My Best Man (2 page)

“Just dip a cup into the ice bucket, darling’,” Amity instructs, “and use it to fill the other cup. We only use those fancy-ass tongs when airline management is on board.”

I disregard what I learned in training and do as she says; it’s infinitely easier. I can’t believe I’ve been struggling with those stupid tongs for three months. “My dad was an orthopedic surgeon who smoked two packs a day. He was actually shocked when he was diagnosed.” I pour ginger ale into the cup and hand it to the passenger. “He thought his tax bracket excluded him from cancer.”

Her face is kind, sympathetic. “Are you doing any kind of therapy?”

“I write poetry,” I tell her. “That’s my therapy.”

“I’d love to have you read it to me sometime. Were you and your dad close?”

“When I was young, yes, very close. He was a great dad. A control freak, but I didn’t mind because he gave me more attention than other kids got from their dads.”

“Coca-Cola, please,” a man in a fedora hat requests. “Is Pepsi OK?” I ask him. “Yes, sir,” he answers.

Amity tells me in an unsubtle stage whisper, “Midwesterners

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and Texans are polite, Harry. They don’t care what you give them. It’s the New Yorkers and Californians who expect you to wipe their butts over the difference between a Coke and a Pepsi.”

I hand the man his Pepsi and then look around, expecting people to be shocked by her words, but the locals seem to smile and nod in agreement while reading their newspapers and magazines. “My father’s work schedule had a way of sucking up his life, but when ever he had time, he was right there. Tennis, golf, horseback riding whatever I was involved in, he’d help me, make me better. When he got cancer, I wanted to do the same for him make him better. But he wouldn’t let me.”

“Sometimes doctors make the worst patients, huh?” Amity says sympathetically, handing peanuts and drinks to her passengers.

I picture my father sitting in the garage, his Cadillac running while he floats away in the carbon monoxide. “He went quickly,” I say.

Amity is focused on me rather than the teenage boy with the baby face who is focused on her while I focus on him. Another unrealized triangle. “Would you like something to drink?” she asks him, still looking at me.

“I’d like a rum and soda with a lime,” I answer, then look at the boy. “How about you?”

“Sounds good,” the teenage kid says.

Amity puts ice in the cup, empties the little rum bottle, adds soda, and places a speared lime into the drink. “How old are you?” I ask him. “Sixteen.”

Amity hands him the cocktail. “Don’t tell your momma or your daddy,” she whispers. He nods OK. She winks at him, and he blushes, making himself even cuter.

I was warned in training that attendants can be fired for serving alcohol to minors, but Amity doesn’t seem concerned. I look across to

the two passengers on my side of the aisle who obviously disapprove of our actions. I wait for them to order. They don’t. “Would you like something to drink?” They request a black coffee and a diet drink. I pour the coffee, continue. “My dad was smoking even more the past year because he was stressed-out about a malpractice suit. Some guy lost his foot in a car accident and my dad had to reattach it, and he put it on sideways or something like that.”

Amity hands a glass of Pepsi to a businessman who seems to be engrossed in our conversation. “G’yaw,” she replies.

“It’s more complicated than that, but basically he screwed up.” I hand out the diet cola and the coffee. These people, so quiet before, are quick to remind me about the peanuts. I give them extras and roll my eyes while looking at Amity. “What is it with these peanuts?” I ask as we push the cart on to the next row.

“They help people poop,” Amity explains. The woman sitting in the aisle seat looks horrified. Amity smiles, turns on the charm, and asks, “Would you care for a beverage, ma’am?”

“I’d like a Diet Seven-Up,” the woman snips, “and no peanuts.” I’ll take hers,” the guy sitting next to her says.

Amity hands the man two bags of peanuts, winks, and says, “Hope everything comes out OK.” Then she pours the woman her beverage, lays the napkin gently onto her tray, and sets the drink down precisely, as if this were a Japanese tea service.

I continue. “My boyfriend, Matthew …”

When the rock-solid guy in the Texas Rangers baseball cap hears me, he looks as if he’s going to puke. When I pause to take his drink order, he looks at me in disgust and shakes his head. I keep forgetting that I’m not insulated by academia anymore, that some people in the real world won’t take a drink from a gay person.

“Matthew was one of those phony-baloney people who majored in psychology so he wouldn’t have to deal with his own feelings. My dad’s body is barely cold, and my boyfriend doesn’t think a thing about breaking up with me. Drink, ma’am?”

