Christine, Page 54

  I almost told him, but it was cold in the telephone booth and my leg was starting to ache again, and that answer would have led to other questions, dozens of them. And even then the only final result might be a flat refusal to believe.

  "Michael, listen," I said, speaking with all the deliberateness I could summon. For one weird moment I felt like Mister Rogers on TV. A big car from the 1950s is coming to eat you up, boys and girls . . . Can you say Christine? I knew you could! "You've got to call my father and Leigh's father. Have both families get together at Leigh's house." I was thinking of brick, good solid brick. "I think maybe you ought to go too, Michael. All of you stay together until Leigh and I get there or until I call. But you tell them for Leigh and me: They're not to go outside after"--I calculated: If Arnie and Regina left the high school at two, how long before his alibi would be cast-iron-watertight?--"after four o'clock this afternoon. After four, none of you go out on the street. Any street. Under no circumstances."

  "Dennis, I can't just--"

  "You have to," I said. "You'll be able to convince my old man, and between the two of you, you should be able to convince Mr. and Mrs. Cabot. And stay away from Christine yourself, Michael."

  "They're leaving right from school," Michael said. "He said the car would be all right in the school parking lot."

  I could hear it in his voice again--his knowledge of the lie. After what had happened last fall, Arnie would no more leave Christine in a public parking lot than he would show up in Calc class naked.

  "Uh-huh," I said. "But if you should happen to look out the window and see her in the driveway anyhow, stay clear. Do you understand?"

  "Yes, but--"

  "Call my father first. Promise me."

  "All right, I promise . . . but Dennis--"

  "Thank you, Michael."

  I hung up. My hands and feet were numb with the cold, but my forehead was slick with sweat. I pushed the door of the phone booth open with the tip of one crutch and worked my way back to Petunia.

  "What did he say?" Leigh asked. "Did he promise?"

  "Yes," I said. "He promised, and my dad will see that they get together. I'm pretty sure of that. If Christine goes for anyone tonight, it will have to be us."

  "All right," she said. "Good."

  I threw Petunia into gear, and we rumbled away. The stage was set-- as well as I could set it, anyway--and now there was really nothing to do but wait and see what would come.

  We drove across town to Darnell's Garage through steady light snow, and I pulled into the parking lot at just past one that afternoon. The long, rambling building with its corrugated-steel sides was totally deserted, and Petunia's belly-high wheels cut through deep, unplowed snow to stop in front of the main door. The signs bolted to that door were the same as they had been on that long-ago August evening when Arnie first drove Christine there--SAVE MONEY! YOUR KNOW-HOW, OUR TOOLS! Garage Space Rented by the Week, Month, or Year, and HONK FOR ENTRY--but the only one that really meant anything was the new one leaning in the darkened office window: CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. Sitting in one corner of the snowy front lot was an old crumpled Mustang, one of the real door-suckers from the '60s. Now it sat silent and broody under a shroud of snow.

  "It's creepy," Leigh said in a low voice.

  "Yeah. It sure is." I gave her the keys I'd made at the Western Auto that morning. "One of these will do it."

  She took the keys, got out, and walked over to the door. I kept an eye in both rearview mirrors while she. fumbled at the lock, but we didn't seem to be attracting any undue attention. I suppose there is a certain psychology involved in seeing such a big, conspicuous vehicle--it makes the idea of something clandestine or illegal harder to swallow.

  Leigh suddenly tugged hard on the door, stood up, tugged again, and then came back to the truck. "I got the key to turn, but I can't get the door up," she said. "I think it's frozen to the ground or something."

  Great, I thought. Wonderful. None of this was going to come easily.

  "Dennis, I'm sorry," she said, seeing it on my face.

  "No, it's all right," I said. I opened the driver's door and performed another of my comical sliding exits.

  "Be careful," she said anxiously, walking beside me with her arm around my waist as I crutched carefully through the snow to the door. "Remember your leg."

  "Yes, Mother," I said, grinning a little. I stood in profile to the door when I got there so I could bend down to the right and keep my weight off my bad leg. Bent over in the snow, left leg in the air, left hand holding onto my crutches, right hand grasping the roll-up door's handle, I must have looked like a circus contortionist. I pulled and felt the door give a little . . . but not quite enough. She was right; it had iced up pretty good along the bottom. You could hear it crackling.

