For one thing, he had grown cynical.
He had told Will in the office yesterday afternoon over cigars (the boy had developed a taste for those as well; Will doubted if his parents knew) that he had missed so many chess club meetings that according to the by-laws, he was no longer a member. Slawson, the faculty advisor, knew it but was conveniently overlooking it until after the Northern States Tourney.
“I’ve missed more meetings than anyone, but I also happen to play better than anyone else, and the shitter knows—” Arnie winced and shoved both hands into the small of his back for a moment.
“You ought to get a doctor to look at that,” Will remarked.
Arnie winked, suddenly looking much older than nearly eighteen. “I don’t need anything but a good Christian fuck to stretch the vertebrae.”
“So you’re going to Philly?” Will had been disappointed, even though Cunningham had the off-time coming; it meant he would have to put Jimmy Sykes in charge for the next couple of nights, and Jimmy didn’t know his ass from ice cream.
“Sure. I’m not about to turn down three days of bright lights,” Arnie said. He saw Will’s sour face and had grinned. “Don’t worry, man. This close to Christmas, all your regulars are buying toys for the kiddies instead of spark plugs and carburettor kits. This place will be dead until next year, and you know it.”
That was certainly true enough, but he hadn’t needed a snotnose kid to point it out for him.
“You want to go to Albany for me after you get back?” Will had asked.
Arnie looked at him carefully. “When?”
“This weekend.”
“Saturday?”
“Yes.”
“What’s the deal?”
“You take my Chrysler to Albany that’s the fucking deal. Henry Buck was fourteen clean used cars he wants to get rid of. He says they’re clean. You go look at them. I’ll give you a blank cheque. If they look good, you make the deal. If they look hot, tell him to take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut.”
“And what do I fake with me?”
Will had looked at him for a long time. “Getting scared, Cunningham?”
“No.” Arnie crushed his cigar out half-smoked. He looked at Will defensively. “Maybe I just feel the odds getting a little longer each time I do it. Is it coke?”
“I’ll get Jimmy to do it,” Will said brusquely.
“Just tell me what it is.”
“Two hundred cartons of Winstons.”
“All right.”
“You sure? Just like that?”
Arnie had laughed. “It’ll be a break from chess.”
Will parked the Chrysler in the stall closest to his office, the one with MR DARNELL DO NOT BLOCK! painted inside the lines. He got out and slammed the door, puffing, labouring for breath. The emphysema was sitting on his chest, and tonight it seemed to have brought its brother. No, he just wasn’t going to lie down; no matter what that asshole doctor said.
Jimmy Sykes was apathetically wielding the big push broom. Jimmy was tall and gangling, twenty-five years old. His light mental retardation made him look perhaps eight years younger. He had started combing his hair back in a fifties-style ducktail, in imitation of Cunningham, whom Jimmy almost worshipped. Except for the low whssht, whssht of the broom’s bristles on the oil-stained concrete, the place was silent. And empty.
“Place is really jumpin tonight, Jimmy, huh?” Will wheezed.
Jimmy looked around. “No, sir, Mr Darnell, nobody been in since Mr Hatch came and got his Fairlane, and that was half an hour ago.”
“Just joking,” Will said, wishing again that Cunningham were here. You couldn’t talk to Jimmy except on a perfectly literal Dick-and-Jane level. Still, maybe he would invite him in for a cup of coffee with a slug of Courvoisier tipped in for good measure. Make it a threesome. Him, Jimmy, and the emphysema. Or maybe, since the emphysema had brought its brother tonight, you’d have to call it a foursome. “What do you say about—”
He broke off suddenly, noticing that stall twenty was empty. Christine was gone.
“Arnie come in?” he said.
“Arnie?” Jimmy repeated, blinkin stupidly.
“Arnie, Arnie Cunningham,” Will said impatiently. “How many Arnies do you know? His car’s gone.”
Jimmy looked around at stall twenty and frowned. “Oh. Yeah.”
Will smiled. “Hotshot got knocked out of his hotshot chess tournament, huh?”
“Oh, did he?” Jimmy asked. “Jeez, that’s too bad, huh?”
Will restrained an urge to grab Jimmy and give him a shake and a wallop. He would not get angry; that only made it harder to breathe, and he would end up having to shoot his lungs full of the horrible-tasting stuff from his aspirator. “Well, what did he say, Jimmy? What did he say when you saw him?” But Will knew suddenly and surely that Jimmy hadn’t seen Arnie.
Jimmy finally understood what Will was driving at. “Oh, I didn’t see him. Just saw Christine go out the door, you know. Boy, that’s some pretty car, ain’t it? He fixed it up like magic.”
“Yes,” Will said. “Like magic.” It was a word that had occurred to him in connection with Christine before. He suddenly changed his mind about inviting Jimmy in for coffee and brandy. Still looking at stall twenty, he said, “You can go home now, Jimmy.”
“Aw, jeez, Mr Darnell, you said I could have six hours tonight. That ain’t over until ten.”
“I’ll punch you out at ten.
Jimmy’s muddy eyes brightened at this unexpected, almost unheard-of largesse. “Really?”
“Yeah, really, really. Make like a tree and leave, Jimmy, okay?”
“Sure,” Jimmy said, thinking that for the first time in the five or six years he had worked for Will (he had trouble remembering which it was, although his mother kept track of it, the same as she kept track of all his tax papers), the old grouch had gotten the Christmas spirit. Just like in that movie about the three ghosts. Summoning up his own Christmas spirit, Jimmy cried: “That’s a big ten-four, good buddy!”
Will winced and lumbered into his office. He turned on the Mr Coffee and sat down behind his desk, watching as Jimmy put away his broom, turned out most of the overhead fluorescents, and got his heavy coat.
Will leaned back and thought.
It was, after all, his brains that had kept him alive all these years, alive and one step ahead; he had never been handsome, he had been fat all of his adult life, and his health had always been terrible. A childhood bout of scarlet fever one spring had been followed by a mild case of polio; he had been left with a right arm that operated at only about seventy per cent capacity. As a young man he had endured a plague of boils. When Will was forty-three his doctor had discovered a large, spongy growth under one arm. It had turned out to be non-malignant, but the removal surgery had kept him on his back most of one summer, and as a result he had developed bedsores. A year later he had almost died of double pneumonia. Now it was incipient diabetes and emphysema. But his brains had always been fine and dandy, and his brains had kept him one step ahead.
So he leaned back and thought about Arnie. He supposed one of the things that had favourably impressed him about Cunningham after he had stood up to Repperton that day was a certain similarity to the long-ago teenaged Will Darnell. Of course, Cunningham wasn’t sickly, but he had been pimply, disliked, a loner. Those things had all been true of the young Will Darnell.
Cunningham had brains, too.
Brains and that car. That strange car.
“Good night, Mr Darnell,” Jimmy called. He stood by the door for a moment, and then added uncertainly, “Merry Christmas.”
Will raised his hand in a wave. Jimmy left. Will heaved his bulk out of his chair, got the bottle of Courvoisier out of the filing cabinet, and set it down next to the Mr Coffee. Then he sat down again. A rough chronology was ticking through his mind.