The sound of a bass drum from the football field, like a giant’s heartbeat.
The sound of my own heartbeat.
I tried the front door.
It was locked.
I licked my lips and realized I was scared.
It was almost as if—this was very funny, this was hilarious—it was almost as if this car didn’t like me, as if it suspected me of wanting to come between it and Arnie, and that the reason I didn’t want to walk in front of it was because—
I laughed again and then remembered my dream and stopped laughing. This was too much like it for comfort. It wasn’t Chubby McCarthy blaring over the PA, of course, not in Hidden Hills, but the rest of it brought on a dreamy, unpleasant sense of déjà vu—the sound of the cheers, the sound of padded body contact, the wind hissing through trees that looked like cutouts under an overcast sky.
The engine would gun. The car would lurch forward, drop back, lurch forward, drop back. And then the tyres would scream as it roared right at me—
I shook the thought off. It was time to stop pandering to myself with all of this crazy shit. It was time—and overtime—to get my imagination under control. This was a car, not a she but an it, not really Christine at all but only a 1958 Plymouth Fury that had rolled off an assembly line in Detroit along with about four hundred thousand others.
It worked… at least temporarily. Just to demonstrate how little afraid of it I was, I got down on my knees and looked under it. What I saw there was even crazier than the haphazard way the car was being rebuilt on top. There were three new Pleasurizer shocks, but the fourth was a dark, oil-caked ruin that looked as if it had been on there for ever. The exhaust was so new it was still silvery, but the silencer looked at least middle-aged and the header pipe was in very bad shape. Looking at the header, thinking about exhaust fumes that could leak into the car from it, made me flash on Veronica LeBay again. Because exhaust fumes can kill. They—
“Dennis, what are you doing?”
I guess I was still more uneasy than I thought, because I was up from my knees like a shot with my heart beating in my throat. It was Arnie. He looked cold and angry.
Because I was looking at his car? Why should that make him mad? Good question. But it had, that was obvious.
“I was looking over your mean machine,” I said, trying to sound casual. “Where’s Leigh?”
“She had to go to the Ladies”, he said, dismissing her. His grey eyes never left my face. “Dennis, you’re the best friend I’ve got, the best friend I’ve ever had. You might have saved me a trip to the hospital the other day when Repperton pulled that knife, and I know it. But don’t you go behind my back, Dennis. Don’t you ever do that.”
From the playing field there was a tremendous cheer the Hillmen had just made the final score of the game, with less than thirty seconds to play.
“Arnie, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” I said, but I felt guilty. I felt guilty the way I had felt being introduced to Leigh, sizing her up, wanting her a little wanting the girl he so obviously wanted himself. But… going behind his back? Was that what I had been doing?
I suppose he could have seen it that way. I had known that his irrational—interest, obsession, put it however you like—his irrational thing about the car was the locked room in the house of our friendship, the place I could not go without inviting all sorts of trouble. And if he hadn’t caught me trying to jimmy the door, he had at least come upon me trying to peek through a keyhole.
“I think you know exactly what I’m talking about,” he said, and I saw with a tired sort of dismay that he was not just a little mad; he was furious. “You and my father and mother are all spying on me “for my own good”, that’s the way it is, isn’t it? They sent you down to Darnell’s Garage, to snoop around, didn’t they?”
“Hey, Arnie, wait just a—”
“Boy, did you think I wouldn’t find out? I didn’t say anything then—because we’re friends. But I don’t know, Dennis. There has to be a line, and I think I’m drawing it. Why don’t you just leave my car alone and stop butting in where you don’t belong?”
“First of all,” I said, “it wasn’t your father and your mother. Your father got me alone and asked me if I’d take a look at what you were doing with the car. I said sure I would, I was curious myself. Your dad has always been okay to me. What was I supposed to say?”
“You were supposed to say no.”
“You don’t get it. He’s on your side. Your mother still hopes it doesn’t come to anything—that was the idea I got—but Michael really hopes you get it running. He said so.”
“Sure, that’s the way he’d come on to you.” He was almost sneering. “Really all he’s interested in is making sure I’m still hobbled. That’s what they’re both interested in. They don’t want me to grow up because then they’d have to face getting old.”
“That’s too hard, man.”
“Maybe you think so. Maybe coming from a halfway-normal family makes you soft in the head, Dennis. They offered me a new car for high school graduation, did you know that? All I had to do was give up Christine, make all A’s, and agree to go to Horlicks… where they could keep me in direct view for another four years.”
I didn’t know what to say. That was pretty crass, all right.
“So just butt out of it, Dennis. That’s all I’m saying. We’ll both be better off.”
“I didn’t tell him anything, anyhow,” I said. “Just that you were doing a few things here and there. He seemed sort of relieved.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet.”
“I didn’t have any idea it was as close to street-legal as it is. But it isn’t all the way yet. I looked underneath, and that header pipe’s a mess. I hope you’re driving with your windows open.”
“Don’t tell me how to drive it! I know more about what makes cars run than you ever will!”
That was when I started to get pissed off at him. I didn’t like it—I didn’t want to have an argument with Arnie, especially not now, when Leigh would be joining him in another moment—but I could feel somebody upstairs in the brain-room starting to pull those red switches, one by one.
“That’s probably true,” I said, controlling my voice. “But I’m not sure how much you know about people. Will Darnell gave you an improper sticker—if you got picked up he could lose his state inspection certificate. He gave you a dealer plate. Why did he do those things, Arnie?”
For the first time Arnie seemed defensive. “I told you. He knows I’m doing the work.”
“Don’t be a numbskull. That guy wouldn’t give a crippled crab a crutch unless there was something in it for him, and you know it.”
“Dennis, will you leave it alone, for God’s sake?”
“Man,” I said, stepping toward him, “I don’t give a fuck if you have a car. I just don’t want you in a bind over it. Sincerely.”
He looked at me uncertainly.
“I mean, what are we yelling at each other about? Because I looked underneath your car to see how the exhaust-pipe was hanging?”
But that hadn’t been all I was doing. Some… but not quite all. And I think we both knew it.
On the playing field, the final gun went off with a flat bang. A slight drizzle had started to come down, and it was getting cold. We turned toward the sound of the gun and saw Leigh coming toward us, carrying her pennant and Arnie’s. She waved. We waved back.
“Dennis, I can take care of myself,” he said.
“Okay,” I said simply. “I hope you can.” Suddenly I wanted to ask him how deep he was in with Darnell. And that was a question I couldn’t ask; that would bring on an even more bitter argument. Things would be said that could maybe never be repaired.
“I can,” he repeated. He touched his car, and the hard look in his eyes softened.
I felt a mixture of relief and dismay—the relief because we weren’t going to have a fight after all; we had both managed to avoid saying anything completely irreparable. But it also seemed to me that it wasn’t just one room of our friendship that had been closed off; it was a whole damn wing. He had rejected what I’d had to say with complete totality and had made the conditions for continuing the friendship pretty clear: everything will be okay as long as you do it my way.