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

After shaving and dressing, I pick up the phone, call Nicolo. There’s no answer. No person, no machine. Nothing but endless unanswered ringing. I’m starving, so I drag myself to the kitchen and lift the lid on the chicken and noodles that are simmering on the stove. They smell heavenly. As I take down a bowl from the cupboard, I see a peach pie cooling on the windowsill, and the leftover flour remnants on the counter make me almost forfeit the noodles and go straight for the homemade pie. God, she’s thought of it all, hasn’t she? Dressed in that gingham apron, her hair pulled demurely back from her face with a yellow ribbon, she looked like some housewife from the 1950’s. As if she was born to cook and clean and give friendly advice to her family. I’ll bet my mother ate it up, just as she will the pie.

I scarf down the chicken and noodles, which are wonderful, and wash them down with the sun tea Amity brewed on the back porch. Then I take the pie down from the sill and cut a piece. I eat it. Then another. And when I’m through, I wash my plate and stick it in the dish rack, open the cupboard under the sink to access the trash, and reach in to throw my paper napkin away. Newspaper is sitting in the wastebasket almost to the top, which is strange because I emptied the trash this morning before heading out with Nicolo. I push down on it to make room, and something below it collapses with a crunch. I’m curious, so I lift up the papers to find the box the pie came in. Ha! She went to a bakery and bought a pie, then heated it until it was warm before my mother arrived. She even sprinkled the counter with a slight amount of flour and strategically placed the rolling pin to the side.

I dig farther, under the bakery box and find the container from Goldman’s Deli the container that held the chicken and noodles before she dumped them into the pot on the stove.

In other words, I’ve been eating a crock of shit. I can’t help but laugh, though it’s a bitter laugh at best. No one can serve it up like Amity, with such panache, style, and sincerity. The apron, the hair ribbon, the little bit of flour on the tip of her nose—which was probably cocaine. Amity is the most gracious manipulator. She slings as much shit as Winston, but she does it in a way that makes the recipient enjoy it. My contemptible lying brother should take lessons from my congenial lying girlfriend he’d make swifter progress and ruin everyone’s lives more pleasantly.

How smart of Amity to innocently thwart the possible consequences of my corazrn being offered to Nicolo—a man who would desire my heart in full, not some package plan with triple occupancy and meal ticket included.

Now Nicolo has no interest in my heart, and why should he? I deceived him, let him think he was the only one for me, while all along I was engaged to be married to someone else. And why wouldn’t Amity protect herself from me? I deceived her as well, telling her I love her and offering her a future, while freely leaving my heart open to attach itself to Nicolo. I’m a failure as a gay man and as a straight one.

I’ve got to get out of here. I grab my gym gear and head out to work off the decoy food.

At the gym, I hoist the weights as if they are Styrofoam, my anger providing me with greater strength than I’ve ever known. I heave them up and down, blowing out all my rage, then slam them down on the floor. And it doesn’t go unnoticed by me that the weights on the bar can take all the slamming and dropping I can offer, but remain solid and unchanged. And I realize I’m going to have to get nimble if I’m going to outsmart Amity, Winston, Nicolo, and myself.

By the end of my workout, I’m completely drained. I shower, once again lingering under the hot stream of water, unable to formulate a plan, but aware that I need one. The guy next to me in the

would. When I look at him he remains absolutely still, his eyes not flinching, challenging me to make the next move. I do. I turn the water off and leave. I’m determined to get Nicolo back.

At home, I fall on my bed. A heavy sleep. Dead sleep with no dreams. The kind that feels as if it was induced by drugs. And when I wake, I hear the voices of Amity and my mother, and I know the nightmare has begun again. I drag myself to the edge of the bed and try to summon the energy to stand. “Yoo-hoof” Amity calls. How the hell could I be attracted to someone who actually yells yoo-hoo? I’m angry that she’s hoodwinked me and my family, so angry I want to shoot her, but the headlines would be too humiliating: GAY FLIGHT ATTENDANT SHOOTS GOLD-DIGGING FIANCIE-ALSO FLIGHT ATTENDANT. I push off the bed, walk to the milT or on the back of my closed door, and peer into it. There are pillowcase marks on my face that look like scars how perfect. Winston slices me up, Amity covers the gashes with powder, and my mother waits in the background with my account at Merrill-Lynch. And Nicolo is nowhere to be found.

I open the door, walk into the living room, and find Amity and my mother in matching outfits. Black stirrup pants, black little flat shoes, shortsleeved white cotton blouses with red polka dots, and matching small black leather purses on long shoulder straps. My mother is even wearing her hair down, which I’ve never seen her do in