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education,
Arnie.
For your
education.
Now you have just over twenty-eight hundred. You can
go on about snooping all you want—and I admit it hurts a little—but that's a
fact. You've gone through twelve hundred dollars in two months. Maybe that's
why I don't want to look at that car. You ought to be able to understand that.
To me it looks like—"
"Listen—"
"—like a great big dollar bill flying away."
"Can I tell you a couple of things?"
"No, I don't think so, Arnie," she said with finality. "I really don't think so."
Michael had come back with her glass, half full of gin. He added tonic at the
bar and handed it to her. Regina drank, making that bitter grimace of distaste
again. Arnie sat in the chair near the TV, looking at her thoughtfully.
"You teach college? he said. "You teach college and that's your attitude? "I
have spoken. The rest of you can just shut up." Great. I pity your students."
"You watch it, Arnie," she said, pointing a finger at him. "Just watch it."
"Can I tell you a couple of things or not?"
"Go ahead. But it won't make any difference."
Michael cleared his throat. "Reg, I think Arnie's right, that's hardly a
constructive atti—"
She turned on him like a cat. "Not one word from you, either!"
Michael flinched back.
"The first thing is this," Arnie said. "If you gave my savings passbook more
than a cursory look—and I'm sure you did—you must have noticed that my
total savings went down to an all-time low of twenty-two hundred dollars the
first week of September. I had to buy a whole new front-end kit for
Christine."
"You speak as if you're proud of it," she said angrily.
"I am." He met her eyes levelly. "I put that front-end kit in myself, with no
help from anybody. And I did a really good job. You wouldn't"—here his
voice seemed to falter momentarily, and then firmed again—"you wouldn't be
able to tell it from the original. But my point is, the total savings are back up
six hundred dollars from then. Because Will Darnell liked my work and took
me on. If I can add six hundred dollars to my savings account every two
months and I might do better if he puts me on the run over to Albany where he
buys his used cars—there'll be forty-six hundred dollars in my account by the
time school ends. And if I work there full-time next summer, I'll be starting
college with nearly seven thousand dollars. And you can lay it all at the door
of the car you hate so much."
"That won't do any good if you can't get into a good school," she countered,
shifting her ground deftly as she had in so many department committee
meetings when someone dared to question one of her opinions… which was
not often. She did not concede the point; she simply passed on to something
else. "Your grades have slipped."
"Not enough to matter," Arnie said.
"What do you mean, "not enough to matter"? You got deficient in Calculus!
We got the red-card just a week ago!" Red-cards, sometimes known as flunk-
cards by the student body, were issued halfway through each marking period
to students who had posted a 75-average grade or lower during the first five
weeks of the quarter.
"That was based on a single examination," Arnie said calmly. "Mr Fenderson
is famous for giving so few exams in the first half of a quarter that you can
bring home a red-card with an F on it because you didn't understand one
basic concept, and end up with an A for the whole marking period. All of
which I would have told you, if you'd asked. You didn't. Also, that's only the
third red-card I've gotten since I started high school. My overall average is
still 93, and you know how good that is—"
"It'll go lower!" she said shrilly, and stepped toward him. "It's this goddam
obsession with the car! You've got a girlfriend; I think that's fine, wonderful,
super! But this car thing is insane! Even Dennis says—"
Arnie was up, and up fast, so close to her that she took a step backward,
surprised out of her anger, at least momentarily, by his. "You leave Dennis
out of this," he said in a deadly soft voice. "This is between us."
"All right," she said, shifting ground once more. "The simple fact is that your
grades are going to go down. I know it, and your father knows it, and that
mathematics red-card is an indication of it."
Arnie smiled confidently, and Regina looked wary.
"Good," he said. "I tell you what. Let me keep the car here until the marking
period ends. If I've got any grade lower than a C, I'll sell it to Darnell. He'll
buy it; he knows he could get a grand for it in the shape it's in now. The
value's not going to do anything but go up."
Arnie considered.
"I'll go you one better. If I'm not on the semester honor roll, I'll also get rid of
it. That means I'm betting my car I'll get a B in Calculus not just for the
quarter but for the whole semester. What do you say?"
"No," Regina said immediately, She shot a warning look at her husband—
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