My Best Man (28 page)

Is it the money? Is the money worth it? Is giving Winston the big fuck you worth the price of the ticket? Or is it my mother I’m trying to appease? Maybe, on some subterranean gut level, I want her acceptance. No matter how much sense of self my grandmother tried to instill in me as a kid, maybe I’ve never cut the cord with Mom. Even though I think it’s a load of bullshit, maybe those pop psychologists

are right about gay men and their too close connections with their mothers. Maybe I’m actually ruining my life for her.

One thing’s for sure the person I’m most angry with is my father. And I know why: For the first time in my life I’m acting exactly like him. I’m doing precisely what he would do in my shoes: retreat to a corner, keep recent enlightenment confidential, assess every angle of every player on the game board. Just as my father did (even at the end, in the garage with the motor running), I’ll make a studied move to manipulate the desired outcome.

Great. I’m becoming my father’s own son. What’s next? Will I vote for Ronald Reagan and get Amity pregnant so that we can spawn a whole new generation of well-bred scammers dressed in khakis and Bass Weejuns? Christ, how am I going to get out of this?

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icolo and I are sitting under the shade of a tree, across from the library on campus. I brewed fresh coffee at home and poured it into a Thermos with ice, bought apple turnovers at the bakery, and met him at school on a break. It’s a little ritual we started a couple of weeks ago: iced coffee and turnovers while sharing bits of our histories. Never in my life have I gone so slowly with a guy, but Nicolo is different from anyone. He’s solid and honest. Kind and funny. Muscular and gentle. It’s almost as if we’re brothers, which sometimes worries me that we won’t progress to lovers. I guess we’re both too modest or inhibited by the world to kiss each other on campus. But last week he showed up at the house as I was leaving to go to work and before I drove away he leaned into my car and kissed me in a way brothers don’t. It was the best damn kiss I’ve ever had from a man.

“Thomas says Amity is coked up all the time,” Nicolo tells me.

“She’s a party girl,” I answer nebulously, as if her actions don’t affect me.

He shakes his head. “I can tell you’ve been bothered by some thing lately, and I know it’s her. She’s out of control, Harry.” “How do you know?” I ask. I’m open to other interpretations.

“She is. You better watch out, amigo. Roommates like that always end up causing you difficulty.”

I slug a shot of iced coffee, look him in the eye. “Why don’t you like her? You’re not very nice to her. To be honest, Nicolo, it’s the one thing about you that has bothered me.”

“Because she’s not for real,” he tells me evenly. The Latin macho stuff rises to the surface. “If you are going to become my boyfriend, I don’t want you hanging around with people who are trouble.”

I still can’t accept that this whole thing with Amity has been a game. I know that somewhere inside her, regardless of her manipulating and scheming, she does love me. She can’t help herself. Just like my father. Just like me. “If I become your boyfriend, you still won’t own me. I’ll hang around with whomever I want, and I’ll always love Amity, whether you like it or not,” I spout off, mostly in response to his macho posturing. At the same time, the scale has tipped so far that everything’s falling away, and quite frankly I’m quite ready to plot my escape from Amity.

He laughs and slugs me on the shoulder. “That’s what I like about you, Harry. That’s the fire I saw in you the night we met when you came to my rescue at the restaurant. But have you ever thought that I may want to protect you like you protected me?”

Do I need protection from Amity? I could use someone else’s opinion. Is this the time? Should I tell him about the engagement? Her scent on the will? Can Nicolo help me get out of this intact, emotionally and financially? I’d like to share my doubts, but if I do, then I’ll have to confess that Amity and I are engaged, and there’s a voice inside me warning against it. God, I’m a real shit. Where’s my integrity? Here I am, ready to pass judgment on Amity, and I’m deceiving just about everyone I know. The truth is, I’m falling in love with Nicolo and I’m not able to tell her about it. Nor am I being truthful with Nicolo that I’m engaged to be married to someone else while dreaming up a whole life spent with him.

“I appreciate your chivalry,” I tell Nicolo, “but I don’t need protection from Amity.”

He raises his arms in surrender. “You are free to love Amity or anyone else.” Then he lies back on his elbows, stretches his legs out, and crosses them. “Including me.”

For someone who is moving so slowly with me, I’m shocked that he says it . and profoundly exhilarated. “Your permission is noted,” I tell him, softening. “So when does summer school end?” I ask. It’s now late July.

