Christine

Students were coming in, parking their cars, and heading for the building, chattering and laughing and horsing around. I slouched lower in my seat, not wanting to be recognized. A bus pulled up at the doors in the main turnaround and disgorged a load of kids. A small cluster of shivering boys and girls gathered out in the smoking area where Buddy had taken Arnie on that day last fall. That day also seemed impossibly distant now.

My heart was thumping in my chest and I was miserably tense. A craven part of me hoped that Arnie simply wouldn’t show up. And then I saw the familiar white-over-red shape of Christine turn in from School Street and cruise up the student drive, moving at a steady twenty, blowing a little plume of white exhaust from her pipe. Arnie was behind the wheel, wearing his school jacket. He didn’t look at me; he simply drove to his accustomed place at the back of the lot and parked.

Just stay slouched down and he won’t even see you, that craven, traitorous part of my mind whispered. He’ll walk right by you, like all the rest of them.

Instead, I opened my door and fumbled my crutches outside. Leaning my weight on them, I yanked myself out and stood there on the packed snow of the parking lot, feeling a little bit like Fred MacMurray in that old picture Double Indemnity. From the school came the burring of the first bell, made faint and unimportant by distance—Arnie was later than he had been in the old days. My mother had said that Arnie was almost disgustingly punctual. Maybe LeBay hadn’t been.

He came toward me, books under his arm, head down twisting in and out between the cars. He walked behind a van, passing out of my sight temporarily, and then came back into view. He looked up then, directly into my eyes.

Ms own eyes widened, and he made an automatic half-turn back toward Christine.

“Feel kind of naked when you’re not behind the wheel?” I asked.

He looked back at me. His lips drew slightly downward, as if he bad tasted something of unpleasant flavour.

“How’s your cunt, Dennis?” he asked.

George LeBay hadn’t said, but he had at least hinted that his brother was extraordinarily good at getting through to people, finding their soft spots.

I took two shuffling steps forward on my crutches while he stood there, smiling with the corners of his mouth down.

“How did you like it when Repperton called you Cuntface?” I asked him. “Did you like it so well you want to turn it around and use it on somebody else?”

Part of him seemed to flinch at that—something that was maybe only in his eyes—but the contemptuous, watchful smile remained on his lips. It was cold out. I hadn’t put on my gloves, and my hands, on the crossbars of the crutches, were getting numb. Our breath made little plumes… “Or what about in the fifth grade, when Tommy Deckinger used to call you Fart-Breath?” I asked, my voice rising. Getting angry at him hadn’t been part of the game-plan, but now it was here, shaking inside me. “Did you like that? And do you remember when Ladd Smythe was a patrol-boy and he pushed you down in the street and I pulled his hat off and stuffed it down his pants? Where you been, Arnie? This guy LeBay is a Johnny-come-lately. Me, I was here all along.”

That flinch again. This time he half-turned away, the smile faltering, his eyes searching for Christine the way your eyes might search for a loved one in a crowded terminal or bus-station. Or the way a junkie might took for his pusher.

“You need her that bad?” I asked. “Man, you’re hooked right through the fucking bag, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said hoarsely. “You stole my girl. Nothing is going to change that. You went behind my back… you cheated… you’re just a shitter, like all the rest of them.” He was looking at me now, his eyes wide and hurt and blazing with anger. “I thought I could trust you, and you turned out to be worse than Repperton or any of them!” He took a step toward me and cried out in a perfect fury of loss, “You stole her, you shitter!”

I lurched forward another step on my crutches; one of them slid a little bit in the packed snow underfoot. We were like two reluctant gunslingers approaching each other.

“You can’t steal what’s been given away,” I said.

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the night she choked in your car. The night Christine tried to kill her. You told her you didn’t need her. You told her to fuck off.”

“I never did! That’s a lie! That’s a goddam lie!”

“Who am I talking to?” I asked.

“Never mind!” His grey eyes were huge behind his spectacles. “Never mind who the fuck you’re talking to! That’s nothing but a dirty lie! No more than I’d expect from that stinking bitch!”

Another step closer. His pale face was marked with flaring red patches of colour.

“When you write your name, it doesn’t look like your signature anymore, Arnie.”

“You shut up, Dennis.”

“Your father says it’s like having a stranger in the house.”

“I’m warning you, man.”