What is she saying? How much is true? I need to stop flying and land somewhere, but it will be a couple more hours before I can lower my gear and slow down enough to think.
“It’s a good thing she found you,” Julie continues. “First of all, because you’re sweet. And I’ll bet you can keep her off the coke and on the straight and narrow. She’s so much fun. Everybody loves her, but from a distance because she’s always on the edge, and to be honest, she’s running out of edges and domiciles. She transferred to New York after the last rehab thing, but then I heard she was based in Chicago for a while too. So when she came back to Dallas, everybody figured she’d burned through most of the route system. I guess she hoped she might have a few friends left here, but Jacqueline Deen is the only one who really seems to be there for her which is totally incredible since Jacqueline was burned by Amity almost worse than anybody. And now that it’s turned out like this, you and her, everybody is just rolling their eyes. It’s amazing how she makes things happen. She said, after Arlen, that when she married again, it would be for permanent financial security and that she wouldn’t fuck it up next time. And there she was, last week, at some party at a pilot’s house, telling everyone you’re inheriting land worth eighteen million and stocks worth twenty or whatever it was and oil wells worth another ten million. I’ll say this for her she always seems to land on her feet just before she lands on her ass. A word of warning.”
“Right.” I smile. I calmly hold the slot machine’s handle for support, stare at the last draw: two jokers and a lemon. Are the gods laughing at me? Does Amity have a secret past? Has she only been interested in permanent financial security all along? Never, never have I given her numbers. And though I haven’t looked at the will since I tucked it away with my important papers, Julie is close to being right on. Which means Amity is right on. How does she know? God, I’d gladly give her half of everything as long as she loves me and doesn’t expect it. I’m not an instrument. I don’t want to be played. “She and I are in this together,” I tell Julie as much as I tell myself. “We’re on the level with each other.” No matter what I say, I can’t fool myself the way I’m fooling Julie.
“You’re pretty cool, Harry,” Julie tells me. “Amity may have finally found the one person who can help her put it all together.”
She finishes her drink, turns to set it down, and falls off her stool. I jump down to help her. “Julie!”
She’s laughing so hard I can’t scrape her off the carpet. “I guess I’ve reached my limit,” she says into the carpet fibers.
“Me too,” I answer. “Me too.”
As I work the next day, I try to put the pieces together in my head. Randy said the lawsuit with the college professor yielded her a hundred thousand dollars. And Julie said she took away half a million dollars from the marriage to Arlen. I try to comfort myself by remembering that Amity told me all about these relationships, sparing no details. But the truth is, she told me about the professor and Arlen after I confronted her about them. And she falsely claimed that Arlen left her penniless. The financial numbers of my inheritance keep floating through my head. Amity must have gone through my private things while I was out flying and found my father’s will. Oh God, I can’t stomach the thought that she may be taking me for a ride, that perhaps she’s interested in my money more than she is me. I fall into the lavatory and throw up.
We lay over that afternoon in Los Angeles. At the pool, Julie,
myself, the other flight attendant, and the captain, a halfway cool guy from Cuba, soak in the sun, sipping mimosas. My body is slack, slightly wrecked from last night’s excess, and the champagne and orange juice take the edge off. We start chatting with a group of seven hard-core Eastern Airlines flight attendants. They order up more cheap champagne and orange juice. And soon we’re all soaked in mimosas as well as the sun.
I’m beginning to find out why Eastern’s crews are legendary radicals within the industry. These girls are rough. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to run into one in a dark aircraft aisle. At the moment, they’re trashing a bunch of Delta flight attendants across the pool, who shared the van ride from the airport to the hotel. After educating us about “those uppity bitches from Delta,” who never acknowledged the Eastern attendants during the ride, the Eastern women are fully worked up. They take their revenge.
“Hey, honey!” a hard Eastern stew with blond hair and black roots yells to a lily white Delta gal. “You’re going to blind us all!”
“Yeah,” her friend joins in, “you better lie under your towel!”
The Delta belle squirms in her chaise, flips a page in her magazine, pretends not to hear.
“Better yet, Snow White,” another Eastern gal yells, “why don’t you go choke on a poison apple!”
The Delta gal remains silent, but makes a sarcastic face, as if to say, very funny.
