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

look at each other, then at Kim. Not the least bit fazed, he takes a bent cigarette from the floor, lights up, and tells us about the hanging cobalt light fixture he plans for above our heads.

The drive back to our house is tense. Kim is driving about a hundred miles an hour, passing left, passing right, ripping up the Tollway while Huey Lewis and the News’ “I Want a New Drug” blasts on the radio as if it were his mantra. I’m waiting for some little old lady to change lanes in front of him without using her blinker and for him to pull out the gun and blow her away. I’m praying he doesn’t get stopped, because it now dawns on me there was probably cocaine in the car the whole time I’ve been driving it. Like a big fucking baggie of the shit in the glove box. What if I’d gotten stopped by a cop? How would a nice white boy from the upper classes of Wichita explain the gun and the drugs and the car and the guy it belongs to and the girl who’s entertaining him? I couldn’t count on Kim to back me up. I picture the jury throwing the book at me, the armed Yankee homosexual with the stolen car and the stash of drugs. Though I definitely have my prison fantasies, I think I’d choose living freely with Amity or Nicolo over being some lifer’s bitch.

Besides, one little felony and I’ll never make Slut of the Month at the airline.

“Amity,” I tell her after Kim is gone and she’s ironing her uniform for work, “we have to talk.”

“Yes, babe?” she asks, running the iron back and forth over her slacks with such manic energy it looks as if she’s trying to erase her pants rather than iron them.

“Kim has a gun,” I tell her.

She makes a tsk sound. “I know. He just loves the whole idea of a Wild West. Isn’t that cute, him being Korean and all?”

“Aren’t you worried?” I ask seriously. “You guys are pretty stoked, doing all that cocaine, driving around with a gun.”

She flips her slacks over and attacks the other side. “Does he have it in the car again?” she asks, annoyed.

“Yes,” I tell her. “It’s under the seat.”

“That little monster,” she says affectionately. “I’ve told him to keep that thing in the house.”

“Do you think you’re safer with it in the house? I don’t think he should have a gun at all, Amity. He’s too out there. I’m worried about you.”

“Harry, you’re sweet, but don’t you fret. I’ll keep him in control. He’s a short man, darling’. Short-man complex. The littler the dick, the bigger the gun. Thank God he’s big for an Oriental, or he’d be carrying a shotgun in the trunk!”

“Amity, I really don’t think this is funny.”

She pulls her pants off the board and slips into them, shuddering at their warmth. “I mean it, Harry. Don’t torment yourself over Kim. He’s harmless. Gun and all.”

CHAPTER

SEVENTEEN

ver the next few days, Nicolo and I talk on the phone incessantly like a couple of teenagers. He likes the pen I bought him and tells me that he uses it at school to record lecture notes. School keeps him busy; he’s majoring in journalism at DCU, the university that sits a block from my house. And of course, there is his job at the restaurant. It seems as if every time he has a break between classes I’m out flying or running errands or chauffeuring Amity somewhere. Each time I come home to a message on my machine saying he’s free to drop by, I’ve missed him. I consider calling in sick so that I can stay home by the phone, but I need to work because my mother is now withholding the money again hinting that, until Amity and I set a date and appear in Wichita for the big shebang in our honor, she can’t send any money on because “Well, you know how strongly your father felt about this.” Funny, she’s so willing to move on with her own life, but digs up my dead dad whenever she deals with mine.

So I fly to make money, and on my next trip I’m assigned to fly with a girl who is an ex-cheerleader with the Dallas Cowboys. She has a kick-ass body and the face of a model, which is why I think it’s really great that she comes to work with hardly any makeup on, her blond hair pulled back in an elastic band, and a

stain on her uniform shirt before we’ve even set foot on the plane. Julie and I immediately hit it off.

Julie is the kind of flight attendant who says, “Here,” and drops the peanuts in your lap. She’d serve a scotch and water to a twelve year old. She doesn’t pick up trash or cross seat belts. She doesn’t even point at the emergency exits during the demonstration she just kind of nods while pushing back her cuticles. And she makes it clear that if the plane crashes she’s the first one down the escape slides. “Follow me, motherfuckers!” she yells, simulating her escape drills, then laughs maniacally. How could I not like her?

On our last flight of the day she asks, “Have you ever done Ecstasy?”

I’ve heard of the new designer drug, but haven’t done it. “No, have you?”

“Sure. Do you want to do some after we get in?”

“You have some with you?” I can’t believe it when she nods yes. A stewardess who travels with Ecstasy. “Yeah, I’ll try it.”

We layover in Las Vegas, land of body odor and perfume. Dry heat and wet armpits. Parched tongues and moist legs. Purple spandex and clammy crotches. Dehydrated grandmothers and junkie waitresses. Cigarette smoke and urinal cakes. Burdened elevators and needless churches. Dusty gutters and damp cocktail napkins. And airline crews with too much time on their hands.

Julie and I agree to meet by the pool. I walk