“Middle of August,” he answers. “Then one more semester,

and I’m a journalist,” he states proudly, biting into his turnover. “Just like your father,” I say.

“That’s right.” His head rises more proudly still while he chews. “Where do you want to go to work?” I ask.

“Argentina,” he answers before swallowing. No hesitation.

If he goes to Argentina, I’ll lose him. I instantly have a new motivation to get my share of the Ford windfall: to hold on to Nicolo. I know from family friends that American dollars can buy a person (or a couple) residency of any country. I could go with him. “Why go back?”

“The political climate is changing. I think I can return to make a difference.”

“What if they disappeared you? You’re Gianni Feragamo’s son. Surely they’ll have it out for you.”

“My friends say it is different. The disappearances are ending. The country is opening up again. Raul Alfonsin, a lawyer who believes in democracy, is our new president. Argentina will be a democratic country. Of course, I can hear my father’s voice. “For how long?” he would say. “Democracy does not last in Argentina,” he would say.”

“So why go?”

“I do not want my father’s and sister’s deaths to be for nothing. If Argentina is to change, it must be documented and written about.

My English is good now. I can reach more people through both languages. But,” he laughs sadly, “I may never make it back. I don’t even know how I’m going to pay off all these loans I owe to the university.”

“You’re schooling yourself on loans?” I ask, sipping the iced coffee, letting it take a dent out of the humid Texas day.

“It took all of our money to come to America. I’ll owe close to fifty thousand dollars for school. That’s a lot of tips for an awkward waiter,” he laughs, seemingly unworried.

Shit. Now I’m really determined to get the money. It’s a drop in the bucket for me if my ship comes in. I’ll finish paying off my student loans and his. Help his mother financially if she needs it. Live six months out of the year in Argentina with him, as long as he’ll live six months of the year with me (and Amity?) in some place like California. I’m falling in love with this beautiful man, fully clothed. As I plot our future, a student in Wrangler jeans and a cowboy hat walks by, his boots clomping on the sidewalk. Nicolo follows him with his eyes. “Aha,” I say. “You’re into cowboys.”

“SI, senor. I used to fantasize about the gauchos,” he growls sexily. “They are such an image. What is the word?”

“Icon?”

“Yes. Icon. I loved them as a boy. Only my aunt, Angelica, understood the depth of my attraction. When I was thirteen she sent me a poster of three gauchos mounted on their horses on the pampas. I still have that poster today.”

“Well,” I announce, “we have something in common again. When I was a boy, I loved horses. My parents bought me a pony when I was nine years old. He was large for a pony, about fourteen and-a-half hands, more like a small horse. I boarded him at a stable a few miles outside the city. I loved him more than anything or anyone. I’d saddle him up and ride the dirt roads of the countryside. I’d race the wheat, and sometimes I’d win.”

“What was his name?”

“Cinnamon.”

“So you are a gaucho, and Cinnamon is your range horse?” “Not anymore,” I answer wistfully. “Your horse is retired?” he asks.

“Yes,” I answer simply, not wanting to dive into details.

“But you can still sit a horse, my friend, no? It’s like riding a bicycle. Once you know how, you can always ride.”

“True. How do you know?”

“I ride too. Aunt Angelica gave to me a horse of my own. He waits in Argentina.”

“Maybe someday we’ll ride together,” I offer, aching for the opportunity.

Nicolo answers, “Perhaps in Argentina.” “Perhaps.”

“Harry! Where have you been?” Amity shouts.

After my afternoon ritual with Nicolo, I’ve decided to confront her about the money involved in her last failed relationships. And with the fact that I’ve heard she’s been bragging about my inheritance, in numerical detail. I won’t tell her I smelled her perfume on the will

I’ll wait to see if she confesses. “I was with Nicolo,”

I answer.

“Oh,” she says, forcibly enthusiastic. “Great!” Grite.t She adopts a strained expression whenever I mention Nicolo, and I realize she finds him a threat. I’ve got to be careful how I approach this. “Amity, I want to talk to you about something …. “

“Not now, babe,” she says excitedly. “We’ve got to get Jackie to the airport. They’re trying to fire her!”

“What are you talking about?”

“We’ll explain on the way!” she says, jumping up and down. “Fire up the Beamer!”

