Christine

I sure thought something was out of whack, and it scared the piss out of me. The Keystone doesn’t publish on Christmas, but all three Pittsburgh network-TV affiliates and both the independent channels had the story of what had happened to Will Darnell, along with bizarre and frightening pictures of his house. The side facing the road had been demolished. It was the only word which fit. That side of the house looked as if some mad Nazi had driven a Panzer tank through it. The story had been headlined this morning—FOUL PLAY SUSPECTED IN BIZARRE DEATH OF SUSPECTED CRIME FIGURE. That was bad enough, even without another picture of Will Darnell’s house with that big hole punched in the side. But you had to check page three to get the rest of it. The other item was smaller because Will Darnell had been a “suspected crime figure”, and Don Vandenberg had only been a dipshit dropout gas-jockey.

SERVICE STATION ATTENDANT KILLED IN CHRISTMAS EVE HIT-AND-RUN, this headline read. A single column followed. The story ended with the Libertyville Chief of Police theorizing that the driver had probably been drunk or stoned. Neither he nor the Keystone made any attempt to connect the deaths, which had been separated by almost ten miles on the night of a screaming blizzard which had stopped all traffic in Ohio and western Pennsylvania. But I could make connections. I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t help it. And hadn’t my father been looking at me strangely several times during the morning? Yes. Once or twice it had seemed he would say something—I had no idea what I would say if he did; Will Darnell’s death, bizarre as it had been, was nowhere nearly as bizarre as my suspicions. Then he had closed his mouth without speaking. That, to be up front about it, was something of a relief.

The doorbell chimed at two past two.

“Come on in!” I yelled, getting up on my crutches again anyway.

The door opened and Leigh poked her head in. “Dennis?”

“Yeah. Come on in.”

She did, looking very pretty in a bright red ski parka and dark blue pants. She pushed the parka’s fur-edged hood back.

“Sit down, she said, unzipping her parka. “Go on, right now, that’s an order. You look like a big dumb stork on those things.”

“Keep it up,” I said, sitting down again with an ungainly plop. When you’re cast in plaster, it’s never like in the movies; you never sit down like Cary Grant getting ready to have cocktails at the Ritz with Ingrid Bergman. It all happens at once, and if the cushion you land on doesn’t give out a big loud raspberry, as if your sudden descent had scared you into cutting the cheese, you count yourself ahead of the game. This time I got lucky. “I’m such a sucker for flattery that I make myself sick.”

“How are you, Dennis?”

“Mending,” I said.” How about you?”

“I’ve been better,” she said in a low voice, and bit at her lower lip. This can sometimes be a seductive gesture on a girl’s part, but it wasn’t this time.

“Hang up your coat and sit down yourself.”

“Okay.” Her eyes touched mine, and looking at them was a little much. I looked someplace else, thinking about Arnie.

She hung her coat up and came back into the living room slowly. “Your folks—”

“I got my father to take everyone out,” I said. “I thought maybe” I shrugged—'we ought to talk just between ourselves.”

She stood by the sofa, looking at me across the room. I was struck again by the simplicity of her good looks her lovely girl’s figure outlined in dark blue pants and a sweater of light, powdery blue, an outfit that made me think about skiing. Her hair was tied in a loose pigtail and lay over her left shoulder. Her eyes were the colour of her sweater, maybe a little darker. A cornfed American beauty, you would have said, except for the high cheekbones, which seemed a little arrogant, bespeaking some older, more exotic heritage—maybe some fifteen or twenty generations back there was a Viking in the woodpile.

Or maybe that isn’t what I was thinking at all.

She saw me looking at her too long and blushed. I looked away.

“Dennis, are you worried about him?”

“Worried? Scared might be a better word.

“What do you know about that car? What has he told you?”

“Not much,” I said. “Look, would you like something to drink? There’s some stuff in the fridge I felt for my crutches.

“Sit still,” she said. “I would like something, but I’ll get it. What about you?”

“I’ll take a ginger ale, if there’s one left.”

She went into the kitchen and I watched her shadow on the wall, moving lightly, like a dancer. There was a momentary added weight in my stomach, almost like a sickness. There’s a name for that sort of sickness. I think it’s called failing in love with your best friend’s girl.

“You’ve got an automatic ice-maker.” Her voice floated back. “We’ve got one too. I love it.”

“Sometimes it goes crazy and sprays ice-cubes all over the floor,” I said. “It’s like Jimmy Cagney in White Heat. “Take that, you dirty rats.” It drives my mother crazy.” I was babbling.