  "Grab on and help me," I said.

  Leigh placed both of her hands over my right hand and we pulled together. That crackling sound became a little louder, but still the ice wouldn't quite give up its grip on the foot of the door.

  "We've almost got it," I said. My right leg was throbbing unpleasantly, and sweat was running down my cheeks. "I'll count. On three, give it all you've got. Okay?"

  "Yes," she said.

  "One . . . two . . . three!"

  What happened was the door came free of the ice all at once, with absurd, deadly ease. It flew upward on its tracks, and I stumbled backward, my crutches flying. My left leg folded underneath me and I landed on it. The deep snow cushioned the fall somewhat, but I still felt the pain in a kind of silver bolt that seemed to ram upward from my thigh all the way to my temples and back down again. I clenched my teeth over a scream, barely keeping it in, and then Leigh was on her knees in the snow beside me, her arm around my shoulders.

  "Dennis! Are you all right?"

  "Help me up."

  She had to do most of the pulling, and both of us were gasping like winded runners by the time I was on my feet again with my crutches propped under me. Now I really needed them. My left leg was in agony.

  "Dennis, you won't be able to work the clutch in that truck now--"

  "Yeah, I will. Help me back, Leigh."

  "You're as white as a ghost. I think we ought to get you to a doctor."

  "No. Help me back."

  "Dennis--"

  "Leigh, help me back!"

  We inched our way back to Petunia through the snow, leaving shuffling, troubled tracks in the snow behind us. I reached up, laid hold of the steering wheel, and did a chin-up to get in, scraping feebly at the running board with my right leg . . . and still, in the end, Leigh had to get behind me and put both hands on my kiester and shove. At last I was behind Petunia's wheel, hot and shivering with pain. My shirt was wet with snowmelt and sweat. Until that day in January of 1979, I don't think I knew how much pain can make you sweat.

  I tried to jam down the clutch with my left foot and that silver bolt of pain came again, making me throw my head back and grind my teeth until it subsided a little.

  "Dennis, I'm going down the street and find a phone and call a doctor." Her face was white and scared. "You broke it again, didn't you? When you fell?"

  "I don't know," I said. "But you can't do that, Leigh. It'll be your folks or mine if we don't end it now. You know that. LeBay won't stop. He has a well-developed sense of vengeance. We can't stop."

  "But you can't drive it!" she wailed. She looked up into the cab at me, crying now. The hood of her parka had fallen back in our mutual struggle to get me up into the driver's seat, where I now sat in magnificent uselessness. I could see a scatter of snowflakes in her dark blond hair.

  "Go inside there," I said. "See if you can find a broom, or a long stick of wood."

  "What good will that do?" she asked, crying harder.

  "Just get it, and then we'll see."

  She went into the dark maw of the open door and disappeared from view. I held onto my leg and sparred with terror. If I really had broken my leg again, there was a good chance I'd be wearing a built
-up heel on my left foot for the rest of my life. But there might not even be that much of my life left if we couldn't put a stop to Christine. Now there was a cheery thought.

  Leigh came back with a push broom. "Will this do?" she asked.

  "To get us inside, yes. Then we'll have to see if we can find something better."

  The handle was the type that unscrews. I got hold of it, unthreaded it, and tossed the bristle end aside. Holding it in my left hand along my side--just another goddam crutch--I pushed down the clutch with it. It held for a moment, then slipped off. The clutch sprang back up. The top of the handle almost bashed me in the mouth. Lookin good, Guilder. But it would have to do.

  "Come on, get in," I said.

  "Dennis, are you sure?"

  "As sure as I can be," I said.

  She looked at me for a moment, and then nodded. "Okay."

  She went around to the passenger side and got in. I slammed my own door, depressed Petunia's clutch with the broom-handle, and geared into first. I had the clutch halfway out and Petunia was just starting to roll forward when the broom-handle slipped off the clutch again. The septic tanker ran inside Darnell's Garage with a series of neck-snapping jerks, and when I slammed my right foot down on the brake, the truck stalled. We were mostly inside.

