mines. 'It's all she talks about Arnie. Once she gets started on the subject, you can't shut her up.'
'Chummy. You're not moving in, are you, Dennis?' He was watching me closely, his eyes slitted with suspicion. 'You wouldn't do anything like that, would you?'
'No,' I said, lying completely and fully. 'That's a hell of a thing to say.'
'Then how do you know so much about what she's doing?'
'I see her around,' I said, 'We talk about you.'
'She talks about me?'
'Yeah, a little,' I said casually. 'She said that you and she had a fight over Christine.'
It was the right thing. He relaxed. 'It was just a little thing. Just a little spat. She'll come around. And there are good schools out in California, if she wants to go to school. We're going to be married, Dennis. Have kids and all that shit.'
I struggled to keep my poker face. 'Does she know that?'
He laughed. 'No way! Not yet. But she will. Soon enough. I love her, and nothing's going to get in the way of that.' The laughter died away. 'What did she say about Christine?'
Another mine.
'She said she didn't like her. I think . . . that maybe she was a little jealous.'
It was the right thing again. He relaxed even more. 'Yeah, she sure was. But she'll come around, Dennis. The course of true love never runs smooth, but she'll come around, don't worry. If you see her again, tell her I'm going to call. Or talk to her when school starts again.'
I considered telling him that Leigh was in California right now and decided not to. And I wondered what this new suspicious Arnie would do if he knew I had kissed the girl he thought he was going to marry, had held her . . . was failing in love with her.
'Look, Dennis!' Arnie cried, and pointed at the TV.
They had switched to Times Square again. The crowd was a huge - but still swelling - organism. It was just past eleven-thirty. The old year was guttering.
'Look at those shitters!' He cackled his shrill, excited laugh, finished his beer, and went downstairs for a fresh six-pack. I sat in my chair and thought about Welch and Repperton, Trelawney, Stanton, Vandenberg, Darnell. I thought about how Arnie - or whatever Arnie had become - thought that he and Leigh had just had an unimportant lovers' spat and how they would end the school year getting married, just like in those greasy love-ballads from the Nifty Fifties.
And oh God I had such a case of the creeps.
We saw the New Year in.
Arnie produced a couple of noisemakers and party favours - the kind that go bang and then release a cloud of tiny crepe streamers. We toasted 1979 and talked a little more on neutral subjects such as the Phillies' disappointing collapse in the playoffs and the Steelers' chances of going all the way to the Super Bowl.
The bowl of popcorn was down to the old maids and the burny-bottoms when I took myself in hand and asked one of the questions I had been avoiding. 'Arnie? What do you think happened to Darnell?'
He glanced at me sharply, then glanced back at the TV, where couples with New Year's confetti in their hair were dancing. He drank some more beer. 'The people he was doing business with shut him up before he could talk too much. That's what I think happened.'
'The people he was working for?'
'Will used to say the Southern Mob was bad,' Arnie said, 'but that the Colombians were even worse.'
'Who are the
'The Colombians?' Arnie laughed cynically. 'Cocaine cowboys, that's who the Colombians are. Will used to claim they'd kill you if you even looked at one of their women the wrong way - and sometimes if you looked at her the right way. Maybe it was the Colombians. It was messy enough to be them.'
'Were you running coke for Darnell?'
He shrugged. 'I was running stuff for Will. I only moved coke for him once or twice, and I thank Christ that I didn't have anything worse than untaxed cigarettes when they picked me up. They caught me dead-bang. Bad shit. But if the situation was the same, I'd probably do it again. Will was a dirty, scuzzy old sonofabitch, but in some ways he was okay.' His eyes grew veiled, strange. 'Yeah, in some ways he was okay. But he knew too much. That's why he got wasted. He knew too much . . . and