• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

He called home first. His father answered, his voice oddly toneless - Arnie had never heard Michael's voice quite that way before, and his unease deepened. His father sounded like Mr Slawson. This Thursday afternoon and evening were taking on the maroon tones of nightmare. Beyond the glass walls of the booth, strange faces drifted dreamily past, like untethered balloons on which someone had crudely drawn human faces, God at work with a Magic Marker.

Shitters,he thought disjointedly. All a bunch of shitters.

'Hello, Dad,' he said uncertainly. 'Look, I - uh, I kind of lost track of the time here, I'm sorry.'

'That's all right,' Michael said. His voice was almost a drone, and Arnie felt his unease deepen into something like fright. 'Where are you, the garage?'

'No - uh, Gino's. Gino's Pizza. Dad, are you okay? You sound funny.'

'I'm fine,' Michael said. 'Just scraped your dinner down the garbage disposal, your mother's upstairs crying again, and you're having a pizza. I'm fine. Enjoying your car, Arnie?'

Arnie's throat worked, but no sound came out.

'Dad,' he managed finally, 'I don't think that's very fair.'

'I don't think I'm very interested anymore in what you think is fair and what you don't think is fair,' Michael said. 'You had some justification for your behaviour at first, perhaps. But in the last month or so you've turned into someone I don't understand at all, and something is going on that I understand even less. Your mother doesn't understand it either, but she senses it, and it's hurting her very badly. I know she brought part of the hurt on herself, but I doubt if that changes the quality of the pain.'

'Dad, I just lost track of the time!' Arnie cried. 'Stop making such a big thing out of it!'

'Were you driving around?'

'Yes, but - '

'I notice that's when it usually happens, Michael said. 'Will you be home tonight?'

'Yes, early,' Arnie said. He wet his lips. 'I just want to go by the garage, I have some information Will asked me to get while I was in Philly

'I'm not very interested in that either, pardon me,' Michael said. His voice was still polite, chillingly disconnected.

'Oh,' Arnie said in a very small voice. He was very scared now, almost trembling.

'Arnie?'

'What?' Arnie nearly whispered.

'What is going on?'

'I don't know what you mean.'

'Please. That detective came by to see me at my office. He was after Regina, as well. He upset her very badly. I don't think he meant to, but - '

'What was it this time?' Arnie asked' fiercely. 'That fucker, what was it this time? I'll - '

'You'll what?'

'Nothing.' He swallowed something that tasted like a lump of dust. 'What was it this time?'

'Repperton,' his father said. 'Repperton and those other two boys. What did you think it was? The geopolitical situation in Brazil?'

'What happened to Repperton was an accident,' Arnie said. 'Why did he want to talk to you and Mom about something that was an accident, for Christ's sake?'

'I don't know.' Michael Cunningham paused. 'Do you?'

'How would I?' Arnie yelled. 'I was in Philadelphia, how would I know anything about it? I was playing chess, not not not anything else,' he finished lamely.

'One more time,' Michael Cunningham said. 'Is something going on, Arnie?'

He thought of the smell, the high, rotting stink. Leigh choking, digging at her throat, turning blue. He had tried to thump her on the back because that's what you did when someone was choking, there was no such thing as a Heimlich Manoeuvre because it hadn't been invented yet, and besides, that was how it was supposed to end, only not in the car beside the road in his arms

He closed his eyes and the whole world seemed to tilt and swirl sickly.

'Arnie?'

'There is nothing going on,' he said through clenched teeth and without opening his eyes. 'Nothing but a lot of people who are on my case because I finally got something of my own and did it all by myself.'

'All right,' his father said, his lacklustre voice once more terribly reminiscent of Mr Slawson's. 'If