Best Friends Read Online Free Page A

spigots and stands almost three feet high. Seven hundred something. For three cups a day.”
    â€œ You don’t drink coffee, do you?” This was hardly news, and sounding the emphasis might be offensive—he was always worried about that possibility—but in fact it was apparently not so here, for she laughed almost carelessly. “I’m usually the joy-killer.”
    Maybe it was his imagination, but he heard some poignancy in this statement, the first he had ever identified in her. But also, on general principles, his heart went out to self-critics. “Don’t say that! It’s not true. You’ve brightened that guy’s life in every way. Take it from me.”
    â€œBut you’re his friend.”
    Roy found this seemingly straightforward assertion to be cryptic. It could mean anything from he was flattering her because her husband was ill to he was Sam’s lifelong comrade whereas she was only the wife of a few years. “I sure am,” he said. “That’s how I know.”
    He was reassured to hear her say, simply, “Thank you.”
    Â 
    Sam was probably a little paler than usual and, if assessed by the eyes alone, older than when last seen, but there had certainly not been time as yet for him to diminish in bulk by reason of the starvation diet of which he had complained instead of saying hi.
    He made the hospital bed, for all its attendant white and stainless-steel accessories, look smaller than it was. There was an incongruous white identification band on his thick hairy wrist.
    â€œNext time smuggle me some rations. I’ll really have a heart attack if I have to live long on the cat piss and bird poop they call food.”
    â€œYeah, a cheeseburger and a hot-fudge sundae,” said Roy, standing at the foot of the bed.
    â€œAlso a bottle of any decent double-malt Scotch.”
    â€œIf I know you, you mean it.” Roy shook his head. “Pathetic.” He located an enameled steel chair, drew it closer to the bed, and sat down. Sam was now considerably higher than he, a big dark head on the glaringly white pillow. “You’re worried about your coffee machine?”
    â€œI wondered if it got turned off before it exploded. I guess it did…. Maybe that thing’s bad luck. Kris really hates it. Want to take it off my hands?”
    â€œThe Stickerino?”
    Sam humorlessly corrected him. “The Stecchino. You won’t find a superior—”
    â€œSure,” Roy told him quickly, finding a lecture on specialty-coffee-making at odds in this setting, that peculiar hospital-stench in his nostrils. “I’ll get it tonight. I’ll leave a check with Kristin.”
    â€œNo! I don’t want her attention called to it. Just get it out of there before she comes home…. I’ll give you the code. You won’t have to write it down. It’s—”
    â€œWhat code?”
    â€œThe front door. Didn’t you ever notice? Well, I guess you aren’t supposed to. The keyhole’s for show, but it’s dead. The lock is controlled by the touchpad under the house-number plate, to the left of the door.”
    â€œI’ll be damned.”
    â€œYou won’t even have to write it down,” Sam repeated. “It’s my birth date, backward. Get it? Okay, you begin with five sixteen sixty-seven. You don’t just switch it to sixty-seven sixteen five. That’d be too easy for somebody to figure out. What you do is reverse the entire thing to seventy-six sixty-one five. ” He narrowed his eyes. “Got it?”
    Roy sighed. “I guess so.” Their birthdays were only ten days apart. For most of their lives they had celebrated in common, on a chosen day between May 5th and 15th. “But I hope you’re not telling me to go to your house and swipe the espresso machine while Kristin is at work.”
    â€œThat’s exactly what I’m asking you to do. She’ll