Christine (31 page)

“She said that she would rather have had me in diapers until I was three than have had me do that. Because, she said, shit wipes off.” Arnie smiled. “You flush it away and it's gone.”

“The way Moochie Welch is gone?” Junkins asked.

“I know nothing about that.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Scout's honor?” Junkins asked. The question was humorous but the eyes were not; they probed at Arnie, looking for the smallest break, a crucial flicker.

Down the aisle, the fellow who had been putting on his winter snows dropped a tool on the concrete. It clanged musically and the fellow chanted, almost chorally, “Oh shit on you, you whore.”

Junkins and Arnie both glanced that way briefly, and the moment was broken.

“Sure, Scout's honor,” Arnie said. “Look, I suppose you have to do this, it's your job—”

“Sure it's my job,” Junkins agreed softly. “The boy was run over three times each way. He was meat. They scraped him up with a shovel.”

“Come on,” Arnie said sickly. His stomach did a lazy barrel roll.

“Why? Isn't that what you're supposed to do with shit? Scrape it up with a shovel?”

“I had nothing to do with it!”
Arnie cried, and the man across the way, who had been tinkering with his muffler, looked up, startled.

Arnie lowered his voice.

“I'm sorry. I just wish you'd leave me alone. You know damn well I didn't have anything to do with it. You just went over the whole car. If Christine had hit that Welch kid that many times and that hard, it would be all busted up. I know that much just from watching TV. And when I was taking Auto Shop I two years ago, Mr. Smolnack said that the two best ways he knew to totally destroy a car's front end was to either hit a deer or a person. He was joking a little, but he wasn't kidding . . . if you know what I mean.” Arnie swallowed and heard a click in his throat, which was very dry.

“Sure,” Junkins said. “Your car looks all right. But you don't, kid. You look like a sleepwalker. You look absolutely fucked over. Pardon my French.” He flicked his cigarette away. “You know something, Arnie?”

“What?”

“I think you're lying faster than a horse can trot.” He slapped Christine's hood. “Or maybe I should say faster than a Plymouth can run.”

Arnie looked at him, his hand on the outside mirror on the passenger side. He said nothing.

“I don't think you're lying about killing the Welch boy. But I think you're lying about what they did to your car; your girl said they mashed the crap out of it, and she's a hell of a lot more convincing than you are. She cried while she told me. She said there was broken glass everywhere. . . . Where did you buy replacement glass, by the way?”

“McConnell's,” Arnie said promptly. “In the Burg.”

“Still got the receipt?”

“Tossed it out.”

“But they'll remember you. Big order like that.”

“They might,” Arnie said, “but I wouldn't count on it, Rudy. They're the biggest auto-glass specialists west of New York and east of Chicago. That covers a lot of ground. They do yea business, and a lot of it's old cars.”

“Still, they'll have the paperwork.”

“I paid cash.”

“But your name will be on the invoice.”

“No,” Arnie said, and smiled a wintry smile. “Darnell's Do-It-Yourself Garage. That way I got a ten percent discount.”

“You got it all covered, don't you?”

“Lieutenant Junkins—”

“You're lying about the glass too, although I'll be goddamned if I know why.”

“You'd think Christ was lying on Calvary, that's what I think,” Arnie said angrily. “Since when is it a crime to buy replacement glass if someone busts up your windows? Or pay cash? Or get a discount?”

“Since never,” Junkins said.

“Then leave me be.”

“More important, I think you're lying about not knowing anything about what happened to the Welch boy. You know something. I want to know what.”

“I don't know anything,” Arnie said.

“What about—”

“I don't have anything more to say to you,” Arnie said. “I'm sorry.”

“All right,” Junkins said, giving up so quickly that Arnie was immediately suspicious. He rummaged around in the sportcoat he was wearing under his topcoat and took out his wallet. Arnie saw that Junkins was carrying a gun in a shoulder holster and suspected Junkins had wanted him to see it. He produced a card and gave it to Arnie. “I can be reached at either of those numbers. If you want to talk about anything. Anything at all.”

Arnie put the card in his breast pocket.

Junkins took one more leisurely stroll around Christine. “Hell of a restoration job,” he repeated. He looked squarely at Arnie. “Why didn't you report it?”

Arnie let out a low shuddering sigh. “Because I thought that would be the end,” he said. “I thought they'd let off.”

“Yeah,” Junkins said. “I thought that might be it. Good night, son.”

“Good night.”

