Christine (39 page)

“Let's have us some music,” the voice beside him said.

Arnie turned on the radio. Dion was singing “Donna the Prima Donna.”

“You going to eat that pizza, or what?” The voice seemed to be changing somehow.

“Sure,” Arnie said. “You want a piece?”

Leering: “I never say no to a piece of anything.”

Arnie opened the pizza box with one hand and pulled a piece free. “Here you g—”

His eyes widened. The slice of pizza began to tremble, the long threads of cheese dangling down beginning to sway like the strands of a spiderweb broken by the wind.

It wasn't LeBay sitting there anymore.

It was
him.

It was Arnie Cunningham at roughly age fifty, not as old as LeBay had been when he and Dennis first met him on that August day, not that old, but getting there, friends and neighbors, getting there. His older self was wearing a slightly yellowed T-shirt and dirty, oil-smeared bluejeans. The glasses were hornrims, taped at one bow. The hair was cut short and receding. The gray eyes were muddy and bloodshot The mouth had taken all the tucks of sour loneliness. Because this—this thing, apparition, whatever it was—it was alone. He felt that.

Alone except for Christine.

This version of himself and Roland D. LeBay could have been son and father: the resemblance was that great.

“You going to drive? Or are you going to stare at me?” this thing asked, and it suddenly began to age before Arnie's stunned eyes. The iron-colored hair went white, the T-shirt rippled and thinned, the body beneath twisted with age. The wrinkles raced across the face and then sank in like lines of acid. The eyes sank into their sockets and the corneas yellowed. Now only the nose thrust forward, and it was the face of some ancient carrion-eater, but still
his
face, oh, yes, still his.

“See anything green?” this sept—no, this octogenarian Arnie Cunningham croaked, as its body twisted and writhed and withered on Christine's red seat “See anything green? See anything green? See anything—” The voice cracked and rose and whined into a shrill, senile treble, and now the skin broke open in sores and surface tumors and behind the glasses milky cataracts covered both eyes like shades being pulled down. It was rotting before his very eyes and the smell of it was what he had smelled in Christine before, what Leigh had smelled, only it was worse now, it was the high, gassy, gagging smell of high-speed decay, the smell of his own death, and Arnie began to whine as Little Richard came on the radio singing “Tutti Frutti,” and now the thing's hair was falling out in gossamer white drifts and its collarbones poked through the shiny, stretched skin above the T-shirt's sagging round collar, they poked through like grotesque white pencils. Its lips were shrivelling away from the final surviving teeth that leaned this way and that like tombstones, it was him, it was dead, and yet it lived—like Christine, it lived.

“See anything green?”
it gibbered.
“See anything green?”

Arnie began to scream.

39

Junkins Again

Arnie pulled into Darnell's Garage about an hour later. His rider—if there really
had
been a rider—was long gone. The smell was gone too; it had undoubtedly been just an illusion. If you hung around the shitters for long enough, Arnie reasoned,
everything
started to smell like shit. And that made them happy, of course.

Will was sitting behind his desk in his glassed-in office, eating a hoagie. He raised one drippy hand but didn't come out. Arnie blipped his horn and parked.

It had all been some kind of dream. Simple as that. Some crazy kind of dream. Calling home, calling Leigh, trying to call Dennis and having that nurse tell him Dennis was in Physical Therapy—it was like being denied three times before the cock crew, or something. He had freaked a little bit. Anyone would have freaked, after the shitstorm he's been through since August. It was all a question of perspective, after all, wasn't it? All his life he had been one thing to people, and now he was coming out of his shell, turning into a normal everyday person with normal everyday concerns. It was not at all surprising that people should resent this, because when someone changed

(far better or worse, for richer or poorer)

it was natural for people to get a little weird about it. It fucked up their perspective.

Leigh had spoken as if she thought he was crazy, and that was nothing but bullshit of the purest ray serene. He had been under strain, of course he had, but strain was a natural part of life. If Miss High-Box-Oh-So-Preppy Leigh Cabot thought otherwise, she was in for an abysmal fucking at the hands of that all-time champion rapist, Life. She'd probably end up taking Dexies to get out of first gear in the morning and Nembies or 'Ludes to come down at night.

Ah, but he wanted her—even now, thinking about her, he felt a great, unaccountable, unnameable desire sweep through him like cold wind, making him squeeze Christine's wheel fiercely in his hands. It was a hot wanting too great, too elemental, for naming. It was its own force.

But he was all right now. He felt he had . . . crossed the last bridge, or something.

He had come back to himself sitting in the middle of a narrow access road beyond the farthest parking-lot reaches of the Monroeville Mall—which meant he was roughly halfway to California. Getting out, looking behind the car, he had seen a hole smashed through a snowbank, and there was melting snow sprayed across Christine's hood. Apparently he had lost control, gone skating across the lot (which, even with the Christmas shopping season in full swing, was mercifully empty this far out), and had crashed through the bank. Damn lucky he hadn't been in an accident.
Damn
lucky.

