Best Friends

by Thomas Berger

  It was pride that finally brought him back to self-control. This was not good old Sam, before whom in all these years he probably could not be embarrassed, but rather Sam’s wife. Despite her formalistic profession of friendship, she owed him nothing beyond routine courtesy, certainly not approval, perhaps not even sympathy.

  “I really appreciate this, Kristin,” he said, not to her but looking out his window. “You’ve got better things to do with your lunch hour than hearing me bare my soul. Is that Clear Brook Park? Let me out at the corner there, if you will. It’s only a mile or two from home, and I could use the walk.”

  Her tone had an edge he had never heard before. “But that’s just what you haven’t done, Roy. You haven’t bared your soul.”

  He felt an infusion of blood in his cheeks, as if, absurdly, he was blushing. He turned to her immaculate profile. “I thought I was going on too much about myself. I guess it was just gibberish. I can’t stop thinking about the what-ifs, useless as that is. I should have followed her home, should have known if the guy would attack her right in front of me, he’d do it when she was alone, do it all the worse after I stopped him the first time.”

  “Were you really in love with her?”

  “Sam’s been talking to you.”

  “Well,” Kristin said, “we’re married, and we have normal conversations.” She pulled up at the designated corner and braked.

  “I didn’t love her,” said Roy. “As for the ‘in love,’ I guess I thought I was early on…actually, I probably wasn’t even then. It was just exciting. I know women never understand what men are attracted to in other women. Even when they say they do, they don’t. But I do believe they know what attracts men to themselves. Francine certainly did. Not all men, of course.” He smiled at Kristin. “Sam has much better taste than I—in human beings, not just the female sort. He has a bigger heart.”

  She accepted the statement with a little shrug, perhaps not of indifference but modesty. She had gotten no easier to read. She asked, “Is that what it takes?”

  It was just the right thing for her to say, whether she realized it or not. “I don’t know,” said he. “I don’t usually know what I’m talking about unless the subject is vintage cars. That should be obvious.”

  She looked at him with her cool blue eyes. “I don’t think that’s true at all. I don’t doubt your knowledge of your profession, but I don’t think that’s all you know by any means.”

  “You haven’t ever approved of me, have you?” He surprised himself with the question; asking it would have been unthinkable had he been in command of himself. He did not, however, regret asking it. It gave him some substance in this time of confusion.

  Kristin continued to stare at him. “It’s not a matter of approval,” she said at last. “I simply didn’t like you.”

  Once again he was actually relieved by what she said, to the degree that he could, awful as he felt, produce a kind of grin. “That’s what I thought.”

  She did not join him in wryness. “What I didn’t begin to distinguish between, until lately, was you, the living individual, and Sam’s idea of you, which is really different—maybe more different than you suspect.”

  Not sure quite how to take her interpretation of his best friend’s opinion of him—which could be designed more to provoke than inform—Roy said seriously, “He might know me better than I know myself. We’ve been pals since we were kids, and his memory is sometimes better than mine.” Then, jokingly, “And he’s bigger than me.”

  “I’ll bet you’re really scared of him.”

  Roy refused to join in any implied derision of Sam, if such this was. “He was not only always a lot taller, but in my early teens I was underweight and scrawny. I wouldn’t eat. I couldn’t. Food was like medicine to me. I never developed an appetite till I started weight training.” In fact he had started to build himself up in conscious response to Sam’s advantage in size. What Roy had done, however, was not to be mistaken as competitive, and as for his friend, Sam cheered him on. It was inconvenient to be undersized, taking an array of compensatory measures: walking faster than the longer-legged, being assigned to the inside seat in diner booths. When they both learned to drive in a car owned by Roy’s father, who was six-one, the seat had to be moved forward to the limits of its forward travel with Roy behind the wheel, then run all the way back for Sam.

  “Speaking of food,” Kristin said now, changing the subject to his relief. “I’m on my lunch break.” She squinted at him. “Would you want to go someplace and eat? Or just watch me? I’m hungry.” The girlish grin briefly deformed her lips, which Roy noted, for the first time, had been so perfect in repose, but it made him feel more comfortable.

