Best Friends

by Thomas Berger

  He turned on the old gooseneck, clamshell-shaded lamp atop his desk, one of the few material souvenirs of his mother’s family. He had kept it because it had first been owned by his maternal grandfather, whose little ornamental-iron shop had failed during the Great Depression and who subsequently found a job as a janitor at twelve dollars a week. His son, Roy’s uncle, whose medals Roy kept at home in a silver box he had made for the purpose, was one of the twelve thousand Americans killed in the taking of Okinawa, where a hundred and ten thousand Japanese died, many by their own hand, including their generals, who disemboweled themselves while being simultaneously beheaded by their aides.

  So far as Roy knew, the only person on either side of his family to commit suicide was his own father, and that was not for honor but rather after a diagnosis of illness.

  There was a tapping at the front door. He stood up and squinted out between the cars, trying to discern who it might be, but could not do so before his eyes adjusted in the transition from staring at a light oak desktop under a sixty-watt bulb. Meanwhile he had walked out far enough so that his gestures could be recognized.

  By then he could see the uniform. He went to open the door. It was Officer Velikovsky.

  “Hi, Mr. Courtright. I just noticed a different light was on.”

  “Thanks for doing a careful job as always…. I’m particularly glad to see you. I tried to pick up your wife today, but I wasn’t man enough to pull it off.”

  Velikovsky assumed a wide grin. “She told me about the incident. I says, ‘You missed the only opportunity you’re gonna get at your age.’ She says, ‘I always miss the boat. Look who I married when I was young.’ She’s got a mouth on her.”

  “She’s a good woman.”

  The officer shrugged, though he looked proud. “I’m not yet ready to recycle her.”

  From Velikovsky’s omission of any reference to the large tip, Roy suspected his wife was keeping it all for herself. He was amused during the few moments it took to return to the office and his predicament.

  He was finally guilty of what his best friend had unjustly charged him with earlier. Kristin agreed with Roy that, given the delicate state of Sam’s health, it would be unthinkable to tell him now. In effect this meant never, for when could a once ailing heart be made permanently invulnerable to an attack on the amour propre? Roy agreed with her that Sam’s greatest love was for himself and not his wife and, certainly, not a friend. And to someone of that character, what could be so mortifying as a conspiracy between that wife and that friend?

  “Believe me, it would kill him,” Roy had told her as they were dressing in the shabby motel room, with its off-white furniture of plastic-faced particle board. He had a remorseful aversion to looking closely at her silver body, of which he caught more accidental glimpses in the mirror-wall than straight on. He wished their coming together had remained awhile longer as an unattainable ideal.

  Roy’s sole material souvenir of his mother, who was still living though not seen by him in two decades, was a booklet bound in fake red leather with a hollow heart inscribed in gold on the cover, inside which in gilt lettering appeared the simple title Love Poems. It was the kind of thing found in stationery shops around Valentine’s Day. The flyleaf was inscribed, in ball pen, Ms. Joan Melinda Shaw. She had probably been an early teenager at the time of purchase; perhaps she had given the book to herself. Years later his father had called her a tramp, but Roy knew she was rather a romantic—unless the two were one and the same. But neither applied to those who found what they were looking for, and he had now done so, for all the good it would do him. He could not kill his best friend just to be happy.

  11

  For the next two days Roy hid out, not emerging from the place he called home, except for a four-mile run early Monday morning. So great was his turmoil of spirit as to overrule his sense of responsibility, and he switched off all telephones and their accessories, making himself inaccessible via the airwaves to all other human beings. This included Robin, meaning that if she had relented and accepted his invitation to a family outing, unlikely but not without precedent, she could not have reached him.

  He could not avoid Sam forever. He had an even greater aversion to Kristin though his feeling for her was now more intense than it had been, because he felt he had not met her expectations as a lover. How rotten it must have been for her if he had provided what was only an embarrassment. If so, she had risked so much for so little. That she had subsequently been kind, even sweet, signified no more than good manners.

