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Hey Pizza-Face!
The wanting to speak, the wanting to reach out to
other people, and the inability. The impotence. It seemed to him that she
couldn't understand the simple fact that, had it not been for Christine, he
never would have had the courage to call her on the phone even if she had
gone around with I WANT TO DATE ARNIE CUNNINGHAM tattooed on
her forehead. She couldn't understand that he sometimes felt thirty years older
than his age—no! more like fifty! and not a boy at all but some terribly hurt
veteran back from an undeclared war.
He caressed the steering wheel. The green cats' eyes of the dash instruments
glowed back at him comfortingly.
"Okay," he said. Almost sighed.
He dropped the gearshift into big D and flicked on the radio. Dee Dee Sharp
singing "Mashed Potato Time"; mystic nonsense on the radio waves coming
out of the dark.
He pulled out, planning to head for the airport, where he would park his car
and catch the bus that ran back to town on the hour. And he did that, but not in
time to take the 11:00 p.m. bus as he had intended. He took the midnight bus
instead, and it was not until he was in bed that night recalling Leigh's warm
kisses instead of the way Christine wouldn't fire up, that it occurred to him
that somewhere that evening, after leaving the Cabot house and before
arriving at the airport, he had lost an hour. It was so obvious that he felt like
a man who has turned the house upside down looking for a vital bit of
correspondence, only to discover that he has been holding it in his other hand
all along. Obvious and a little scary.
Where had he been?
He had a blurry memory of drawing away from the curb in front of Leigh's
and then just…
…just cruising.
Yeah. Cruising. That was all. No big deal.
Cruising through the thickening sleet, cruising empty streets that were plated
with the stuff, cruising without snow tires (and yet Christine, incredibly
surefooted, never missed her way or skidded around a corner, Christine
seemed to find the safe and secure way as if by magic, the ride as solid as it
would have been if the car had been on trolley-tracks), cruising with the
radio on, spilling out a constant stream of oldies that seemed to consist solely
of girls' names: Peggy Sue, Carol, Barbara-Ann, Susie Darlin".
It seemed to him that at some point he had gotten a little frightened and had
punched one of the chrome buttons on the converter he'd installed, but instead
of FM-104 and the Block Party Weekend he got WDIL all over again, only
now the disc jockey sounded crazily like Alan Freed, and the voice that
followed was that of Screamin" Jay Hawkins, hoarse and chanting:
"I put a
spell on youuu… because you're miiiiiine "
And then at last there had been the airport with its foul-weather lights pulsing
sequentially like a visible heartbeat. Whatever had been on the radio faded to
a meaningless jumble of static and he had turned it off. Getting out of the car
he had felt a sweaty, incomprehensible sort of relief.
Now he lay in bed, needing to sleep but unable, The sleet had thickened and
curdled into fat white splats of snow.
It wasn't right.
Something had been started, something was going on. He couldn't even lie to
himself and say that he didn't know about it. The car—Christine—several
people had commented on how beautifully he had restored her. He had driven
it to school and the kids from auto shop were all over it; they were
underneath it on crawlers to look at the new exhaust system, the new shocks,
the bodywork. They were waist-deep in the engine compartment, checking
out the belts and the radiator, which was miraculously free of the corrosion
and the green gunk that is the residue of years of antifreeze, checking out the
generator and the tight, gleaming pistons socketed in their valves. Even the
air cleaner was new, with the numbers 318 painted across-the top, raked
backward to indicate speed.
Yes, he had become something of a hero to his fellow shoppies, and he had
taken all the comments and the compliments with just the night deprecatory
grin. But even then, hadn't the confusion been there, somewhere deep inside?
Sure.
Because he couldn't remember what he had done to Christine and what he
hadn't.
The time spent working on her at Darnell's was nothing but a blur now, like
his ride out to the airport earlier this evening had been. He could remember
starting the bodywork on the dented rear end, but he couldn't remember
finishing it. He could remember painting the hood—covering the windscreen
and mudguards with masking tape and donning the white mask in the paint-
shop out back—but exactly when he had replaced the springs he couldn't
remember. Nor could he remember where he had gotten them. All he could
remember for sure was sitting behind the wheel for long periods, stupefied
with happiness… feeling the way he had felt when Leigh whispered "I love
you" before slipping in her front door. Sitting there after most of the guys who
worked on their cars at Darnell's had gone home to get their suppers. Sitting
there and sometimes turning on the radio to listen to the oldies on WDIL.
Maybe the windscreen was the worst.
He hadn't bought a new windscreen for Christine, he was sure of that. His
bankbook would be dented a lot more than it was if he'd bought one of those
fancy wrap jobs. And wouldn't he have a receipt? He had even hunted for
such a receipt once in the desk-file marked CAR STUFF that he kept in his
room. But he hadn't found one, and the truth was, he had hunted rather
halfheartedly.
Dennis had said something—that the snarl of cracks had looked smaller, less
serious. Then, that day at Hidden Hills, it had just been… well, gone. The
windscreen had been clean and unflawed.
But
when
had it happened?
How
had it happened?
He didn't know.
He finally fell asleep and dreamed unpleasantly, twisting the covers into a
ball as the scud of clouds blew away and the autumnal stars shone coldly
down.
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