  “I don’t really want to walk home by myself,” he said. Then, remembering, “I’ve got to get that case of Apollinaris over to Sam.”

  “We’ll deal with that after lunch,” Kristin said decisively. She quickly put the car in motion, as if he might change his mind.

  Having turned one corner, they were back in urgent traffic. Kristin drove with an easy confidence that was a contrast to Sam’s demeanor behind the wheel. Driving a car evoked from Sam a display of emotions of which he was otherwise publicly innocent. When afoot it was he who apologized to those who collided with him or stepped on his foot, though such things were almost never his fault—despite being oversized he maneuvered gracefully through crowds. But at the controls of an automobile he trembled with resentment toward any other vehicle that shared the road. However circumspectly its driver performed at one moment, the situation could change for the worse in the next. If the car ahead of him obeyed an established stop sign, the habitually tailgating Sam was obliged to panic-brake. But when he was leader, any driver who followed him too closely (in his opinion they all did) was sure to be tormented with many pseudobrakings, quick touches of the pedal to flash the red lights. He usually drove too slowly, which practice showed more uncertainty than genuine prudence and might be downright dangerous in certain applications, such as penetrating a high-volumed thruway.

  To Sam, though, Roy, who never met a speed limit he could respect, was a reckless character, and he avoided riding with his friend; for many years now each drove his own car when they were to be companions at a restaurant or entertainment event.

  Roy remembered that he should get in touch with his office. Excusing himself, he brought out the cell phone and called his assistant. He found he had no taste to produce more than a superficial lie to the effect that he was staying home ill and letting the machine take all messages. He predicted a full recovery by the next day.

  “You call her Mrs. Forsythe?” Kristin asked as he lowered the phone.

  “She’s old enough—well, almost—to be my mother,” said Roy. “Damned if I want to call her Margaret.”

  “What does she call you?”

  He smirked. “Well, Roy.” He quickly went on. “She only works half a day but does more in that time than anybody I’ve ever hired.”

  “Minimum wage? No benefits?” Kristin glanced at him, smiling slyly. “That’s right, I’m prying.”

  “I’m flattered,” said Roy. “I do a little better for her than that, but she’s still a bargain.” He did not mention that of Mrs. Forsythe’s merits, perhaps the greatest for him was that she provided no sexual distraction. He would never have made an advance toward a female employee, but would have been uncomfortable with one he desired.

  Kristin’s cell phone, mounted in a dashboard holster, rang as Roy was putting his own in his pocket. Its signal was repeated as, excusing herself, she brushed his knee with her elbow, opened the glove compartment, and brought out a headset.

  “Guess who that is?” she asked Roy, putting the device in place over her fair crown and making the necessary connections and adjustments. An insistent telephone always made Roy nervous, but this one had no discernible effect on Kristin. She fiddled with the mouthpiece, impervious to the sound. Finally she was ready.

  “Yeah,” she said to the
caller. “It always takes a while with this gadget of yours, and I’m in traffic…. Going to lunch with some people—no, I’m sure he won’t forget the water. Told me it will be late afternoon. All right. I can remember. Loois, The Hot Fives, volume one. Okay, Mingus Moves…I’ll find them more easily without the directions…. You’re kidding. Seeya.”

  She returned the headpiece to the glove compartment. “I assume he was joking when he asked me to smuggle in a thermosful of martinis, but you never know. He wants those jazz CDs. Bet you could find them quicker than me. You guys listen to them all the time. Do you recognize the titles?”

  “The Charles Mingus will be easy to locate,” Roy said. “Sam doesn’t have that many. But he’s got shelf after shelf of Louis Armstrong, in no particular order.”

  “Is that correct: Loois, not Looey?”

  “The man himself always pronounces the name that way on the TV interviews Sam’s got on video and on the audio tapes.”