Junkins started away, turned, came back. “Think it over,” he said. “You really do look like hell, you know what I mean? You have a nice girl there. She's worried about you, and she feels bad about what happened to your car. Your dad's worried about you, too. I could get that even over the phone. Think it over and then give me a call, son. You'll sleep better.”

Arnie felt something trembling behind his lips, something small and tearful, something that hurt. Junkins's brown eyes were kind. He opened his mouth—God alone knew what might have spilled out—and then a monstrous jab of pain walloped him in the back, making him straighten suddenly. It also had the effect of a slap on a hysteric. He felt calmer, clear-headed again.

“Good night,” he repeated. “Good night, Rudy.”

Junkins looked at him a moment longer, troubled, and then left.

Arnie began to shake all over. The trembling started in his hands and spread up his forearms to his elbows, and then it was suddenly everywhere. He grabbed blindly for the doorhandle, found it at last, and slipped into Christine, into the comforting smells of car and fresh upholstery. He turned the key to acc, the idiot lights glowed, and he felt for the radio dial.

As he did so his eyes fell on the swinging leather tab with r.d.l. branded into it and his dream recurred with sudden terrible force: the rotting corpse sitting where he was sitting now; the empty eyesockets staring out through the windshield; the fingerbones gripping the wheel; the empty grin of the skull's teeth as Christine bore down on Moochie Welch while the radio, tuned to WDIL, played “Last Kiss” by J. Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers.

He suddenly felt sick—puking-sick. Nausea fluttered sickeningly in his stomach and in the back of his throat. Arnie scrambled out of the car and ran for the head, his footfalls hammering crazily in his ears. He just made it. Everything came up; he vomited again and again until there was nothing left but sour spit. Lights danced in front of his eyes. His ears rang and the muscles in his gut throbbed tiredly.

He looked at his pale, harried face in the spotty mirror, at the dark circles under his eyes and the lank spill of hair across his forehead. Junkins was right. He looked like hell.

But his pimples were all gone.

He laughed crazily. He wouldn't give Christine up, no matter what. That was the one thing he wouldn't do. He—

And suddenly he had to do it again, only there was nothing left to come up: only ripping, clenching dry-heaves and that electric taste of spit in his mouth again.

He had to talk to Leigh. Quite suddenly he had to talk to Leigh.

• • •

He let himself into Will's office, where the only sound was the thump of the time clock bolted on the wall turning up fresh minutes. He dialled the Cabots' number from memory but miscued twice because his fingers were trembling so badly.

Leigh herself answered, her voice sounding sleepy.

“Arnie?”

“I have to talk to you, Leigh. I have to see you.”

“Arnie, it's almost ten o'clock. I just got out of the shower and into bed . . . I was almost asleep. . ..”

“Please,” he said, and shut his eyes.

“Tomorrow,” she said. “It can't be tonight, my folks wouldn't let me out so late—”

“It's only ten. And it's Friday.”

“They really don't want me to see so much of you, Arnie. They liked you at first, and my dad still does . . . but they both think you've gotten a little spooky.” There was a long, long pause at Leigh's end. “I think you have, too,” she said finally.

“Does that mean you don't want to see me anymore?” he asked dully. His stomach hurt, his back hurt, everything hurt.

“No.” Now the faintest reproach crept into her voice. “I was kind of getting the idea that
you
didn't want to see
me
. . . not at school, and nights you're always down there at the garage. Working on your car.”

“That's all done,” he said. And then, with a monstrous effort: “It's the car I want to—
oww, goddammit!”
He grabbed at his back, where there had been another huge bolt of pain, and got only a handful of back brace.

“Arnie?” She was alarmed. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah. I had a twinge in my back.”

“What were you going to say?”

“Tomorrow,” he said. “We'll drive over to Baskin-Robbins and have an ice cream and maybe do some Christmas shopping and have some supper and I'll have you home by seven. And I won't be weird. I promise.”

She laughed a little, and Arnie felt a great, sweeping relief. It was like balm. “You dummy.”

“Does that mean okay?”

“Yes, it means okay.” Leigh paused and then said softly, “I said my parents didn't want me to see so much of you. I didn't say I wanted that.”

“Thanks,” he said, struggling to keep his voice steady. “Thanks for that.”

“What do you want to talk to me about?”

Christine. I want to talk to you about her—and about my dreams. And about why I look like hell. And why I always want to listen to WDIL now, and about what I did that night after everyone was gone . . . the night I hurt my back. Oh Leigh I want—

Another slash of pain up his back like cat's claws.

“I think we just talked about it,” he said.

“Oh.” A slight, warm pause. “Good.”

“Leigh?”

“Umm.”

