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

Denied again. Fuck. These card people are closing in on me. I’ve got to get these payments out. It’s just that even my minimum payments are too high now for me to have any money to live. I’m afraid try my third and last card, and luckily I don’t have to when Amity dives in and saves the day, happily producing her credit card to agent. “Sorry,” I tell her, embarrassed. I’ll pay you back as soon as we get home.” “Don’t worry about it, Harry,” she smiles, fully sincere. “We’re a team.”

We find a reasonable hotel next to the ocean. Amity checks us in, and we head immediately for the beach.

The almost tepid ocean is like a Kansas horizon right before tornado, but the charcoal darkness of the water is sliced with of rolling white waves. The patches of sky are the same brilliant blues of any Caribbean horizon and strung together with high cumulus clouds looking like giant popcorn floating by. We dig toes into the warm sand. Let the sun soak into our skin. Walk with our feet in the water. Snack on chips. Flip through magazines.

In the late afternoon, after we’re tanned and warmed and talked out, we grab the rental car and head across the border to Matamoros, Mexico.

We stroll through the dusty dirt streets of Mexico, dressed in our boxer shorts and short sleeved button downs. We’re energized

by the brass of the mariachi music floating out of a nearby bar as we inspect ashtrays, rugs, velvet paintings, and maracas laid out on the brilliant blankets of the street vendors. When I offer to buy Amity a pair of maracas, she tells me she already has a pair, then shakes her titties. I laugh, and so do the local men on the street, while their wives scold them and usher them back into the shops or on their way.

We decide we’re hungry for local flavor of a more edible character, so we dine in a restaurant that looks like something from the Hollywood of the 1940’s. Large round tables with white starched tablecloths and napkins, big red velvet chairs, a huge dance floor in the middle of the restaurant, and a large live orchestra that plays while we eat.

There is something special about this day, this evening, this dinner. Amity’s hair is curly, full, and gorgeous, and her ears are adorned with gold hoop earrings, and this combination makes her look almost like a Latin Grace Kelly. And though she’s wearing only a starched white men’s shortsleeved dress shirt, boxer shorts, and little leather slip-on shoes, she’s glamorous beyond words. She leaves the top two buttons of her shirt open, and the string of pearls around her neck spills into her freckled cleavage.

And tonight she looks at me as if I’m the finest man in the world. And I completely forget that I’ve seen her look at Bart this way. And Troy. And Hunt. And probably Wade. And Miguel Arturo. And while she gazes at me with magic in her eyes, I can’t help but notice the waiters appraise my status. Nice score, amigo, their faces tell me. And the bass player in the band nods his approval. And the couple at the next table, who are only mildly enjoying them selves, seem to look at Amity and me with melancholy envy. Man, this is it. The thing that everyone is looking for. I feel like the one guy in the room who every other guy wants to be.

Amity, in between bites of lobster and sips of beer, stops and holds my hand and bathes me with her eyes, but doesn’t even try

to add language to the moment before she gently releases my fingers and returns to the food. Maybe there hasn’t been language invented yet for two people like us in a situation like this.

While the orchestra plays, a Mexican gentleman with a large, old-fashioned camera goes table to table. He stops and raises his camera to capture us. Amity leans over, I hold a bottle of beer in my right hand and put my left arm around her, and she puts both her hands under the table on my leg, where she slides one hand inside my boxer shorts and moves it upward until it almost touches my dick. We look into the camera. Flash.t Her hand is gone.

We look at each other and burst with laughter. “You almost touched my lobster,” I tell her.

After dinner we move onto the dance floor and shake it out with the band to some killer merengue. We’re a little drunk on margadtas, beer, and most definitely, each other. We don’t even notice that everyone else is dressed formally until the maitre d’ comes onto the dance floor to inform us there is no dancing in underwear. We laugh, dance back to our seats, feed each other dessert, and pay the check both of us contributing, me using my little stash of cash.

We hold hands on the return drive to Padre, and once back, Amity says, “Let’s take a romantic walk on the beach.” The moon , is full enough that we can see the sand below our toes and the waves rolling in beyond the shore. We stroll, holding our shoes in one hand, each other in the other, while the warm wind washes over the sea and onto our faces. I look down and in the moonlight see little creatures running at our feet. Crabs? Wait. What’s that one with the curled tail? A scorpion? A scorpion! “Amity, there’re scorpions on the beach!”

“Where?” she screams.

“There!” I say, pointing to the creature with the erectile little tail.

“Run!”

We break hands and run toward the hotel, dodging crabs and scorpions and anything else our imaginations might give form. We get to the door, and Amity says, “Hurry!” as I try to get the key into the lock. We fly into the room and fall onto the bed, laughing. She pulls herself up to me and