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

be comfortable.” He squints. “Love and money. Are you refusing me?”

“Are you insinuating I don’t love Amity?”

“Not the way you love Nicolo. It’s not possible.”

“Why do you say that?”

“When you’re gay, you’re gay. You can’t love a woman fully.” I look him dead in the eye. “And you’re the expert, aren’t you?” He blasts me with contempt. “Harry. Harry Ford. The perfect little man so true to himself, true to the world.” He walks over to the bookshelf and plucks out a book, which he holds in front of himself like a sword. “Wielding the saber of honesty since the age of seventeen. Forsaking all financial provisions in order to live peacefully. How peaceful was it, Harry? Driving around in that junk heap, in debt up to your ears just to attend a public university. Eating franks and beans with your middle-class chums. Working in a theater box office in order to pay for your books. And now you’re tossing bags of peanuts to those animals in coach.” He tosses the book onto a chair. “Was it worth it?”

I look at him and wonder how he can be so handsome and so ugly at the same time. “It was great,” I tell him with pleasure. “I

was poor, but I was happy. I loved my VW it was the best car

I’ve ever had.”

“There’s no accounting for taste,” he sniffs.

“And franks and beans are just fine …… better after you’re stoned, but just fine. I loved working in the box office because I got to attend all performances for free, and it’s how I met my college boyfriend. And the flight attendant job well, it’s kind of a drag, I admit. But I won’t be doing it for much longer because now I’ll be happy and rich.”

“Wealthy is how we say it.”

I’ll be more than wealthy,” I assure him. “I’ll be spending my life with someone who loves me.” Nicolo, I hope.

“And you’ll give up Nicolo and your horse for money?” “I’m giving up Nicolo and my horse for Amity.” “She’ll burn you, little brother. Mark my words.”

I get up, leave. “I know what I’m doing,” I spit over my shoulder. I wouldn’t risk saying it if I weren’t sure I could get Nicolo back. Never mind that I can’t find him I know I’ll get him back, because if I have to, I’ll call off the wedding.

“I ask for your attention please,” Donald says into the microphone. “Your attention.” He’s a confident speaker I guess because he’s a general, and generals know how to give orders like, “Go out there and get killed!” So asking for attention is nothing to him. My mother stands beside him, wiggling and glowing like a firefly without an off mechanism. Amity holds on to me with one hand, her champagne glass with the other. “We’d like to make a presentation. As you know, we’re here tonight to celebrate Harry and Amity’s impending doom I mean, wedding.” Ha ha ha. The crowd chuckles on cue as if LAUGH signs are flashing in the corners of the room. “His mother and I …”

Who are you? I wonder, looking at Donald.

“His mother and I,” he continues, “are very proud parents this evening. Needless to say, Amity has made quite an impression on our hearts.” ‘

“And our checkbooks!” Winston yells.

The crowd laughs, mistakenly thinking the imaginary LAUGH signs are flashing again. Donald nods, as if the remark was planned, and continues. “We also want to extend the regrets of the Stones of Fort Worth, Texas, Amity’s parents, who had to cancel their plans to be here this evening when Amity’s grandmother suffered a mild stroke.”

The crowd gives one of those pathetically sad, “Oh” mixed

with “Ah” sounds, as if the flashing signs now say, SYMPATHY

NOISE.

Donald continues. “But from what we understand, the damage was mild, and Grandmother Stone will be back to the horse races and her book club in no time. We must tell you, the Stones, with their kindest regards, have had their accountant send a blank check to cover the cost of this entire event.”

The crowd is silent, but awash with impressed and approving looks.

I look over at Amity, and she looks back with slight nervousness and shrugs.

“Which we cannot accept,” Donald adds.

Amity’s shoulders fall as she exhales, relieved.

The room is peppered with several agreements of, “Of course not. ‘

Donald takes a check from his pocket and tears it in hall then drops it to the floor. “Now, we want to do something special for these fine young people. Hart’y, Amity, will you please come up here?”

Amity sets her champagne glass down and dons that same look she wore when collecting her award at the airline ceremony. Pulling me up as she rises, she lets me take over, play the big man leading his fiancee to the forefront of people’s affections. As we make our way, the band plays a few bars of Chopin’s funeral march. The crowd laughs. My mother good-naturedly shakes her fist at the band, and they stop the music, then launch into “We’ve Only Just Begun.” More rehearsed laughs. It’s getting so trite that Rogers and Hammerstein are going to have to change the line to “I’m as corny as Kansas in September.”

“Harry and Amity,” my mother says, nervous to be speaking into a microphone, “I would like to present you with something that has been in our family for three generations.” She opens a small velvet box, revealing a diamond-and-emerald ring of exquisite

beauty. “Amity, this was my mother’s engagement ring, and her mother’s before that.”

I look to the side of the room, where Winston and his date sit far apart, When Winston sees me he scoots closer to her and takes her hand, almost frightening her. He looks at me, at the ring, then at Amity. If he had a gun, he’d shoot the diamonds out of my mother’s hands.

My mother continues. “Since I have no daughters…” I expect Winston to crack a joke, and obviously she does too because