Christine - Stephen King [61]
The thought of Veronica LeBay jumped into my head, all unbidden.
'But now ' He shrugged, glanced at the door between the garage and the kitchen, dropped his cigarette, and scuffed it out. 'He's obviously committed. He's got his sense of self-respect on the line. I'd like to see him at least get it running.'
Maybe he saw something in my face; when he went on he sounded defensive.
'I haven't quite forgotten everything about being young,' he said. 'I know a car is important to a kid Arnie's age. Regina can't see that quite so clearly. She always got picked up. She was never faced with the problems of being the picker-upper. I remember that a car is important if a kid's ever going to have any dates.'
So that's where he thought it was at. He saw Christine as a means to an end rather than as the end itself. I wondered what he'd think if I told him that I didn't think Arnie had ever looked any further than getting the Fury running and legal. I wondered if that would make him more or less uneasy.
The thump of the kitchen door closing.
'Would you go take a look?'
'I guess so,' I said. 'If you want.'
'Thanks.'
Arnie came back with the beers. 'What's the thanks for?' he asked Michael. His voice was light and humorous, but his eyes flicked between us carefully. I noticed again that his complexion was really clearing, and his face seemed to have strengthened. For the first time, the two thoughts Arnie and dates didn't seem mutually exclusive. It occurred to me that his face was almost handsome - not in any jut-jawed lifeguard king-of-the-prom way, but in an interesting, thoughtful way. He would never be Roseanne's type, but
'For helping with the, canoe,' Michael said casually.
'Oh.'
We drank our beers. I went home. The next day the happy threesome went off together to New York, presumably to rediscover the family unity that had been lost over the latter third of the summer.
The day before they were due back I took a ride down to Darnell's Garage - as much to satisfy my own curiosity as Michael Cunningham's.
The garage, standing in front of the block-long lot of junked cars, looked just as attractive in daylight as it had on the evening we had brought Christine - it had all the charm of a dead gopher.
I pulled into a vacant slot in front of the speed shop that Darnell also ran - well stocked with such items as Feully heads, Hurst gearboxes, and Ram-Jett superchargers (for all those working men who had to keep their old cars running so they could continue to put bread on the table, no doubt), not to mention a wide selection of huge mutant tyres and a variety of spinner hubcaps. Looking through the window of Darnell's speed shop was like looking into a crazy automotive Disneyland.
I got out and walked back across the tarmac toward the garage and the clanging sound of tools, shouts, the machine-gun blast of pneumatic wrenches. A sleazy-looking guy in a cracked leather jacket was dorking around with an old BSA bike by one of the garage bays, either removing the bike's manifold or putting it back on. There was a stutter of road-rash down his left cheek. The back of his jacket displayed a skull wearing a Green Beret and the charming motto KILL EM ALL AND LET GOD SORT EM OUT.
He looked up at me with bloodshot and lunatic Rasputin eyes, then looked back at what he was doing. He had a surgical array of tools spread out beside him, each one die-stamped with the words DARNELL'S GARAGE.
Inside, the world was full of the echoey, evocative bang of tools and the sound of men working on cars and hollering profanity at the rolling iron they were working on. Always the profanity, and always female in gender: come offa there you bitch, come loose, you cunt, come on over here, Rick, and help me get this