  Kristin sighed. “I thought Sam was just being pretentious.”

  “That’s the kind of thing he usually knows.” Roy suppressed an urge to reprove her except by implication. “Much more than I am likely to do. Most of the hobbies we share were begun by him, and I’ve gone along because he was my pal. I’m not complaining. As I probably don’t have to tell you, you can have a lot of fun with Sam. It’s that enthusiasm of his.” He hesitated. “But it has to go his way. I’m not talking behind his back; I’ve told him to his face—he hasn’t returned the favor with cars.”

  “Of course it’s not equivalent,” Kristin said immediately. “Cars are your profession, maybe even a vocation.”

  In an instant she had recognized a truth that had never occurred to Roy. For as short a time, he disliked her for showing him up on a subject of which he should have been a master. But his was a reflex action, expiring as quickly as it had come. He was pleased by her loyal defense of Sam, which was as it should be.

  “You’re right,” he said. “I never looked at it that way.”

  And then she proceeded to nullify her moral position. “That’s his problem. He’s never had a profession, let alone a vocation.”

  Roy winced. He really should not listen to serious criticism of his friend, but he was not sure how to discourage it without insulting Sam’s wife and thus, in effect, Sam. “I know he’s tried a lot of things on for size. I think he’s eventually going to find one that fits.” It was lame. Worse, it was false. He had no faith in Sam except as a friend, which was saying a great deal, but it was not to the point here.

  Kristin kept her eyes on the road. “He doesn’t have the capital now to try much more. He’s pissed it all away.”

  The gross expression was not like her, at least insofar as Roy’s limited experience of her company went, but sometimes people changed or revealed more of themselves when you knew them better. Francine had begun more foulmouthed than she ended…. God almighty, what an end. The desolation from which he had been temporarily distracted came flooding back. Sam’s problems seemed surmountable. “He’s survived this heart thing. He’s still young.”

  “I’m going to run a risk in even bringing this up,” Kristin said, braking to a stop under a traffic light. “I’ve never interfered before in the friendship between you two. I doubt I would be doing it now if Sam wasn’t in the hospital. This is behind his back: There’s no other way to do it.” She looked at Roy. “I’m going to ask you not to lend him any more money.”

  For the second time Roy felt as though he blushed, and on this occasion he had no clear sense of why. What could be embarrassing about lending money to a friend when you had it and in so doing were not taking food from someone else’s mouth? He and Robin had each inherited considerably more than Sam had been left by his own father, on whose estate the creditors made many claims.

  The driver behind them sounded his horn on the green light. Kristin looked back at the road and put the Corolla in motion. “This is the time if there ever was one for him to make a basic change.”

  “It hasn’t been all that much,” Roy said, “and Sam—”

  She interrupted, and in an offensive style. “Oh, come on, Roy. I’m married to him, remember? Not to mention that I’m a banker. I have a damn good idea of what he’s taken from you.”

  “That’s more than I do. Look, he’s got it coming. My father thought a lot of Sam. He told me he would have left him something if my sister would have put up with it, but he was sure Robin wouldn’t. He didn’t even want the subject brought up with her.”

  “Well, that’s your business,” Kristin said, peering through the windshield more intensely than the now lightly trafficked road demanded. “Mine is to see he acquires more financial responsibility, and I’m asking you to help. As his friend.” She glanced quickly his way, frowning. “As my friend.”

  Roy nervously slapped himself on the kneecap. “That’s more easily said than done. We’ve been sharing stuff for years. If it was something one had, the other could always make a claim on it. He’s usually the one who’s had more possessions than I. He’s the collector, not me, except for cars.”

  “And you sell them. That’s completely different. How often have you asked to borrow Sam’s movie cassettes? Doesn’t he always suggest some title, even press it on you? Same thing with CDs, boutique beers, or whatever, at least since I’ve known the two of you.”

  Roy was made resentful by what was indeed the truth, but who was she to have recognized it so arrogantly and, worse, to announce it in this style?

