My Best Man by Andy Schell (top 10 novels TXT) 📕

invented by the straight guys in my college dorm: hairy carport, love taco, Cindy’s trap door. But girls always seem to give it feminine names or liken it to a flower. Georgia O’Keefe made it downright glorious. What in the hell is going on behind that bath room door?

“Ahhhh!” Amity screams. Then she starts singing in a high pitched voice:

When you see Libby Libby Libby on your table table table, you better pet her, pet her, pet her, while you’re able able able!

“Is it over?” I ask.

“It will be in a couple days, darling’. But at the moment it’s like a Jane Fonda workout. I feel the burn!”

The next week, the day before she’s to leave on her trip with Wade, I say, “Don’t go. Let’s buzz down to Padre Island and cross the border to Mexico.” Padre Island is off the gulf coast of southern Texas, where college students spend their spring break burning through their parents’ money by drinking cases of Jack Daniel’s Whiskey and puking it over the sides of chartered “booze cruise” barges. It’s also a favorite junket of Dallas-based flight attendants, just a nonstop flight from Dallas to Brownsville, the gateway city, and we can be down there in just over an hour.

“Harry,” Amity says, “I thought you were supposed to be working a three-day trip tomorrow?”

I was. But yesterday I signed it over to a flight attendant who wanted the hours. I don’t mind her going out with someone besides me, but Wade ? I mean, he’s a nice guy and all, but he doesn’t even make her laugh. “I’m not working this week. Let’s go to Padre. We’ll bake and drink Margaritas.”

“What about Wade and his blue green algae?” Amity wonders, doing her doe-eyed look.

“Tell him you’re in search of a blue green cocktail instead.”

We wear sufficient clothing for the flight down, but pack nothing but swimsuits and the boxer shorts Amity lifted from Troy, since it’s now full-on summer and we’re into minimalist attire. Our flight down to Brownsville is staffed by a woman with clownish makeup. Amity whispers, “Barnum and Bailey, y’all.” The attendant also has the longest, biggest hair I’ve seen in Texas yet. I check to see if her name tag says, “Rapunzel.” In contrast, our flight’s also a woman, has hair shorn so severely that we’re able to see her. scalp. “Well I guess those two even themselves out,” Amity says,

brushing the crumbs off her seat cushion before sitting down. “What do you mean?”

“The captain and Rapunzel are lovers. They think knows, but it’s a common fact.”

I buckle my seat belt. “That hair has got to be heavy. At some point it’s going to snap her neck.”

“Good, she’s senior to us. We’ll both move up a number the seniority list.” Amity checks her own hair’s reflection in little purse mirror she carries. “Harry, promise if my hair ever that big, you’ll write me a note.”

We order two glasses of champagne from the woman with colossal coif, and when she brings them, we inspect them for hair All clear, we sip them and snack on the little bags of dr) nuts with MSG glaze, while flipping through the in-flight to check out the Slut of the Month, a girl Amity claims has more abortions than there are Osmond children.

As the jet turns to make its final approach to the runway Brownsville, Amity states, “My parents have a second home on the island.”

I’m surprised she didn’t mention it before. “Are they now?”

“I don’t know,” she says, looking out the window to the lush farmland of the Rio Grande Valley as it grows closer and closer.

My parents have a home in Colorado, and I can’t imagine going to Aspen and not staying in the family house even though I’d have to sneak us in with my extra key. “You don’t want to stay with them?”

“No,” she says. “If they’re there, they’ll only make us crazy. We didn’t bring any nice clothes, and they’ll want to drag us to the Yacht Club and make us play bridge all day while sipping Manhattans.”

“Sounds awful,” I admit.

“We’re not even going to call them,” she states.

“I understand,” I answer. But I don’t believe her parents have a home on Padre Island. What is this thing with her family? Does she even have a family?

Amity takes off her sunglasses and holds my hand. Her eyes sparkle as she changes her entire chemistry to address me. “Let’s not talk about my family. This is going to be a wonderful two days together, Harry. Just you and me. We don’t need anyone else, do we?”

“No, we don’t.”

“Power nap!” she barks without a segue, breaking regulations by reclining her seat fully before landing. In seconds she’s out cold. The jet’s gear drops with a thud, and the engines whine while we line up with the runway. We come roaring in and touch down with a hard bounce as if we’ve been shot out of the sky and the pilots deploy the thrust reversers with full force, as if the runway were the length of a Band-Aid. The shrill noise is deafening as the reverse thrust slows the aircraft. We’re still moving at a good clip when the captain steers the jet onto a taxiway as if she’s making a left turn through a yellow stoplight. Everyone on board is thrown against the right side of his seat. And Amity sleeps through all of it.

As the pilots shut down the engines at the gate, I lean over to gently wake her. Just as I’m about to touch her shoulder, she pops up like a piece of toast from a toaster. “Let’s go!”

“Ahhh!” I jolt, slamming back against my own armrest. “God, Amity! Why do you do that?”

“Do what?” she asks, grabbing her tote.

I approach the rental desk to rent a cheap car. After handing over my credit card, the agent informs me my authorization has been denied. I make a lame joke and hand her another card.