Christine (62 page)

"Hello, Mr Guilder."

"Hi, Arnie," my dad said, raising one gloved hand. "How's it been going?"

"Well, you know, not that great. But that's all going to change, New year, new broom, out with the old shit, in with the new shit, right?"

"I guess so," my father said, sounding a little taken aback. "Dennis, are you sure you don't want me to come back and get you?"

I wanted that more than anything, but Arnie was looking at me and his mouth was still smiling but his eyes were flat and watchful. "No, Arnie'll bring me home… if that rustbucket will start, that is?"

"Oh-oh, watch what you call my car," Arnie said. "She's very sensitive."

"Is she?" I asked.

"She is," Arnie said, smiling.

I turned my head and called, "Sorry, Christine."

"That's better."

For a moment all three of us stood there, my father and I at the bottom of the kitchen steps. Arnie in the doorway above us, none of us apparently knowing what to say next. I felt a kind of panic—somebody
had
to say something, or else the whole, ridiculous fiction that nothing had changed would collapse of its own weight.

"Well, okay," my dad said at last. "You two kids stay sober. If you have more than a couple of beers, Arnie, call me."

"Don't worry, Mr Guilder."

"We'll be all right," I said, grinning a grin that felt plastic and false. "You go on home and get your beauty sleep, Dad. You need it."

"Oh-ho," my father said. "Watch what you call my face. It's very sensitive."

He went back to the car. I stood and watched him, my crutches propped into my armpits. I watched him while he crossed behind Christine. And when he backed out of the driveway and turned toward home, I felt a little bit better.

I banged the snow off the tip of each crutch carefully while standing in the doorway. The Cunninghams' kitchen was tile-floored. A couple of near accidents had taught me that on smooth surfaces a pair of crutches with wet snow on them can turn into ice-skates.

"You really operate on those babies," Arnie said, watching me cross the floor. He took a pack of Tiparillos from the pocket of his flannel shirt, shook one out, bit down on the white plastic mouthpiece, and lit it with his head cocked to one side. The match flame played momentarily across his cheeks like yellow streaks of paint.

"It's a skill I'll be glad to lose," I said. "When did you start with the cigars?"

"Darnell's," he said. "I don't smoke em in front of my mother. The smell drives her bugshit."

He didn't smoke like a kid who just learning the habit—he smoked like a man who has been doing it for twenty years.

"I thought I'd make popcorn," he said. "You up for that?"

"Sure. You got any beer?"

"That's affirmative. There's a six-pack in the fridge and two more downstairs."

"Great." I sat down carefully at the kitchen table, stretching out my left leg. "Where're your folks?"

"Went to a New Year's Eve party at the Fassenbachs". When's that cast come off?"

"Maybe at the end of January, if I'm lucky." I waved my crutches in the air and cried dramatically, "Tiny Tim walks again! God bless us, every one!"

Arnie, on his way to the stove with a deep pan, a bag of popcorn, and a bottle of Wesson Oil, laughed and shook his head. "Same old Dennis. They didn't knock much of the stuffing out of you, you shitter."

"You didn't exactly overwhelm me with visits in the hospital, Arnie."

"I brought you Thanksgiving supper—what the hell do you want, blood?"

I shrugged.

Arnie sighed. "Sometimes I think you were my good-luck charm, Dennis."

"Off my case, hose-head."

"No, seriously. I've been in hot water ever since you broke your wishbones, and I'm still in hot water. It's a wonder I don't look like a lobster." He laughed heartily. It was not the sound you'd expect of a kid in trouble; it was the laugh of a man—yes, a man—who was enjoying himself tremendously, He put the pan on the stove and poured Wesson Oil over the bottom of it. His hair, shorter than it used to be and combed back in a style that was new to me, fell over his forehead. He flipped it back with a quick jerk of his head and added popcorn to the oil. He slammed a lid over the pan. Went to the fridge. Got a six-pack. Slammed it down in front of me, pulled off two cans, and opened them. Gave me one. Held up his. I held up mine.

"A toast," Arnie said. "Death to all the shitters of the world in 1979."

I lowered my can slowly. "I can't drink to that, man."

