she would probably just melt). His touch always brought a coppery taste of excitement to her mouth, a feeling that every sense was alive and deliciously attuned. But in the car that feeling seemed blunted . . . maybe because in the car Arnie seemed less honestly passionate and somehow more lecherous.
She opened her mouth again as they turned onto her street, wanting to explain some of this, and again nothing would come. Why should it? There was really nothing to explain - it was all vapours. Nothing but vague burnouts.
Well . . . there was one thing. But she couldn't tell him that; it would hurt him too badly. She didn't want to hurt him because she thought she was beginning to love him.
But it was there.
The smell - a rotten, thick smell under the aromas of new seat covers and the cleaning fluid he had used on the floormats. It was there, faint but terribly unpleasant. Almost stomach-turning.
As if, at some time, something had crawled into the car and died there.
He kissed her good night on her doorstep, the sleet shining silver in the cone of yellow light thrown by the carriage lamp at the foot of the porch steps. It shone in her dark blond hair like jewels. He would have liked to have really kissed her, but the fact that her parents might be watching from the living room - probably were, in fact - forced him to kiss her almost formally, as you might kiss a dear cousin.
'I'm sorry,' she said. 'I was silly.'
'No,' Arnie said, obviously meaning yes.
'It's just that' - and her mind supplied her with something that was a curious hybrid of the truth and a lie - 'that it doesn't seem right in the car. Any car. I want us to be together, but not parked in the dark at the end of a dead-end road. Do you understand?'
'Yes,' he said. Up at the Embankment, in the car, he had felt a little angry with her . . . well, to be honest, he had been pretty goddam pissed off. But now, standing here on her stoop, he thought he could understand - and marvel that he could want to deny her anything or cross her will in any way. 'I know exactly what you mean.'
She hugged him, her arms locked around his neck. Her coat was still open, and he could feel the soft, maddening weight of her breasts.
'I love you,' she said for the first time, and then slipped inside to leave him standing there on the porch momentarily, agreeably stunned, and much warmer than he should have been in the ticking, pattering sleet of late autumn.
The idea that the Cabots might find it peculiar if he stood on their front stoop much longer in the sleet at last percolated down into his bemused brain. Arnie went back down the walk through the tick and patter, snapping his fingers and grinning. He was riding the rollercoaster now, the one that's the best ride, the one they really only let you take once.
Near the place where the concrete path joined the sidewalk, he stopped, the smile fading off his face. Christine stood at the kerb, drops of melted sleet pearling her glass, smearing the red dash lights from the inside. He had left Christine running, and she had stalled. This was the second time.
'Wet wires,' he muttered under his breath. 'That's all.' It couldn't be plugs; he had put in a whole new set just the day before yesterday, at Will's. Eight new Champions and -
Which of us do you spend more time with? Me . . . or her?
The smile returned, but this time it was uneasy. Well, he spent more time around cars in general - of course. That came of working for Will. But it was ridiculous to think that . . .
You lied to her. That's the truth, isn't it?
No, he answered himself uneasily. No, I don't think you could say I really lied to her. . .
No? Then just what do you call it?
For the first and only time since he had taken her to the football game at Hidden Hills, he had told her a big fat lie. Because the truth was, he spent more time with Christine, and he hated having her parked in the thirty-day section of the airport parking lot, out in the wind and the rain, soon to be snow -