Free Best Friends by Thomas Berger Page A

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.
    â€œGuess 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.
    â€œYeah,” 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?”
    â€œThe 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.”
    â€œIs that correct: Loois, not Looey?”
    â€œThe 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.”
    â€œThat’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.”
    â€œOf 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.
    â€œYou’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