  As to Sam, no matter how often Roy told himself he had nothing but contempt for the man, he did not believe it. If only he could take the matter to—Sam. Not that Sam had ever understood or even been sympathetic to him. In view of Kristin’s revelations, the bastard might well have been downright hostile. Yet that could not alter the fact that Sam was his best friend, a fact that had a long, unrewritable history. He and Sam had been stuck with each other for more than half their lives. Whether they had actually ever liked each other was probably irrelevant.

  For example, Sam was the only person to whom Roy could have confessed spending much of his two-day reclusion in surfing the 120 channels reached by the satellite service without finding anything to which he could attach his interest for more than a moment, and not only because it was Sam who dogged him into signing on to it. Sam himself would squander whole mornings in that sort of pursuit, the difference being that Sam would be fascinated by most of the programs he encountered. The same was true when the Internet had come into being. Sam would log on and stay for an hour at a site that offered only video images of the traffic on the bridge, and come up with an investment idea.

  Nevertheless, because Roy so dreaded facing the music, two days passed as quickly as hours, and there he was, Tuesday noontime, sitting across the room from the newly arrived Mrs. Forsythe, whose phone was in her hand.

  “I can’t keep this up, Roy. He kept calling Saturday afternoon. I could at least tell him the truth then: I didn’t know where you were. But I do now, and I’m not going to lie.”

  With all his dread of the fall of the ax, Roy was taken by surprise when, Mrs. F. having pushed the button that put him on the line with Sam, his best friend’s greeting was breezily affectionate.

  “How ya doin’, kid?”

  “How about you?”

  “I can’t believe how great I feel. Believe it or not, just those few days on hospital food, I lost four pounds. And I’ve been home three days without putting them back, though over the weekend Kris prepared some fantastic things. We were hoping you would turn up. What became of you? You slipped under the radar. I been callin’ for days.”

  “I had to go upstate to look at an Alfa, a middle-sixties Duetto, if that means anything to you.”

  “What’ll you make on that?”

  “Didn’t end up buying it. Needed too much restoration, and the owner wouldn’t lower his asking price.” The best lies consist mostly of the truth. Roy had made that very trip the year before. What he wondered now is whether he had told Sam about it at the time.

  “So that’s your excuse for the last three days,” said Sam. “I certainly hope you can get over here today. How about dinner? Kris vows to come home at a reasonable hour. I got to take it easy on food and drink, but there’s no reason for you to hold back.”

  Roy had not truly considered the practical consequences of what he and Kristin had done on Saturday. What was he expected to do about such an invitation? That is, by the heavenly powers? Sam was of course pressuring him to accept it.

  “I’ve got this guy coming from Baltimore. He’s supposedly driving one of the rarest of the great classics, worth millions—”

  “I thought he was due on Saturday,” Sam broke in to say. “But I guess he didn’t show if you drove upstate. Or was that Sunday or Monday?”

  “Yeah,” said Roy. He declined to explain further. Sam could go fuck himself.

  “Say,” Sam said brightly, “here’s an idea. You�
��ll sure want a test drive in that classic of his. Mind swinging past here? Stop in for a drink. Anyway, just run up the driveway and give me a look. I’d love to see what’s worth that kind of money. What is it, an old Rolls?”

  The request was selfishly obtuse as to the protocol of the vintage-car trade in which his best friend had long been engaged, but had Roy not become Kristin’s lover he would simply have laughed off Sam’s sudden interest in vintage cars as phoney. But Roy and Kristin were lovers—this was the first time, tempering his shame with a certain pride, that he had defined them as such—and he could never again trust his best friend with the truth.

  “Sure, I’ll bring him around.”

  “You’re full of shit. You seem to have lost your sense of humor lately. In my financial condition, do you think I want to meet some asshole who has so much money he can’t find a better use for it than buying old automobiles?”

  Roy had no stomach for this. “You’re right. I should have known better.”

