“Since never,” Junkins said.
“Then leave me be.”
“More important, I think you’re lying about not knowing anything about what happened to the Welch boy. You know something. I want to know what.”
“I don’t know anything,” Arnie said.
“What about—”
“I don’t have anything more to say to you,” Arnie said. “I’m sorry.”
“All right,” Junkins said, giving up so quickly that Arnie was immediately suspicious. He rummaged around in the sportcoat he was wearing under his topcoat and took out his wallet. Arnie saw that Junkins was carrying a gun in a shoulder holster and suspected Junkins had wanted him to see it. He produced a card and gave it to Arnie. “I can be reached at either of those numbers, If you want to talk about anything. Anything at all.”
Arnie put the card in his breast pocket.
Junkins took one more leisurely stroll around Christine. “Hell of a restoration job,” he repeated. He looked squarely at Arnie. “Why didn’t you report it?”
Arnie let out a low shuddering sigh. “Because I thought that would be the end,” he said. “I thought they’d let off.”
“Yeah,” Junkins said. “I thought that might be it. Good night, son.”
“Good night.”
Junkins started away, turned, came back. “Think it over,” he said. “You really do look like hell, you know what I mean? You have a nice girl there. She’s worried about you, and she feels bad about what happened to your car. Your dad’s worried about you, too. I could get that even over the phone. Think it over and then give me a call, son. You’ll sleep better.”
Arnie felt something trembling behind his lips, something small and tearful, something that hurt. Junkins’s brown eyes were kind. He opened his mouth—God alone knew what might have spilled out—and then a monstrous jab of pain walloped him in the back, making him straighten suddenly. It also had the effect of a slap on a hysteric. He felt calmer, clear-headed again.
“Good night,” he repeated. “Good night, Rudy.”
Junkins looked at him a moment longer, troubled, and then left.
Arnie began to shake all over. The trembling started in his hands and spread up his forearms to his elbows, and then it was suddenly everywhere. He grabbed blindly for the doorhandle, found it at last, and slipped into Christine, into the comforting smells of car and fresh upholstery. He turned the key to ACC, the dash lights glowed, and he felt for the radio dial.
As he did so his eyes fell on the swinging leather tab with R.D.L. branded into it and his dream recurred with sudden terrible force: the rotting corpse sitting where he was sitting now; the empty eyesockets staring out through the windshield; the fingerbones gripping the wheel; the empty grin of the skull’s teeth as Christine bore down on Moochie Welch while the radio, tuned to WDIL, played “Last Kiss” by J. Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers.
He suddenly felt sick—puking-sick. Nausea fluttered sickeningly in his stomach and in the back of his throat. Arnie scrambled out of the car and ran for the head, his footfalls hammering crazily in his cars. He just made it. Everything came up; he vomited again and again until there was nothing left but sour spit. Lights danced in front of his eyes. His ears rang and the muscles in his gut throbbed tiredly.
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 dialled 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.