know enough to get the hose and attach it to the exhaust pipe and put it in through the window. I try not to wonder about those things. They keep me awake at night.'
I thought about what he had said, and about the things he hadn't said - the things he had left between the lines. Intuitive, he had said. So single-minded in his few simple purposes, he had said. Suppose Roland LeBay had understood in some way he wouldn't even admit to himself that he was investing his Plymouth with some supernatural power? And suppose he had only been waiting for the right inheritor to come along . . . and now . . .
'Does that answer your questions, Dennis?'
'I think it does,' I said slowly.
'What are you going to do?'
'I think you know that.'
'Destroy the car?'
'I'm going to try,' I said, and then looked over at my crutches, leaning against the wall. My goddam crutches.
'You may destroy your friend, as well.'
'I may save him,' I said.
Quietly, George LeBay said, ' I wonder if that is still possible.'
PART III: CHRISTINE - TEENAGE DEATH-SONGS Chapter 47 THE BETRAYAL
There was blood and glass all over,
And there was nobody there but me.
As the rain tumbled down, hard and cold,
I seen a young man lyin by the side
of the road,
He cried, 'Mister, won't you
help me, please?'
- Bruce Springsteen
I kissed her.
Her arms slipped around my neck. One of her cool hands pressed lightly against the back of my head. There was no more question for me about what was going on; and when she pulled slightly away from me, her eyes half-closed, I could see there was no question for her, either.
'Dennis,' she murmured, and I kissed her again. Our tongues touched gently. For a moment her kiss intensified; I could feel the passion those high cheekbones hinted at. Then she gasped a little and drew back. 'That's enough,' she said. 'We'll be arrested for indecent exposure, or something.'
It was January 18th. We were parked in the lot behind the local Kentucky Fried, the remains of a pretty decent chicken dinner spread around us. We were in my Duster, and that alone was something of an occasion for me - it was my first time behind the wheel since the accident. Just that morning, the doctor had removed the huge cast on my left leg and replaced it with a brace. His warning to stay off it was stern, but I could tell he was feeling good about the way things were going for me. My recovery was about a month ahead of schedule. He put it down to superior techniques; my mother to positive thinking and chicken soup; Coach Puffer to rosehips.
Me, I thought Leigh Cabot had a lot to do with it.
'We have to talk,' she said.
'No, let's make out some more,' I said.
'Talk now. Make out later.'
'Has he started again?'
She nodded.
In the almost two weeks since my telephone conversation with LeBay, the first two weeks of winter term, Arnie had been working at making a rapprochement with Leigh working at it with an intensity that scared both of us. I had told her about my talk with George LeBay (but not, as I've said, about my terrible ride home on New Year's morning) and made it as clear as I could that on no account should she simply cut him off. That would drive him into a fury, and these days, when Arnie was furious with someone, unpleasant things happened to them.
'That makes it like cheating on him,' she said.
'I know,' I said, more sharply than I had intended. 'I don't like it, but I don't want that car rolling again.'
'So?'
And I shook my head,
In truth, I was starting to feel like Prince Hamlet, delaying and delaying. I knew what had to be done, of course; Christine had to be destroyed. Leigh and I had looked into ways of doing it.
The first idea had been Leigh's - Molotov cocktails. We would, she said, fill some wine-bottles with gasoline, take them to the Cunningham house in the early-morning hours, light the wicks ('Wicks? What wicks?' I asked. 'Kotex ought to do just fine,' she answered promptly, causing me to wonder again about her high-cheekboned forebears), and toss them in through Christine's windows.
'What if the windows are rolled up and the doors are locked?' I asked her. 'That's the way it's apt to be, you know.'
She looked at me as if I was a total drip. 'Are you saying, she asked, 'that the