days of the '50s when all the oil millionaires were from Texas and the Yankee dollar was kicking the shit out of the Japanese yen instead of the other way around. Back in the days when Carl Perkins was singing about pink pedal pushers and Johnny Horton was singing about dancing all night on a honky-tonk hardwood floor and the biggest teen idol in the country was Edd 'Kookie' Byrnes.
I touched Christine. I tried to caress it as Arnie had done, to like it for Arnie's sake as Leigh had done. Surely if anyone should be able to make himself like it, it should be me. Leigh had only known Arnie a month. I had known him my whole life.
I slipped my hand along the rusty surface and I thought of George LeBay, and Veronica and Rita LeBay, and somewhere along the line the hand that was supposed to be caressing closed into a fist and I suddenly slammed it down on Christine's flank as hard as I could - plenty hard enough to hurt my hand and make myself utter a defensive little laugh and wonder what the hell I thought I was doing.
The sound of rust sitting down onto the hottop in small flakes.
The sound of a bass drum from the football field, like a giant's heartbeat.
The sound of my own heartbeat.
I tried the front door.
It was locked.
I licked my lips and realized I was scared.
It was almost as if - this was very funny, this was hilarious - it was almost as if this car didn't like me, as if it suspected me of wanting to come between it and Arnie, and that the reason I didn't want to walk in front of it was because -
I laughed again and then remembered my dream and stopped laughing. This was too much like it for comfort. It wasn't Chubby McCarthy blaring over the PA, of course, not in Hidden Hills, but the rest of it brought on a dreamy, unpleasant sense of dйjа vu - the sound of the cheers, the sound of padded body contact, the wind hissing through trees that looked like cutouts under an overcast sky.
The engine would gun. The car would lurch forward, drop back, lurch forward, drop back. And then the tyres would scream as it roared right at me -
I shook the thought off. It was time to stop pandering to myself with all of this crazy shit. It was time - and overtime - to get my imagination under control. This was a car, not a she but an it, not really Christine at all but only a 1958 Plymouth Fury that had rolled off an assembly line in Detroit along with about four hundred thousand others.
It worked . . . at least temporarily. Just to demonstrate how little afraid of it I was, I got down on my knees and looked under it. What I saw there was even crazier than the haphazard way the car was being rebuilt on top. There were three new Pleasurizer shocks, but the fourth was a dark, oil-caked ruin that looked as if it had been on there for ever. The exhaust was so new it was still silvery, but the silencer looked at least middle-aged and the header pipe was in very bad shape. Looking at the header, thinking about exhaust fumes that could leak into the car from it, made me flash on Veronica LeBay again. Because exhaust fumes can kill. They -
'Dennis, what are you doing?'
I guess I was still more uneasy than I thought, because I was up from my knees like a shot with my heart beating in my throat. It was Arnie. He looked cold and angry.
Because I was looking at his car? Why should that make him mad? Good question. But it had, that was obvious.
'I was looking over your mean machine,' I said, trying to sound casual. 'Where's Leigh?'
'She had to go to the Ladies', he said, dismissing her. His grey eyes never left my face. 'Dennis, you're the best friend I've got, the best friend I've ever had. You might have saved me a trip to the hospital the other day when Repperton pulled that knife, and I know it. But don't you go behind my back, Dennis. Don't you ever do that.'
From the playing field there was a tremendous cheer the Hillmen had just made the final score of the game, with less than thirty seconds to play.