you'd expect of a kid in trouble; it was the laugh of a man - yes, a man - who was enjoying himself tremendously, He put the pan on the stove and poured Wesson Oil over the bottom of it. His hair, shorter than it used to be and combed back in a style that was new to me, fell over his forehead. He flipped it back with a quick jerk of his head and added popcorn to the oil. He slammed a lid over the pan. Went to the fridge. Got a six-pack. Slammed it down in front of me, pulled off two cans, and opened them. Gave me one. Held up his. I held up mine.
'A toast,' Arnie said. 'Death to all the shitters of the world in 1979.'
I lowered my can slowly. 'I can't drink to that, man.'
I saw a spark of anger in those grey eyes. It seemed to twinkle there, like spurious good humour, and then go out. 'Well, what can you drink to - man?'
'How about to college?' I asked quietly.
He looked at me sullenly, his earlier good humour gone like magic. 'I should have known she'd fill you full of that garbage. My mother is one woman who never stuck at getting low to get what she wants. You know that, Dennis. She'd kiss the devil's ass if that's what it took.'
I put my beer-can down, still full. 'Well, she didn't kiss my ass. She just said you weren't making any applications and she was worried.'
'It's my life,' Arnie said. His lips twisted, changing his face, making it extraordinarily ugly. 'I'll do what I want.'
'And college isn't it?'
'Yeah, I'll go. But in my own time. You tell her that, if she asks. In my own time. Not this year. Definitely not. If she thinks I'm going to go off to Pitt or Horlicks or Rutgers and put on a freshman beanie and go boola-boola at the home football games, she's out of her mind. Not after the shitstorm I've been through this year. No way, man.'
'What are you going to do?'
'I'm taking off,' he said.'I'm going to get in Christine and we're going to motorvate right the Christ out of this one-timetable town. You understand?' His voice began to rise, to become shrill, and I felt horror sweep over me again. I was helpless against that unmanning fear and could only hope that it didn't show on my face. Because it wasn't just LeBay's voice now; now it was even LeBay's face, swimming under Arnie's like some dead thing preserved in Formalin. 'It's been nothing but a shitstorm, and I think that goddam Junkins is still after me full steam ahead, and he better watch out or somebody just might junk him - '
'Who's Junkins?' I asked.
'Never mind,' he said. 'It's not important.' Behind him, the Wesson Oil had begun to sizzle. A kernel of corn popped - ponk! - against the underside of the lid. 'I've got to go shake that, Dennis. Do you want to make a toast or not? Makes no difference to me.'
'All right,' I said. 'How about to us?'
He smiled, and the constriction in my chest eased a little. 'Us, yeah, that's a good one, Dennis. To us. Gotta be that, huh?'
'Gotta be,' I said, and my voice hoarsened a little. 'Yeah, gotta be.'
We clicked the Bud cans together and drank.
Arnie went over to the stove and began shaking the pan, where the corn was picking up speed. I let a couple of swallows of beer slide down my throat. Beer was still a fairly new thing to me then, and I had never been drunk on it because I liked the taste quite well, and friends - Lenny Barongg was the chief of them - had told me that if you got falling-down, standing-up, ralphing-down-your-shirt shitfaced, you couldn't even look at the stuff for weeks. Sadly, I have found out since that that isn't completely true.
But Arnie was drinking like they were going to reinstitute Prohibition on January lst; he had finished his first can before the popcorn had finished popping. He crimped the empty, winked at me, and said, 'Watch me put it up the little tramp's ass, Dennis.' The allusion escaped me, so I just smiled noncommitally as he tossed the can toward the wastebasket. It banged the wall over it and dropped in.
'Two points,' I said.
'That's right,' he said. 'Hand me another one, would you?'