The woman declines, not because I’m gay, I think, but because she’s creeped out by talk of my dad’s dead body. “What about your momma?” Amity asks. “She’s already remarried,” I answer.

“G’yaw, Bubba. People move fast around you! Beverage, sir?” The gentleman orders a hot Bloody Mary.

“One spicy B.M. coming down the pike,” Amity announces as if the peanuts are working on her.

“My mom is one of those resilient Midwest women,” I say. “Onward and upward. She wastes no time.” I hand out two Pepsis and notice that my drawer of peanuts is empty. “I need poop inducers.”

She happily throws me two bags, I catch one, miss the other. “Gay guys can’t catch!” she yells. People turn in their seats. I’m embarrassed, but there’s something so honest about her I know she’s not trying to harass me. Somehow, I ignore the stares. We move on.

By the time we get to the last row, I’ve poured out more of my innards than I have soda, juice, and coffee. I’ve explained that with my father gone, my boyfriend gone, and my mother’s new surname and life, I feel left behind. Lost. No family. No school peers. Nobody to hang with. The only thing I’ve edited is the existence of my brother. I just can’t stand to talk about him right now not since the reading of the will. Through it all, Amity is an extraordinary listener, as if everything I’m saying is absolutely fascinating, She has an instinct for when to be quiet and when to make a joke, and even though I’m a little needy now, she’s cool enough not to make me feel like some pathetic washout. I’m grateful.

Near the end of the flight, I stand with Amity and Jacqueline in the rear galley. Amity breaks open a bottle of champagne she’s taken from first class and pours rations into three Styrofoam cups …… so no passenger will know what we’re drinking and we toast to “New friends!” as Amity warmly puts it. The flight attendant at

the front of the plane, in first class, ignores us. “How come she hasn’t come back here?” I ask.

“She’s one of those girls who makes the mistake of thinking that, because she’s working first class, she is first class. Misguided.”

I laugh. We down the champagne. I learn that Jacqueline and Amity are roommates, both twenty-six years old. They share a house near the DCU campus in Dallas. They each give me their phone numbers to their separate phone lines, and I tell them that I’m in the process of moving and will call with my new number. The truth is, Matthew ended it so quickly that I have nothing set up.

When the flight lands, I politely say my goodbyes at the front door and tell Amity it was nice to meet her. She agrees, then yells, ” “Bye, Harry! Love your guts!” Once I’m off the jet I decide to wait until Amity deplanes and ask her if she’d like to go for a late lunch. I’m standing there, in the gate area, when she exits the jetway, and just as I’m ready to approach her, this really hot guy in a khaki-colored business suit takes her into his arms and kisses her lips and then her neck. He picks up her luggage, and they stroll away while the loudspeaker announces the departure of a flight bound for Memphis.

Good for her.

“Hey,” a guy says. He’s also in a suit, also sexy. I recognize him from the flight. He’s very tall and lanky with sandy hair and an almost blond beard that is trimmed close to his face. “Sorry to hear about your boyfriend.” He must have been listening to our in-flight conversation. “Want to go for a beer?”

Good for me.

t’s 12:01 A.M.” and the pain is excruciating. I’m doubled over, riding in the passenger seat of the lanky guy’s car. After ten minutes that seem like twelve hours, we turn into the circular drive of the hospital, and he helps me out of his car and through the electronic doors. The emergency room is incredibly bright, and my agony is highlighted by the nuclear glow of a thousand fluorescent bulbs. As I limp toward the admitting desk, while leaning on the arm of this guy whose name I can’t remember, I notice a woman with a bloody broken nose who’s waiting in a chair beside a man. His cologne smells like Wife Beater he’s even wearing the white tank top underwear shirt. There’s also a guy who’s having some kind of allergic reaction; his head is redder than a ripe tomato while the rest of him is as white as a marshmallow. He uses a single fingernail to scratch his nose. And in the corner, a couple hold a sleeping child in both their arms and rock it back and forth as if it were in a hammock. Add the Duran Duran song playing in Muzak, the out-of-date National Geographies strewn about the room, and the noisy motor of the drinking fountain, and this place is a real party.