I saw a spark of anger in those gray eyes. It seemed to twinkle there, like spurious good humor, and then go out. "Well, what
can
you drink to—
man?
"

"How about to college?" I asked quietly.

He looked at me sullenly, his earlier good humor gone like magic. "I should have known she'd fill you full of that garbage. My mother is one woman who never stuck at getting low to get what she wants. You know that, Dennis. She'd kiss the devil's ass if that's what it took."

I put my beer-can down, still full. "Well, she didn't kiss my ass. She just said you weren't making any applications and she was worried."

"It's my life," Arnie said. His lips twisted, changing his face, making it extraordinarily ugly. "I'll do what I want."

"And college isn't it?"

"Yeah, I'll go. But in my own time. You tell her that, if she asks. In my own time. Not this year. Definitely not. If she thinks I'm going to go off to Pitt or Horlicks or Rutgers and put on a freshman beanie and go boola-boola at the home football games, she's out of her mind. Not after the shitstorm I've been through this year. No way, man."

"What
are
you going to do?"

"I'm taking off," he said. "I'm going to get in Christine and we're going to motorvate right the Christ out of this one-timetable town. You understand?" His voice began to rise, to become shrill, and I felt horror sweep over me again. I was helpless against that unmanning fear and could only hope that it didn't show on my face. Because it wasn't just LeBay's voice now; now it was even LeBay's
face
, swimming under Arnie's like some dead thing preserved in Formalin. "It's been nothing but a shitstorm, and I think that goddam Junkins is still after me full steam ahead, and he better watch out or somebody just might junk
him
—"

"Who's Junkins?" I asked.

"Never mind," he said. "It's not important." Behind him, the Wesson Oil had begun to sizzle. A kernel of corn popped—
ponk!
—against the underside of the lid. "I've got to go shake that, Dennis. Do you want to make a toast or not? Makes no difference to me."

"All right," I said. "How about to us?"

He smiled, and the constriction in my chest eased a little. "Us, yeah, that's a good one, Dennis. To us. Gotta be that, huh?"

"Gotta be," I said, and my voice hoarsened a little. "Yeah, gotta be."

We clicked the Bud cans together and drank.

Arnie went over to the stove and began shaking the pan, where the corn was picking up speed. I let a couple of swallows of beer slide down my throat. Beer was still a fairly new thing to me then, and I had never been drunk on it because I liked the taste quite well, and friends—Lenny Barongg was the chief of them—had told me that if you got falling-down, standing-up, ralphing-down-your-shirt shitfaced, you couldn't even look at the stuff for weeks. Sadly, I have found out since that that isn't completely true.

But Arnie was drinking like they were going to reinstitute Prohibition on January first; he had finished his first can before the popcorn had finished popping. He crimped the empty, winked at me, and said, "Watch me put it up the little tramp's ass, Dennis." The allusion escaped me, so I just smiled noncommitally as he tossed the can toward the wastebasket. It banged the wall over it and dropped in.

"Two points," I said.

"That's right," he said. "Hand me another one, would you?"

I did, figuring what the hell—my folks were planning to see the New Year in at home, and if Arnie got really drunk and passed out, I could give my dad a call. Arnie might say things drunk that he wouldn't say sober, and I didn't want to ride home in Christine anyway.

But the beer didn't seem to affect him. He finished popping the corn, dumped it into a big plastic bowl, melted half a stick of margarine, poured it over the top, salted it, and said, "Let's go in the living room and watch some tube. What do you say?"

"Fine by me." I got my crutches, seated them in my armpits—which just lately felt as if they might be growing callouses and then groped for the three beers still on the table.

"I'll come back for them," Arnie said. "Come on. Before you break everything all over again. He smiled at me, and for that moment he was nobody but Arnie Cunningham, so much so that it broke my heart a little bit to look at him.

There was some dorky New Year's Eve special on. Donny and Marie Osmond were singing. both of them showing their giant white teeth in friendly but somehow sha,rklike grins. We let the TV play and talked. I told Arnie about the physical therapy sessions, and how I was working out with weights, and after two beers I confessed that I was sometimes afraid that I would never walk right again. Not playing football in college didn't bother me, but that did. He nodded calmly and sympathetically through it all.