“There'll be more time now. I promise. All the time you want.” And thought:
Because now, with Dennis in the hospital, you're all that
's left, all that's left between me . . . me and. . .

“That's good,” Leigh said.

“I love you.”

“Goodbye, Arnie.”

Say it back!
he wanted to shout suddenly.
Say it back, I need you to say it back!

But there was only the click of the phone in his ear.

He sat behind Will's desk for a long time, head lowered, getting hold of himself. She didn't need to say it back every time he said it to her, did she? He didn't need reassurance that badly, did he? Did he?

Arnie got up and went to the door. She was coming out with him tomorrow, that was the important thing. They would do the Christmas shopping they had been planning on the day those shitters trashed Christine; they would walk and talk, they would have a good time. She would say she loved him.

“She'll say it,” he whispered, standing in the doorway, but halfway down the left-hand side of the garage Christine sat like a mute and stupid denial, her grille poking forward as if hunting something.

And the voice whispered out of his lower consciousness, the dark questioning voice:
How did you hurt your back? How did you hurt your back? How did you hurt your back, Arnie?

It was a question he shrank from. He was afraid of the answer.

34

Leigh and Christine

It was a gray day, threatening snow, but Arnie was right on both counts—they had a good time and he wasn't weird. Mrs. Cabot had been at home when Arnie got there, and her initial reception was cool. But it was a long time—perhaps twenty minutes—before Leigh came downstairs, wearing a caramel-colored sweater that clung lovingly to her breasts and a new pair of cranberry-colored slacks that clung lovingly to her hips. This inexplicable lateness in a girl who was almost always perfectly on time might have been on purpose. Arnie asked her later and Leigh denied it with an innocence that was perhaps just a little too wide-eyed, but in any case it served its purpose.

Arnie could be charming when he had to be, and he went to work on Mrs. Cabot with a will. Before Leigh finally came bouncing downstairs, twisting her hair into a ponytail, Mrs. Cabot had thawed. She had gotten Arnie a Pepsi-Cola and was listening raptly as he regaled her with tales of the chess club.

“It's the only
civilized
extra-curricular activity I've ever heard of,” she told Leigh, and smiled approvingly at Arnie.

“BORRRRR-ing,”
Leigh trumpeted. She put an arm around Arnie's waist and smacked him loudly on the cheek.

“Leigh
Cabot!”

“Sorry, Mums, but he looks cute in lipstick, doesn't he? Wait a minute, Arnie, I've got a Kleenex. Don't
claw
at it.”

She dug in her purse for a tissue. Arnie looked at Mrs. Cabot and rolled his eyes. Natalie Cabot put a hand to her mouth and giggled. The
rapprochement
between her and Arnie was complete.

Arnie and Leigh went to Baskin-Robbins, where an initial awkwardness, left over from the phone conversation of the night before, finally melted away. Arnie had had a vague fear that Christine would not run well, or that Leigh would find something nasty to say about her; she had never liked riding in his car. Both were needless worries. Christine ran like a fine Swiss watch, and the only things Leigh had to say about her rang of pleasure and amazement.

“I never would have believed it,” she said as they drove out of the ice-cream parlor's small parking lot and joined the flow of traffic headed toward the Monroeville Mall. “You must have worked like a dog.”

“It wasn't as bad as it probably looked to you,” Arnie said. “Mind some music?”

“No, of course not.”

Arnie turned on the radio—The Silhouettes were kip-kipping and boom-booming through “Get a Job.” Leigh made a face. “DIL, yuck. Can I change it?”

“Be my guest.”

Leigh switched it to a Pittsburgh rock station and got Billy Joel. “You may be right,” Billy admitted cheerfully, “I may be crazy.” This was followed by Billy telling his girl Virginia that Catholic girls started much too late—it was the Block Party Weekend.
Now,
Arnie thought.
Now she'll start to hitch . . . back off . . . something.
But Christine only went rolling along.

The mall was thronged with hectic but mostly goodnatured shoppers; the last frantic and sometimes ugly Christmas rush was better than two weeks off. The Yuletide spirit was still new enough to be novel, and it was possible to look at the tinsel strung through the wide mall hallways without feeling sour and Ebenezer Scroogey. The steady ringing of the Salvation Army Santas' bells had not yet become a guilty annoyance; they still chanted good tidings and good will rather than the monotonous, metallic chant of
The poor have no Christmas the poor have no Christmas the poor have no Christmas
that Arnie always seemed to hear as the day grew closer and both the shopgirls and the Salvation Army Santas grew more harried and hollow-eyed.

