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

If I weren’t on a mission, I’d be happy to stay here with the innocents, but I’ve got a sabotage plot of my own to thwart.

I leave the TV room and head back across the edge of the dining

room, through a hallway, and approach the men’s card room. Again I hear voices. But no woman’s voice. I stop at the doorway and steal a look inside. Fat cats my father’s age are murmuring to each other, shaking hands, making an illegal business deal, no doubt. One takes two cigars from his breast pocket, and they start to light up. I hate the smell of cigars. I leave.

Maybe Winston and Amity actually went to the bathroom at the same time. I enter the men’s and Bob Valentine is at the urinal. “Have you seen my brother?” I ask.

He laughs with contempt, shakes his dick clean, and goes to the mirror.

“How about my big sister?” I ask.

He fusses with his thinning hair. “Your sister’s in the coat room with her future brother-in-law, Nicolo.”

God, this is all getting confusing. “Thanks,” I tell him. “It’s too bad we both turned out to be jerks.”

I walk down the hall again, toward the coat-check room, where I notice the coat-check girl standing nervously in the hallway outside of her station. She starts to speak, but I put my finger to my lips, telling her to shush. I open her little Dutch door, soil conducting her to silence with my finger, and hear the two voices.

“Are you crazy?” I hear Winston ask. “I’m offering you your freedom and two million dollars. What more do you want?”

“Harry,” Amity says. Is she talking to me? I freeze. How am I going to confront them both at once? I’m not ready. “I want Harry,” she tells him. “We’re in love.” My heart is in my throat, but I realize she hasn’t seen me. I duck behind a fur coat, grabbing its hanger to mute any noise. The fur is soft on my face, but it smells like mothballs. I’d prefer the smell of the cigars. Slowly, one-sixteenth of an inch at a time, I slide the coat over the rod, until I have a tiny frame of the two of them.

“You’re more full of shit than that stupid horse of his. I know what you think you’re doing, having this little agreement with my nmm| my

brother. But I’m telling you, it’ll never happen. I know Harry. He won’t go through with it. He’s in love with Nicolo. You said so yourself to my mother, no doubt because you were worried he’d leave you. You should worry. We’re Fords. We know how to take care of ourselves. This little quest for money isn’t his style. If he thinks he’ll lose Nicolo, he’ll call off the wedding . I’m sure of it. And you’ll be left with nothing.” He holds out a business card.

“And you’ll be left with everything. And there would be no problems for you,” Amity points out, refusing the card. “So I don’t think you’re sure of it at all,” she claims, giving him her best John Belushi eyebrow. “Or you wouldn’t be offering me this little bribe.”

“Let’s just call it an insurance marker. Don’t be foolish. Take it. Even if you win the gamble and he marries you, by the time you divorce him. two months later, I presume our lawyers will be ready to destroy you, and you’ll walk away with far less than I’m offering you now. Why put yourself through it? Besides, shouldn’t he ride off into the sunset with his true love? If you love him, like I do, you should want to see him happy. Or are you more interested in your own happiness?”

“Scoundrels like you are horsewhipped in Texas,” she says, throwing her shoulders back.

“Cut the Southern crap, Amy.” Amity steps back, and she looks as if she’s been slapped on the face. Winston continues. “Amy Stubbs. Surely you didn’t think I wouldn’t investigate your cave clan, Amy. Your grandmother’s had a stroke, my ass. She’s a pig farmer from Waco. The Stubbses didn’t even know they were invited tonight. And even if they had, they probably wouldn’t have arrived in time, considering they probably travel by pack mule.”

“My name is Amity Stone,” Amity says, her voice shaking. “Legally.”

“You can change your name,” Winston snarls, “but you’ll always be Amy

Stubbs, trailer trash from Waco. Shoplifting misdemeanors, hot checks, and booked on possession. My mother will never find you suitable.”

Amity’s eyes are blurred with tears. “I’m in love with your brother and we’re going to have a wedding,” she states. But then she cautiously takes the card from my brother’s hand and tucks it into her cleavage.

“Good gift. Now go home and change the lines in your little script and call me when you’re ready to make a deal.”

I suck my stomach in and smash myself against the cloak room wall. Winston leaves first, and in a few seconds, after she composes herself, Amity glides out. I wait another minute before I exit myself, mothballs burning my nasal linings. I slip the coat room girl a twenty dollar bill probably her third bill in two minutes.

“What a grand evening!” my mother trumpets, walking through the front door of the house.

“What a grand evening,” Amity echoes. “Thank you, Susan and Donald. This evening was a fairy tale. I only wish you’d have let my parents pay for this.”

“You never told me about their offer,” I interrupt.

“I know you wouldn’t have allowed it, Harry,” she says. “No, he wouldn’t,” my mother says. “None of us would.”

“If only Winston and Patty were staying here with us,” Amity glows, “we’d all be together.”

“Yes. They were more comfortable in a hotel this time,” Donald says, greatly relieved.

Amity and I head out to our room and peel ourselves out of our smoke-infested party clothes. I keep my underwear on, but Amity is naked. I kiss her poison cheek and head into the bathroom to brush my teeth. She