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Cars
are
girls
, she had said. She hadn't been thinking of what she was saying;
it had just popped out of her mouth. And it certainly wasn't always true; she
didn't think of their family sedan as having any particular gender; it was just a
Ford.
But—
Forget it, jet rid of all the hocus-pocus and phony stuff. The truth was much
more brutal and even crazier, wasn't it? She couldn't make love to him,
couldn't touch him in that intimate way, much less think about bringing him to
a climax that way (or the other, the real way—she had turned that over and
over in her mind as she lay in her narrow bed, feeling a new and nearly
amazing excitement steal over her), in the car.
Not in the car.
Because the realty crazy part was that she felt Christine was watching them.
That she was jealous, disapproving, maybe hating. Because there were times
(like tonight, as Arnie skated the Plymouth so smoothly and delicately across
the building scales of sleet) when she felt that the two of them—Arnie and
Christine—were welded together in a disturbing parody of the-act of love.
Because Leigh did not feel that she
rode
in Christine; when she got in to go
somewhere with Arnie she felt
swallowed
in Christine. And the act of kissing
him, making love to him, seemed a perversion worse than voyeurism or
exhibitionism—it was like making love inside the body of her rival.
The really crazy part of it was that she hated Christine.
Hated her and feared her. She had developed a vague dislike of walking in
front of the new grille, or closely behind the boot; she had vague thoughts of
the emergency brake letting go or the gearshift popping out of park and into
neutral for some reason. Thoughts she had never had about the family sedan.
But mostly it was not wanting to do anything in the car… or even go
anywhere in the car, if she could help it. Arnie seemed somehow different in
the car, a person she didn't really know. She loved the feel of his hands on
her body—her breasts, her thighs (she had not yet allowed him to touch the
center of her, but she wanted his hands there; she thought if he touched her
there 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 vapors. Nothing but vague humors.
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 curb, 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—
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