ass.'
Dull fury went up from my stomach to my head and made it throb. Inside I begged Arnie to tell this fat fuck to bore it and stroke it and then drive it straight up his old tan track just as fast and far as it would go. Of course then Darnell's poker buddies would get into it and we'd both probably end this enchanting evening at the emergency room of Libertyville Community Hospital getting our heads stitched up . . . but it would almost be worth it.
Arnie, I begged inside, tell him to shove it and let's get out of here. Stand up to him, Arnie. Don't let him pull this shit on you. Don't be a loser, Arnie - if you can stand up to your mother, you can stand up to this happy asshole. Just this once, don't be a loser.
Arnie stood silent for a long time, his head down, and then he said, 'Yessir.' The word was so low it was nearly inaudible. It sounded as if he was choking on it.
'What did you say?'
Arnie looked up.His face was deadly pale. His eye's were swimming with tears. I couldn't look at that. It hurt me too bad to look at that. I turned away. The poker players had suspended their game to watch developments over at stall twenty.
'I said, "Yessir,"' Arnie said in a trembling voice. It was as if he had just signed his name to some terrible confession. I looked at the car again, the '58 Plymouth, sitting in here when it should have been out back in the junkyard with the rest of Darnell's rotten plugs, and I hated it all over again for what it was doing to Arnie.
'Arright, get out of here,' Darnell said. 'We're closed.'
Arnie stumbled away blindly. He would have walked right into a stack of old bald tyres if I hadn't grabbed his arm and steered him away. Darnell went back the other way to the poker table. When he got there he said something to the others in his wheezy voice. They all roared with laughter.
'I'm all right, Dennis,' Arnie said, as if I had asked him. His teeth were locked together and his chest was heaving in quick, shallow breaths. 'I'm all right, let go of me, I'm all right, I'm okay.'
I let go of his arm. We walked across to the door and Darnell hollered at us, 'And you ain't going to bring your hoodlum friends in here, or you're out!'
One of the others chimed, 'And leave your dope at home!'
Arnie cringed. He was my friend, but I hated him when he cringed that way.
We escaped into the cool darkness. The door rattled down behind us. And that's how we got Christine to Darnell's Garage. Some great time, huh?
PART I: DENNIS - TEENAGE CAR-SONG Chapter 6 OUTSIDE
I got me a car and I
got me some gas,
Told everybody they could
Kiss my ass . . .
- Glenn Frey
We got into my car and I drove out of the yard. Somehow it had gotten around to past nine o'clock. How the time flies when you're having fun. A half-moon stood out in the sky. That and the orange lights in the acres of parking lot at the Monroeville Mall took care of any wishing stars there might have been.
We drove the first two or three blocks in utter I silence, and then Arnie suddenly burst into a fury of weeping. I had thought he might cry, but the force of this frightened me. I pulled over immediately.
'Arnie - '
I gave up right there. He was going to do it until it was done. The tears and the sobs came in a shrill, bitter flood, and they came without restraint - Arnie had used up his quota of restraint for the day. At first it seemed to be nothing but reaction; I felt the same sort of thing myself, only mine had gone to my head, making it ache like a rotted tooth, and to my stomach, which was sickly clenched up.
So, yeah, at first I thought it was nothing but a reaction sort of thing, a spontaneous release, and maybe at first it was. But after a minute or two, I realised it was a lot more than that; it went a lot deeper than that. And I began to get words out of the sounds he was making: just a few at first, then strings of them.
'I'll get them!' he shouted thickly through the