He had sat there for a while, listening to the radio and looking through the windshield at the half-moon floating overhead. Bobby Helms had come on singing “Jingle Bell Rock,” a Sound of the Season, as the deejays said, and he had smiled a little, feeling better. He couldn't remember what exactly it was that he had seen (or thought he had seen), and he didn't really want to. Whatever it had been, it was the first and last time. He was quite sure of that. People had gotten him imagining things. They'd probably be delighted if they knew . . . but he wasn't going to give them that satisfaction.

Things were going to be better all the way around. He would mend his fences at home—in fact, he could start tonight by watching some TV with his folks, just like in the old days. And he would win Leigh back. If she didn't like the car, no matter how weird her reasons were, fine. Maybe he would even buy another car sometime soon and tell her he had traded Christine in. He could keep Christine here, rent space. What she didn't know wouldn't hurt her. And Will. This was going to be his last run for Will, this coming weekend. That bullshit had gone just about far enough; he could feel it. Let Will think he was a chicken if that's what he wanted to think. A felony rap for interstate transport of unlicensed cigarettes and alcohol wouldn't look all that hot on his college application, would it? A
Federal
felony rap. No. Not too cool.

He laughed a little. He
did
feel better. Purged. On his way over to the garage he ate his pizza even though it was cold. He was ravenous. It had struck him a bit peculiar that one piece was gone—in fact, it made him a bit uneasy—but he dismissed it. He had probably eaten it during that strange blank period, or maybe even thrown it out the window. Whoo, that had been spooky. No more of that shit. And he laughed again, this time a little less shakily.

Now he got out of the car, slammed the door, and started toward Will's office to find out what he had for him to do this evening. It suddenly occurred to him that tomorrow was the last day of school before the Christmas vacation, and that put an extra spring in his step.

That was when the side door, the one beside the big carport door, opened and a man let himself in. It was Junkins. Again.

He saw Arnie looking at him and raised a hand. “Hi, Arnie.”

Arnie glanced at Will. Through the glass, Will shrugged and went on eating his hoagie.

“Hello,” Arnie said. “What can I do for you.”

“Well, I don't know,” Junkins said. He smiled, and then his eyes slid past Arnie to Christine, appraising, looking for damage. “Do you want to do something for me?”

“Not fucking likely,” Arnie said. He could feel his head starting to throb with rage again.

Rudy Junkins smiled, apparently unoffended.

“I just dropped by. How you been?”

He stuck out his hand. Arnie only looked at it. Not embarrassed in the slightest, Junkins dropped his hand, walked around to Christine, and began examining her again. Arnie watched him, his lips pressed together so tightly they were white. He felt a fresh pulse of anger each time Junkins dropped one of his hands onto Christine.

“Look, maybe you ought to buy a season ticket or something,” Arnie said. “Like to the Steelers games.”

Junkins turned and looked at him questioningly.

“Never mind,” Arnie said sullenly.

Junkins went on looking. “You know,” he said, “it's a hell of a strange thing, what happened to Buddy Repperton and those other two boys, isn't it?”

Fuck it,
Arnie thought.
I'm not going to fool around with this shitter.

“I was in Philadelphia. Chess tourney.”

“I know,” Junkins said.

“Jesus!
You're really checking me out!”

Junkins walked back to Arnie. There was no smile on his face now. “Yes, that's right,” he said. “I'm checking you out. Three of the boys I believe were involved in vandalizing your car are now dead, along with a fourth boy who was apparently just along for the ride on Tuesday night. That's a pretty big coincidence. It's nine miles too big for me. You bet I'm checking you out.”

Arnie stared at him, surprised out of his anger, uncertain. “I thought it was an accident.. . that they were liquored up and speeding and—”

“There was another car involved,” Junkins said.

“How do you know that?”

“There were tracks in the snow, for one thing. Unfortunately, the wind had blurred them too much for us to be able to get a decent photo. But one of the barriers at the Squantic Hills State Park gate was broken, and we found traces of red paint on it. Buddy's Camaro wasn't red. It was blue.”

He measured Arnie with his eyes.

“We also found traces of red paint embedded in Moochie Welch's skin, Arnie. Can you dig that?
Embedded.
Do you know how hard a car has to hit a guy to
embed
paint in his skin?”

“You ought to go out there and start counting red cars,” Arnie said coldly. “You'll be up to twenty before you get to Basin Drive, I guarantee it.”

“You bet,” Junkins said. “But we sent our samples to the FBI lab in Washington, where they have samples of every shade of paint they ever used in Detroit. We got the results back today. Any idea what they were? Want to guess?”

Arnie's heart was thudding dully in his chest; there was a corresponding beat at his temples. “Since you're here, I'd guess it was Autumn Red. Christine's color.”

“Give that man a Kewpie doll,” Junkins said. He lit a cigarette and looked at Arnie through the smoke. He had abandoned any pretense of good humor; his gaze was stony.