They held hands until the parcels grew too many for that, and then Arnie complained goodnaturedly about how she was turning him into her beast of burden. As they were going down to the lower level and B. Dalton, where Arnie wanted to look for a book on toy-making for Dennis Guilder's old man, Leigh noticed that it had begun to snow. They stood for a moment at the window of the glassed-in stairwell, looking out like children. Arnie took her hand and Leigh looked at him, smiling. He could smell her skin, clean and a bit soapy; he could smell the fragrance of her hair. He moved his head forward a bit; she moved hers a bit toward him. They kissed lightly and she squeezed his hand. Later, after the bookstore, they stood above the rink in the center of the mall, watching the skaters as they dipped and pirouetted and swooped to the sound of Christmas carols.

It was a very good day right up until the moment that Leigh Cabot almost died.

• • •

She almost surely would have died, if not for the hitchhiker. They had been on their way back then, and an early December twilight had long since turned to snowy dark. Christine, surefooted as usual, purred easily through the four inches of fresh light powder.

Arnie had made a reservation for an early dinner at the British Lion Steak House, Libertyville's only really good restaurant, but the time had gotten away from them and they had agreed on a quick to-go meal from the McDonald's on JFK Drive. Leigh had promised her mother she would be in by eight-thirty because the Cabots were “having friends in,” and it had been quarter of eight when they left the mall.

“Just as well,” Arnie said. “I'm damn near broke anyway.”

The headlights picked out the hitchhiker standing at the intersection of Route 17 and JFK Drive, still five miles outside of Libertyville. His black hair was shoulder-length, speckled with snow, and there was a duffel-bag between his feet.

As they approached him, the hitchhiker held up a sign painted with Day-Glo letters. It read:
LIBERTYVILLE, PA
. As they drew closer, he flipped it over. The other side read:
NON-PSYCHO COLLEGE STUDENT
.

Leigh burst out laughing. “Let's give him a ride, Arnie.”

Arnie said, “When they go out of their way to advertise their non-psychotic status, that's when you got to look out. But okay.” He pulled over. That evening he would have tried to catch the moon in a bushel basket if Leigh had asked him to give it a shot.

Christine rolled smoothly to the verge of the road, tires barely slipping. But as they stopped, static blared across the radio, which had been playing some hard rock tune, and when the static cleared, there was the Big Bopper, singing “Chantilly Lace.”

“What happened to the Block Party Weekend?” Leigh asked as the hitchhiker ran toward them.

“I don't know,” Arnie said, but he knew. It had happened before. Sometimes all that Christine's radio would pick up was WDIL. It didn't matter what buttons you pushed or how much you fooled with the FM converter under the dashboard; it was WDIL or nothing.

He suddenly felt that stopping for the hitchhiker had been a mistake.

But it was too late for second thoughts now; the fellow had opened one of Christine's rear doors, tossed his duffel-bag onto the floor, and slipped in after it. A blast of cold air and a swirl of snow came in with him.

“Ah, man, thanks.” He sighed. “My fingers and toes all took off for Miami Beach about twenty minutes ago. They must have gone somewhere, anyway, cause I sure can't feel em anymore.”

“Thank my lady,” Arnie said shortly.

“Thank you, ma'am,” the hitchhiker said, tipping an invisible hat gallantly.

“Don't mention it,” Leigh said, and smiled. “Merry Christmas.”

“Same to you,” the hitchhiker said, “although you'd never know there was such a thing if you'd been standing out there trying to hook a ride tonight. People just breeze by and then they're gone.
Voom.”
He looked around appreciatively. “Nice car, man. Hell of a nice car.”

“Thanks,” Arnie said.

“You restore it yourself?”

“Yeah.”

Leigh was looking at Arnie, puzzled. His earlier expansive mood had been replaced by a curtness that was not like his usual self at all. On the radio, the Big Bopper finished and Richie Valens came on, doing “La Bamba.”

The hitchhiker shook his head and laughed. “First the Big Bopper, then Richie Valens. Must be death night on the radio. Good old WDIL.”

“What do you mean?” Leigh asked.

Arnie snapped the radio off. “They died in a plane crash. With Buddy Holly.”

“Oh,” Leigh said in a small voice.

Perhaps the hitchhiker also sensed the change in Arnie's mood; he fell silent and meditative in the back seat. Outside, the snow began to fall faster and harder. The first good storm of the season had come in.

At length, the golden arches twinkled up out of the snow.

“Do you want me to go in, Arnie?” Leigh asked. Arnie had gone nearly as quiet as stone, turning aside her bright attempts at conversation with mere grunts.

