'Not much. Changed the oil. Looked the block over. It's' not cracked, Dennis, that's one thing. LeBay or somebody left the drain plug out somewhere along the line, that's all. A lot of the old oil had leaked out. I was lucky not to fry a piston driving it Friday night.'
'How'd you get lift-time? I thought you had to reserve that in advance.'
His eyes shifted away from mine. 'No problem there,' he said, but there was deception in his voice. 'I ran a couple of errands for Mr Darnell.'
I opened my mouth to ask what errands, and then I decided I didn't want to hear. Probably the 'couple of errands' boiled down to no more than running around the corner to Schirmer's Luncheonette and bringing back coffee-and for the regulars or crating up various used auto parts for later sale, but I didn't want to be involved in the Christine end of Arnie's life, and that included how he was getting along (or not getting along) down at Darnell's Garage
And there was something else - a feeling of letting go. I either couldn't define that feeling very well back then or didn't want to. Now I guess I'd say it's the way you feel when a friend of yours falls in love and marries a right high-riding, dyed-in-the-wool bitch. You don't like the bitch and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the bitch doesn't like you, so you just close the door on that room of your friendship. When the thing is done, you either let go of the subject . . . or you find your friend letting go of you, usually with the bitch's enthusiastic approval.
'Let's go to the movies,' Arnie said restlessly.
'What's on?'
'Well, there's one of those gross Kung-fu movies down at the State Twin, how does that sound? Heee-yah!' He pretended to administer a savage karate kick to Screaming Jay Hawkins, and Screaming Jay took off like a shot.
'Sounds pretty good. Bruce Lee?'
'Nah, some other guy.'
'What's it called?'
'I don't know. Fists of Danger. Flying Hands of Death. Or maybe it was Genitals of Fury, I don't know. What do you say? We can come back and tell the gross parts to Ellie and make her puke.'
'All right,' I said. 'If we can still get in for a buck each.'
'Yeah, we can until three.'
'Let's go.'
We went. It turned out to be a Chuck Norris movie, not bad at all. And on Monday we went back to building the Interstate extension. I forgot about my dream. Gradually I realized that I wasn't seeing as much of Arnie as I used to; again, it was the way you seem to fall out of touch with a guy who has just gotten married. Besides, my thing with the cheerleader began to heat up around then. My thing was heating up, all right - more than one night I brought her home from the submarine races at the drive-in with my balls throbbing so badly I could barely walk.
Arnie, meanwhile, was spending most of his evenings at Darnell's.
PART I: DENNIS - TEENAGE CAR-SONG Chapter 9 BUDDY REPPERTON
And I know, no matter what the cost,
Oooooh, that dual exhaust
Makes my motor cry,
My baby's got the Cadillac Walk.
- Moon Martin
Our last full week of work before school started was the week before Labor Day. When I pulled up to Arnie's house to pick him up that morning, he came out with a great big blue-black shiner around one eye and an ugly scrape upside his face.
'What happened to you?'
'I don't want to talk about it,' he said sullenly. 'I had to talk to my parents about it until I thought I was gonna croak.' He tossed his lunch pail in the back and lapsed into a grim silence that lasted all the way to work. Some of the other guys ribbed him about his shiner, but Arnie just shrugged it off.
I didn't say anything about it on the Way home, just played the radio and kept myself to myself. And I might not have heard the story at all if I hadn't been waylaid by this greasy Irish wop named Gino just before we turned off Main Street.
Back then Gino was always waylaying me - he could reach right through a closed car window and do it. Gino's Fine Italian Pizza is on the corner of Main and Basin Drive, and every time I saw that sign with the pizza going up in the air and all