She rushes me out the door, I start the car, and we drive three houses down to pick up Jacqueline, who comes flying out the door wearing a ridiculously large hat and carrying a cigarette in hand.

“I hope it’s OK to smoke in your car, Amity,” she pleads, trying to get her hat inside the car, “because I’m just really freaked out. I’m just freaked out because they’re trying to fire me, and I really need to smoke when I’m freaked out.”

“OK, girl!” Amity yells. “We get it. You’re freaked out. Put the damn cigarette in your mouth!”

Amity explains that, while she and Jacqueline were flying together a couple of weeks ago, a muscular guy from Austin with gorgeous long hair came on strong to Amity, but she convinced him that her friend, Jacqueline, was the girl he wanted because, Amity explains, I had asked her to keep her dalliances to a minimum, and she’d decided that any guy who comes on to her, she’d pass on to Jackie, and haven’t I noticed what an effort she’s making? Amity explains that after speaking on the phone, Jacqueline and the guy arrange a date, which happens to be on a day when Jacqueline’s scheduled to work. Since lunch with a muscular guy with gorgeous long hair is preferable to passing out bags of dry-roasted peanuts to the irritable traveling public, Jackie decides to call in sick and go to Austin. And given that she’s flying for free on a “pass,” she feels the need to disguise herself since she’s officially supposed to be sick. She goes to the airport in her “date clothes,” but upon her head she wears a humongous, wide-brimmed black hat the hat she’s wearing now. It’s similar to the style of hats Joan Collins wears on Dynasty, though it’s even more outlandish than anything Alexis Carrington Colby would wear. While she walks through the terminal, I picture the hat knocking people over, downing pay phones, clearing shelves in gift shops.

Jacqueline jumps into the conversation to add that, in tandem with the hat, she wore a huge pair of dark glasses that were so dark she accidentally walked into the TV monitor near the gate podium, as well as the podium itself. At check-in, when the agent asked her to say her name, she whispered it. And when the agent asked her to repeat it, she merely whispered it again, she said, so that if any

other airline personnel were boarding the flight they couldn’t identify her.

Apparently, after Jacqueline secured her boarding pass, the ticket agent called down to the main offices and told them an off-duty flight attendant, with an awning on her head and goggles on her face, was acting awfully peculiar while about to board a flight. Jacqueline was allowed to fly to Austin, but when her supervisor checked it out, her illegal travel was exposed, and subsequently she’s been summoned to the airport to be fired.

So now she’ sin Amity’ scar, smoking like a wet log in a campfire, knocking her hat against the roof, waving her cigarette like a baton. “What am I going to do? Gila is going to fire me!”

Gila is the meanest of all the supervisors. When a flight attendant class graduates, they assign the marginals and potential troublemakers to Gila. She’s known as the Gila Monster. Her fingernails are sharp as knives and always painted bloodred. Her makeup is so perfect her face looks like a mask as if she’s a player in the Stewardess Kabuki Theater. Likewise, her hair is so immaculate and over sprayed it’s a crash helmet. She used to work for another airline, and she was actually a stewardess on a flight that crashed into a residential area in Florida during thunderstorms. She was the only flight attendant who survived, and the rumor is she got up and walked away because of that helmet of hair.

“She’s going to fire me, man!” Jackie whines.

Like the time the cop stopped Amity and me in the brand-new Beamer, Amity slams into save-your-ass mode. “Girl, listen to me good.”

Jacqueline sucks the life out of the cigarette and thrashes in the backseat.

“Jackie! I mean it,” Amity says. “Pour some water on the fire and listen.

Jacqueline snubs out her cigarette. I watch the master go to work.

Amity swivels in her seat, looks Jackie square in the eye. “This is what you do. First of all, take that damn hat off!”

Jacqueline hoists the hat off her head and wrestles it into the seat beside her.

“You walk into that office, no hat, no glasses, just tears,” Amity coaches. “You sit down with that old Gila Monster, and you tell her you had to fly to Austin to get an abortion! You turn on those water works, girl. Get those tears going real good, and tell her your boyfriend got you pregnant, and left you high and dry!” Haw and drawl “You tell her you had no one to turn to and that you couldn’t possibly have the abortion here in Dallas because you had to protect your anon. aninom—shit. Harry, say it.”