The Best of Enemies Read Online Free PDF Page B

of the USSR? This enmity changed the face of Soviet politics. (Arguably not a net positive.) Better example—how much more skilled of a chess player was Kasparov after playing against Deep Blue? Or Ali and Frazier—their animosity forever upped the standards in boxing.
    Or what about Sammy Hagar against David Lee Roth?
    Perhaps Van Halen versus Van Hagar isn’t quite the same in terms of rivalry and competition, but some fortunate reporter at
Rolling Stone
wrote career-enhancing column inches on that particular battle of the bands.
    Documenting the conflict between enemies lights my fire. Gets me out of my sleeping bag in the morning. I wish I had a true and worthy nemesis, an Edison to my Tesla, a Jobs to my Gates, a Nixon to my Frost, driving me ever forward in the pursuit of being the best journalist I can be.
    Nope.
    Figures that the number one slot on my personal enemy list is Kitty “Flipping” Carricoe, a
girl
to the nth degree.
    Had I not hated her so much, I might not have been so eager to take my first overseas assignment. I should give her due credit for being so damned contemptible. If I hadn’t left the States, I’d have never embedded, thus I’d never have been nominated for a Pulitzer for international reporting or have written and sold my memoir
Girl O’War
. (Wasn’t keen on the title, but my editor insisted. After forty weeks on the
New York Times
bestseller list, I admit he was right.)
    I’m about to reply to Bobby when someone leans over his shoulder. The first thing I see is tanned cleavage, encased in a snug T-shirt featuring a beribboned, cartoon cat face. She plops down in Bobby’s lap, obscuring most of his face with her ample Hello, Kitty-covered rack.
    “Ohmigod, is that your sister?! Hi! Hi, hi, hi! I’m Melody, Bobby’s girlfriend!” she says. “I totes can’t wait to meet in person! He’s told me a scrillion things about you!”
    Bobby narrows his eyes. “Nope, not me, never said anything like that. In fact, Jack, I don’t like you. I don’t like you because you’re dangerous.”
    I reply, “That’s right, Iceman. I am dangerous.”
    Then he chomps at me Val Kilmer–style and we both crack up again.
    The best thing about my relationship with my brothers is the shorthand we’ve established over the decades. We don’t need a lot of words to connect with our shared history. One snap of my brother’s teeth brings forth the recollection of a hundred games of street hockey, long treks through the Skokie Lagoons, and sitting side by side on the old couch in the dusty family room, surrounded by a never-ending stream of fat Labrador retrievers, watching our favorite movie for the umpteenth time.
    And, if I delve deeper, which I’m not often wont to do, the wordless memory of how we were there for one another in the years after we lost our mother. Without her, we were unmoored, rattling around in our Saint Louis home like loose marbles in a box until my dad brought us together with what we considered the greatest movie ever made.
    Once we finally accepted she was gone forever, Dad took the job in Illinois, which was for the best. We couldn’t move past our loss in the old place. My mother was everywhere—in the bright pink flowers still lining the front walk, in the way her spicy perfume lingered in her closet long after it was emptied, in how every knickknack had been arranged just so. Moving to Evanston was how we excised her ghost.
    “I don’t get it,” Melody says, interrupting my reverie.
    “We’re quoting lines from
Top Gun
,” I explain, attempting to remain patient for Bobby’s sake. She seems puzzled, so I elaborate. “The movie? Came out in 1986?”
    She giggles. “Well, no wonder I’m confused! I wasn’t born until 1993!”
    Bobby’s expression turns plaintive and even though we’re seven thousand miles away, a single glance tells me he’s pleading for me to take it easy on this one. He must have a soft spot for her, too.
    “Wow,” I reply,