  “He’s the one with the ideas. He’s better at having fun than I’ve ever been. He gets so much pleasure from sharing his interests. Sometimes I’ve gone along just to please him, watched a movie I knew I wouldn’t like; and you know Sam, you have to do your homework, he’s not going to let you give a simple pro or con reaction to anything he’s suggested you do or watch or taste. So you’re forced to pay attention to detail, and more often than not I’ve ended up liking whatever it was.” He cleared his throat. “Or sort of liking it, which is different from liking something in the natural way without being influenced.”

  “Oh?” asked Kristin, without irony and as if to herself. “You’ve noticed that, too.”

  Subliminally he also noticed that they had entered a familiar neighborhood. She now turned into the driveway of the Grandy residence.

  “I’ll pick up that water,” he said as they pulled up behind the house. “You handle the security system.” He turned to open the door.

  Kristin asked, “Do you mind, Roy?”

  He looked over his shoulder. “I’m not trying to evade the matter. I’m trying to figure out how not just to turn him down next time he asks, but also explain that I’m doing so because his wife wants me to.” He stared at her. “Because that’s the only way I’ll do it.”

  “That’s the only way I would want it done.”

  He left the car. He was too proud to admit immediately that both her cause and her means were just.

  “Your kitchen always smells good,” he said when they were inside the house. In Sam’s absence the high-tech exhaust system was not overused. “Mine often stinks of the fluids used by the cleaning woman. Soon as the odor’s gone, she’s back with more.”

  Kristin deposited her purse on the polished-granite counter. “You ought to do more cooking there. Or just boil water with cinnamon in it. That’s what real-estate agents advise home sellers to do before they bring around a prospect.”

  “Someone buys a house because it smells good?”

  “Probably helps establish a positive mood. You don’t deal with what could be called the general public, do you?”

  “Over the years a few people have come in off the street and three or four have ended up buying a car, usually one of the less expensive marques, an MG Midget or Triumph Spitfire. But once a guy in work clothes walked in and bought a Ferrari Two-Fifty GTE right off the floor. For cash: seventy-five grand. The car was a sixty-three.”

  Kristin wrinkled her nose. “He carried t
hat kind of money on him.”

  “A check,” said Roy. “Of course he didn’t drive the car away until we cleared it. He’s a local contractor.”

  She pointed to one of the stools at the middle island. “Take a seat. What do you want to drink? I got these chores to do.”

  “Want me to locate the CDs?”

  “That would be nice of you.”

  The wall phone rang, startling him. Kristin punched the button that put it on speaker.

  “HI,” boomed Sam’s voice. It was disquieting for Roy to hear his friend so amplified.

  “Hold on,” Kristin said. “I’ve got to turn the volume down. Maria’s been up to her old tricks.”

  “There are a couple more things I want you to bring over,” said Sam.

  Kristin grimaced at Roy. Then she surprised him by saying, “If it’s more CDs, tell your best friend.”

  “Hi, Sam,” said Roy.

  “Roy, you’re there?”

  “I came to pick up the Apollinaris.”

  “Oh, sure…well, listen, then.” He proceeded to name what he needed: Monk at the Five Spot in ‘58 and specific performances by Bird and Coltrane. Sam’s jazz collection was enormous and included tapes and LPs as well as vintage shellac 78s. He had paid too much for the last and not for the quality of the music, all of which had been digitally remastered and was available on CD, whereas much on the deteriorated soundtracks of the originals was audibly compromised.

  Roy felt obliged to explain. “I’ll find them and give them to Kristin. I’ll bring you the water around six.”

  “Kris,” asked Sam, “you meeting the others at the restaurant?”

  “That’s right. And I won’t tell you where so you can’t phone me. You’ll swear you won’t, and then you’ll break your promise.”

  “I’m a real bastard that way.”

  Roy thought he heard bitterness in the reply, but perhaps that was only an electronic effect of the speaker phone, which he felt introduced a false, public-relations element into, and so warped, any personal conversation.