

I feel so weird, jerking off while Amity’s mother is talking. I concentrate on the yard stud when her father comes on. “That’s right, darling’. Your momma and I miss you something’ awful. You call, OK? “Bye now.”

” “Bye!” her mother’s voice adds before they hang up.

God, they sound nice.

The yard stud, the yard stud. Back to business.

Ding-dong.

Shit! Someone’s at the door! Someone’s at the fucking door! Oh, God. What if it’s one of the yard boys? I pull my pants up as the doorbell continues to ring insistently. If it is a yard boy, I can tell by the way he rings that he’s a top.

I stuff my stiff dick into my pants and think of puppies and squirrels and innocent little things to make it go down. It’s not working, and as I move toward the front door I go for the old standby, Heidi Schaeffer. Heidi was a fat little German girl grammar school whose bottom never smelled right, particularly after recess. I’ve used the visual and olfactory memory of Heidi to squelch hard-ons for years. I’m only semi by the time I open the door. The scent of freshly cut grass pours in, washing Heidi’s bottom from my nostrils.

“Mr. Ford?” the ancient couple asks in unison. It’s hot they’re sweating, bundled in their Sunday clothes.

xes. I feel gravity pulling my softening dick down. “We’re from the Healthy Retriever Credit Agency,” the old woman says, watching my dick move in my pants. “May we have a couple minutes of your time?”

They’re old. They look as if they’re going to die. What am going to do, slam the door in their faces? “Sure, come on in.”

They each lift their feet over the threshold as if they’re stepping over a great chasm. I direct the woman to the wingback chair. get a folding chair from the closet for the gentleman, whom I into the seat. I stand. “How can I help you?” ,

Father Time clears his throat, tries to speak. Nothing comes

He clears his throat again. “We’re here on behalf of Inter-Bank, as well as Ala-Corp,” he says, reading his papers. seems you owe a total of…” He can’t find the figure on the He struggles for it, adjusts his glasses. Gives up. “I’m as blind

Jose Feliciano, but without the musical background,” he

“Can I help you?” I offer.

Whistler’s mother thinks I’m talking to her. “Do you have water?” She looks ashen, dizzy, not long for this world.

“Yes, of course,” I say, hustling to the kitchen. I grab ice put into glasses and see the frozen credit cards in containers. God, these people are bill collectors? They make

Carbonada look like a candy striper. They’re Mesozoic at best. This is terrible. They shouldn’t be out in the Texas heat, hunting down delinquent bill payers who buy BMWs. I feel so guilty. “Here,” I say gently, offering them cold water. “I think I owe close to fifteen thousand dollars. Unless you count the balance on the car I recently bought, which is financed through my credit union. Then it’s about forty thousand total.”

“OK,” the man answers.

“Yes, probably,” the woman adds.

“Are you two married?”

“Sixty-one years,” the woman responds, lacking the enthusiasm I’d expect from such a statement.

These poor people. They’ve got to be over eighty years old, and they’re working this horrendous job where desperate, bankrupt people must scream at them, spit on them, and treat them like shit. I’ll bet it’s this lousy savings-and-loan crisis. I’ll bet they lost all their retirement savings, and this is how they survive. Don’t they know McDonald’s hires senior citizens? They could work in an air-conditioned building, and no one would scream or spit on them for offering up Big Macs and soft-serve cones. I can’t stand it. I run into the kitchen, open the freezer, grab the Tupperware, turn it over and pop out the large bowls of ice. I carry them to the creditors. “Look! I’m serious about not going into any more debt. I’ve frozen my cards. And I’ll get you the money, I promise!”

“You will?” the man asks, surprised.

“I will,” I decree, sincerely, balancing the ice hunks in my freezing hands. “Do they give you a bonus for making a quick collection?” I picture them being able to retire on the bonus from my speedy payoff, living a life of relaxation, wintering in Scottsdale, summering in Vancouver.

“They?” the man asks, ice water dribbling a little down his craggy chin.

“Whoever owns the company,” I say.

“We own the company,” the old woman says. “We got tired of cruise ships and grandchildren and vacations and watching our stocks split and our dividends be reinvested. So we started a business.” She downs her ice water.

I want to stick a vacuum hose down her throat and suck it back up. Then I want to throw it in her baggy face. “How nice for you,” I chirp, pert and perky as I possibly can be, my hands too cold to ever stroke my dick again, these two dinosaurs who deserved to die in the ice age with all the rest of them smiling in my miserable face.

To think, these old fossils cost me a yard-boy orgasm!

Three days later, Amity comes back from her work trip.

“I thought you were supposed to get home yesterday?” I ask, pouring us glasses of sun tea I brewed on the back porch.

“We got rerouted. Extra night in Memphis. I got fucked by the ghost of Elvis!”

“How was it?”

“He drugged me. I can’t remember,” she says, taking her glass of tea.

She walks to the bathroom. I follow her and sit on the tub while she sits on the toilet. As her stream of pee shoots into the bowl, i tell her about the blood-sucking dinosaurs that came calling money.

“I practically fed them and clothed them,” I say. “I wanted buy them a cottage and pay for their medications.”

Amity whips off a few squares of toilet paper, wipes once, flushes. “My bill collector was this nervous little Japanese she laughs while rinsing her cervical cap, a European form control she finds superior to any available in the States. “I let do his spiel; then I threw him down on the hardwoods and the shit out of him. Raped him, baby!” Riped him, bye-beet “I never got another notice.” She places the cervical cap in a small bowl and fills the bowl with mint mouthwash.

I motion to the mouthwash. “Does that make your Lady smell like pussy mint

“Pussymint!” Amity screams. She heads back to the couch in the sitting room.

“Wait,” I say, following her. “I haven’t told you the worst part about these bill people. They came while the yard boys were here.”

“Harry saw the yard boys,” Amity announces, plopping onto the couch.

She lies down on one end, I on the other, our legs touching as we face each other. “When the two thousand year old couple knocked on the door, I was jacking off to the yard boys. I swear to God, my pants were around my ankles, and I was fantasizing about getting laid by the gorgeous tattooed moose with the weed whacker.”

“Harry, we’re going to have to put a cervical cap up your butt.” “No shit,” I tell her.