to Darnell's, he couldn't get fifty dollars for parts. It's a piece of shit.'
'No. No, it isn't.' Without the bad complexion, my friend Arnie would have looked completely ordinary. But God gives everyone at least one good feature, I think, and with Arnie it was his eyes. Behind the glasses that usually obscured them they were a fine and intelligent grey, the colour of clouds on an overcast autumn day. They could be almost uncomfortably sharp and probing when something was going on that he was interested in, but now they were distant and dreaming. 'It's not a piece of shit at all.'
That was when I really began to understand it was more than just Arnie suddenly deciding he wanted a car. He had never even expressed an interest in owning one before; he was content to ride with me and chip in for gas or to pedal his three-speed. And it wasn't as if he needed a car so he could step out; to the best of my knowledge Arnie had never had a date in his life. This was something different. It was love, or something like it.
I said, 'At least get him to start it for you, Arnie. And get the hood up. There's a puddle of oil underneath. I think the block might be cracked. I really think - '
'Can you loan me the nine?' His eyes were fixed on mine. I gave up. I took out my wallet and gave him the nine dollars.
'Thanks, Dennis,' he said.
'Your funeral, man.'
He took no notice. He put my nine with his sixteen and went back to where LeBay stood by the car. He handed the money over and LeBay counted it carefully, wetting his thumb.
'I'll only hold it for twenty-four hours, you understand,' LeBay said.
'Yessir, that'll be fine,' Arnie said.
'I'll just go in the house and write you out a receipt,' he said. 'What did you say your name was, soldier?'
Arnie smiled a little. 'Cunningham. Arnold Cunningham.'
LeBay grunted and walked across his unhealthy lawn to his back door. The outer door was one of those funky aluminium combination doors with a scrolled letter in the centre - a big L in this case.
The door slammed behind him.
'The guy's weird, Arnie. The guy is really fucking w - '
But Arnie wasn't there. He was sitting behind the wheel of the car. That same sappy expression was on his face.
I went around to the front and found the hood release. I pulled it, and the hood went up with a rusty scream that made me think of the sound effects you hear on some of those haunted-house records. Flecks of metal sifted down. The battery was an old Allstate, and the terminals were so glooped up with green corrosion that you couldn't tell which was positive and which was negative. I pulled the air cleaner and looked glumly into a four-barrel carb as black as a mineshaft.
I lowered the hood and went back to where Arnie was sitting, running his hand along the edge of the dashboard over the speedometer, which was calibrated up to an utterly absurd 120 miles per hour. Had cars ever really gone that fast ?
'Arnie, I think the engine block's cracked. I really do. This car is lunch, my friend. It's just total lunch. If you want wheels, we can find you something a lot better than this for two-fifty. I mean it. A lot better.'
'It's twenty years old,' he said. 'Do you realize a car is officially an antique when it's twenty years old?'
'Yeah,' I said. 'The junkyard behind Darnell's is full of official antiques, you know what I mean?'
'Dennis - '
The door banged. LeDay was coming back. it was just as well; further discussion would have been meaningless, I may not be the world's most sensitive human being, but when the signals are strong enough, I can pick them up. This was something Arnie felt he had to have, and I wasn't going to talk him out of it. I didn't think anyone was going to talk him out of it.
LeBay handed him the receipt with a flourish. Written on a plain sheet of notepaper in an old man's spidery and slightly trembling script was: Received from Arnold Cunningham, $25.00 as a 24-hr deposit on 1958 Plymouth, Christine. And below that he had signed his name.
'What's this Christine?' I asked, thinking I might have misread it or he might have misspelled it.
His lips tightened and his shoulders went up a little, as if