Christine, Page 30

  Junkins lit a cigarette. "Am I missing the point, Arnie? Because I don't see it yet."

  "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

  My baby drove up in a brand-new Cadillac,

  She said, "Hey, come here, Daddy,

  I ain't never comin back!"

  Baby, baby, won't you hear my plea?

  Come on, sugar, come on back to me!

  She said, "Balls to you, big daddy,

  I ain't never comin back!"

  --The Clash

  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.