'Keep it up,' I said, sitting down again with an ungainly plop. When you're cast in plaster, it's never like in the movies; you never sit down like Cary Grant getting ready to have cocktails at the Ritz with Ingrid Bergman. It all happens at once, and if the cushion you land on doesn't give out a big loud raspberry, as if your sudden descent had scared you into cutting the cheese, you count yourself ahead of the game. This time I got lucky. 'I'm such a sucker for flattery that I make myself sick.'
'How are you, Dennis?'
'Mending,' I said.' How about you?'
'I've been better,' she said in a low voice, and bit at her lower lip. This can sometimes be a seductive gesture on a girl's part, but it wasn't this time.
'Hang up your coat and sit down yourself.'
'Okay.' Her eyes touched mine, and looking at them was a little much. I looked someplace else, thinking about Arnie.
She hung her coat up and came back into the living room slowly. 'Your folks - '
'I got my father to take everyone out,' I said. 'I thought maybe' I shrugged - 'we ought to talk just between ourselves.'
She stood by the sofa, looking at me across the room. I was struck again by the simplicity of her good looks her lovely girl's figure outlined in dark blue pants and a sweater of light, powdery blue, an outfit that made me think about skiing. Her hair was tied in a loose pigtail and lay over her left shoulder. Her eyes were the colour of her sweater, maybe a little darker. A cornfed American beauty, you would have said, except for the high cheekbones, which seemed a little arrogant, bespeaking some older, more exotic heritage - maybe some fifteen or twenty generations back there was a Viking in the woodpile.
Or maybe that isn't what I was thinking at all.
She saw me looking at her too long and blushed. I looked away.
'Dennis, are you worried about him?'
'Worried? Scared might be a better word.
'What do you know about that car? What has he told you?'
'Not much,' I said. 'Look, would you like something to drink? There's some stuff in the fridge I felt for my crutches.
'Sit still,' she said. 'I would like something, but I'll get it. What about you?'
'I'll take a ginger ale, if there's one left.'
She went into the kitchen and I watched her shadow on the wall, moving lightly, like a dancer. There was a momentary added weight in my stomach, almost like a sickness. There's a name for that sort of sickness. I think it's called failing in love with your best friend's girl.
'You've got an automatic ice-maker.' Her voice floated back. 'We've got one too. I love it.'
'Sometimes it goes crazy and sprays ice-cubes all over the floor,' I said. 'It's like Jimmy Cagney in White Heat. "Take that, you dirty rats." It drives my mother crazy.' I was babbling.
She laughed. Ice-cubes clinked in glasses. Shortly she came back with two glasses of ice and two cans of Canada Dry.
'Thanks,' I said, taking mine.
'No, thank you,' she said, and now her blue eyes were dark and sober. 'Thanks for being around. If I had to deal with this alone, I think I'd . . . I don't know.'
'Come on,' I said. 'It's not that bad.'
'Isn't it? Do you know about Darnell?' I nodded.
'And that other one? Don Vandenberg.'
So she had made the connection too.
I nodded again. 'I saw it. Leigh, what is it about Christine that bothers you?'
For a long time I didn't know if she was going to answer. If she would be able to answer. I could see her struggling with it, looking down at her glass, held in both hands.
At last in a very low voice, she said, 'I think she tried to kill me.'
I don't know what I had expected, but it wasn't that. 'What do you mean?'
She talked, first hesitantly, then more rapidly, until it was pouring out of her. It is a story you have already heard, so I won't repeat it here; suffice to say that I tried to tell it pretty much as she told it to me. She hadn't been kidding about being scared. It was in the pallor of her face, the little hitches and gulps of her voice, the way her hands constantly caressed her upper arms, as if she was too cold in spite of the sweater. And the more she