Christine

I glanced at my watch. It was only eleven-twenty. But hadn’t I had enough of Arnie and Arnie’s problems for one day?

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“Are you going to call him?”

I sighed. “Yeah, I guess I will.”

I went into the kitchen, slapped together a cold chicken sandwich, poured myself a glass of Hawaiian punch—gross stuff, but I love it—and dialled Arnie’s house. He picked up the phone himself on the second ring. He sounded happy and excited.

“Dennis! Where you been?”

“Bowling,” I said.

“Listen, I went down to Darnell’s tonight, you know? And—this is great, Dennis—he gave Repperton the boot! Repperton’s gone and I can stay!”

That sensation of unformed dread in my belly again. I put my sandwich down. Suddenly I didn’t want it anymore.

“Arnie, do you think taking it back there is really such a good idea?”

What do you mean? Repperton’s gone. That doesn’t sound like a good idea to you?”

I thought about Darnell ordering Arnie to turn off his car before it polluted his cruddy garage, Darnell telling Arnie he didn’t take any shit from kids like him. I thought about the shamefaced way Arnie had cut his eyes away from mine when he told me he had gotten lift-time to change his oil by doing “a couple of errands”. I had an idea that Darnell might find it amusing to turn Arnie into his pet gofer. It would amuse the shit out of his other regulars and his poker buddies. Arnie goes out for coffee, Arnie goes out for doughnuts, Arnie changes the toilet paper rolls in the crapper and loads up the Nibroc dispenser with paper towels. Hey Will, who’s the four eyes swamping out the toilet in there?… Him? Name’s Cunningham. His folks teach up at the college. He’s taking a shithouse postgrad course down here. And they would laugh. Arnie would the local joke down at Darnell’s Garage on Hampton Street.

I thought about those things, but I didn’t say them. I figured Arnie could make up his own mind about whether he was treading water or shit. This couldn’t go on for ever Arnie was just too smart. Or so I hoped. He was ugly, but he wasn’t dumb.

“Repperton being gone sounds like a fine idea,” I said. “It was just that I thought Darnell’s was sort of a temporary measure. I mean, twenty a week, Arnie that’s pretty stiff on top of the tools fees and the lift fees and all that happy crappy.”

“That’s why I thought renting Mr LeBay’s garage would be so great,” Arnie said. “I figured that even at twenty-five a week I’d be better off.”

“Well, there you go. It you put an ad in the paper for garage space, I bet you’d—”

“No, no, let me finish,” Arnie said. He was still excited. “When I went down there this afternoon Darnell took me aside right away. Said he was sorry about the ragging I had to take from Repperton. He said he misjudged me.”

“He said that?” I guess I believed it, but I didn’t trust it.

“Yeah. He asked me how I’d like to work for him part-time. Ten, maybe twenty hours a week during school. Putting stuff away, oiling the lifts, that kind of thing. And I can have the space for ten a week, tools fees and lift fees at half. How does that sound?”

I thought it sounded too fucking good to be true.

“Watch your ass, Arnie.”

“What?”

“My dad says he’s a crook.”

“I haven’t seen any sign of it, I think that’s all just talk, Dennis. He’s a loudmouth, but I think that’s all.”

I’m just telling you to stay loose, that’s all.” I switched the phone to my other ear and drank some Hawaiian Punch. “Keep your eyes open and move away quick if anything starts to look heavy.”

“Are you talking about anything specific?”

I thought of the vague stories about drugs, the more specific ones about hot cars.

“No,” I said. “I just don’t trust him.”

“Well… he said doubtfully, trailing away, and then came back to the original subject: Christine. With him it always got back to Christine. “But it’s a break, a real break for me, Dennis, if it works out. Christine… she’s really hurting. I’ve been able to do some things with her, but for everything I do it looks like there’s four more. Some of it I don’t even know how to do, but I’m going to learn.”

“Yeah,” I said, and took a bite out of my sandwich. After my conversation with George LeBay, my enthusiasm for the subject of Arnie’s best girl Christine had passed zero and entered the negative regions.

“She needs a front-end alignment—hell, she needs a new front end—and new brake shoes… a ring-job… I may try to re-grind the pistons… but I can’t do any of that stuff with my fifty-four-buck Craftsman toolkit. You see what I mean, Dennis?”