Christine

Slowly, he said, “He and Regina are going to Penn State this afternoon right after school. Arnie called her this morning and asked her if she’d go with him. He said…” He paused, thinking. “He said he felt as if he’d suddenly come to his senses. He said it just sort of hit him as he was going to school this morning that if he didn’t do something definite about college, it might slip away from him. He told her he’d decided Penn State was the best bet and asked her if she’d like to go up with him and help talk to the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and to some of the people in the history and philosophy departments.”

The booth was cold. My hands were starting to go numb. Leigh was high up in Petunia’s wheelhouse, watching me anxiously. How well you arranged things, Arnie, I thought. Still the chess-player. He was manipulating his mother, putting her on strings and making her dance. I felt some pity for her, but not as much as I might have felt. How many times had Regina herself been the manipulator, dancing others across her stage like so many Punch and Judys? Now, white she was half-distracted with fear and shame, LeBay had dangled in front of her eyes the one thing absolutely guaranteed to make her come running: the possibility that things might just be returning to normal.

“And did all that ring true to you?” I asked Michael.

“Of course not!” he burst out. “It wouldn’t have rung true to her, if she was thinking straight! With college admissions what they are today, Penn State would enrol him in July, if he had the money for tuition and the College Board scores—and Arnie has both. He talked as if this were the fifties instead of the seventies!”

“When are they leaving?”

“She’s going to meet him at the high school after period six; that’s what she said when she called me. He’s getting a dismissal slip.”

That meant they would be leaving Libertyville in less than an hour and a half. So I asked the last question, even though I already knew the answer. “They’re not taking Christine, are they?”

“No, they’re going in the station wagon. She was delirious with joy, Dennis. Delirious. That business of getting her to go with him to Penn State… that was inspired. Wild horses wouldn’t have kept Regina from a chance like that. Dennis, what’s going on? Please.”

“Tomorrow,” I said. “That’s a promise. Firm. Meantime, you’ve got to do something for me. It could be a matter of life and death for my family and for Leigh Cabot’s family. You—”

“Oh my God,” he said hoarsely. He spoke in the voice of a man for whom a great light has just dawned. “He’s been gone every time—except when the Welch boy was killed, and that time he was… Regina saw him asleep, and I’m sure she wasn’t lying about that… Dennis, who’s driving that car? Who’s using Christine to kill people when Arnie isn’t here?”

I almost told him, but it was cold in the telephone booth and my leg was starting to ache again, and that answer would have led to other questions, dozens of them. And even then the only final result might be a flat refusal to believe.

“Michael, listen,” I said, speaking with all the deliberateness I could summon. For one weird moment I felt like Mister Rogers on TV. A big car from the 1950s is coming to eat you up, boys and girls… Can you say Christine? I knew you could! “You’ve got to call my father and Leigh’s father. Have both families get together at Leigh’s house.” I was thinking of brick, good solid brick. “I think maybe you ought to go too, Michael. All of you stay together until Leigh and I get there or until I call. But you tell them for Leigh and me: They’re not to go outside after'—I calculated: If Arnie and Regina left the high school at two, how long before his alibi would be cast-iron-watertight? — after four o’clock this afternoon. After four, none of you goes out on the street. Any street. Under no circumstances.”

“Dennis, I can’t just—”

“You have to,” I said. “You’ll be able to convince my old man, and between the two of you, you should be able to convince Mr and Mrs Cabot. And stay away from Christine yourself, Michael.”

“They’re leaving right from school,” Michael said. “He said the car would be all right in the school parking lot.”

I could hear it in his voice again—his knowledge of the lie. After what had happened last fall, Arnie would no more leave Christine in a public parking lot than he would show up in Calc class naked.

“Uh-huh,” I said. “But if you should happen to look out the window and see her in the driveway anyhow, stay clear. Do you understand?”

“Yes, but—”

“Call my father first. Promise me.”

“All right, I promise… but Dennis—”

“Thank you, Michael.”

I hung up. My hands and feet were numb with the cold, but my forehead was slick with sweat. I pushed the door of the phone booth open with the tip of one crutch and worked my way back to Petunia.

“What did he say?” Leigh asked. “Did he promise?”