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

how I want to approach it I have no intention of playing my cards until I’m completely aware of the hand I’m holding. “Don’t worry about it, Amity,” I say. “We have jobs. We can pay the rent. Let’s just go home.”

On the way I stop for moo goo gai pan, hoping some food might straighten her up. Amity waits in the car while I run into the restaurant and get the food. When I return to the car, she’s acting as if it’s a different day. She’s totally calm. The dome light is on,

and she’s repairing a chipped nail with her little bottle of nail glue. “Ready, babe?” she asks in an almost breezy tone.

I look at her sideways. She’s acting as if we’re out for a pleasure drive. I don’t say anything. Now I’m freaked a little. Her mood swing is so faultless. We get home, and she puts on a Sade album and fires up a joint. After taking a toke, she offers it to me. I pass. She sings along with the ever mellow Sade.

“Amity, we’ve got to make some changes,” I tell her, standing in the kitchen.

She stops singing, looks attentive. “Yes, babe?”

As I empty the Chinese food on plates, I look at the picture of the two of us having dinner at the country club in Kansas. It’s stuck to the refrigerator by a magnet. Amity put it there after my mom sent it in the mail with a letter to us both. My mother no longer writes just to me, but to Amity and me. It’s something she’s never done with any of my boyfriends. “There’s too much going on. We’ we got to simplify things here,” I tell her. I’m rational, collected. “There’re the waiters, and you’ve got some new mystery guy calling. I’ve been hearing him on the machine. And there’s me. And there’s Kim. I think we need to figure some of this out.”

She tilts her head and softens, relaxes. “Harry, you just tell me what you want me to do, and I’ll do it.”

Too easy, much too easy. Why haven’t I noticed this before? How fucking stupid can I be? It’s all I can do to keep my mouth shut about what Julie said. Still, something tells me to play it cool until I get some backup on the whole thing, truly understand where she’s coming from. “You know, Amity, you say it’s just you and me. Well, it seems like there’s an awful lot of other people involved.”

“Babe, if you just want it to be you and me, then it’s you and me.” ‘

I need to buy myself some time, steer Amity away from the cocaine and get her into a mental state that’s workable. What I

need is to get the gun-toting Korean out of the picture. “Why don’t you stick to me and Thomas for the moment, huh? Do you really need this Kim guy?”

“Of course not, Harry. Anything you say.”

Still too easy. It gives me a terrible feeling. “Hand me that fortune cookie,” I prod.

She picks it up, breaks it open herself, and reads, ” “You will be happily married and wealthy beyond your wildest dreams!” “

She hands me the crumbs.

That night, I tell her I have a bad headache and I think I’ll sleep alone in my own room. When I’m sure she’s asleep, I slowly leave my bed and go into my closet, where my little portable file box is. I open it and sift through until I find the will the will that is washed in the slight scent of Amity’s perfume. A dead giveaway. She’s been here, all right. And Julie’s dictation of the financial figures are almost dead on.

I’m a fool. A total idiot. I’m so stupid I can’t even look at the current condition of my BMW and see that the ride I’m being taken for is radically off road. And Amity has been in the driver’s seat from the beginning. I’m enraged that she’s been playing me for a fool. My ego is bruised and I’m angry she thinks I’m stupid enough to stay in the car while she heads at 120 mph for a sharp curve on which my door will open and she’ll push me out. I should go into her room right now and confront her about everything. But I’m not. It’s a game, now, and I’m a player.

Is it the money? Is the money worth it? Is giving Winston the big fuck you worth the price of the ticket? Or is it my mother I’m trying to appease? Maybe, on some subterranean gut level, I want her acceptance. No matter how much sense of self my grandmother tried to instill in me as a kid, maybe I’ve never cut the cord with Mom. Even though I think it’s a load of bullshit, maybe those pop psychologists

are right about gay men and their too close connections with their mothers. Maybe I’m actually ruining my life for her.

One thing’s for sure the person I’m most angry with is my father. And I know why: For the first time in my life I’m acting exactly like him. I’m doing precisely what he would do in my shoes: retreat to a corner, keep recent enlightenment confidential, assess every angle of every player on the game board. Just as my father did (even at the end, in the garage with the motor running), I’ll make a studied move to manipulate the desired outcome.

Great. I’m becoming my father’s own son. What’s next? Will I vote for Ronald Reagan and get Amity pregnant so that we can spawn a whole new generation of well-bred scammers dressed in khakis and Bass Weejuns? Christ, how am I going to get out of this?

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icolo and I are sitting under the shade of a tree, across from the library on campus. I brewed fresh coffee at home and poured it into a Thermos with ice, bought apple turnovers at the bakery, and met him