could be, but no matter how I work it over in my mind, it comes out seeing that that was how it was. I know that's how it was. It's got you, doesn't it?'
'Leigh, if you'll pardon my French, that's pretty fucking stupid. It's a car! Can you spell that C-A-R, car! There's nothing - '
'Yes,' she said, and now her voice was wavering toward tears. 'It's got you, she's got you, and I guess nobody can get you free except you.'
His back suddenly awoke and began to throb, sending pain out in a sickish radiation that seemed to echo and amplify in his head.
'Isn't that the truth of it, Arnie?'
He didn't, couldn't, answer.
'Get rid of it,' Leigh said. 'Please. I read about that Repperton boy in the paper this morning, and - '
'What's that got to do with anything?' Arnie croaked. And for the second time: 'That was an accident.'
'I don't know what it was. Maybe I don't want to know. But it isn't us I'm worried about anymore. It's you, Arnie. I'm scared for you. You ought to - no, you have to get rid of it.'
Arnie whispered, 'Just say you won't dump me, Leigh. Okay?'
Now she was even closer to crying - or perhaps she was already doing it. 'Promise me, Arnie. You have to promise me and then you have to do it. Then we . . . we can see. Promise me you'll get rid of that car. It's all I want from you, nothing else.'
He closed his eyes and saw Leigh walking home from school. And a block down, idling at the kerb, was Christine. Waiting for her.
He opened his eyes quickly, as if he had seen a friend in a dark room.
'I can't do that,' he said.
'Then we don't have much to talk about, do we?'
'Yes! Yes, we do. We - '
'No. Goodbye, Arnie. I'll see you in school.'
'Leigh, wait!'
Click. And dead smooth silence.
A moment of nearly total rage came over him. He had a sudden deadly impulse to swing the black phone receiver around and around his head like an Argentinian bolas, shattering the glass in this goddam torture-chamber of a telephone booth. They had run out on him, all of them. Rats deserting a sinking ship.
You have to be ready to help yourself before anyone else can help you.
Fuck that bullshit! They were rats deserting a sinking ship. Not one of them, from that shitter Slawson with his thick horn -rimmed glasses and his weird poached-egg eyes to his rotten shitting old man who was so fucking pussywhipped that he ought to just give that cunt he was married to a razor and invite her to cut it off to that cheap bitch in her fancy house with her legs crossed probably she'd been having her period and that's why she choked on the goddam hamburger and those shitters with their fancy goddam cars and the boots full of golf-clubs those goddam officers I'd like to bend them over this here lathe I'd play some golf with them I could find the right hole to put those little white balls in you bet your ass but when I get out of here no one's going to tell me what to do it's gonna be my way my way mine mine mine mine mine MINE -
Arnie came back to himself suddenly, scared and wide-eyed, breathing hard. What had been happening to him? He had seemed like someone else there for a moment, someone on a crazed rant against humanity in general Not just someone. It was LeBay.
No! That's not true at all!
Leigh's voice: Isn't that the truth of it, Arnie?
Suddenly something very like a vision rose in his tired, confused mind. He was hearing a minister's voice: Arnold, do you take this woman to be your loving -
But it wasn't a church; it was a used-car lot with bright multicoloured plastic pennants fluttering in a stiff breeze. Camp chairs had been set up. It was Will Darnell's lot, and Will was standing beside him in the best man's position. There was no girl beside him. Christine was parked beside him, shining in a spring sun, even her whitewalls seeming to glow.
His father's voice: Is there something going on ?
The preacher's voice: Who giveth this woman to this man?
Roland D. LeBay rose from one of the camp chairs like the prow of a skeletal ghost-ship from Hades. He was grinning - and for the first time Arnie saw who had been sitting around