Arnie clapped his hands to his head in an exaggerated gesture of exasperation. “Autumn Red, great. Christine's a custom job, but there were Fords from 1959 to 1963 painted Autumn Red, and Thunderbirds, and Chevrolet offered that shade from 1962 to 1964, and for a while in the mid-fifties you could get a Rambler painted Autumn Red. I've been working on my '58 for half a year now, I get the car books; you can't do work on an old car without the books, or you're screwed before you start. Autumn Red was a popular choice. I know it”—he looked at Junkins fixedly—”and you know it, too. Don't you?”

Junkins said nothing; he only went on looking at Arnie in that fixed, stony, unsettling way. Arnie had never been looked at in that way by anyone in his life, but he recognized the gaze. He supposed anyone would. It was a look of strong, frank suspicion. It scared him. A few months ago—even a few weeks ago—that was probably all it would have done. But now it made him furious as well.

“You're really reaching. Just what the hell have you got against me anyway, Mr. Junkins? Why are you on my ass?”

Junkins laughed and walked around in a large half-circle. The place was entirely empty except for the two of them out here and Will in his office, finishing his hoagie and licking olive oil off his hands and still watching them closely.

“What have I got against you?” he said. “How does first-degree murder sound to you, Arnie? Does that grab you with any force?”

Arnie grew very still.

“Don't worry,” Junkins said, still walking. “No big tough cop scene. No menacing threats about going downtown—except in this case downtown would be Harrisburg. No Miranda card. Everything is still fine for our hero, Arnold Cunningham.”

“I don't understand any of what you're—”

“You
. . .
understand
. . .
PLENTY!”
Junkins roared at him. He had stopped next to a giant yellow hulk of a truck—another of Johnny Pomberton's dumpsters-in-the-making. He stared at Arnie. “Three of the kids who beat on your car are dead. Autumn Red paint samples were taken at both crime scenes, leading us to believe that the vehicle the perpetrator used in both cases was at least in part Autumn Red. And gee whiz! It just turns out that the car those kids trashed is mostly Autumn Red. And you stand there and push your glasses up on your nose and tell me you don't understand what I'm talking about.”

“I was in Philadelphia when it happened,” Arnie said quietly. “Don't you get that? Don't you get that at all?”

“Kiddo,” Junkins said flipping his cigarette away, “that's the worst part of it. That's the part that really stinks.”

“I wish you'd get out of here or put me under arrest or something. Because I'm supposed to punch in and do some work.”

“For now,” Junkins said, “talk is all I've got. The first time—when Welch got killed—you were supposed to be home in bed.”

“Pretty thin, I know,” Arnie said. “Believe me, if I'd known this shit was going to come down on my head, I would have hired a sick friend to sit up with me.”

“Oh, no—that was
good,
”
Junkins said. “Your mother and father had no cause to doubt your tale. I could tell that from speaking to them. And alibis—the true ones—usually have more holes than a Salvation Army suit. It's when they start to look like suits of armor that I get nervous.”

“Holy Jumping
Jesus!”
Arnie almost screamed. “It was a fucking
chess
meet! I've been in the chess club for
four years
now!”

“Until today,” Junkins said, and Arnie grew still again. Junkins nodded. “Oh yeah, I talked to the club advisor. Herbert Slawson. He says that the first three years you never missed a meeting, even came to a couple with a low-grade case of the flu. You were his star player. Then, this year, you were spotty right from the start—”

“I had my car to work on . . . and I got a girl—”

“He said you missed the first three tourneys, and he was pretty surprised when your name turned up on the trip sheet for the Northern States meet. He thought you'd lost all your interest in the club.”

“I told you—”

“Yes, you did. Too busy. Cars and girls, just what makes most kids too busy. But you regained your interest long enough to go to Philly—and then you dropped out. That strikes me as very odd.”

“I can't see anything funny about it,” Arnie said, but his voice seemed distant, almost lost in the surf-roar of blood in his ears.

“Bullshit. It looks as if you knew it was coming down and set yourself up with an airtight alibi.”

The roar in his head had even assumed the steady, wavelike beats of surf, each beat accompanied by a dull thrust of pain. He was getting a headache—why wouldn't this monstrous man with his prying brown eyes just go away? None of it was true, none of it. He hadn't set anything up, not an alibi, not anything. He had been as surprised as anyone else when he read in the paper what had happened. Of course he had been. There was nothing strange going on, unless it was this lunatic's paranoia, and

(how did you hurt your back anyway, Arnie? and by
the way, do you see anything green? do you see)

he closed his eyes and for a moment the world seemed to lurch out of its orbit and he saw that green, grinning, rotting face floating before him, saying:
Start her up. Get the heater going and let's motorvate. And while we're at it, let's get the shitters that wrecked our car. Let's grease the little cock-knockers, kid, what do you say? Let's hit them so fucking hard the corpse-cutter down at city hospital will have to pull the paint-chips out
of their carcasses with pliers. What do you say? Find some doowop music on the radio and let's cruise. Let's—