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

My theater training pays off. “You bet your sweet ass.” ] bet yur sweet ayuss.

“Good boy, Harry.”

“Here’s what we’re prepared to offer you,” JT says, tapl his pen on a legal pad. I’ve dropped Amity off at home, and l sitting in JT’s office, the glass windows obscured by minibli he’s rotated shut. “You buy the car, and we overlook the dam Or you buy the car, and we can fix the damage at below cost c six hundred dollars.-, and we’ll simply tie it into your payments. you don’t buy, and we go-through your insurance company, I’m afraid the damage is set at thirty-two hundred.”

He doesn’t know that I don’t carry collision coverage on VW, so I’m not covered for the BMW. I’d have to come up v over three thousand dollars and get nothing in return. “I’m not s I qualify financially to buy the car,” I tell him sheepishly.

“Harry,” he says sexily, as if he wants to rip my clothes, “everybody qualifies. I’m tight with Gary, our wonder boy in finance department. I’ll push it through for you.”

“Man, I don’t know,” I say, pressing my palm into my fore he “I mean, I don’t really need a new car. I don’t know if a BM even my style. I really didn’t come here expecting to buy a ca

“Then why did you come here?” JT asks, biting his pen through smiling teeth, both his eyebrows raised.

I move my hand down my face and rest my chin in it. Look at him. Grin.

“Look, Harry. Your car’s almost twenty years old. It’s time. There’s nothing wrong with driving a BMW. You’re not going to turn into a capitalist pig or yuppie scum or whatever it is you’re afraid of. We can transfer your Amnesty International sticker from the Volkswagen to the BMW,” he teases. “You’ll still have enough money to write those checks to Greenpeace. But you’ll love driving this car, I’m telling you. And if for any reason you find you can’t afford it, you can return it at any time, and we’ll buy it back from

“

you.

My grin changes from good-natured to wry. “For a lot less than I paid.” “That’ sa fallacy. We can give you almost what you paid. Really. There’s no risk, buddy. Your little accident today was just life telling you to wake up. Come on, Harry. Don’t you want to grab life by the balls?”

I think about his balls. And the third credit card that arrived yesterday, with the preapproved seven-thousand-dollar spending limit. “What the fuck? I’ll do it.”

“Great,” he says, standing and coming around to meet me on the other side of the desk. I stand and we shake hands. He holds on to my hand and tells me, his face inches from mine, “I’ve never had a customer I didn’t satisfy.” He’s so hot my clothes are going to ignite.

He finagles the paperwork, and I sign on the fifty-two dotted lines, and with the credit card down payment, and a small amount on another credit card, and the trade-in with the VW, and the rest financed through the credit union at the airline, my payments are only $512.47 a month for four years. And since I make $17,000.00 a year as a flight attendant, it will only cost me, after taxes, about

two-thirds of my salary a year for four years which means I have to eat nothing but those little squares of cafeteria lunch, and dinner for four years.

As we’re wrapping up the transaction, shaking hands outside the car, JT penetrates me with his arctic eyes, hands me a and says, “This card is different from the one I gave you at gym. It has my private number on it. My wife doesn’t answer private phone. And I want you to call me if there’s anything I can do to make you feel satisfied.”

Is this what I would be like if I married Amity? Would I up being a hungry animal on the prowl for the real nourishment need? I’m sometimes wondering if I’m falling in love with and I know I love being with her, but I also know I’d never able to deny my natural feelings for men. Would it be fair to myself to her if I could never tender my body in full? Maybe but it’s my heart that wants her, and isn’t my heart more

“Call me soon. Don’t make me wait,” he whispers.

Shit. At the moment, my dick has so much more feeling my heart.

We have eye sex for a second; then I drive away. In a Beamer with a dented hood and bumper.

When the bills start coming in, I make the minimum on the Rolex, and somehow eke out the first car payment. It me with nothing in the bank. I can’t even afford a square of Amity graciously pays the rent in full, as an apology for the BMW. But I still don’t have any money for food or bills. decide to call my mother. I know she’s sympathetic, and now my father is gone she’ll be more apt to help me. I also know kept a tight rein on her, and she’s been brainwashed into it’s for my own good (translate: future heterosexuality) for her withhold, which spikes my anger. After all, Winston has a Brink’s truck worth of cash over the years, while I’ve toed

own humble line, never inching over. The least she can do is give me a loan. I’ll pay it back. With interest, if she wants.

“How’s Amity?” she asks almost before we’ve even said hello. “Fine, Mother. She’s out on a trip,” I answer into the phone. “And your children?”

I’m always stunned when my mother dishes out a little sarcasm; it seems so incongruous with her jaunty personality. “They’re fine, Mother. Harry Jr. has the best batting stats in Little League, and Amber and Amity recently won the Mother-Daughter Pageant. And how are things with the general?”

“Just