Will had looked at him for a long time. 'Getting scared, Cunningham?'
'No.' Arnie crushed his cigar out half-smoked. He looked at Will defensively. 'Maybe I just feel the odds getting a little longer each time I do it. Is it coke?'
'I'll get Jimmy to do it,' Will said brusquely.
'Just tell me what it is.'
'Two hundred cartons of Winstons.'
'All right.'
'You sure? Just like that?'
Arnie had laughed. 'It'll be a break from chess.'
Will parked the Chrysler in the stall closest to his office, the one with MR DARNELL DO NOT BLOCK! painted inside the lines. He got out and slammed the door, puffing, labouring for breath. The emphysema was sitting on his chest, and tonight it seemed to have brought its brother. No, he just wasn't going to lie down; no matter what that asshole doctor said.
Jimmy Sykes was apathetically wielding the big push broom. Jimmy was tall and gangling, twenty-five years old. His light mental retardation made him look perhaps eight years younger. He had started combing his hair back in a fifties-style ducktail, in imitation of Cunningham, whom Jimmy almost worshipped. Except for the low whssht, whssht of the broom's bristles on the oil-stained concrete, the place was silent. And empty.
'Place is really jumpin tonight, Jimmy, huh?' Will wheezed.
Jimmy looked around. 'No, sir, Mr Darnell, nobody been in since Mr Hatch came and got his Fairlane, and that was half an hour ago.'
'Just joking,' Will said, wishing again that Cunningham were here. You couldn't talk to Jimmy except on a perfectly literal Dick-and-Jane level. Still, maybe he would invite him in for a cup of coffee with a slug of Courvoisier tipped in for good measure. Make it a threesome. Him, Jimmy, and the emphysema. Or maybe, since the emphysema had brought its brother tonight, you'd have to call it a foursome. 'What do you say about - '
He broke off suddenly, noticing that stall twenty was empty. Christine was gone.
'Arnie come in?' he said.
'Arnie?' Jimmy repeated, blinkin stupidly.
'Arnie, Arnie Cunningham,' Will said impatiently. 'How many Arnies do you know? His car's gone.'
Jimmy looked around at stall twenty and frowned. 'Oh. Yeah.'
Will smiled. 'Hotshot got knocked out of his hotshot chess tournament, huh?'
'Oh, did he?' Jimmy asked. 'Jeez, that's too bad, huh?'
Will restrained an urge to grab Jimmy and give him a shake and a wallop. He would not get angry; that only made it harder to breathe, and he would end up having to shoot his lungs full of the horrible-tasting stuff from his aspirator. 'Well, what did he say, Jimmy? What did he say when you saw him?' But Will knew suddenly and surely that Jimmy hadn't seen Arnie.
Jimmy finally understood what Will was driving at. 'Oh, I didn't see him. Just saw Christine go out the door, you know. Boy, that's some pretty car, ain't it? He fixed it up like magic.'
'Yes,' Will said. 'Like magic.' It was a word that had occurred to him in connection with Christine before. He suddenly changed his mind about inviting Jimmy in for coffee and brandy. Still looking at stall twenty, he said, 'You can go home now, Jimmy.'
'Aw, jeez, Mr Darnell, you said I could have six hours tonight. That ain't over until ten.'
'I'll punch you out at ten.
Jimmy's muddy eyes brightened at this unexpected, almost unheard-of largesse. 'Really?'
'Yeah, really, really. Make like a tree and leave, Jimmy, okay?'
'Sure,' Jimmy said, thinking that for the first time in the five or six years he had worked for Will (he had trouble remembering which it was, although his mother kept track of it, the same as she kept track of all his tax papers), the old grouch had gotten the Christmas spirit. Just like in that movie about the three ghosts. Summoning up his own Christmas spirit, Jimmy cried: 'That's a big ten-four, good buddy!'
Will winced and lumbered into his office. He turned on the Mr Coffee and sat down behind his desk, watching as Jimmy put away his broom, turned out most of the overhead fluorescents, and got his heavy coat.
Will leaned back and thought.
It was, after all, his brains that had kept him alive all these years, alive and one step ahead; he had never been handsome, he had been fat all of his adult life, and his health had always been terrible. A childhood bout of scarlet fever one spring had been followed by a mild case of polio; he had been