  "Leigh, I've got to have something with a wider foot," I said. "This broom-handle don't cut it."

  "I'll see what there is."

  She got out and began to walk around the edge of the garage floor, hunting. I stared around. Creepy, Leigh had said, and she was right. The only cars left were four or five old soldiers so gravely wounded that no one had cared enough to claim them. All the rest of the slant spaces with their numbers stencilled in white paint were empty. I glanced at stall twenty and then glanced away.

  The overhead tire racks were likewise nearly empty. A few baldies remained, heeled over against one another like giant doughnuts blackened in a fire, but that was all. One of the two lifts was partially up, with a wheel-rim caught beneath it. The front-end alignment chart on the right-hand wall glimmered faintly red and white, the two headlight targets like bloodshot eyes. And shadows, shadows everywhere. Overhead, big box-shaped heaters pointed their louvers this way and that, roosting up there like weird bats.

  It seemed very much like a death-place.

  Leigh had used another of Jimmy's keys to open Will's office. I could see her moving back and forth in there through the window Will had used to look out at his customers . . . those working joes who had to keep their cars running so they could blah-blah-blah. She flipped some switches, and the overhead fluorescents came on in snow-cold ranks. So the electric company hadn't cut off the juice. I'd have to have her turn the lights off again--we couldn't afford to risk attracting attention--but at least we could have some heat.

  She opened another door and disappeared temporarily from view. I glanced at my watch. One-thirty now.

  She came back, and I saw that she was holding an O-Cedar mop, the kind with the wide yellow sponge along the foot.

  "Would this be any good?"

  "Only perfect," I said. "Get in, kiddo. We're in business."

  She climbed up once more, and I pushed the clutch down with the mop. "Lots better," I said. "Where did you find it?"

  "In the bathroom," she said, and wrinkled her nose.

  "Bad in there?"

  "Dirty, reeking of cigars, and there's a whole pile of mouldy books in the corner. The kind they sell at those little hole-in-the-wall stores."

  So that was what Darnell left behind him, I thought: an empty garage, a pile of Beeline Books, and a phantom reek of Roi-Tan cigars. I felt cold again, and thought that if I had my way, I'd see this place bulldozed flat and pasted over with hottop. I could not shake the feeling that it was an unmarked grave of a sort--the place where LeBay and Christine had killed my friend's mind and taken over his life.

  "I can't wait to get out of here," Leigh said, looking around nervously.

  "Really? I kind of like it. I was thinking of moving in." I caressed her shoulder and looked deeply into her eyes. "We could start a family," I breathed.

  She held up a fist. "Want me to start a nosebleed?"

  "No, that's all right. For what it's worth, I can't wait to get out of here, either." I drove Petunia the rest of the way inside. I found that I could run the clutch pretty well using the O-Cedar mop . . . in first gear, at least. The handle had a tendency to bend, and I would have preferred something thicker, but it would have to do unless we could find something better in the meantime.

  "We've got to turn off the lights again," I said. "The wrong people might see them."

  She got out and turned them off while I swung Petunia in a wide circle and then carefully backed it up until the rear end almost touched the window between the garage and Darnell's office. Now the big truck's snout was pointing directly back at the open overhead door through which we had entered.

  With the lights off, the shadows descended again. The light coming in through the open door was weak, muted by the snow, white and without strength. It spread on the oil-stained, cracked concrete like a pie-wedge and simply died halfway across the floor.

  "I'm cold, Dennis," Leigh called from Darnell's office. "He's got the switches for the heat marked. Can I turn them on?"

  "Go ahead," I called back.

  A moment later the garage whispered with the sound of the blowers.

  I leaned back against the seat, gently running my hands over my left leg. The material of my jeans was stretched smoothly over the thigh, tight and without a wrinkle. The sonofabitch was swelling. And it hurt. Christ, did it hurt.

  Leigh came back and climbed up beside me. She told me again how terrible I looked, and for some reason my mind cross-patched and I thought of the afternoon Arnie had brought Christine down here, of the be-bop queen's husband yelling for Arnie to get that hunk of junk out from in front of his house, and of Arnie telling me the guy was a regular Robert Deadford. How we had gotten the giggles. I closed my eyes against the sting of tears.

