Christine

“Dennis!” She sounded both pleased and surprised. For a moment it was the voice of the old Regina, the one who gave Arnie and me peanut butter sandwiches with bits of bacon crumbled into them (peanut butter and bacon on stone-ground rye, of course). “How are you? We heard that they sprung you from the hospital.”

“I’m doing okay,” I said. “How about you?”

There was a brief silence, and then she said, “Well, you know how things have been around here.”

“Problems,” I said. “Yeah.”

“All the problems we missed “in earlier years,” Regina said. “I guess they just piled up in a corner and waited for us.”

I cleared my throat a little and said nothing.

“Did you want to talk to Arnie?”

“If he’s there.”

After another slight pause, Regina said, “I remember that in the old days you and he used to swap back and forth on New Year’s Eve, seeing the New Year in. Was that what you were calling about, Dennis?” She sounded almost timid, and that was not like the old full-steam-ahead Regina at all.

“Well, yeah,” I said. “Kid stuff, I know, but—”

“No!” she said, sharply and quickly. “No, not at all! If Arnie ever needed you, Dennis—needed some friend now is the time. He… he’s upstairs now, sleeping. He sleeps much too much. And he’s… he’s not… he hasn’t.”

“Hasn’t what, Regina?”

“He hasn’t made any of his college applications! she burst out, and then immediately lowered her voice, as if Arnie might overhear. “Not a single one! Mr Vickers, the guidance counsellor at school, called and told me! He scored 700s on his college boards, he could get into almost any college in the country—at least he could have before this—this trouble…” Her voice wavered toward tears, and then she got hold of herself again. “Talk to him, Dennis. If you could spend the evening with him tonight… drink a few beers with him and just… just talk to him…”

She stopped, but I could tell there was something more. Something she needed to say and couldn’t.

“Regina,” I said. I hadn’t liked the old Regina, the compulsive dominator who seemed to run the lives of her husband and son to fit her own timetable, but I liked this distracted, weepy woman even less. “Come on. Take it easy, okay?”

I’m afraid to talk to him,” she said finally. “And Michael’s afraid to talk to him. He… he seems to explode if you cross him on some subjects. At first it was only his car; now it’s college too. Talk to him, Dennis, please.” There was another short pause, and then, almost casually, she brought out the heart of her dread: “I think we’re losing him.”

“No, Regina, hey—”

“I’ll get him,” she said abruptly, and the phone clunked down. The wait seemed to stretch out. I crooked the phone between my jaw and my shoulder and rapped my knuckles on the cast that still covered my upper left leg. I wrestled with a craven urge just to hang the telephone up and push this entire business away.

Then the phone was picked up again. “Hello?” a wary voice asked, and the thought that burned across my mind with complete assurance was: That’s not Arnie.

“Arnie?”

“It sounds like Dennis Guilder, the mouth that walks like a man,” the voice said, and that sounded like Arnie, all right—but at the same time, it didn’t. His voice hadn’t really deepened, but it seemed to have roughened, as if through overuse and shouting. It was eerie, as if I were talking to a stranger who was doing a pretty good imitation of my friend Arnie.

“Watch what you’re saying, dork,” I said. I was smiling but my hands were dead cold.

“You know,” he said in a confidential voice, “your face and my ass bear a suspicious resemblance.”

“I’ve noticed the resemblance, but last time I thought it was the other way around,” I said, and then a little silence fell between us—we had gone through what passed for the amenities with us. “So what are you doing tonight?” I asked.

“Not much,” he said. “No date or anything. You?”

“Sure, I’m in great shape,” I said. “I’m going to go pick up Roseanne and take her to Studio 2000. You can come along and hold my crutches while we dance, if you want.”

He laughed a little.

“I thought I’d come over,” I said. “Maybe you and me could see the New Year in like we used to. You know?”

“Yeah!” Arnie said. He sounded pleased by the idea—but still not quite like himself. “Watch Guy Lombardo and all that happy crappy. That’d be all right.”

I paused for a moment, not quite sure what to say. Finally I replied cautiously, “Well, maybe Dick Clark or someone. Guy Lombardo’s dead, Arnie.”

“Is he?” Arnie sounded puzzled, doubtful. “Oh. Oh, yeah, I guess he is. But Dick Clark’s hanging in there, right?”

“Right,” I said.

“I got to give it an eighty-five Dick, it’s got a good beat and you can dance to it,” Arnie said, but it wasn’t Arnie’s voice at al I. My mind made a sudden and hideously unexpected cross-connection

(best smell in the world… except maybe for pussy) and my hand tightened down convulsively on the telephone. I think I almost screamed. I wasn’t talking to Arnie; I was talking to Roland LeBay. I was talking to a dead man.