My Best Man (35 page)

I leave the TV room and head back across the edge of the dining

room, through a hallway, and approach the men’s card room. Again I hear voices. But no woman’s voice. I stop at the doorway and steal a look inside. Fat cats my father’s age are murmuring to each other, shaking hands, making an illegal business deal, no doubt. One takes two cigars from his breast pocket, and they start to light up. I hate the smell of cigars. I leave.

Maybe Winston and Amity actually went to the bathroom at the same time. I enter the men’s and Bob Valentine is at the urinal. “Have you seen my brother?” I ask.

He laughs with contempt, shakes his dick clean, and goes to the mirror.

“How about my big sister?” I ask.

He fusses with his thinning hair. “Your sister’s in the coat room with her future brother-in-law, Nicolo.”

God, this is all getting confusing. “Thanks,” I tell him. “It’s too bad we both turned out to be jerks.”

I walk down the hall again, toward the coat-check room, where I notice the coat-check girl standing nervously in the hallway outside of her station. She starts to speak, but I put my finger to my lips, telling her to shush. I open her little Dutch door, soil conducting her to silence with my finger, and hear the two voices.

“Are you crazy?” I hear Winston ask. “I’m offering you your freedom and two million dollars. What more do you want?”

“Harry,” Amity says. Is she talking to me? I freeze. How am I going to confront them both at once? I’m not ready. “I want Harry,” she tells him. “We’re in love.” My heart is in my throat, but I realize she hasn’t seen me. I duck behind a fur coat, grabbing its hanger to mute any noise. The fur is soft on my face, but it smells like mothballs. I’d prefer the smell of the cigars. Slowly, one-sixteenth of an inch at a time, I slide the coat over the rod, until I have a tiny frame of the two of them.

“You’re more full of shit than that stupid horse of his. I know what you think you’re doing, having this little agreement with my nmm| my

brother. But I’m telling you, it’ll never happen. I know Harry. He won’t go through with it. He’s in love with Nicolo. You said so yourself to my mother, no doubt because you were worried he’d leave you. You should worry. We’re Fords. We know how to take care of ourselves. This little quest for money isn’t his style. If he thinks he’ll lose Nicolo, he’ll call off the wedding . I’m sure of it. And you’ll be left with nothing.” He holds out a business card.

“And you’ll be left with everything. And there would be no problems for you,” Amity points out, refusing the card. “So I don’t think you’re sure of it at all,” she claims, giving him her best John Belushi eyebrow. “Or you wouldn’t be offering me this little bribe.”

“Let’s just call it an insurance marker. Don’t be foolish. Take it. Even if you win the gamble and he marries you, by the time you divorce him. two months later, I presume our lawyers will be ready to destroy you, and you’ll walk away with far less than I’m offering you now. Why put yourself through it? Besides, shouldn’t he ride off into the sunset with his true love? If you love him, like I do, you should want to see him happy. Or are you more interested in your own happiness?”

“Scoundrels like you are horsewhipped in Texas,” she says, throwing her shoulders back.

“Cut the Southern crap, Amy.” Amity steps back, and she looks as if she’s been slapped on the face. Winston continues. “Amy Stubbs. Surely you didn’t think I wouldn’t investigate your cave clan, Amy. Your grandmother’s had a stroke, my ass. She’s a pig farmer from Waco. The Stubbses didn’t even know they were invited tonight. And even if they had, they probably wouldn’t have arrived in time, considering they probably travel by pack mule.”

“My name is Amity Stone,” Amity says, her voice shaking. “Legally.”

“You can change your name,” Winston snarls, “but you’ll always be Amy

Stubbs, trailer trash from Waco. Shoplifting misdemeanors, hot checks, and booked on possession. My mother will never find you suitable.”

Amity’s eyes are blurred with tears. “I’m in love with your brother and we’re going to have a wedding,” she states. But then she cautiously takes the card from my brother’s hand and tucks it into her cleavage.

“Good gift. Now go home and change the lines in your little script and call me when you’re ready to make a deal.”

I suck my stomach in and smash myself against the cloak room wall. Winston leaves first, and in a few seconds, after she composes herself, Amity glides out. I wait another minute before I exit myself, mothballs burning my nasal linings. I slip the coat room girl a twenty dollar bill probably her third bill in two minutes.

“What a grand evening!” my mother trumpets, walking through the front door of the house.