Our hostess, the woman at the admitting desk, looks like Divine’ s stunt double, with her big perfect hair and cat-eyed makeup. Her

motionless forearms lay on the table like hunks of yeasty, rising bread dough. But her fingertips fly around the keyboard like manic hummingbirds. She looks like a huge thrift store mannequin that’s retaining water. I never want to come to one of her parties again.

“Age?” she asks, not looking at me. “Twenty-three.” “Height?” “Five-eight.” “Weight?”

“One forty-two.”

Eyes brown, hair brown, shit brown. Come on, lady, can’t you see I’m dying here? All you people care about is whether a guy has insurance anyway.

“What is your complaint?” she asks.

The pain strikes my lower abdomen like lightning. “Oh, my God!” I shriek, falling over. I can feel something explode inside of me.

“I’ve got to go,” my new former friend nervously tells the admitting gal. He beelines for the door.

“Wait!” she calls. “Are you family? Friend?”

“He’s got an insurance card in his wallet. I checked!” the guy yells over his shoulder before slipping out and into the night.

What’ swrong? Why is he fleeing the scene? Did he do something to me? We just had good old normal sex, as any two guys would. But now the fireworks are in my stomach, and they’re burning me up. As I start to pass out, I see a nurse and an intern running toward me.

When I wake, I hear a TV blaring the All My Children theme and see a curtain between me and my roommate. I discern I have a roommate because the scrim like curtain makes silhouettes of the bloated, large-headed creatures gathered round his bed, and when they raise their fat hands to gesture, or eat fried chicken (I can smell it), their hands appear to be webbed. When they move slightly and allow me a view of the silhouetted patient, all I see is a large stomach on a slab. The visitors standing at the foot of his bed, beyond the curtain, all have big, wide, matching bottoms, so I figure they’re all cursed with the same genetics and must be the poor sap’s family flesh from the lake bed.

One of the creatury shadows speaks. “That little gal is evil.” Ayvil.

“She sure is.” She shore iyuz.

The biggest shadow creature, the one who looks as if she’s got a spark arrester on her head, says, “Erica ain’t dumb. She’ll catch on.” Ercka aint doom. Shill kich own.

A voice escapes one of the butts at the end of the bed. “That guy ever wake up over there?”

The tremendous buttocks turns, I assume so that whatever is connected to them can look at me. Oh, God, get me out of here. I close my eyes, pretend I’m asleep. I’ve seen the bumper stickers stuck to tailgates of those dusty pickup tracks the moment I crossed over the state line: SECEDE! and us out OF TEXAS! I just don’t take the citizens of the Lone Star State to be the kind of folksy neighbors who will shower goodwill upon a Yankee homosexual who is probably hospitalized because he got knocked up by someone who wasn’t his own cousin. At best, they make jokes, the way they do about blacks and Mexicans. Nigras and Mescuns. And at worst, they’ll throw stones, read me scripture, and make me watch PTL with Jim and Tammy Faye.

I keep my eyes closed for at least another hour. All My Children ends; One Life to Live begins. A nurse comes in to check me, and even though I’m starving, I pretend to be asleep. Finally, the puffy lake people become bored with the schizophrenic Nicki/Vicki story line on One Life, so they decide to wallow back to the estuary.

I ring for the nurse. She appears. Nurse Carbonada. She’s a hundred years old and smells like broiled meat. “How are you feeling?” she wheezes.

“Fine.”

“Your girlfriend was in here this morning. Wants you to know she’ll be back this afternoon.”

My girlfriend? That guy who brought me here? Gee, Nurse

Carbonada is awfully hip. “Hungry?” she asks. “I guess. A little.”

“You’re restricted. I’ll bring in what I can.”

Before I can ask her what happened last night, she’s gone. There’ snothing lonelier than being in this hospital by myself and not knowing what circumstances brought me here. Strangely enough, I have the immediate longing for family. But who can I call? My father? Moot point. Although maybe he’s already here, watching all this from above. I can’t help but wonder if he loves me now, if he understands me in a way he couldn’t before. Is he some divine spirit who’s stopped passing judgment? He was good to me when I was a kid. Never physically affectionate, but always interactive. Showed me how to toss the tennis ball while serving. Bought me the best golf clubs and demonstrated the right wrist action when chipping onto the green. Taught me everything he’d learned of horses as a boy and bought me a wonderful gelding and schooled me into a knowledgeable equestrian, counseling me on form and helping me train my horse and enter horse shows.