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

She calls over her shoulder while gliding out of the lounge, “Bart’s waiting out front I’ll get rid of him.”

“But ” Before I can argue, she’s out the door.

In a few minutes she returns. “Come on. You’re going home with me.”

“I feel guilty,” I tell her, picking up my luggage. “Why? Bart’s got a home you don’t.” “But he wanted to be with you tonight.”

She smiles, holding the door open for me. “Not anymore. I told him I just started my period.”

It’s a white wood-framed, one-story “house that sits on a corner near the Dallas Congregational University campus. As she puts the key in the lock, I cup my hands to the glass door and look past the enclosed porch into the living room. The lights are on, and I see a shiny hardwood floor that looks as if it was polished by hand, a wood-framed lithograph of one of those English horse-and-hound hunting scenes, and a single elegant wingback chair sitting confidently alone. It is so well ordered, so the opposite of my chaotic life at the moment.

“Where’s Jacqueline?” I ask.

“Didn’t I tell you? Jacqueline moved out.”

fast?” I can tell by the quick way she says it there’s something more to the story. “What happened?”

“Girl stuff. I won’t bore you with the details.”

“But you and Jacqueline seemed like good friends,” I protest. Like a Star Search spokes model she sweeps her arms upward and across while moving into the house, her heels barely making a sound on the hardwood floor as she walks. “This is the living room,” she announces, throwing her arms apart. I expect the walls to slide open and reveal a speedboat and a gas grill. She rests her hand on the fireplace mantel the fireplace that has been sealed off and no longer burns wood and looks into the mirror above it. Instead of looking at herself, she looks at the reflection of me and smiles into the glass.

“I get the feeling you don’t want to talk about Jacqueline,” I tell her.

She takes her glance from me, her smile fades, and she at her own reflection. “Sometimes people aren’t at all what appear to be,” she tells herself. For a moment she stares at visage, unblinking. And she looks as if she might even cry. like a wind-up toy that is suddenly rewound to its tightest turn, smiles and chirps, “Let’s have a drink!” and flings me into kitchen, which is too small to house such a big mood swing. she opens the refrigerator, I can sense she’s aware of my which is why she bypasses the Diet Dr. Pepper and nail polish go straight for the only other item in her refrigerator: champagne

She pops the cork, fills two flutes, hands one to me, then back through the living room and the hallway so smoothly that champagne in her glass doesn’t even move. I look to see if she wheels on the bottom of her shoes. We arrive at the doorway the vacant bedroom. “This is your bedroom if you want it, Ford,” she offers. “I’m a great roommate.”

I’m stunned. I thought she was offering me a room for the ni not something permanent. “You’re serious?”

“Serious as Clan Rather sitting on a corncob.”

I peer into the bedroom; it’s carpeted and has windows in different walls. “You’d offer a stranger a place to live?” I ask.

“Harry!” she says, hitting me on the shoulder, spilling a of my champagne. “You’re not a stranger. Do you consider me stranger?”

“No,” I answer sheepishly, still wondering what happened Jacqueline.

“You need a place to stay. I need someone to share with. let’s be roommates.”

“But I don’t even have a bed,” I tell her.

“No problemo, amigo,” she tells me, going into the hallway and opening the closet door. She hauls out a deflated full-size mattress. “I don’t have a pump so I guess we’re just going to have to blow up this bad boy ourselves,” she says. I follow her to the

living room where she puts Thriller on the turntable and starts it up. She takes me by the hand and leads me back to the carpeted square hallway that sits in the center of the house, dividing the bedrooms from the bathroom and living room. I feel like a little boy being led to school. We sit on the floor and smoke from the bong.

“I’m so glad you’re here, Harry. I think we’re going to be wonderful roommates.” Room mites.

I’m flattered. “Me too, Amity. Thanks for helping me out, coming to the hospital, and now offering me a place.”

“I know you’d do the same for me,” she says matter-of factly She grabs the bong, stuffs it full of marijuana, and offers it to me. I use the plastic lighter and light up. I smile at her as I inhale. She smiles back. Her hair is a mop of gold, falling down upon her shoulders like sunlight onto a beautiful ridge. Her face is lightly brushed with color, and she is wearing the same perfume as the day we met. But when she sticks her painted lips around the bong and sucks like a Hoover, she’s all action. It’s a fetching quality I notice right away her ability to meld the feminine with gusto. She’s take charge, confident, one of the guys. I can’t-help but like her, because, for whatever reason, whether we’re straight or gay, guys like guys—especially when they’re women.

We blow and blow that air mattress, stoned out of our minds. The more oxygen we surrender, the higher we get, as if we’re sitting on our own private mountain. We start laughing about Michael Jackson, who’s wailing in the background.

“Sings like Tarzan, looks like Jane,” I choke. “Looks like his mother,” Amity corrects. “What?”

“Everybody always thinks he’s trying to look like Diana Ross, but just look at a picture of his mother that’s who he’s trying to look like. It’s all subconscious, I’m sure. Anyway, I don’t care

what