“What a grand evening,” Amity echoes. “Thank you, Susan and Donald. This evening was a fairy tale. I only wish you’d have let my parents pay for this.”

“You never told me about their offer,” I interrupt.

“I know you wouldn’t have allowed it, Harry,” she says. “No, he wouldn’t,” my mother says. “None of us would.”

“If only Winston and Patty were staying here with us,” Amity glows, “we’d all be together.”

“Yes. They were more comfortable in a hotel this time,” Donald says, greatly relieved.

Amity and I head out to our room and peel ourselves out of our smoke-infested party clothes. I keep my underwear on, but Amity is naked. I kiss her poison cheek and head into the bathroom to brush my teeth. She follows me, puts the lid down on the toilet, and pees. “Harry, I have to tell you something.”

“Yes?” I garble, my mouth full of spearmint toothpaste. “Winston came to me tonight.”

Did she see me hiding in the coat room? Is that why she’s

how she duped me to begin with. and probably all the other guys too by always being so painfully honest. I look angered, stop brushing, my teeth, and slam my toothbrush down. “What happened I ask, spitting the paste out of my mouth.

“He’s concerned that you still might be in love with Nicolo. Don’t ask me how he knows,” she says, winding the toilet paper around her hand about ten times rather than pulling off a few squares the way she usually does. “Your mother must have told him about

Nicolo, and now he’s afraid you might call off the wedding.” “Why would he care? He has everything to gain.”

She wipes herself and flushes the toilet. “But he does care, Bubba. Oh, he acts mean and nasty around you, but he tells me he loves you, and since he knows you want to receive your inheritance, he’s worried that you might forfeit the whole thing just for Nicolo.”

I can’t believe she’s saying this shit, twisting the conversation, substituting the wrong pronouns again, misrepresenting my brother misrepresentations. She’s worded that I might forfeit the whole thing for Nicolo. “I assure you, he hopes I give it all up for Nicolo,” I tell her, bringing the first amount of truth to this barren table. “He’s even tried to bribe me.”

She pulls her toothbrush from her toiletry kit. “Bribe you?” she asks calmly. “How?” She slowly puts some paste on her brush, but her hands are shaking.

I can see she’s blown out of the water. “Yes, he offered to buy Nicolo and me a house, a second car, even give me back my horse. And throw in some junk bonds on top of that. If I call off the wedding with you and flee with Nicolo.”

“G’yaw, Harry. What ” She stops.

“What am I going to do?” I wash my hands.

She shrugs and starts brushing her teeth.

“Of course I told him to fuck off. He thinks he can throw me a few crumbs while he walks away with the cake. Forget it. We

said we would be honest with each other, me and you, and play this thing out, and that’s what I intend to do. Besides, Nicolo doesn’t love me and you do.”

She brushes her teeth delicately, as if she’s in pain—which I know is impossible since the cocaine has probably numbed her entire mouth. Meaning, I’ve gotten through to her. She spits, rinses. I wait to see if she comes clean, admits that Winston is playing us both against each other. “Do you love Nicolo?” she asks.

I’m stunned. I didn’t think my feelings for Nicolo entered into her equation. “What does it matter?” I tell her, drying my hands.

“We’re getting married . you and I.”

“It matters,” she says.

“Yes,” I tell her, unable to lie about it. “I do. I love him. But the guy hates me. He doesn’t want to see me. So I’m not going to chase him around like some pathetic puppy dog. I’ve got bigger fish to fry.” That’s one of her lines..I’m sure she’ll appreciate it. “We’ll be married and have lots of money so we can see whomever we want. What’s the problem?”

I watch the tension evaporate from her face as she relaxes, stands, and takes my hand. Then she squints, as if looking far off into the distance at something very beautiful. “He shouldn’t worry. None of us should. This is all going to turn out great.” Grite. Her hair is naturally as blond as the ripest wheat. Her breasts are perfect little margarine cups. Her stomach is as flat as a kitchen counter. Her waist is so narrow you can practically put your hands around it and have your fingertips touch. And it’s apparent that she has no intention of telling me about Winston’s two-million-dollar offer, which means her little bush of light brown pubic hair is waxed into a perfect little V for victory. Victory over Winston, and victory over me.

acqueline and I are driving in my car to the Highland Park Cafeteria. I check the rearview mirror often because my driver’ s side mirror was torn off when Amity borrowed the car two days ago to pick up her cleaning at the drive-through cleaners. Culture Club’s “Church of the Poison Mind” is playing on the radio, and I talk over Boy George as I drive, explaining the whole story to Jacqueline. My family, the will, my brother, Amity, Nicolo, all of it. I spare nothing because it’s only two weeks until the wedding and Nicolo still won’t see me, so I’ve come up with a plan. Actually, my friend Randy came up with it. Over a long phone conversation, as I described the cast of characters, he recommended I enlist Jacqueline to bail me out. “She’s clay, Harry. Just mold her into what you need.” It’s weak and not really a great plan, and it’s insulting to Jackie I’m sure, but it’s the best I can do.

