“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 manual 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.
The two of them setting off for Penn State through the light snow, Regina driving, Arnie sitting in the shotgun seat with his hands folded stiffly in his lap, his face pale and unsmiling and clear of acne.
And back in the student parking lot at LHS, Christine sitting silently in the driveway. Waiting for the snow to thicken. Waiting for dark.
At three-thirty or so, Leigh went back through Darnell’s office to use the bathroom, and while she was gone I dry-swallowed two more Darvon. My leg was a steady, leaden agony.
Shortly after that, I lost coherent track of time. The dope had me fuddled, I guess. The whole thing began to seem Dreamlike the deepening shadows, the white light coming in through the windows slowly changing to an ashy grey, the drone of the overhead heaters.
I think that Leigh and I made love… not in the ordinary way, not with my leg the way it was, but some kind of sweet substitute. I seem to remember her breath steepening in my ear until she was nearly panting; I seem to remember her whispering for me to be careful, to please be careful, that she had lost Arnie and could not bear to lose me too. I seem to remember an explosion of pleasure that made the pain disappear in a brief but total way that not all the Darvon in the world could manage… but brief was the right word. It was all too brief. And then I think I dozed.
The next thing I remember for sure was Leigh shaking me fully awake and whispering my name over and over in my ear.
“Huh? What?” I was spaced out and my leg was full of a glassy pain, simply waiting to explode. There was an ache in my temples, and my eyes felt too big for their sockets. I blinked around at Leigh like a large stupid owl.
“It’s dark,” she said. “I thought I heard something.”
I blinked again and saw that she looked drawn and frightened. Then I glanced toward the door and saw that it was standing wide open.
“How the hell did that—”
“Me,” she said. “I opened it.”
“Cripes!” I said, straightening up — a little and wincing at the pain in my leg. “That wasn’t too smart, Leigh. If she had come—”
“She didn’t,” Leigh said. “It started to get dark, that’s all,” and to snow harder. So I got out and opened the door and then I came back here. I kept thinking you’d wake up in a minute… you were mumbling… and I kept thinking, “I’ll wait until it’s really dark, I’ll just wait until it’s really dark,” and then I saw I was fooling myself, because it’s been dark for almost half an hour now and I was only thinking I could still see some light. Because I wanted to see it, I guess. And… just now… I thought I heard something.”
Her lips began to tremble and she pressed them tightly together.
I looked at my watch and saw that it was quarter of six. If everything had gone right, my parents and sister would be together with Michael and Leigh’s folks now. I looked through Petunia’s windscreen at the square of snow-shot darkness where the garage entrance was. I could hear the wind shrieking. A thin creeper of snow had already blown in onto the cement.
“You just heard the wind, I said uneasily. “It’s walking and talking out there.”
“Maybe. But—”
I nodded reluctantly. I didn’t want her to leave the safety of Petunia’s high cab, but if she didn’t go now, maybe she never would. I wouldn’t let her, and she would let me not let her. And then, when and if Christine came, all she would have to do would be to reverse back out of Darnell’s.
And wait for a more opportune time.
“Okay,” I said. “But remember… stand back in that little niche to the right of the door. If she comes, she may just stand outside for a while.” Scenting the air like an animal, I thought. “Don’t get scared, don’t move. Don’t let her freak you into giving yourself away. Just be cool and wait until she comes in. Then push that button and get the hell out. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “Dennis, will this work?”
“It should, if she comes at all.”
“I won’t see you until it’s over.”
“I guess that’s so.”
She leaned over, placed her left hand tightly on the side of my neck, and kissed my mouth. “Be careful, Dennis,” she said, “But kill it. It’s realty not a she at all—just an it. Kill it.”
“I will,” I said.
She looked in my eyes and nodded. “Do it for Arnie “she said. “Set him free.”
I hugged her hard and she hugged me back. Then she slid across the seat. She hit her little handbag with her knee and it fell to the floor of the cab. She paused, bead cocked, a startled, thoughtful look in her eyes. Then she smiled, bent over, picked it up, and began to rummage quickly through it.
“Dennis,” she said, “do you remember the Morte d'arthur?”
“A little.” One of the classes Leigh and Arnie and I had all shared before my football injury was Fudgy Bowen’s Classics of English Literature, and one of the first things we had been faced with in there was Malory’s Morte d'arthur. Why Leigh asked me this now was a mystery to me.
She had found what she wanted. It was a filmy pink scarf, nylon, the sort of thing a girl wears over her head on a day when a misty sort of rain is falling. She tied it around the left forearm of my parka.
“What the hell?” I asked, smiling a little.
“Be my knight,” she said, and smiled back—but her eyes were serious. “Be my knight, Dennis.”
I picked up the squeegee mop she had found in Will’s bathroom and made a clumsy salute with it. “Sure,” I said. “Just call me Sir O-Cedar.”
“Joke about it if you want,” she said, “but don’t really joke about it. Okay?”
“All right,” I said. “If it’s what you want, I’ll be your parfit goddam gentil knight.”
She laughed a little, and that was better.
“Remember about that button kiddo. Push it hard. We don’t want that door to just burp once and stop on its track. No escapes, right?”
“Right.”
She got out of Petunia, and I can close my eyes now and see her as she was then, in that clean and silent moment just before everything went terribly wrong—a tall, pretty girl with long blond hair the colour of raw honey, slim hips, long legs, and those striking, Nordic cheekbones, now wearing a ski-parka and faded Lee Riders, moving with a dancer’s grace. I can still see it and I still dream about it, because of course while we were busy setting up Christine, she was busy setting us up—that old and infinitely wise monster. Did we really think we could outsmart her so easily? I guess we did.
My dreams are in terrible slow motion. I can see the softly lovely motion of her hips as she walks; I can hear the hollow click of her Frye boots on the oil-stained cement floor; I can ever hear the soft, dry whish-whish of her parka’s quilted inner lining brushing against her blouse. She’s walking slowly and her head is up—now she is the animal, but no predator; she walks with the cautious grace of a zebra approaching a waterhole at dusk. It is
