Best Friends (2 page)

“You used-car dealers all talk alike,” Sam said in joking abuse, choosing the most offensive name for his friend's business. He opened the wire-and-porcelain plug on the brown beer bottle.

Roy, who loved his profession, responded to the serious implication in the gibe. “The odometer hasn't been touched. You can always tell. Well,
I
can't, but Diego and Paul can.” For Kristin he identified the names as those of the mechanics whose garage was on the basement level of his hillside showroom. They were specialists in high-performance machinery and in exchange for free rent worked on the cars he sold.

“I've heard you mention them before,” said she. “I remember. Masters of their craft. I wish I could say the same for the people who work for me. It must be a satisfying feeling.”

“Brew?” Sam asked his wife, extending to her his own replenished stein. He cared nothing for cars as works of art, preferring routine Detroit iron so long as it was lengthy and wide. He was jealous now and anxious to display the expertise he had in another area. “Brown ale, from a little operation run by a guy named Bob Dolby, out back of his pub in Weirton. Only produces a few cases a day, and not every day at that. I taste a hint of hazelnut, maybe, with an overtone of sorghum.”

Kristin put up her hands to fend off the stein, though he had not moved physically toward her. “Are those china plugs necessary?” she asked, staring at the bottle. “Would metal really change the taste?”

“Absolutely!” Sam affirmed. “Not to mention the ecological factor. Metal caps are thrown away. I bet you wouldn't even mind cans.” All this was good-humored. Kristin did not care much for any kind of beer, except for the Berliner Weisse that Sam brought home once, but that was a sourish product customarily sweetened in the glass with raspberry syrup, and not finally real beer.

Kristin pointed at Roy. “Refill our guest.”

“I already did so while you two were talking cars.”

Roy lifted his stein and, with an idea of maintaining his new rapport with Kristin, smacked his lips and said, “I'm picking up the hint of hazelnut.”

But she turned coolly away.

“Oh, screw you,” said Sam. “You and your Alvis. Are you making up that name? Remember, I've known you when. I can still recall some of those fake models you invented when we were young punks: the Crap-mobile, the Pussycafé.”

Kristin returned with a smile.

“I was young,” Roy told her with upturned palms. To Sam he said, “They used to race Alvises in England in the twenties. This one's a three-liter drophead coupé, made in the Coventry works in fifty-four. Only two owners. We've got the provenance.”

“Both little old ladies,” Sam said. “Drove it only to church teas, hot scones in baskets on the back seat, clotted double-Devonshire cream, gooseberry jam.” He kissed the air.

“I'm going to the kitchen,” said Kristin.

It was after she left the room that Roy decided her clothes were the product of more than good taste. She wore them well, in bearing and stride. Today the colors were a perfectly coordinated lime green and olive. But he could not believe her apparently better opinion of him was permanent. It was probably not natural for a wife really to like a husband's best friend, or vice versa. There was a normal rivalry that had no homosexual reference. However, speaking for the man, or at least himself, the reverse resentment, if it existed at all, was much weaker. He had no problem with Kristin.

The meal she made, in little more than an hour, was superb as usual: salmon fillets on a bed of potatoes sliced paper-thin, under julienned fennel, carrots, and kalamata olives, inside little hobo bags of parchment paper, tied with scallion strands. Of the selections of wines Roy had brought, the Sonoma-Cutrer Russian River Ranches Chardonnay was righteous, though Sam stubbornly, maybe even perversely, stuck to the same boutique ale despite its treacly-sweetness, not at all suited to the fish at hand. Today he seemed to be the one defiant of Roy.

The cognac he produced later on, however, had been an earlier gift of his best friend, and it was Kristin who declined that, as well as any help with the cleanup. She became even somewhat irritated when Roy's offer seemed too insistent, so he lost the advantage gained by the Alvis, the subject of which had occupied some of the dinner conversation, along with other of his exotic wares such as the Aston Martin DB-1 that won at Le Mans in 1959 and a customized 1940 Packard that had supposedly been owned by the bygone movie star Errol Flynn, a claim made by the previous owner, which Roy frankly doubted because it could not be confirmed by any paper trail.

“We certainly wouldn't pay what he was asking.”

Kristin sympathetically nodded her sleek blonde head, money being her profession.

But Sam, no doubt grateful for a possible diversion from motor vehicles, asked, “Wasn't Flynn supposed to be quite the lech? Raping young girls, and so on? Still,
Casablanca
is a great picture.”

“Errol Flynn wasn't in it,” said Kristin.

Sam groaned. “Now, why did I say that? I
know
he wasn't. I owned the cassette for years, and it was one of the first films I got on DVD.”

Roy came to his friend's aid, if lamely. Maybe that was what annoyed Kristin. “Flynn was a lecher, though, I believe, and involved in a lot of scandals in his time. My father mentioned him.”

“That's right,” Sam chimed in. “That's where I first heard his name.” Sam spent a lot of time at Roy's house when they were teenagers, and Roy's father was always partial to him. “Hey, you want to look at
They Died With Their Boots On
later? I've always had a crush on Olivia de Havilland.”

“I know,” said Roy, and as to the movie, “Sure.”

“Not me,” said Kristin. “I'm sleepy.” Though you could not have told it from her alert eyes.

Dessert had been sliced peaches in a stemmed glass filled with sparkling Vouvray, accompanied by
langues-de-chat
that she had baked over the weekend, but when thawed were as if new from the oven. It was after this course was finished that the brief argument about the washing-up ensued. Of course, not much was needed for the job but the dishwasher, a lately updated model no doubt selected by Sam, given its multitudinous touchpad offerings, more elaborate than the dashboard on any of Roy's vintage cars.

