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

infamous freeway in Dallas on which people die horrible deaths. Every day. It has only two lanes in each direction, no shoulder (only walls), and insidious curves. There are no on ramps where you can build up speed to merge. The traffic hurls along at 70 mph, so anyone entering the expressway must go from a complete stop to 70 mph, while concentrating on the curve ahead, and trying

not to hit the side wall. Did I mention Texas allows open containers of alcohol while driving? …. “Here, Harry. Take another hit off the joint.”

“No!” I scream. “You’re trying to make me kill us both!” heart is thumping. I’m at the edge of Mockingbird Lane, ready turn on to Suicide Express. :

“It’ll make you drive better, I swear,” Amity pleads, laughing

She cranks up the stereo louder so that the Thompson Twins shouting “Doctor! Doctor!”

“You’re going to need a fucking doctor if you give me more of that pot!” I yell.

“OK, OK. Get ready!” she shouts, bracing herself,

against the dash

I put it in first gear and hold the clutch in. Then I step on the gas.

Amity whoops, “Go!”

I pop the clutch, the tires squeal, our heads snap back, and we jettison into the traffic, screaming like passengers in a crashin airplane. “We’re going to die! We’re going to die big time!” Big Tom.t

As we pass the brightly colored candy counter at the movie theater Amity makes an ugh sound and looks as if she’s going vomit. We sit in the back of the theater and watch the movie, and halfway through Amity whispers that she wants a diet drink. I her favorite, Diet Dr. Pepper, and return with popcorn too. pushes the popcorn into her mouth as if all these meetings is having with Gorbachov are just for show and the Soviets are going to drop the bomb at any moment. She washes it down with a huge gulp of Diet Dr. Pepper. After the salty popcorn is gone, Amity gets up and leaves. She returns with malted milk balls. Christ, two hours ago she ate enough candy to satisfy a busload of kindergartners. An hour later she was ready to puke at the sight of

the candy case in the lobby. And now she’s wolfing malted milk balls as if they’re a cure for cancer. I can’t figure her out.

At the end of the film, when Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner are reunited, Amity reaches over and takes my hand. I look sideways at her in the dark while the movie screen lights up her face. She’s not looking at me, but focusing on the movie. Yet she’s quietly holding my hand with no explanation.

It really is the strangest, most tender moment. Sometimes Mat thew and I held hands during movies, but it always seemed like a statement. A we’re-just-as-good-as-anyone-else gesture. We would sit there, clenched in unity, and when the lights went up after the picture ended, and all the straight couples had unclasped and were gathering their coats, we’d wait a few moments longer to ensure the effect of our statement. Of course, that took the romance out of it and made it a political gesture. And though political gestures are necessary, they’re seldom sexy. So this public act of hand holding with Amity is a provocative, new, free feeling. Straight people have it so easy.

Two days later, Amity is over her period but now has a raging yeast infection, something I’m not at all familiar with, but she assures me it’s true. I offer my services, and since she doesn’t want to poo up to go to the drug store (because women in Texas feel obligated to wear a ball gown to a 7-11, and even Amity suffers this burden), she sends me to the pharmacist for Monistat cream.

“Hep Yew?” the lady pharmacist who looks like Dolly Parton asks.

“I’m picking up a prescription for Amity Stone.” “What’s the prescription?” “Monistat.” “And you are?”

Not suffering from a yeast infection, Dolly. “Harry Ford, her roommate.”

She gets the stuff, has me sign the log, inspects my name as if hllUy

I’m a scam artist, and carefully hands me the pussy cream as if it’ kryptonite. I rip it from her hands and hustle to the register.

“

“

When I bring it home, Amity yips, Relief. She takes medicine and rushes into the bathroom, and for the first time

I met her, she closes the door. I start to head for the kitchen to a Diet Dr. Pepper, but she yells out, “You’re so good to me,

No guy would ever help a girl with this. Thank you, babe.” “You’re welcome,” I call.

“Do you know how hard it is to lie down on a cold floor and do this?” she asks.

“I know it sucks. Every time I get a yeast infection I vow it’ my last,” I answer. *

“It’s not a picnic in the park, is it?” she responds, as if I’ serious. “I mean, here I am, fixin’ to shoot Libby in the with chilly cream! It’s about as pleasant as a drive-by shooting.”

I imagine her with a loaded gun pointed at her crotch. “Do shoot it like a gun?”

“Sort of. Well, not really,” she yells. “I mean, you won’t a bang or anything.”

“Are you doing it now?” “Are you ready?” she asks, as if I have anything to do with “Maybe I should take a hit off the bong first,” I joke. “Good idea, babe, but hurry. I’m freezing lying on this

“Just get it over with,” I tell her. “I don’t need drugs for this.“i

“I do,” she says. “Fire up that bong and pass it through door.”

I laugh and grab the bong off the hallway floor. There’s still left in the bowl, so I open the door a crack and slide it in on floor, followed by the lighter.

“Grazie!” she yells. I hear the bubbling of the water in chamber, followed by silence, followed by exhalation. “OK, Harry, here we go. Medicine time for Muffle!”

“I’m ready.” I keep thinking about the vaginal