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She
sounds like her, and
you
sound like her, but
I just sound like the guy in charge of some dumb UN peacekeeping force
that's about to get its collective ass shot off."
Arnie slumped a little; his hand found the car again and began caressing,
caressing.
"All right," he said. "I guess I see what you mean. I don't know why you want
to let her push you around like that, but okay."
The sad, humiliated grin remained, a little like the grin of a dog that has
chased a woodchuck a long time on a hot summer day. "Maybe some things
get to be a way of life. And maybe there are compensations that you can't
understand and I can't explain. Like well, I love her, you know."
Arnie shrugged. "So… what now?"
"Can we go for a ride?"
Arnie looked surprised, then pleased. "Sure. Hop in. Any place in
particular?"
"The airport."
Arnie's eyebrows went up. "The airport? Why?"
"I'll tell you as we go."
"What about Regina?"
"Your mother's gone to bed," Michael said quietly, and Arnie had the good
grace to flush a little himself.
Arnie drove firmly and well. Christine's new sealed-beam headlights cut the
early dark in a clean, deep tunnel of light. He passed the Guilders' house,
then turned left onto Elm Street at the stop sign and started out toward JFK
Drive. I-376 took them to I-278 and then out toward the airport. Traffic was
light. The engine muttered softly through new pipes. The dashboard
instrument panel glowed a mystic green.
Arnie turned on the radio and found WDIL, the AM station from Pittsburgh
that plays only oldies. Gene Chandler was chanting "The Duke of Earl".
"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 harboring 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 odometer."
"It's running backward, isn't it?"
The odometer 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 odometer 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 traveled. 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 odometer that had gotten funky. And did Arnie really believe
that the speedometer and odometer 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
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