The toughest Eastern stew of all, the one with the precancerous tan, a slight gut, and a cigarette in her hand yells, “What’s the matter, honey? Captain got your tongue?”
“No way,” the black-rooted blond adds. “Those bitches are virgins, even the married ones.”
The third one joins back in. “The only warm pussy in her house is sitting on top of the refrigerator!”
I feel as if I’m watching some women’s prison B-flick from the 1950’ s.
The Delta gal leans over to her two flying partners and quietly whispers. Then the three of them giggle and look superior.
The cancer-tan stewardess yells, “Cunts!”
It’s like the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The Southern belles are completely annihilated, destroyed. They grab the scatterings of their magazines and diet Cokes and leave the pool.
The Eastern stews whistle and catcall them as they leave. Then they start telling jokes. They tell every tasteless joke of the week, and then one mentions she knows a great fudge-packer joke.
I’ve never heard the term before, but of course I know fudge packer means gay. Now what do I do? I’m supposed to be this burgeoning heterosexual sitting here with people from my airline, where everyone knows I’m engaged to Amity because she announced it into a microphone. Yes, I was flattered that night of the award ceremony, and I liked being accepted by the guys for all of five minutes, but now I’m wondering if the flattery from Amity is bullshit just like these homophobic faggot jokes. “Careful,” I say, “you’re sitting with a fudge packer.”
The Eastern girls look at me with interest. They don’t know whether to respect me or rip me a new faggot asshole.
“You’re gay?” the captain says. “I thought you were engaged t”
to Amity 5tone.
“Yes,” I say confidently, “I am.”
“Engaged or gay?” the precancerous gal asks, too interested for my comfort.
“Both,” I answer matter-of-factly. “My fiancee and I love each other and understand each other. We have no secrets.”
Julie looks at me, sips her mimosa, gives me the thumbs up. “It’s a modern fucking world,” the melanoma model blurts.
The other Eastern gals decide to respect me. “I guess I won’t tell my joke then,” the original perpetrator says.
But the party soon breaks up. I’ve brought too much honesty to
the table. The Eastern gals call it a day. They grab their stuff, give us their awkward, seldom used polite respects, and leave.
Why is my truth the one that breaks up the party? If I’m a liar and pretend I’m one of them and let them make fun of people like me, everything will be jolly. But I know I’ll die a little inside if I do. I hate that other people, even my mother and father, would rather I live a straight life, so they can be more comfortable. It’s asking too much. And now look where it’s gotten me. There’s a chance I’m engaged to someone I don’t even know.
Back in Dallas, my phone is ringing as I walk through the door. I’m exhausted, my uniform stinks of cigarette smoke, it’s late evening, and I still haven’t eaten dinner. But I have a feeling it may be Nicolo, so I pick up the receiver and say hello. It’s Amity. She’s whispering and sounds desperate.
“Harry, it’s your girl. Please pick up! Hart’y, your girl needs you!”
Amity tells me to get into my car and come get her at Kim’s. She’s frantic. I say I’ll be right there. She can’t remember the exact street or even the house number. “I don’t know! I don’t know! It’s something circle or court! Just come get me!” She’s almost crying now. Is this part of some scheme? Is she polishing my ego by making me feel like the white knight who rescues his damsel in distress? Whatever the case, I’d never forgive myself if she was truly in trouble and I wasn’t there to help her. I tell her I’ll come right away.
In my dented BMW, I jettison onto the Tollway and try to flash back to when I went to the condo with Kim and Amity. Intuition tells me when to exit. Then a right. And another right. Somehow I do find it, and as I pull up, Amity comes running out, her purse falling off her shoulder. Before I can even get out, she rushes around and jumps into the passenger seat.
“Go! Just go!”
I take off. “Amity, what the hell is going on?”
She’s not crying, and she doesn’t look as if she’s been hit or anything, but her blouse is torn and she’s shaking like an epileptic. “He’s lost it, Harry. He’s been on a cocaine hinge for days.” Dies. “I don’t think he’s had anything to eat. It was becoming a bad situation, Harry. He’s threatening to kill his wife’s lawyer. He keeps waving that gun around.”
“Jesus Christ, Amity,” I gasp. “Is it loaded?”
“Hell, yes. He shot out part of the chandelier. That’s why we’ve got to get out of here before the police come.”
