Best Friends Read Free

hands to fend off the stein, though he had not moved physically toward her. “Are those china plugs necessary?” she asked, staring at the bottle. “Would metal really change the taste?”
    â€œAbsolutely!” Sam affirmed. “Not to mention the ecological factor. Metal caps are thrown away. I bet you wouldn’t even mind cans.” All this was good-humored. Kristin did not care much for any kind of beer, except for the Berliner Weisse that Sam brought home once, but that was a sourish product customarily sweetened in the glass with raspberry syrup, and not finally real beer.
    Kristin pointed at Roy. “Refill our guest.”
    â€œI already did so while you two were talking cars.”
    Roy lifted his stein and, with an idea of maintaining his new rapport with Kristin, smacked his lips and said, “I’m picking up the hint of hazelnut.”
    But she turned coolly away.
    â€œOh, screw you,” said Sam. “You and your Alvis. Are you making up that name? Remember, I’ve known you when. I can still recall some of those fake models you invented when we were young punks: the Crap-mobile, the Pussycafé.”
    Kristin returned with a smile.
    â€œI was young,” Roy told her with upturned palms. To Sam he said, “They used to race Alvises in England in the twenties. This one’s a three-liter drophead coupé, made in the Coventry works in fifty-four. Only two owners. We’ve got the provenance.”
    â€œBoth little old ladies,” Sam said. “Drove it only to church teas, hot scones in baskets on the back seat, clotted double-Devonshire cream, gooseberry jam.” He kissed the air.
    â€œI’m going to the kitchen,” said Kristin.
    It was after she left the room that Roy decided her clothes were the product of more than good taste. She wore them well, in bearing and stride. Today the colors were a perfectly coordinated lime green and olive. But he could not believe her apparently better opinion of him was permanent. It was probably not natural for a wife really to like a husband’s best friend, or vice versa. There was a normal rivalry that had no homosexual reference. However, speaking for the man, or at least himself, the reverse resentment, if it existed at all, was much weaker. He had no problem with Kristin.
    The meal she made, in little more than an hour, was superb as usual: salmon fillets on a bed of potatoes sliced paper-thin, under julienned fennel, carrots, and kalamata olives, inside little hobo bags of parchment paper, tied with scallion strands. Of the selections of wines Roy had brought, the Sonoma-Cutrer Russian River Ranches Chardonnay was righteous, though Sam stubbornly, maybe even perversely, stuck to the same boutique ale despite its treacly-sweetness, not at all suited to the fish at hand. Today he seemed to be the one defiant of Roy.
    The cognac he produced later on, however, had been an earlier gift of his best friend, and it was Kristin who declined that, as well as any help with the cleanup. She became even somewhat irritated when Roy’s offer seemed too insistent, so he lost the advantage gained by the Alvis, the subject of which had occupied some of the dinner conversation, along with other of his exotic wares such as the Aston Martin DB-1 that won at Le Mans in 1959 and a customized 1940 Packard that had supposedly been owned by the bygone movie star Errol Flynn, a claim made by the previous owner, which Roy frankly doubted because it could not be confirmed by any paper trail.
    â€œWe certainly wouldn’t pay what he was asking.”
    Kristin sympathetically nodded her sleek blonde head, money being her profession.
    But Sam, no doubt grateful for a possible diversion from motor vehicles, asked, “Wasn’t Flynn supposed to be quite the lech? Raping young girls, and so on? Still, Casablanca is a great picture.”
    â€œErrol Flynn wasn’t in it,” said Kristin.
    Sam groaned.