“Can I do something for you, Mr Cunningham?” LeBay asked at last.
Arnie cleared his throat. “I wag wondering about the garage,” he said finally. “You see, I’m working on the car, trying to get her street-legal again. My folks don’t want it at my house, and I was wondering—”
“No.”
“—if maybe I could rent the garage—”
“No, out of the question, it’s really—”
“I’d pay you twenty dollars a week, Arnie said “Twenty-five, if you wanted.” I winced. He was like a kid who has stumbled into quicksand and decides to cheer himself up by eating a few arsenic-laced brownies.
“—impossible.” LeBay was looking more and more distressed.
“Just the garage,” Arnie said, his calm starting to crack. “Just the garage where it originally was.”
“It can’t be done,” LeBay said. “I listed the house with Century 21, Libertyville Realty, and Pittsburgh Homes just this morning. They’ll be showing the house—”
“Yes, sure, in time, but until—”
“—and it wouldn’t do to have you tinkering around. You see, don’t you?” He bent toward Arnie a little. “Please don’t misunderstand me. I have nothing against teenagers in general—if I did, I’d probably be in a lunatic asylum now, because I’ve taught high school in Paradise Falls, Ohio, for almost forty years—and you seem to be a very intelligent, well-spoken example of the genus adolescent. But all I want to do here in Libertyville is sell the house and split whatever proceeds there may be with my sister in Denver. I want to be shut of the house, Mr Cunningham, and I want to be shut of my brother’s life.”
“I see,” Arnie said. “Would it make any difference if I promised to look after the place? Mow the grass? Repaint the trim? Make little repairs? I can be handy that way.”
“He really is good at stuff like that,” I chipped in. It wouldn’t hurt, I thought, for Arnie to remember later that I had been on his side… even if I wasn’t.
“I’ve already hired a fellow to keep an eye on the place and do a little maintenance,” he said. It sounded plausible, but I knew, suddenly and surely, that it was a lie. And I think Arnie knew it, too.
“All right. I’m sorry about your brother. He seemed like a… a very strong-willed man.” As he said it, I found myself remembering turning around and seeing LeBay with large, greasy tears on his cheeks. Well, that’s that. I’m shut of her, sonny.
“Strong-willed?” LeBay smiled cynically. “Oh, yes. He was a strong-willed son of a bitch.” He appeared not to notice Arnie’s shocked expression. “Excuse me, gentlemen. I’m afraid the sun has upset my stomach a little.”
He started to walk away. We stood not far from the grave and watched him go. All at once he stopped, and Arnie’s face brightened; he thought LeBay had suddenly changed his mind. For a moment LeBay just stood there on the grass, his head bent in the posture of a man thinking hard. Then he turned back to us.
“My advice to you is to forget the car,” he said to Arnie. “Sell her. If no one will buy her whole, sell her for parts. If no one will buy her for parts, junk her. Do it quickly and completely. Do it the way you would quit a bad habit. I think you will be happier.”
He stood there, looking at Arnie, waiting for Arnie to say something, but Arnie made no reply. He only held LeBay’s gaze with his own. His eyes had gone that peculiar slatey colour they got when his mind was made up and his feet were planted. LeBay read the look and nodded. He looked unhappy and a little ill.
“Gentlemen, good day.”
Arnie sighed. “I guess that’s that.” He eyed LeBay’s retreating back with some resentment.
“Yeah,” I said, hoping I sounded more unhappy than I felt. It was the dream. I didn’t like the idea of Christine back in that garage. It was too much like my dream.
We started back toward my car, neither of us speaking. LeBay nagged at me. Both LeBays nagged at me. I came to a sudden, impulsive decision—God only knows how much different things might have been if I hadn’t followed the impulse.
“Hey, man,” I said. “I gotta go take a whiz. Give me a minute or two, okay?”
“Sure,” he said, hardly looking up. He walked on, hands in his pockets and eyes on the ground.
I walked off to the left, where a small, discreet sign and an even smaller arrow pointed the way toward the restrooms. But when I was over the first rise and out of Arnie’s view, I cut to the right and started to sprint toward the parking lot. I caught George LeBay slowly folding himself behind the wheel of an extremely tiny Chevette with a Hertz sticker on the windscreen.
“Mr LeBay!” I puffed. “Mr LeBay?” He looked up curiously. “Pardon me,” I said. “Sorry to bother you again.”
“That’s all right,” he said, “but I’m afraid what I said to your friend still stands. I can’t let him garage the car here.”
“Good,” I said.
His bushy eyebrows went up.
“The car,” I said. “That Fury. I don’t like it.” He went on looking at me, not talking.
“I don’t think it’s been good for him. Maybe part of it’s being… I don’t know…”
“Jealous?” he asked me quietly. “Time he used to spend with you he now spends with her?”
“Well, yeah, right,” I said. “He’s been my friend for a long time. But I–I don’t think that’s all of it.”
“No?”
“No.” I looked around to see if Arnie was in sight, and while I wasn’t looking at him, I was finally able to come out with it. “Why did you tell him to junk it and forget it? Why did you say it was like a bad habit?”
He said nothing, and I was afraid he had nothing to say—at least, not to me. And then, almost too softly to hear, he asked, “Son, are you sure this is your business?”
“I don’t know.” Suddenly it seemed very important to meet his eyes. “But I care about Arnie, you know. I don’t want to see him get hurt. This car has already gotten him into trouble. I don’t want to see it get any worse.”
“Come by my motel this evening. It’s just off the Western Avenue exit from 376. Can you find that?”
“I hotpatched the sides of the ramp,” I said, and held out my hands. “Still got the blisters.”
I smiled, but he didn’t smile back. “Rainbow Motel. There are two at the foot of the exit. Mine is the cheap one.”
“Thanks,” I said awkwardly. “Listen really, th—”
“It may not be your business, or mine, or anyone’s,” LeBay said in his soft, schoolteacherish voice, so different from (but somehow so eerily similar to) his late brother’s wild croak.
(and that’s about the finest smell in the world… except maybe for pussy)
“But I can tell you this much right now. My brother was not a good man. I believe the only thing he ever truly loved in his whole life was that Plymouth Fury your friend has purchased. So the business may be between them and them alone, no matter what you tell me, or I tell you.”
He smiled at me. It wasn’t a pleasant smile, and in that instant I seemed to see Roland D. LeBay looking out through his eyes, and I shivered.
“Son, you’re probably too young to look for wisdom in anyone’s words but your own, but I’ll tell you this: love is the enemy.” He nodded at me slowly. “Yes. The poets continually and sometimes wilfully mistake love. Love is the old slaughterer. Love is not blind. Love is a cannibal with extremely acute vision. Love is insectile; it is always hungry.”
“What does it eat?” I asked, not aware I was going to ask anything at all. Every part of me but my mouth thought the entire conversation insane.
“Friendship,” George LeBay said. “It eats friendship. If I were you, Dennis, I would now prepare for the worst.”
He closed the door of the Chevette with a soft chuck! and started up its sewing-machine engine. He drove away, leaving me to stand there on the edge of the blacktop. I suddenly remembered that Arnie should see me coming from the direction of the comfort stations, so I headed that way as fast as I could.