'I really can't,' Dennis said, taking the Tupperware container and a fresh plastic fork. He finished the slice of pie in four huge bites and then belched. He upended the remainder of his second beer and belched again. 'In Portugal, that's a compliment to the cook,' he said. His head was buzzing pleasantly from the beer.
'Whatever you say,' Arnie responded with a grin. He got up, turned on the overhead fluorescent, and snuffed the candles. Outside a steady rain had begun to beat against the windows; it looked and sounded cold. And for Dennis, some of the warm spirit of friendship and real Thanksgiving seemed to go out with the candles.
'I'm gonna hate you tomorrow,' Dennis said. 'I'll probably have to sit on that john in there for an hour. And it hurts my back.'
'You remember the time Elaine got the farts?' Arnie asked, and they both laughed. 'We teased her until your mother gave us holy old hell.'
'They didn't smell, but they sure were loud,' Dennis said, smiling.
'Like gunshots,' Arnie agreed, and they both laughed a little - but it was a sad sort of laughter, if there is such a thing. A lot of water under the bridge. The thought that Ellie's attack of the farts had happened seven years ago was somehow more unsettling than it was amusing. There was a breath of mortality in the realization that seven years could steal past with such smooth and unobtrusive ease.
Conversation lapsed a little, both of them lost in their own thoughts.
At last Dennis said, 'Leigh came by yesterday. Told me, about Christine. I'm sorry, man. Bummer.'
Arnie looked up, and his expression of thoughtful melancholy was lost in a cheerful smile that Dennis didn't really believe.
'Yeah,' he said. 'It was crude. But I went way overboard about it.'
'Anyone would,' Dennis said, aware that he had become suddenly watchful, hating it but unable to help it. The friendship part was over; it had been here, warming the room and filling it, and now it had simply slipped away like the ephemeral, delicate thing it was. Now they were just dancing. Arnie's cheerful eyes were also opaque and - he would have sworn to it - watchful.
'Sure. I gave my mother a hard time. Leigh too, I guess. It was just the shock of seeing all that work . . . all that work down the tubes.' He shook his head. 'Bad news.'
'Are you going to be able to do anything with it?' Arnie brightened immediately - really brightened this time, Dennis felt. 'Sure! I already have. You wouldn't believe it, Dennis, if you'd seen the way it looked in that parking lot. They made them tough in those days, not like now when all the stuff that looks like metal is really just shiny plastic. That car is nothing but a damn tank. The glass was the worst part. And the tyres, of course. They slashed the tyres.'
'What about the engine?'
'Never got at it,' Arnie said promptly, and that was the first lie. They had been at it, all right. When Arnie and Leigh had gotten to Christine that afternoon, the distributor cap had been lying on the pavement. Leigh had recognized it and had told Dennis about it. What else had they done under the hood, Dennis wondered. The radiator? If someone was going to use a tyre iron to punch holes in the bodywork, might they not be apt to use the same tool to spring the radiator in a few places? What about the plugs? The voltage regulator? The carburettor?
Arnie, why are you lying to me?
'So what are you doing with it now?' Dennis asked.
'Spending money on it, what else?' Arnie said, and laughed his almost-genuine laugh. Dennis might even have accepted it as genuine if he hadn't heard the real article once or twice over the Thanksgiving supper Arnie had brought. 'New tyres, new glass. Got some bodywork to do, and then it will be as good as new.'
As good as new. But Leigh had said that they had found something that was little more than a smashed hulk, a carny three-swings-for-a-quarter derelict.
Why are you lying?
For a cold moment he found himself wondering if maybe Arnie hadn't gone a little crazy - but no, that wasn't the impression he gave. The feeling Dennis got from him was one of . . . furtiveness. Craftiness. Then, for the first time, the crazy thought