Christine (40 page)

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 dialed 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 beaded 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 good-natured 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 tinder 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—"