“I will,” he said, and pulled in. “What do you want?”

“Just a hamburger and french fries, please.” She had intended to go the whole hog—Big Mac, shake, even the cookies—but her appetite seemed to have shrunk away to nothing.

Arnie parked. In the yellow light flaring from the squat brick building's undersides, his face looked jaundiced and somehow diseased. He turned around, arm trailing over the seat. “Can I grab you something?”

“No thanks,” the hitchhiker said. “Folks'll be waiting supper. Can't disappoint my mom. She kills the fatted calf every time I come h—”

The chunk of door cut off his final word. Arnie had gotten out and was headed briskly across to the in door, his boots kicking up little puffs of new snow.

“Is he always that cheery?” the hitchhiker asked. “Or does he get sorta taciturn sometimes?”

“He's very sweet,” Leigh said firmly. She was suddenly nervous. Arnie had turned off the engine and taken the keys, and she was left alone with this stranger in the back seat. She could see him in the rearview mirror, and suddenly his long black hair, tangled by the wind, his scruff of beard, and his dark eyes made him seem Manson-like and wild.

“Where do you go to school?” she asked. Her fingers were plucking at her slacks, and she made them stop.

“Pitt,” the hitchhiker said, and no more. His eyes met hers in the mirror, and Leigh dropped hers hastily to her lap. Cranberry-red slacks. She had worn them because Arnie had once told her he liked them—probably because they were the tightest pair she owned, even tighter than her Levi's. She suddenly wished she had worn something else, something that could be considered provocative by no stretch of the imagination: a grain-sack, maybe. She tried to smile—it was a funny thought, all right, a grain-sack, get it, ha-ha-ho-ho, wotta knee-slapper—but no smile came. There was no way she could keep from admitting it to herself: Arnie had left her alone with this stranger (as punishment? it had been her idea to pick him up), and now she was scared.

“Bad vibes,” the hitchhiker said suddenly, making her actually catch her breath. His words were flat and final. She could see Arnie through the plate-glass window, standing fifth or sixth in line. He wouldn't get up to the counter for a while. She found herself imagining the hitchhiker suddenly clamping his gloved hands around her throat. Of course she could reach the horn-ring—but would the horn sound? She found herself doubting it for no sane reason at all. She found herself thinking she could hit the horn ninety-nine times and it would honk satisfyingly. But if, on the hundredth, she was being strangled by this hitchhiker on whose behalf she had interceded, the horn wouldn't blow. Because . . . because Christine didn't like her. In fact, she believed that Christine hated her guts. It was as simple as that. Crazy but simple.

“P-Pardon me?” She glanced back in the rearview mirror and was immeasurably relieved to see that the hitchhiker wasn't looking at her at all; he was glancing around the car. He touched the seat cover with his palm, then lightly brushed the roof upholstery with the tips of his fingers.

“Bad vibes,” he said, and shook his head. “This car, I don't know why, but I get bad vibes.”

“Do you?” she asked, hoping her voice sounded neutral.

“Yeah. I got stuck in an elevator once when I was a little kid. Ever since then I get attacks of claustrophobia. I never had one in a car before, but boy, I got one now. In the worst way. I think you could light a kitchen match on my tongue, that's how dry my mouth is.”

He laughed a short, embarrassed laugh.

“If I wasn't already so late, I'd just get out and walk. No offense to you or your guy's car,” he added hastily, and when Leigh looked back into the mirror his eyes did not seem wild at all, only nervous. Apparently he wasn't kidding about the claustrophobia, and he no longer looked like Charlie Manson to her at all. Leigh wondered how she could have been so stupid . . . except she knew how, and why. She knew perfectly well.

It was the car. All day long she had felt perfectly okay riding in Christine, but now her former nervousness and dislike were back. She had merely projected her feelings onto the hitchhiker because . . . well, because you could be scared and nervous about some guy you just picked up off the road, but it was insane to be scared by a car, an inanimate construct of steel and glass and plastic and chrome. That wasn't just a little eccentric, it was
insane.

“You don't smell anything, do you?” he asked abruptly.

“Smell anything?”

“A bad smell.”

“No, not at all.” Her fingers were plucking at the bottom of her sweater now, pulling off wisps of angora. Her heart was knocking unpleasantly in her chest. “It must be part of your claustrophobia whatzis.”

“I guess so.”

But she
could
smell it. Under the good new smells of leather and upholstery there was a faint odor: something like gone-over eggs. Just a whiff . . . a lingering whiff.

“Mind if I crank the window down a little?”