“You restore it yourself?”
“Yeah.”
Leigh was looking at Arnie, puzzled. His earlier expansive mood had been replaced by a curtness that was not like his usual self at all. On the radio, the Big Bopper finished and Richie Valens came on, doing “La Bamba”.
The hitchhiker shook his head and laughed. “First the Big Bopper, then Richie Valens. Must be death night on the radio. Good old WDIL.”
“What do you mean?” Leigh asked.
Arnie snapped the radio off. “They died in a plane crash. With Buddy Holly.”
“Oh,” Leigh said in a small voice.
Perhaps the hitchhiker also sensed the change in Arnie’s mood; he fell silent and meditative in the back seat. Outside, the snow began to fall faster and harder. The first good storm of the season had come in.
At length, the golden arches twinkled up out of the snow.
“Do you want me to go in, Arnie?” Leigh asked. Arnie had gone nearly as quiet as stone, turning aside her bright attempts at conversation with mere grunts.
“I will,” he said, and pulled in. “What do you want?” “Just a hamburger and french fries, please.” She had intended to go the whole hog—Big Mac, shake, even the cookies—but her appetite seemed to have shrunk away to nothing.
Arnie parked. In the yellow light flaring from the squat brick building’s undersides, his face looked jaundiced and somehow diseased. He turned around, arm trailing over the seat. “Can I grab you something?”
“No thanks,” the hitchhiker said. “Folks’ll be waiting supper. Can’t disappoint my mom. She kills the fatted calf every time I come h—”
The chunk of door cut off his final word. Arnie had gotten out and was headed briskly across to the IN door, his boots kicking up little puffs of new snow.
“Is he always that cheery?” the hitchhiker asked “Or does he get sorta taciturn sometimes?”
“He’s very sweet,” Leigh said firmly. She was suddenly nervous. Arnie had turned off the engine and taken the keys, and she was left alone with this stranger in the back seat. She could see him in the rearview mirror, and suddenly his long black hair, tangled by the wind, his scruff of beard, and his dark eyes made him seem Manson-like and wild.
“Where do you go to school?” she asked. Her fingers were plucking at her slacks, and she made them stop.
“Pitt,” the hitchhiker said, and no more. His eyes met hers in the mirror, and Leigh dropped hers hastily to her lap. Cranberry red slacks. She had worn them because Arnie had once told her he liked them—probably because they were the tightest pair she owned, even tighter than her Levi’s. She suddenly wished she had worn something else, something that could be considered provocative by no stretch of the imagination: a grain-sack, maybe. She tried to smile—it was a funny thought, all right, a grain-sack, get it, ha-ha-ho-ho, wotta knee-slapper—but no smile came. There was no way she could keep from admitting it to herself: Arnie had left her alone with this stranger (as punishment? it had been her idea to pick him up), and now she was scared.
“Bad vibes,” the hitchhiker said suddenly, making her actually catch her breath. His words were flat and final. She could see Arnie through the plate-glass window, standing fifth or sixth in line. He wouldn’t get up to the counter for a while. She found herself imagining the hitchhiker suddenly clamping his gloved hands around her throat. Of course she could reach the horn-ring… but would the horn sound? She found herself doubting it for no sane reason at all. She found herself thinking that she could hit the horn ninety-nine times and it would honk satisfyingly. But if, on the hundredth, she was being strangled by this hitchhiker on whose behalf she had interceded, the horn wouldn’t blow. Because… because Christine didn’t like her. In fact, she believed that Christine hated her guts. It was as simple as that. Crazy but simple.
“P-Pardon me?” She glanced back in the rearview mirror and was immeasurably relieved to see that the hitchhiker wasn’t looking at her at all; he was glancing around the car. He touched the seat cover with his palm, then lightly brushed the roof upholstery with the tips of his fingers.
“Bad vibes,” he said, and shook his head. “This car, I don’t know why, but I get bad vibes.”
“Do you?” she asked, hoping her voice sounded neutral.
“Yeah. I got stuck in an elevator once when I was a little kid. Ever since then I get attacks of claustrophobia. I never had one in a car before, but boy, I got one now. In the worst way. I think you could light a kitchen match on my tongue, that’s how dry my mouth is.”
He laughed a short, embarrassed laugh.
“If I wasn’t already so late, I’d just get out and walk. No offence to you or your guy’s car,” he added hastily, and when Leigh looked back into the mirror his eyes did not seem wild at all, only nervous. Apparently he wasn’t kidding about the claustrophobia, and he no longer looked like Charlie Manson to her at all. Leigh wondered how she could have been so stupid… except she knew how, and why. She knew perfectly well.
It was the car. All day long she had felt perfectly okay riding in Christine, but now her former nervousness and dislike were back. She had merely projected her feelings onto a hitchhiker because… well, because you could be scared and nervous about some guy you just picked up off the road, but it was insane to be scared by a car, an inanimate construct of steel and glass and plastic and chrome. That wasn’t just a little eccentric, it was insane.
“You don’t smell anything, do you?” he asked abruptly.
“Smell anything?”
“A bad smell.”
“No, not at all.” Her fingers were plucking at the bottom of her sweater now, pulling off wisps of angora. Her heart was knocking unpleasantly in her chest. “It must be part of your claustrophobia whatzis.”
“I guess so.”
But she could smell it. Under the good new smells of leather and upholstery there was a faint odour: something like gone-over eggs. Just a whiff… a lingering whiff.
“Mind if I crank the window down a little?”
“If you want,” Leigh said, and found it took some effort to keep her voice steady and casual. Suddenly her mind’s eye showed her the picture that had been in the paper yesterday morning, a picture of Moochie Welch probably culled from the yearbook. The caption beneath read: Peter Welch, victim of fatal hit-and-run incident that police feel may have been murder.
The hitchhiker unrolled his window three inches and crisp cold air came in, driving that smell away. Inside McD’s, Arnie had reached the counter and was giving his order. Looking at him, Leigh experienced such an odd swirl of love and fear that she felt nauseated by the mixture—for the second or third time lately she found herself wishing that she had fixed on Dennis first. Dennis who seemed so safe and sensible…
She turned her thoughts away from that.
“Just tell me if it gets cold on you,” the hitchhiker said apologetically. “I’m weird, I know it.” He sighed. “Sometimes I think I never should have given up drugs, you know?”
Leigh smiled.
Arnie came out with a white bag, skidded a little in the snow, and then got behind the wheel.
“Cold like an icebox in here,” he grunted.
“Sorry, man,” the hitchhiker said from the back, and rolled the window up again. Leigh waited to see if that smell would come back, but now she could smell nothing but leather, upholstery, and the faint aroma of Arnie’s aftershave.
“Here you go, Leigh.” He gave her a burger, fries, and a small Coke. He had gotten himself a Big Mac.
“Want to thank you again for the ride, man,” the hitchhiker said. “You can just drop me off at the corner of JFK and Center, if that’s cool.”
“Fine,” Arnie said shortly, and pulled out. The snow was coming down even more heavily now, and the wind had begun to whoop. For the first time Leigh felt Christine skid a bit as she felt for a grip on the wide street, which was now almost deserted. They were less than fifteen minutes from home.