“How long has this been going on?”
“Just a couple days, babe.” She’s grinding her teeth. She pulls the sun visor down and inspects herself in the vanity mirror, but it’s dark in the car, and even in the lighted mirror she obviously doesn’t see the coke on the side of her nose and upper lip.
I reach over and wipe it off. “A couple days? Shit, you should have gotten the hell out of there before now, Amity.”
“I’m just so sorry, babe. Kim was going to be our opportunity to so many things.”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. She’s apologizing for losing our meal ticket the one with the coke problem and the gun. The one who ought to be locked in a cage at the animal shelter with a sign that says, KOREAN PUSS HOt ND And she’s insinuating that my inheritance wouldn’t be enough. She’ll have access to millions and it still won’t be enough? Is everything Julie said true? Now isn’t the time to get into it. She’s too strung out. And I’m not sure how I want to approach it I have no intention of playing my cards until I’m completely aware of the hand I’m holding. “Don’t worry about it, Amity,” I say. “We have jobs. We can pay the rent. Let’s just go home.”
On the way I stop for moo goo gai pan, hoping some food might straighten her up. Amity waits in the car while I run into the restaurant and get the food. When I return to the car, she’s acting as if it’s a different day. She’s totally calm. The dome light is on,
and she’s repairing a chipped nail with her little bottle of nail glue. “Ready, babe?” she asks in an almost breezy tone.
I look at her sideways. She’s acting as if we’re out for a pleasure drive. I don’t say anything. Now I’m freaked a little. Her mood swing is so faultless. We get home, and she puts on a Sade album and fires up a joint. After taking a toke, she offers it to me. I pass. She sings along with the ever mellow Sade.
“Amity, we’ve got to make some changes,” I tell her, standing in the kitchen.
She stops singing, looks attentive. “Yes, babe?”
As I empty the Chinese food on plates, I look at the picture of the two of us having dinner at the country club in Kansas. It’s stuck to the refrigerator by a magnet. Amity put it there after my mom sent it in the mail with a letter to us both. My mother no longer writes just to me, but to Amity and me. It’s something she’s never done with any of my boyfriends. “There’s too much going on. We’ we got to simplify things here,” I tell her. I’m rational, collected. “There’re the waiters, and you’ve got some new mystery guy calling. I’ve been hearing him on the machine. And there’s me. And there’s Kim. I think we need to figure some of this out.”
She tilts her head and softens, relaxes. “Harry, you just tell me what you want me to do, and I’ll do it.”
Too easy, much too easy. Why haven’t I noticed this before? How fucking stupid can I be? It’s all I can do to keep my mouth shut about what Julie said. Still, something tells me to play it cool until I get some backup on the whole thing, truly understand where she’s coming from. “You know, Amity, you say it’s just you and me. Well, it seems like there’s an awful lot of other people involved.”
“Babe, if you just want it to be you and me, then it’s you and me.” ‘
I need to buy myself some time, steer Amity away from the cocaine and get her into a mental state that’s workable. What I
need is to get the gun-toting Korean out of the picture. “Why don’t you stick to me and Thomas for the moment, huh? Do you really need this Kim guy?”
“Of course not, Harry. Anything you say.”
Still too easy. It gives me a terrible feeling. “Hand me that fortune cookie,” I prod.
She picks it up, breaks it open herself, and reads, ” “You will be happily married and wealthy beyond your wildest dreams!” “
She hands me the crumbs.
That night, I tell her I have a bad headache and I think I’ll sleep alone in my own room. When I’m sure she’s asleep, I slowly leave my bed and go into my closet, where my little portable file box is. I open it and sift through until I find the will the will that is washed in the slight scent of Amity’s perfume. A dead giveaway. She’s been here, all right. And Julie’s dictation of the financial figures are almost dead on.
I’m a fool. A total idiot. I’m so stupid I can’t even look at the current condition of my BMW and see that the ride I’m being taken for is radically off road. And Amity has been in the driver’s seat from the beginning. I’m enraged that she’s been playing me for a fool. My ego is bruised and I’m angry she thinks I’m stupid enough to stay in the car while she heads at 120 mph for a sharp curve on which my door will open and she’ll push me out. I should go into her room right now and confront her about everything. But I’m not. It’s a game, now, and I’m a player.