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!”
It was a grey 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-coloured sweater that clung lovingly to her breasts and a new pair of cranberry-coloured 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 parlour’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 centre 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, tyres 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.