Plymouth. Still, it was Buddy’s business, not his.
“Good,” he said again.
“Keep your jock on, man,” Richie said, and giggled.
“Sure,” Sandy said. He was glad they were going. Maybe he wouldn’t hang around Vandenberg’s Happy Gas so much after this. Maybe after this he didn’t want to. This was heavy shit. Too heavy, maybe. And maybe he would pick up a couple of night courses, too. He’d have to give this job up, but maybe that wouldn’t be so bad, either—it was a pretty dull fucking job.
Buddy was still looking at him, smiling that hard, gonzo smile, and Sandy took a big drink of Texas Driver. He nearly gagged. For an instant he had an image of puking down into Buddy’s upturned face, and his unease became terror.
“If the cops get in on it,” Buddy said, “you don’t know nothing, you didn’t see nothing. Like you said, you had to go in and take a crap around nine-thirty.”
“Sure, Buddy.”
“We all wore our wittle mittens. We didn’t leave any prints.”
“Sure.”
“Stay cool, Sandy, Buddy said softly.
“Yeah, okay.”
The Camaro began to roll again. Sandy raised the gate with the manual button. The car headed toward the airport exit road at a sedate pace.
Someone called “Arf! Arf!” The sound drifted back to Sandy against the wind.
Troubled, he sat down to watch TV.
Shortly before the rush of customers who had come in on the ten-forty from Cleveland began to arrive, he poured the rest of the Driver out of the window and onto the ground. He didn’t want it anymore.
26
CHRISTINE LAID LOW
Transfusion, transfusion,
Oh I’m never-never-never gonna speed again,
Pass the blood to me, Bud.
The next day Arnie and Leigh rode out to the airport together after school to pick up Christine. They were planning on a trip to Pittsburgh to do some early Christmas shopping, and they were looking forward to doing it together—it seemed somehow terribly adult.
Arnie was in a fine mood on the bus, making up fanciful little vignettes about their fellow passengers and making her laugh in spite of her period, which was usually depressing and almost always painful. The fat lady in the man’s workshoes was a lapsed nun, he said. The kid in the cowboy hat was a hustler. And on and on. She got into the spirit of the thing but was not as good at it as he. It was amazing, the way he had come out of his shell… the way he had bloomed. That was really the only word for it. She felt the smug, pleased satisfaction of a prospector who has suspected the presence of gold by certain signs and has been proved correct. She loved him, and she had been right to love him.
They got off the bus at the terminal stop together and walked across the access road to the parking lot hand in hand.
“This isn’t bad,” Leigh said. It was the first time she had come out with him to pick up Christine. “Twenty- five minutes from school.”
“Yeah, it’s okay,” Arnie said. “It keeps peace in the family, that’s the important thing. I’m telling you, when my mom got home that night and saw Christine in the driveway, she went totally bullshit.”
Leigh laughed, and the wind flipped her hair out behind her. The temperature had moderated from last night’s bitter mid-teens, but it was still chilly. She was glad. Without a certain chill in the air, it didn’t feel like Christmas shopping. Bad enough the decorations in Pittsburgh wouldn’t be up yet. But it wasn’t bad; it was good. And suddenly she was glad about everything, most of all glad to be alive. And in love.
She had thought about it, the way she loved him. She had had crushes before, and once, in Massachusetts, she had thought she might be in love, but about this boy there was simply no question. He troubled her sometimes—his interest in the car seemed almost obsessive—but even her occasional unease played a part in her feelings, which were richer than anything she had ever known. And part of it, she admitted to herself, was of course selfish—she had, in weeks only, begun to make him over… to complete him.
They cut between the cars, headed for the thirty-day section of the parking lot. Overhead, a USAir jet was coming in on its final approach, the thunder of its engines rolling away in great flat waves of sound. Arnie was saying something, but the plane obliterated his voice altogether after the first few words—something about Thanksgiving dinner—and she turned to look at his face, secretly amused by his silently moving mouth,
Then, quite suddenly, his mouth stopped moving. He stopped walking, His eyes opened wider… and then seemed to bulge. His mouth began to twist, and the hand holding Leigh’s suddenly clamped down ruthlessly, grinding her fingerbones painfully together.
“Arnie—”
The jet-roar was fading, but he seemed not to have heard. His hand clamped tighter. His mouth had slammed shut now, and it was knotted into an awful grimace of surprise and terror. She thought, He’s having a heart attack… stroke… something.
“Arnie, what’s wrong?” she cried. “Arnie… ooowwwhoww, that hurts!”
For one unbearable moment the pressure on the hand he had been holding so lightly and lovingly just before increased until it seemed that the bones would actually splinter and break. The high colour in his cheeks was gone, and his skin was as leaden as a slate headstone.
He said one word—'Christine! — and suddenly let go of her. He ran, thumping his leg against the bumper of a Cadillac, spinning away, almost falling, catching himself, and running forward again.
She realized at last it was something about the car—the ear, the car, always it was the goddam car—and a bitter anger rose in her that was both total and despairing. For the first time she wondered if it would be possible to love him; if Arnie would allow it.
Her anger was quenched the instant she really looked… and saw.
Arnie ran to what remained of his car, hands out, and stopped so abruptly in front of it that the gesture seemed almost to be a horrified warding-off; the classic movie pose of the hit-and-run victim an instant before the lethal collision.
He stood that way for a moment, as if to stop the car, or the whole world. Then he lowered his arms. His adam’s apple lurched up and down twice as he struggled to swallow something back—a moan, a cry—and then his throat seemed to lock solid, every muscle standing out, each cord standing out, even the blood-vessels standing out in perfect relief. It was the throat of a man trying to lift a piano.
Leigh walked slowly toward him. Her hand still throbbed, and tomorrow it would be swollen and virtually useless, but for now she had forgotten it. Her heart went out to him and seemed to find him; she felt his sorrow and shared it or it seemed to her that she did. It was only later that she realized how much Arnie shut her out that day—how much of his suffering he elected to do alone, and how much of his hate he hid away.
“Arnie, who did it?” she asked, her voice breaking with grief for him. No, she had not liked the car, but to see it reduced to this made her understand fully what Arnie’s commitment had been, and she could hate it no longer—or so she thought.
Arnie made no answer. He stood looking at Christine, his eyes burning, his head slightly down.
The windscreen had been smashed through in two places; handfuls of safety glass fragments were strewn across the slashed seat covers like trumpery diamonds. Half of the front bumper had been pried off and now dragged on the pavement, near a snarl of black wires like octopus tentacles. Three of the four side windows had