I may as well stop right here and tell you that I have never spent such a peculiar evening in my life. Worse things were waiting, but nothing that was so strange, so… so
disjointed
. It was like sitting through a movie where the picture is almost—but not quite—focused. Sometimes he seemed like Arnie, but at others he didn't seem like Arnie at all. He had picked up mannerisms I had never noticed before—twirling his car-keys nervously on the rectangle of leather to which they were attached, cracking his knuckles, occasionally biting at the ball of his thumb with his upper front teeth. There was that comment about putting it up the little tramp's ass when he tossed his beer-can. And although he had gotten through five beers by the time I had finished my second, just downing them one after the other, he still didn't seem drunk.

And there were mannerisms I had always associated with Arnie which seemed to have disappeared completely: the quick, nervous pull at his earlobe when he was talking, the sudden stretch of his long legs ending with the ankles briefly crossed, his habit of expressing amusement by hissing air through his pursed lips instead of laughing outright. He did do that last once or twice. But more often he would signal his amusement in a string of shrill chuckles that I associated with LeBay.

The special finished up at eleven, and Arnie switched around the dial until he found a dance-party in some New York hotel where they kept switching outside to Times Square, where a big crowd had already gathered. It wasn't Guy Lombardo, but it was close.

"You're really not going to college?" I asked.

"Not this year. Christine and I are going to head out for California right after graduation. That golden shore."

"Your folks know?"

He looked startled at the idea. "Hell, no! And don't you tell them, either! I need that like I need a rubber dick!"

"What are you going to do out there?"

He shrugged. "Look for a job fixing cars. I'm as good at that as I am at anything." And then he stunned me by saying casually, "I'm hoping I can persuade Leigh to come with me.

I swallowed beer the wrong way and began to cough, spraying my pants. Arnie slammed me on the back twice, hard. "You okay?"

"Sure," I managed. "Just went down the wrong pipe. Arnie… if you think she's going to come with you, you're living in a dream world. She's working on her college applications. She's got a whole file of them, man. She's really serious about it."

His eyes narrowed immediately, and I had a sinking feeling that the beer had betrayed me into saying more than I should have.

"How come you know so much about my girl?"

All of a sudden I felt as if I had been dropped into a long field that was full of loaded mines. "It's all she talks about Arnie. Once she gets started on the subject, you can't shut her up."

"Chummy. You're not moving in, are you, Dennis?" He was watching me closely, his eyes slitted with suspicion. "You wouldn't do anything like that, would you?"

"No," I said, lying completely and fully. "That's a hell of a thing to say."

"Then how do you know so much about what she's doing?"

"I see her around," I said, "We talk about you."

"She talks about me?"

"Yeah, a little," I said casually. "She said that you and she had a fight over Christine."

It was the right thing. He relaxed. "It was just a little thing. Just a little spat. She'll come around. And there are good schools out in California, if she wants to go to school. We're going to be married, Dennis. Have kids and all that shit."

I struggled to keep my poker face. "Does she know that?"

He laughed. "No way! Not yet. But she will. Soon enough. I love her, and nothing's going to get in the way of that." The laughter died away. "What did she say about Christine?"

Another mine.

"She said she didn't like her. I think… that maybe she was a little jealous."

It was the right thing again. He relaxed even more. "Yeah, she sure was. But she'll come around, Dennis. The course of true love never runs smooth, but she'll come around, don't worry. If you see her again, tell her I'm going to call. Or talk to her when school starts again."

I considered telling him that Leigh was in California right now and decided not to. And I wondered what this new suspicious Arnie would do if he knew I had kissed the girl he thought he was going to marry, had held her was failing in love with her.

"Look, Dennis!" Arnie cried, and pointed at the TV.

They had switched to Times Square again. The crowd was a huge—but still swelling—organism. It was just past eleven-thirty. The old year was guttering.

"Look at those shitters!" He cackled his shrill, excited laugh, finished his beer, and went downstairs for a fresh six-pack. I sat in my chair and thought about Welch and Repperton, Trelawney, Stanton, Vandenberg, Darnell. I thought about how Arnie—or whatever Arnie had become—thought that he and Leigh had just had an unimportant lovers' spat and how they would end the school year getting married, just like in those greasy love-ballads from the Nifty Fifties.