When he discerned that Kristin would be genuinely offended if he insisted further, Roy smiled to bring her back and said, “I just wanted to run that fantastic dishwasher.”

Sam asked loudly, “Hey, remember that old joke about a guy who got his dick caught in the dishwasher? How'd that go, exactly?”

Roy was embarrassed in front of Kristin. He answered truthfully, “I don't remember it.”

Sam stood ponderously against the counter, a hand on it for security, though he could hardly be drunk on a few beers. “It hinged on the sex of the dishwasher, I think. The dishwasher was human, you see, in a rest-au-rant.”

The hesitation between syllables caused Roy to look more carefully at the man he had known for so long. Sam
was
drunk, probably had poured down a bit before Roy arrived, or more than that. It took quite a lot of extra alcohol with a body of his size.

Roy was least fond of any situation in which he himself was sober and his companion was inebriated to any degree. This was worst when the latter was a woman, for it meant she was preoccupied by some personal problem that had no reference to oneself, but for which one would be blamed if present when the emotion reached critical mass. Any kind of sexual relations in this context would be disastrous, but neither was it a simple matter to escape with grace.

No such special problem came into play with Sam, but Roy was reluctant to leave his friend alone to drink through the old movie. He wondered whether Kristin was really sleepy or just politely determined to avoid a film in which she had no interest. In the almost three years of their marriage, Roy had never seen them quarrel. Sam was too good-natured for that, and Kristin seemed too smart. Or such was Roy's interpretation. He had never thus far come close to marriage, not having yet found that woman for whom he could forsake all others. He suspected that for a man of his temperament, being formally attached to one woman was to lose the possibility of being a friend to any, and in most cases he began and ended a romantic connection on an amicable basis and remained on good terms with former intimates for years.

The exceptions, and of course there had been some, were unrepresentative: Usually these were errant wives, risking more than those who did not have to deal with injured or possibly vengeful husbands. It was true that Jane Waggoner threw a glass of Gewürztraminer in his face when he wondered whether they should begin to ease off, and this was in public, though fortunately in an inn fifty miles away in an untrendy corner of the county, ignored by the kind of people who would recognize them. As ill luck would have it, Jane had just that morning asked her spouse for a divorce, else she might not have been so bitter, and Roy's gently but justly disclaiming personal responsibility had not helped.

Showing how drunk he all at once was, Sam suddenly relieved Roy of the current dilemma, asking, “Gimme a rain check on the movie, willya? Don't feel up to it, if you don't mind.”

As if it had been Roy's idea! He nevertheless went along with the game, as he usually did. “We'll do it another night.” He was eager to get away. He praised Kristin's meal again and said that week after next it was
his
turn, the Auberge if that would be okay, Gérard promised a saddle of venison, and she responded graciously. He never called her “Kris,” as did Sam and, apparently, her other friends, nor had he ever exchanged even air-kisses with his best friend's wife. For her part, she had never offered him a handshake.

“Talk to you, kid,” he said to Sam.

“Hey,” said Sam, winking blearily. “There you go.”

There was a touch of coolness in the evening breeze and the sports jacket Roy wore would be a bit light in the open car, but raising the Alvis's canvas top was too much work, especially in the darkened driveway. Sam if sober would have switched on the outside lights and even might have come along to help with the top.

Roy worried that the Alvis would not start immediately, as he had not driven it much, but the engine came throatily to life with one touch of what one who sold vintage British cars should be careful to call the self-starter (as in fact the canvas top was the “hood,” and the hood, the “bonnet”) and echoed loudly throughout the neighborhood of broad lawns and designer landscaping.

At home there were five calls on his answering machine, one from a usually overwrought woman named Francine Holbrook, the other four, one per hour, were from his sister. He elected to call his twin first, who was always exasperated with him—but he had known her since birth.

“Goddammit!” she cried. “Why can't I get you when I need you? The IRS is after Ross. He might go to jail.”

Robin's husband was almost twenty years her senior and, perhaps for that reason, in a hurry to sire another string of kids to replace the three from his first marriage who had been commandeered by his ex-wife. Therefore Robin was usually pregnant and more self-concerned than ever.

“Come on,” said Roy. “You're overreacting.” Over
acting
was more like it. Born second, Robin got all the emotion left over after Roy had been furnished with the reasonable amount, or so he saw it. She spent much of her childhood in a tantrum. When their mother decamped, Robin made the most of being the only female under the family roof. “This is America. You can't be sent to jail without a trial. He's probably just being audited at this point.”

“Easy for you to say. You don't have two children with another on the way, and I'm alone tonight. Ross is being bicoastal.” Alone to Robin meant with at least one au pair, if not a team.

“I've been working my head off,” Roy said, answering the, to him, deafening though silent accusation. “I'll drop in tomorrow evening.”

“Late enough to miss the kids.”

“I was trying not to stick you with dinner. How about I come earlier and bring Chinese?”

“You do what you want, Roy. You always do.”

This of course was a blatant misrepresentation, and she knew it. He had never done what he wanted, but rather what he had to do according to standards that few others noticed, let alone respected. For example, he was careful never to mention Sam's name to Robin, who had had an affair with his best friend years earlier, before either was married. It had ended so unpleasantly, at least for Robin, that she could never bring herself to disclose what went wrong. Sam himself had not brought up the matter, no doubt finding it too delicate by reason of the complex loyalties involved.

Roy's final duty on this Sunday evening was to return the call from Francine Holbrook. Because Robin was only his sister, at her most waspish she was easier to deal with than Francine, a divorcée with whom he had been having an attachment that for several weeks had been either phasing out or being reawakened. Francine could not make up her mind on this matter and Roy was shrewd enough not to fix a position of his own, having learned by painful experience that in such a situation he could not but lose unless he remained undefinable.