My Best Man by Andy Schell (unputdownable books .txt) 📗

may never

Nicolo’s mother, who had long been yearning for her native land, ultimately decided not to return to Argentina, but to stay in Dallas, and in due time allowed me to buy her a small house. She and I mended our torn fences long ago, and she often comes to visit her homeland, but the ghosts of her past eventually overtake her, and she flies from their grip by returning to Dallas. On the ranch, Nicolo’s aunt Angelica and her mate Aurora are our spiritual and land advisors since we’ve taken over the farming business,

since they have many years of connection with the earth in a way we are only beginning to learn ourselves.

The truth is, Nicolo’s aunt Angelica married us almost thirteen years ago in a grove of olive trees on the farm during our first visit to Argentina. But after all these years, my mother has decided, with Donald’s encouragement, it’s time she sees one of her children make a completed trip down the aisle. She readily agreed to come here, to Argentina, to have the wedding—probably because she’s unfamiliar with the small gathering of locals in the church, save for Nicolo and his mother, and I assume she’s imminently more comfortable having everyone speak Spanish so that she simply doesn’t have to know what they’re saying. To her happiness and mine, Amity and her latest boyfriend, a French-Canadian banking executive she met while working the first-class section of a flight to Montreal (“He’s all natural and big big big!”), are attending the wedding, with Amity serving as my best man, of course. And they’re staying with us at the ranch. Jacqueline and Thomas couldn’t make it, because it would be a difficult distance to travel with two young boys, and Jackie is seven months pregnant with her third child. “I hope it’s a girl. I really hope it’s a girl, ‘cuz I really want a girl,” she told me last night on the phone, after wishing Nicolo and me suerte.

Amity is happy. Since her last dry out, she’s managed to keep herself in control all these years, never spending money on a substance more potent than champagne. She does go a little overboard on clothing, but that’s OK considering she doesn’t spend money on automobiles she still drives the Mercedes presented to us on our wedding day, restoring it to mint condition after some bumps and scrapes acquired during her first wild months as a millionaire. She’s never married, because, as she told me, I’ll never find a man as wonderful as you, Harry Ford.” It made me feel guilty for her to say so, but then she added, “And besides, I’d get bored just sucking one dick for the rest of my life.” Atta girl.

The priest concludes, “Then with the power of our creator, who we recognize to be all loving and all encompassing, I now pronounce you husband and wife neither one nor the other. but both. You may kiss.”

And so we do. And though our lips have had years to grow accustomed to each other’s, it’s a sweet kiss I take from Nicolo’s lips, the sweetness of dulce de leche. And when our friends and family applaud, we break from each other and turn to them with smiles. Tia Angelica opens the doors to the small chapel, and waiting outside are our two horses.

Cinnamon is twenty-eight years old now, and he endured many miles on the freighter that brought him here, so I don’t much ride him anymore. He’s certainly earned the right to mingle in the field with the cattle in blissful retirement. But today is a special occasion, and Angelica has adorned him with a fine show saddle and buck-stitch bridle. Nicolo mounts up on his dappled Arabian, and I slowly swing onto my venerable old steed, and Nicolo and I ride slowly down the lane, side by side, hand in hand, as the golden wheat of the Santa Fe province rolls like waves beside us. As we look back, the congregation seems to be floating, drifting away, waving to us, singing a wedding song. Nicolo has promised he will play his guitar and sing the song for me tonight in our tent in the countryside.

I look back in my mind as well and see my buoyant Amity sitting on my hospital bed, visiting hours over, filling two glasses with the champagne she’d brought me, toasting to the “Us!” we had not yet become, and I realize our brief and shared paths ultimately provided the salvation that helped to shape our characters into something indelible and good.

Before I turn ahead, to the road in front of us, I take one last look at her and see that my manic ex-fiancEe is the only person not waving, not singing. Her hands are in her pockets, and her hair is blowing in the breeze, and she’s just watching us ride together on

our horses. And I realize that 1984 was more than my year of heterosexuality it was the year that I became a man. And if it’s true that you get what you give in this world, then Amity is destined for more happiness than she could ever think possible, because that’s what she’s given to me.