  “You’re not going to defend car collecting?” Sam asked derisively. “I can’t get a rise out of you today. That trip upstate must have taken a lot outta you.”

  Roy’s promise to Kristin this time was absolute: He would once for all reject Sam’s plea for the loan, and in justice to everybody concerned, that had to be done face to face.

  “I’ll be over later.”

  “Cheer up,” said Sam. “You can eat and drink as much as you want. I just have to watch.” He hung up on this ambiguous statement.

  “You’re expecting Maxwell Leander today?” asked Mrs. Forsythe, her head at an angle. “He changed the appointment?”

  “I guess I didn’t mention it. He was here Saturday morning. I lied just now to Sam Grandy.”

  “That might be none of my business, but I do like to know when we’re expecting a visitor.”

  “You’ll be the first to know, Mrs. F., if one is due to arrive during your hours here. If somebody comes at another time, I may forget to tell you if he does not buy or sell a car.”

  She made no response to the rebuking explanation but continued to stare at him. At last she said, “I wonder if I should tell you this, Roy. I’ve decided to do so because I think you basically have a good heart, and you’ve been very nice to me, I have to admit.” Her thin eyebrows arched. “But you do have a reputation. And there’s that terrible thing that happened to poor Mrs. Holbrook, and some of the dirt might well have brushed off on you. You have to realize that…” She cleared her throat and softened her voice almost to a whisper. “You were recognized on Saturday, in a parked car on Milburn Road in broad daylight, with a woman in your arms.”

  “Who was the woman?”

  Mrs. F. gasped. “You don’t remember?”

  For some perverse reason, he found temporary relief from his cares in this exchange. “I can’t tell one from the other, Mrs. F. There’s such a long list, and they’re interchangeable.”

  Surprisingly, she was not provoked, at least not in the expected manner. Instead she produced a rare smile. “Now, Roy, you’re kidding me. You’re a rascal but you’re not that sort of man. I know that sort, or knew: Bob Forsythe. I was dumb enough to marry him.”

  “The woman’s car had just had a blowout, and I stopped to help. That experience can be terrifying to someone not an expert driver, and she was in hysterics. I calmed her down and called Harry Bates at the Towne Garage to come and tow the car in, and I gave her a lift home.”

  Mrs. F. displayed self-satisfaction. “I knew, in this case at least, there was a good reason, and I said as much to the person who told me.”

  “I’m curious,” said Roy. “Who was that person?”

  “Juliette, as it happened. Her friend recognized you.”

  “I’ve never met your daughter.” He made a mock frown. “I think you’ve kept her away from me.”

  Mrs. Forsythe looked aside. “No, Roy, that is not true.” Her eyes came back and fixed on him. “She does not care for the male sex. And no wonder, with a father like hers.”

  “How old is she now?”

  “She’s eighteen. None of us are as young as we once were.”

  “That’s certainly true of me,” said Roy. “It’s time I settled down.”

  “You took the words out of my mouth.” Mrs. F. again looked away, as was her habit when speaking on a subject that touched a nerve at least with herself.

  “Despite your own unhappy experience, you still believe in marriage?”

  “I try not to be too self-centered in looking at things,” said she. “I’ll bet you would make a fine father.”

  “Really?” He was inordinately pleased.

  “You’re very manly. I know, there’s still some childishness in you, but that’s natural enough. For a while there were people who wanted men to be more like women, but that doesn’t make any sense.” She blinked. “Incidentally, the opposite of manliness isn’t being effeminate, and it isn’t necessarily cowardice. It’s disloyalty.”

  He had never before seen the moralist in Mrs. Forsythe. Perhaps it was rather that he had never given himself the opportunity to speak with her on matters of fundamental importance.

  “You may be overestimating me,” he told her, “but it’s nice to hear.” Loyalty could sometimes be only habitual, but he would not make that point aloud.

  She was not yet done with the subject. “Give me a loyal coward over a disloyal hero.”

  “The disloyal hero is devoted to himself, whereas at least the loyal coward does not betray his community.”