“So you see,” I tell her as we snake down the line, past the wall of presidential photographs in the cafeteria, “I need you to marry me. Just for a month or something.”

“Roast beef, uh-huh, roast beef,” she requests from the server. She speaks to me without looking at me. “I thought you said you had to be married ten years.”

“It’s credited at ten percent a year. So we’ll wait a month, get

a divorce that I’ll pay for and at least get a few hundred thousand dollars for our one-twelfth of a year marriage. Then we’ll get on with our lives.”

“Broccoli. Steamed broccoli,” she tells the vegetable gal. “See, the rest of my inheritance is forfeited to the estate in the event of a divorce, and my mother controls the estate, so at least Winston and Amity won’t get anything.”

“Zucchini bread, please. Zucchini bread.”

“So what do you say?”

“Lemon.” She picks up a glass of iced tea from the tray of hundreds of iced teas. “Lemon,” she says.

We sit across from each other and I take her hand. “Jackie, please. I need your help. This is my life here. I’ve got to get Nicolo back. And I’ve got to out maneuver Winston and Amity. You’re my only hope. Please.”

“I don’t know,” she says, drawing her hand back. “I mean, I don’t want to marry a guy unless he wants to have a baby with me. I want a guy who wants to have a baby with me, because I want a baby.”

“Fine. We’ll buy a baby. A doll. We’ll get out of bed every two hours at night and pretend it’s crying. Then after we get divorced, we’ll throw it in the trash and you can have a real one with the guy you really marry.”

She pulls off a piece of zucchini bread and puts it into her mouth. “I don’t know, Harry. People are supposed to marry for love.”

God, I hate it when uncomplicated people are earnest. And right. But I can’t let Winston steal my inheritance. Or Amity. “I will marry for love. I’m going to marry Nicolo. And you’re going to marry for love too. Just not this time.”

“Well, what about a license and everything,”.” she asks.

I fork one of my beef tips. “We’ll get a license. Today.”

She cuts herself a piece of roast beef. Then cuts that piece again. Then again. “I don’t know if I can do this to Amity. She saved my ass, man. If it weren’t for her, I’d have lost my job. She was a friend to me.”

“and you’ll still be a friend to her. If we tell her now, there’s plenty of time for her to save face and bow out gracefully. It’ll be fine. And after I get my money, I’ll pay for Amity to go to the rehab center. We won’t just abandon her.”

“It’s still mean,” she laments, putting the roast beef in her mouth.

I squeeze my corn muffin as if it’s her head. “Jesus, Jacqueline. I’ve told you what she’s doing to me. She’s a fucking crook. Worse, if she takes the two million my brother offered her, she’ll spin totally out of control.”

“She’ll buy a lot of clothes,” Jackie says, spearing a piece of broccoli.

“What she’ll buy is coke, weed, and champagne,” I warn. “She’ll ruin her own life besides ruining mine.”

Jacqueline sighs, sticking a broccoli floret into her mouth halfway and leaving it to look like a bonsai tree hanging from her lips. Finally, she sucks up the tree and answers, “I know. She ruined my life too.”

“What do you mean?”

“She was fooling around with my boyfriend Arthur. Behind my back. It was her and Arthur together that wrecked my Jaguar. They wrecked it.” She sips her tea, looks away, ashamed. “Together.”

I remember Amity saying that Arthur has no conscience. “Jackie! Why haven’t you ever told me this?”

“Friends shouldn’t talk about friends,” she says simply. “Friends are friends.”

“Even if they fuck you over completely? Jackie, her name isn’t even Amity Stone. It’s Amy Stubbs. She’s Amy Stubbs from Waco. Has she ever told you that?”

“Well, I don’t know about the name thing, but I know she’s from Waco.”

“So she’s still lying to you. And me.”