the back end of a Mack truck and she never stopped chewing gum. The stink of Juicy Fruit hung around her in a constant cloud. She got pregnant at about the same time Freddy got hung up on her. I always sort of figured he got hung up on her because she was the first girl to let him go all the way. So what happens is he drops out of school, gets a job in a warehouse, the princess has the baby, and he shows up with her at a party after the Junior Prom last December, wanting everything to seem the same when nothing is the same; she is looking at all of us guys with those dead, contemptuous eyes, her jaws are going up and down like the jaws of a cow working over a particularly tasty cud, and all of us have heard the news: she's back at the bowling alley, she's back at the Libertyville Rec, she's back at Gino's, she's out cruising while Freddy is working, she's back hard at work, banging for the gang and stooping for the troops. I know they say that a stiff dick has no conscience, but I tell you now that some cunts have teeth, and when I looked at Freddy, looking ten years older than he should have, I felt like I wanted to cry. And when he talked about her, he did it in that same pleading tone I had heard in Arnie's voice just now - You really like her, guys, don't you? She's all right, isn't she, guys? I didn't fuck up too bad, did I, guys? I mean, this is probably just a bad dream and I'll wake up pretty soon, right? Right? Right?
'Sure,' I said into the telephone. That whole stupid, ugly Freddy Darlington business had gone through my mind in maybe two seconds. 'I see what you mean, Arnie.'
'Good,' he said, relieved.
'Just watch out for your ass. And that goes double when you get back to school. Keep away from Buddy Repperton.'
'Yeah. You bet.'
'Arnie - '
'What?'
I paused. I wanted to ask him if Darnell had said anything about Christine being in his shop before, if he had recognized her. Even more, I wanted to tell him what had happened to Mrs LeBay and to her small daughter, Rita. But I couldn't. He would know right away where I had gotten the information. And in his touchy state over the damn car, he would be apt to think I had gone behind his back - and in a way I had. But to tell him I had might well mean the end of our friendship.
I had had enough of Christine, but I still cared for Arnie. Which meant that door had to be closed for good. No more creeping around and asking questions. No more lectures.
'Nothing,' I said. 'I was just going to say that I guess you found a home for your rustbucket. Congratulations.'
'Dennis, are you eating something?'
'Yeah, a chicken sandwich. Why?'
'You're chewing in my ear. It really sounds gross.'
I began to smack as loudly as I could. Arnie made puking sounds. We both got laughing, and it was good - it was like the old days before he married that numb fucking car.
'You're an asshole, Dennis.'
'That's right. I learned it from you.
'Get bent,' he said, and hung up.
I finished my sandwich and my Hawaiian Punch, rinsed the plate and the glass and went back into the living room, ready to shower and go to bed. I was beat.
Sometime during our phone conversation I had heard the TV go off and had assumed that my father had gone upstairs. But he hadn't. He was sitting in his recliner chair with his shirt open. I noticed with some unease how grey the hair on his chest was getting, and the way the reading lamp beside him shone through the -hair on his head and showed his pink scalp. Getting thinner up there. My father was no kid. I realized with greater unease that in five years, by the time I would theoretically finish college, he would be fifty and balding - a stereotype accountant. Fifty in five years if he didn't just drop dead of another heart attack. The first one had not been bad - no myocardial scarring, he had told me on the one occasion I had asked. But he did not try to tell me that a second heart attack wasn't likely. I knew it was, my mom knew