  With nothing to do but wait, time slowed down. It was quarter of two, then two o'clock. Outside, the snow had thickened a little, but not much. Leigh got out of the truck and pushed the button that trundled the door back down. That made it even darker inside.

  She came back, climbed up, and said, "There's a funny gadget on the side of the door--see it? It looks just like the electronic garage door-opener we used to have when we lived in Weston."

  I sat up suddenly. Stared at it. "Oh," I said. "Oh, Jesus."

  "What's the matter?"

  "That's just what it is. A garage door-opener. And there's one of the transmitter gadgets on Christine. Arnie mentioned that to me Thanksgiving night. You've got to break it, Leigh. Use the handle of that push broom."

  So she got down again, picked up the broom-handle, and stood below the electric eye gadget, looking up and bashing at it with the handle. She looked like a woman trying to kill a bug near the ceiling. At last she was rewarded with a crunch of plastic and tinkle of glass.

  She came back slowly, tossing the broom-handle aside, and got up beside me. "Dennis, don't you think it's time you told me exactly what you've got in mind?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "You know what I mean," she said, and pointed at the closed overhead door. Five square windows in a line three-quarters of the way up its height let in minimal light through dirty glass. "When it gets dark you plan to open that door again, don't you?"

  I nodded. The door itself was wood, but it was braced with hinged steel strips, like the inner gate of an old-time elevator. I'd let her in, but once the door was shut, Christine wouldn't be able to bash her way back out again. I hoped. It made me cold to think how close we'd come to overlooking the electronic door-opener.

  Open the door at dusk, yes. Let Christine in, yes. Close the door again. Then I would use Petunia to batter her to death.

  "Okay," she said, "that's the trap. But once she--it--comes in, how are you going to get tha
t door shut again to keep her in? Maybe there's a button in Darnell's office that does it, but I didn't see it."

  "So far as I know, there isn't one," I said. "So you're going to be standing over there by the button that shuts the door." I pointed. The manual button was located on the right side of the door, about two feet below the ruins of the electric door-opener box. "You'll be against the wall, out of sight. When Christine comes in--always assuming she does-- you're going to push the button that starts the door coming down and then step outside in a hurry. The door comes down. And, bam! The trap's shut."

  Her face set. "On you as well as her. In the words of the immortal Wordsworth, that sucks."

  "That's Coleridge, not Wordsworth. There's no other way to do it, Leigh. If you're still inside when that door comes down, Christine is going to run you down. Even if there was a button in Darnell's office-well, you saw in the paper what happened to the side of his house."

  Her face was stubborn. "Park over by the switch. And when she comes in, I'll reach out the window and hit the button and lower the door."

  "If I park there, I'll be in sight. And if this tank is in sight, she won't come in."

  "I don't like it!" she burst out. "I don't like leaving you alone! It's like you tricked me!"

  In a way, that's just what I had done, and for whatever it's worth, I would not do it the same way now--but I was going on eighteen then, and there's no male chauvinist pig like an eighteen-year-old male chauvinist pig. I put an arm around her shoulders. She resisted stiffly for a moment and then came to me. "There's just no other way," I said. "If it wasn't for my leg, or if you could drive a standard shift--" I shrugged.

  "I'm scared for you, Dennis. I want to help."

  "You'll be helping plenty. You're the one that's really in danger, Leigh--you'll be outside, on the floor, when she comes in. I'm just going to sit up here in the cab and beat that bitch back into component parts."

  "I only hope it works that way," she said, and put her head on my chest. I touched her hair.

  *

  So we waited.

  In my mind's eye I could see Arnie coming out of the main building at LHS, books under his arm. I could see Regina waiting for him there in the Cunninghams' compact wagon, radiant with happiness. Arnie smiling remotely and submitting to her embrace. Arnie, you've made the right decision . . . you don't know how relieved, how happy, your father and I are. Yes, Mom. Do you want to drive, honey? No, you drive, Mom. That's okay.