stripped away, and she felt a cold, consuming fear. It was at this moment that she had first seized on the idea of 'Getting us over this', the way a drowning person will seize a life preserver. It was Arnie, it was her son, not in a jail cell (that was the only thing she had been spared, but she was grateful for even small favours) but in a small square room whose only furnishings were two chairs and a table scarred with cigarette burns.
Arnie had looked at her steadily, and his face seemed horribly gaunt, skull-like. He had been to the barber only a week before, and had gotten a surprisingly short haircut (after years of wearing it long, in emulation of Dennis), and now the overhead light shone down cruelly through what was left, making him appear momentarily bald, as if they had shaved his head to loosen his lips.
'Arnie,' she said, and went to him - halfway to him. He turned his head away from her, his lips pressing together, and she stopped. A lesser woman might have burst into tears then, but Regina was not a lesser woman. She let the coldness come back and have its way with her. The coldness was all that would help now,
Instead of embracing him - something he obviously didn't want - she sat down and told him what had to be done. He refused. She ordered him to talk to the police. He refused again. She reasoned with him. He refused. She harangued him. He refused. She pleaded with him. He refused. Finally she just sat there dully, a headache thudding at her temples, and asked him why. He refused to tell her.
'I thought you were smart!' she shouted finally. She was nearly mad with frustration - the thing she hated above all others was not getting her way when she absolutely wanted to have it, needed to have it; this had in fact ever happened to her since she left home. Until now. It was infuriating to be so smoothly and seamlessly baulked by this boy who had once drawn milk from her breasts. 'I thought you were smart but you're stupid! You're . . . you're an asshole! They'll put you in jail! Do you want to go to jail for that man Darnell? Is that what you want? He'll laugh at you! He'll laugh at you!' Regina could imagine nothing worse, and her son's apparent lack of interest in whether or not he was laughed at infuriated her all the more.
She rose from her chair and pushed her hair away from her brow and eyes, the unconscious gesture of a person who is ready to fight. She was breathing rapidly, and her face was flushed. To Arnie, she looked both younger and much, much older than he had ever seen her.
'I'm not doing it for Darnell,' he said quietly, 'and I'm not going to jail.'
'What are you, Oliver Wendell Holmes?' she rejoined fiercely, but her anger was in some measure overmastered by relief. At least he could say something. 'They caught you in his car with the boot loaded with cigarettes! Illegal cigarettes!'
Mildly, Arnie said, 'They weren't in the boot. They were in a compartment under the boot. A secret compartment. And it was Will's car. Will told me to take his car.' She looked at him.
'Are you saying you didn't know they were there?'
Arnie looked at her with an expression she simply couldn't accept, it was so foreign to his face - it was contempt. Good as gold, my boy's as good as gold, she thought crazily.
'I knew, and Will knew. But they have to prove it, don't they?'
She could only look at him, amazed.
'If they do drop it on me somehow,' he said, 'I'll get a suspended sentence.'
'Arnie,' she said at last, 'you're not thinking straight. Maybe your father - '
'Yes,' he interrupted. 'I'm thinking straight. I don't know what you're doing, but I'm thinking very straight.'
And he looked at her, his grey eyes so horribly blank that she could no longer stand it and had to leave.
In the small green reception room she walked blindly past her husband, who had been sitting on a bench with Warberg. 'You go in,' she said. 'You make him see reason.' She went on without waiting for his reply, not stopping until she was outside and the cold December air was painting her hot cheeks.
Michael went in and had no better luck; he came out with nothing