Christine

Maybe it had been. But the guy hadn’t even tried to persuade him to stay, that was the thing. He should have at least tried, because Arnie was the best the LHS chess club had to offer, and Slawson knew it. If he had tried, maybe Arnie would have changed his mind. The truth was, he did have a little more time now that Christine was… was… What?

… well, fixed up again. If Mr Slawson had said something like Hey Arnie, don’t be so rash, let’s think this over, we could really use you… if Mr Slawson had said something like that, why, he might have reconsidered. But not Slawson. Just we’ll be right here in Room 30 if you change your mind, and blah-blah and yak-yak, what a fucking shitter, just like the rest of them. It wasn’t his fault that LHS had been knocked out in the semi-final round; he had won four games before that and would have won in the finals if he had gotten a chance. It was those two shitters Barry Qualson and Mike Hicks that had lost it for them; both of them played chess as if maybe they thought Ruy Lopex was some new kind of soft drink or something…

He stripped the wrapper and the foil from a stick of gum, folded the gum into his mouth, balled the wrapper, and flicked it into the litterbag hanging from Christine’s ashtray with neat accuracy, “Right up the little tramp’s ass,” he muttered, and then grinned. It was a hard, spitless grin. Above it, his eyes moved restlessly from side to side, looking mistrustfully out at a world full of crazy drivers and stupid pedestrians and general idiocy.

Arnie cruised aimlessly around Libertyville, his thoughts continuing to run on in this softly paranoid and bitterly comforting fashion. The radio spilled out a steady flood of golden oldies, and today all of them seemed to be instrumentals—’rebel Rouser”, “Wild Weekend”, “Telstar”, Sandy Nelson’s jungle-driven “Teen Beat”, and “Rumble” by Line Wray, the greatest of them all. His back nagged, but in a low key. The flurry intensified briefly to a dark grey cloud of snow. He popped on his headlights, and just as quickly the snow tapered off and the clouds broke, spilling through bars of remote and coldly beautiful late-afternoon winter sun.

He cruised.

He came out of his thoughts which now were that Repperton had maybe come to a perfectly fitting end after all—and was shocked to realize that it was nearly quarter of six, and dark. Gino’s Pizza was coming up on the left, the little green neon shamrocks shimmering in the dark. Arnie pulled over to the kerb and got out. He started to cross the street, then realized he had left his keys in Christine’s ignition.

He leaned in to get them… and suddenly the smell assaulted him, the smell Leigh had told him about, the smell he had denied.

It was here now, as if it had come out when he left the car—a high, rotten, meaty smell that made his eyes water and his throat close. He snatched the keys and stood back, trembling, looking at Christine with something like horror.

Arnie, there was a smell. A horrible, rotten smell… you know what I’m talking about.

No, I don’t have the slightest idea… you’re imagining things.

But if she was, so was he.

Arnie turned suddenly and ran across the street to Gino’s as if the devil was on his tail.

Inside, he ordered a pizza he didn’t really want, changed some quarters for dimes, and slipped into the telephone booth beside the juke. It was thumping some current tune Arnie had not heard before.

He called home first. His father answered, his voice oddly toneless—Arnie had never heard Michael’s voice quite that way before, and his unease deepened. His father sounded like Mr Slawson. This Thursday afternoon and evening were taking on the maroon tones of nightmare. Beyond the glass walls of the booth, strange faces drifted dreamily past, like untethered balloons on which someone had crudely drawn human faces, God at work with a Magic Marker.

Shitters,he thought disjointedly. All a bunch of shitters.

“Hello, Dad,” he said uncertainly. “Look, I—uh, I kind of lost track of the time here, I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right,” Michael said. His voice was almost a drone, and Arnie felt his unease deepen into something like fright. “Where are you, the garage?”

“No—uh, Gino’s. Gino’s Pizza. Dad, are you okay? You sound funny.”

“I’m fine,” Michael said. “Just scraped your dinner down the garbage disposal, your mother’s upstairs crying again, and you’re having a pizza. I’m fine. Enjoying your car, Arnie?”

Arnie’s throat worked, but no sound came out.

“Dad,” he managed finally, “I don’t think that’s very fair.”