sobs. 'I'll 'get those fucking sons of bitches I'll get them Dennis. I'll make them sorry I'll make those fuckers eat it . . . EAT IT . . . EAT IT!'
'Stop it,' I said, scared. 'Arnie, quit it.'
But he wouldn't quit it. He began to slam his -fists down on the padded dashboard of my Duster, hard enough to make marks.
'I'll get them you see if I don't!'
In the dim glow of the moon and a nearby streetlight, his face looked ravaged and haglike. He was like a stranger to me then. He was off walking in whatever cold places of the universe a fun-loving God reserves for people like him. I didn't know him. I didn't want to know him. I could only sit there helplessly and hope that the Arnie I did know would come back. After a while, he did.
The hysterical words disappeared into sobs again. The hate was gone and he was only crying. It was a deep, bawling, bewildered sound.
I sat there behind the wheel of my car, not sure what I should do, wishing I was someplace else, anyplace else, trying on shoes at Thom McAn's, filling out a credit application in a discount store, standing in front of a pay toilet stall with diarrhoea and no dime. Anyplace, man. It didn't have to be Monte Carlo. Mostly I sat there wishing I was older. Wishing we were both older.
But that was a copout job. I knew what to do. Reluctantly, not wanting to, I slid across the seat and put my arms around him and held him. I could feel his face, hot and fevered, mashed against my chest. We sat that way for maybe five minutes, and then I drove him to his house and dropped him off. After that I went home myself. Neither of us talked about it later, me holding him like that. No one came along the sidewalk and saw us parked at the kerb. I suppose if someone had, we would have looked like a couple of queers, I sat there and held him and loved him the best I could and wondered how come it had to be that I was Arnie Cunningham's only friend, because right then, believe me, I didn't want to be his friend.
Yet , somehow - I realized it then, if only dimly - maybe Christine was going to be his friend now, too. I wasn't sure if I liked that either, although we had been through the same shit-factory on her behalf that long crazy day.
When we rolled up to the kerb in front of his house I said, 'You going to be all right, man?'
He managed a smile. 'Yeah, I'll be okay.' He looked at me sadly. 'You know, you ought to find some other favourite charity. Heart Fund. Cancer Society. Something.'
'Ahh, get out of here.'
'You know what I mean.'
'If you mean you're a wet end, you're not telling me anything I didn't know.'
The front porch light came on, and both Michael and Regina came flying out, probably to see if it was us or the State Police come to inform them that their only chick and child had been run over on the highway.
'Arnold?' Regina called shrilly.
'Bug out, Dennis,' Arnie said, grinning a little more honestly now. 'This shit you don't need.' He got out of the car and said dutifully, 'Hi, Mom. Hi, Dad.'
'Where have you been?' Michael asked. 'You had your mother badly frightened, young man!'
Arnie was right. I could do without the reunion scene. I glanced back in the rearview mirror just briefly and saw him standing there, looking solitary and vulnerable - and then the two of them enfolded him and began shepherding him back to the $60,000 nest, no doubt turning the full force of all their latest parenting trips on him - Parent Effectiveness Training, est, who knows what else. They were so perfectly rational about it, that was the thing. They had played such a large part in what he was, and they were just too motherfucking (and fatherfucking) rational to see it.
I turned the radio on to FM-104, where the Block Party Weekend was continuing, and got Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band singing 'Still the Same'. The serendipity was just a little too hideously perfect, and I dialled away to the Phillies game.
The Phillies were losing. That was all right. That was par for the course.
PART I: DENNIS - TEENAGE CAR-SONG Chapter 7 BAD DREAMS
I'm a roadrunner, honey,