'This thing runs like a dream,' Michael Cunningham said. He sounded awed.
'Thanks,' Arnie said, smiling.
Michael inhaled. 'It smells new.'
'A lot of it is. These seat covers set me back eighty bucks. Part of the money Regina was bitching about. I went to the library and got a lot of books and tried to copy everything the best I could. But it hasn't been as easy as people might think.'
'Why not?'
'Well, for one thing, the '58 Plymouth Fury wasn't anybody's idea of a classic car, so no one wrote much about it, even in the car retrospective volumes - American Car, American Classics, Cars of the 1950s, things like that. The '58 Pontiac was a classic, only the second year Pontiac made the Bonneville model; and the '58 T-Bird with the rabbit-ear fins, that was the last really great Thunderbird, I think; and - '
'I had no idea you knew so much about old cars,' Michael said. 'How long have you been harbouring this interest, Arnie?'
He shrugged vaguely. 'Anyway, the other problem was just that LeBay himself customized the original Detroit rolling stock - Plymouth didn't offer a Fury in, red and white, for one thing - and I've been trying to restore the car more the way he had it than the way Detroit meant it to be. So I've just been sort of flying by the seat of my pants.'
'Why do you want to restore it the way LeBay had it?'
That vague shrug again. 'I don't know. It just seems like the right thing to do.'
'Well, I think you're doing a hell of a job.'
'Thank you.'
His father leaned toward him, looking at the instrument panel.
'What are you looking at?' Arnie asked, a little sharply.
'I'll be damned,' Michael said. 'I've never seen that before.'
'What? Arnie glanced down. 'Oh. The milometer.'
'It's running backward, isn't it?'
The milometer was indeed running backward; at that time, on the evening of November 1, it read 79,500 and some odd miles. As Michael watched, the tenths-of-a-mile indicator rolled from .2 to . 1 to 0. As it went back to .9, the actual miles slipped back by one.
Michael laughed. 'That's one thing you missed, son.'
Arnie smiled - a small smile. 'That's right,' he said. 'Will says there's a wire crossed in there someplace. I don't think I'll fool with it. It's sort of neat, having a milometer that runs backward.'
'Is it accurate?'
'Huh?'
'Well, if you go from our house to Station Square, would it subtract five miles from the total?'
'Oh,' Arnie said. 'I get you. No, it's not accurate at all. Turns back two or three miles for every actual mile travelled. Sometimes more. Sooner or later the speedometer cable will break, and when I replace that, it'll take care of itself.'
Michael, who had had a speedometer cable or two break on him in his time, glanced at the needle for the characteristic jitter that indicated trouble there. But the needle hung dead still just above forty. The speedometer seemed fine; it was only the milometer that had gotten funky. And did Arnie really believe that the speedometer and milometer ran off the same cables? Surely not.
He laughed and said, 'That's weird, son.'
'Why the airport?' Arnie asked.
'I'm going to treat you to a thirty-day parking stub,' Michael said. 'Five dollars. Cheaper than Darnell's garage. And you can get your car out whenever you want it. The airport's a regular stop on the bus run. End of the line, in fact.'
'Holy Christ, that's the craziest thing I ever heard!' Arnie shouted. He pulled into the turnaround drive of a darkened dry cleaner's shop. 'I'm to take the bus twenty miles out to the airport to get my car when I need it? It's like something out of Catch-22! No! No way!'
He was about to say something more, when he was suddenly grabbed by the neck.
'You listen,' Michael said. 'I'm your father, so you listen to me. Your mother was right, Arnie. You've gotten unreasonable - more than unreasonable - in the last couple of months. You've gotten downright peculiar.'
'Let go of me,' Arnie said, struggling in his father's grip.
Michael didn't let go, but he loosened up. 'I'll put it in perspective for you,' he said. 'Yes, the airport is a long way to come, but the same quarter that would take you to Darnell's will take you out here. There are parking garages closer in, but there are more incidents of theft and vandalism in the city. The airport is, by