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

known as the Gila Monster. Her fingernails are sharp as knives and always painted bloodred. Her makeup is so perfect her face looks like a mask as if she’s a player in the Stewardess Kabuki Theater. Likewise, her hair is so immaculate and over sprayed it’s a crash helmet. She used to work for another airline, and she was actually a stewardess on a flight that crashed into a residential area in Florida during thunderstorms. She was the only flight attendant who survived, and the rumor is she got up and walked away because of that helmet of hair.

“She’s going to fire me, man!” Jackie whines.

Like the time the cop stopped Amity and me in the brand-new Beamer, Amity slams into save-your-ass mode. “Girl, listen to me good.”

Jacqueline sucks the life out of the cigarette and thrashes in the backseat.

“Jackie! I mean it,” Amity says. “Pour some water on the fire and listen.

Jacqueline snubs out her cigarette. I watch the master go to work.

Amity swivels in her seat, looks Jackie square in the eye. “This is what you do. First of all, take that damn hat off!”

Jacqueline hoists the hat off her head and wrestles it into the seat beside her.

“You walk into that office, no hat, no glasses, just tears,” Amity coaches. “You sit down with that old Gila Monster, and you tell her you had to fly to Austin to get an abortion! You turn on those water works, girl. Get those tears going real good, and tell her your boyfriend got you pregnant, and left you high and dry!” Haw and drawl “You tell her you had no one to turn to and that you couldn’t possibly have the abortion here in Dallas because you had to protect your anon. aninom—shit. Harry, say it.”

“Anonymity.”

“Right!” Rot! She turns to me. “I hate that word. I shouldn’t use it.” Back to Jacqueline. “You got it, girl?”

Jacqueline thinks about it for a second, then heartily agrees. “Yeah, that’s it. That’s what I’ll say. I had an abortion. An abortion. Yeah, I had an abortion, man. I just had to take care of it, you know. Get an abortion.”

We pull into the employee lot at the airport and wait while she goes in for her meeting with the Gila Monster. Amity puts Culture Club’s cassette into the player, and I roll down the windows. “OK, Harry. What is it that you wanted to talk about?”

It’s all adding up. Her out-of-control behavior, the coke, the professor, the marriage, Julie’s claims, Nicolo’s suspicions, and now this: this bogus story she’s woven with master skill for Jacqueline from thin air. “Work up tears,” she told her. “You had to have an abortion!” she told her. She’s too quick. The duplicity comes too naturally for her.

“Well?” Amity asks. “Do you need to talk, Harry?”

My dad channels into me again. “Not now.” Why tip my hand? Information is power. Never exit the building until your car is waiting out front, my father would say. I have to come up with a plan before I exit this charade. I turn on the radio, and the announcer’s voice says, “Today, Soviet cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya became the first woman to walk in space.”

“Jacqueline’s been doing that for years,” Amity says, reclining her seat for a power nap.

“Gila bought it, man!” Jacqueline says, returning to the car. “The whole thing. I took your advice, Amity, and I really cried a lot. At first, I didn’t say anything at all, I just cried. Then I told her that I needed to tell the truth, that I had an abortion. She was really concerned. I can tell she’s had an abortion herself, ‘cuz she kept telling me I could have come to her, ‘cuz, you know, she would have helped me, and that an abortion is something no woman should have to go through alone.”

“Amen, girl,” Amity says, as if it really happened. “It’s just too scary for you to be alone.”

Jacqueline agrees. “Right. You’ve got to have support.”

“Is that all?”

“She offered to help me pay for it,” Jacqueline said, taking out a cigarette. “She said she’d write me a check.”

“Girl! Did you take it?”

I notice the flash of excitement in Amity’s eyes. She wants Jacqueline to have taken the money.

“No,” Jackie says, lighting her cigarette, ” ‘cuz I just would have had to pay her back, and I didn’t want to have to do that.”

“You wouldn’t have had to pay her back, Jackie,” Amity says slyly. “What’s she going to do? Bug you for the money? “Hey, Jacqueline. Where’s my abortion loan?” No way. She’d have let it slide.”

“I don’t want her money,” Jackie answers.

Amity finishes with conviction. “Well that Gila Monster has been mean enough to a lot of people, and it’s time she helped somebody, Jackie. You deserve her concern and her money after all you’ve been through.”

This is getting freaky. Like, where does the truth lie? So to speak. If I had any prior doubts about Julie’s stories of the real Amity, I don’t now. I can see the thrill Amity’s getting from playing this game. It’s Jacqueline’s life that is affected, but Amity loves moving her and Gila into position, like pawns on a chessboard, until she can manufacture the best outcome.

“I’m just so glad it’s all over,” Amity finishes.

I can’t tell if she means the conflict or the mythical abortion.

“You still have your job, and this calls for a celebration,” I tell Jackie. “Let’s go to Sfuzis and drink belli nis

“Great idea, Harry!” Amity cheers. And before we’re out of the airport drive, she pulls a little vial of cocaine from her purse and starts scooping tiny spoonfuls for everyone. I decline.

I’m declining, big Tom.

That evening, Amity has a date with Thomas, who has the night off from the restaurant. When he comes over, he mentions that, from the sound of it, Nicolo finds me to be serious boyfriend material. I’m so ecstatic to hear this news from someone he calls a friend that