  “You understand very well.”

  “What about women?”

  “Women,” said Mrs. F., “are the community.”

  Yet to whom to be loyal? It was a serious problem but not a serious question. His love for Kristin had all but expunged his affection for Sam. But for the principle of friendship, he would not have given the matter a second thought. He had no feeling one way or the other for the husbands of the women with whom he had gone to bed. He felt neither triumph over them nor guilt. They played no part in his side of an affair, unless of course they acted as did Martin Holbrook in the parking lot of The Hedges. Until then, the man had been only a name.

  He suddenly ached to be in touch with Kristin, with whom he had had no contact since delivering her to the foot of the Grandy driveway on Saturday evening. On parting they had not even made any arrangement to meet again. It did not occur to him at the time that she might have no intention of meeting him again, that he had served his purpose for that hour or so, that she did not reciprocate his love, but had rather been ruled by a temporary physical passion, the satisfaction of which on that single occasion would suffice forever.

  She had never told him not to phone her at the bank. Nevertheless, doing so would violate the classic protocol of illicit liaisons. Roy was a traditionalist, not a rule-breaker; he would take another man’s wife to bed but not flout the lesser conventions, just as he would drive a car far in excess of speed limits but always obey stop signs and use turn signals. However, unless he called Kristin at work she would be accessible only on the home phones of which Sam was again in command.

  He could not afford to wait for her to call him, having convinced himself, all at once, that she would never do so.

  After her tea was brewed, Mrs. Forsythe did not usually return to the lavatory until it was quitting time each day. He could certainly not phone Kristin in her presence.

  “I’m going down to see if the guys have put the E-Type back together.” To which assertion Mrs. F., eyes on monitor screen and fingers at keyboard, made a preoccupied nod.

  He carried his cell phone to the lower level but at the bottom did not enter the garage, owing to the din of mechanics at work. At the moment the guys were in the farthest corner. A fire door between him and them muffled the noise of the compressed-air wrenches and ballpeen-hammer blows.

  He asked the woman who answered the bank’s telephone to connect him with Kristin Grandy.

  “She’s in a meeting. Can y
ou give me your name and number? She’ll call back soon as she can.”

  “I’m moving around. I better try again. When’s a good time?”

  “I couldn’t say. She’s awfully busy. Better pick a time when you’re going to be in one place for a while, and let her return your call.”

  “I’ll get back to you.”

  As Roy stepped into the office Mrs. Forsythe was saying, “Just a moment. Here he is now.” She pointed toward the phone on his desk.

  “Who is it?” he asked in annoyance. She knew he disliked taking business calls without preparation.

  “You’ll want to talk to her,” said Mrs. F. “She’s interested in that old Elvis of yours.”

  “The Alvis,” he said, and not for the first time. He had almost given up correcting her defiant mispronunciation of the German sports car name as “Porsh,” because, as she had pointed out, the same was used on television by every showbiz celebrity who owned one.

  When he answered his desk phone, it was Kristin’s voice that said, “Mr. Courtright?”

  “Yes.”

  “Could I look at the car after six today?”

  “By all means.”

  “Would that be convenient?”

  “That will be fine.”

  “See you then.”

  “Thank you.”

  “That didn’t take long,” Mrs. Forsythe said. “Short and, I hope, sweet.”

  “She wants to take a test drive.”

  “Say when?”

  “Maybe tomorrow.”

  “I really prefer specific appointments,” said Mrs. F., wrinkling her nose. “But at least that woman phoned on business. You got another call during the few minutes you were downstairs. Somebody named Michelle. She didn’t say anything about cars.”

  “I’m seeing her socially,” said Roy. “She may be a bit young for me—she’s just finishing college—but she’s single. She’s a very level-headed young woman. She might make a fine wife and mother, but I want to know her better.”

  Mrs. Forsythe was beaming at him. “I’ve never given up hope on you, Roy. Maybe you’re finally on the right track. Now get back to your Michelle. She sounded awfully anxious.”