by Steven King
• • •
Buddy Repperton, out of school and with no interest in initiating the procedures that might have gotten him readmitted at the beginning of the spring semester in January, had gone to work at the gas station run by Don Vandenberg’s father. In the few weeks he had been there, he had already begun a number of fairly typical scams—shortchanging gas customers who looked as if they might be in too big a hurry to count the bills he gave back to them, running the retread game (which consists of charging the customer for a new tire and then actually putting on a retread and pocketing the fifteen-to sixty-dollar difference), running the similar used-parts game, plus selling inspection stickers to kids from the high school and nearby Horlicks—kids desperate to keep their death-traps on the road.
The station was open twenty-four hours a day, and Buddy worked the late shift, from 9 P.M. to 5 A.M. Around eleven o’clock, Moochie Welch and Sandy Galton were apt to drop by in Sandy’s old dented Mustang; Richie Trelawney might come by in his Firebird; and Don, of course, was in and out all the time—when he wasn’t goofing off at school. By midnight on any given week night there might be six or eight guys sitting around in the office, drinking beer out of dirty teacups, passing around a bottle of Buddy’s Texas Driver, doing a joint or maybe a little hash, farting, telling dirty jokes, swapping lies about how much pussy they were getting, and maybe helping Buddy fiddle around with whatever was up on the lift.
During one of these late-night gatherings in early November, Sandy happened to mention that Arnie Cunningham was parking his machine in the long-term lot out at the airport. He had, in fact, bought a thirty-day ticket.
Buddy, whose usual demeanor during these late-night bull-sessions was one of sullen withdrawal, tipped his cheap contour-plastic chair abruptly back down on all four legs and put his bottle of Driver down on the windshield-wiper cabinet with a bang.
“What did you say?” he asked. “Cunningham? Ole Cuntface?”
“Yeah,” Sandy said, surprised and a little uneasy. “That’s him.”
“You sure? The guy that got me kicked out of school?”
Sandy looked at him with mounting alarm. “Yeah. Why?”
“And he’s got a thirty-day ticket, which means he’s parked in the long-term lot?”
“Yeah. Maybe his folks didn’t want him to have it at …”
Sandy trailed off. Buddy Repperton had begun to smile. It was not a pleasant sight, that smile, and not only because the teeth it revealed were already going rotten. It was as if, somewhere, some terrible machinery had just whined into life and was beginning to cycle up and up to full running speed.
Buddy looked around from Sandy to Don to Moochie Welch to Richie Trelawney. They looked back at him, interested and a little scared.
“Cuntface,” he said in a soft, marvelling voice. “Ole Cuntface got his machine street-legal and his funky folks have got him parking it out at the airport.”
He laughed.
Moochie and Don exchanged a glance that was somehow both uneasy and eager.
Buddy leaned toward them, elbows on the knees of his jeans.
“Listen,” he said.
23
Arnie and Leigh
WDIL was on the car radio and Dion was singing “Runaround Sue” in his tough, streetwise voice, but neither of them was listening.
His hand had slipped up under the T-shirt she was wearing and had found the soft glory of her breasts, capped with nipples that were tight and hard with excitement. Her breath came in short, steep gasps. And for the first time her hand had gone where he wanted it, where he needed it, into his lap, where it pressed and turned and moved, without experience but with enough desire to make up for the lack.
He kissed her and her mouth opened wide, her tongue was there, and the kiss was like inhaling the clean aroma/taste of a rain forest. He could feel excitement and arousal coming off her like a glow.
He leaned toward her, strained toward her, all of him, and for a moment he could feel her respond with a pure, clean passion.
Then she was gone.
Arnie sat there, dazed and stupefied, a little to the right of the steering wheel, as Christine’s dome-light came on. It was brief; the passenger door clunked solidly shut and the light clicked off again.
He sat a moment longer, not sure what had happened, momentarily not even sure of where he was. His body was in a complete stew—a helter-skelter array of emotions and erratic physical reactions that were half wonderful and half terrible. His glands hurt; his penis was hard iron; his balls throbbed dully. He could feel adrenaline whipping rapidly through his bloodstream, up and down and all around.
He made a fist and brought it down on his leg, hard. Then he slid across the seat, opened the door, and went after her.
Leigh was standing on the very edge of the Embankment, looking down into the darkness. Within a bright rectangle in the middle of that darkness, Sylvester Stallone strode across the night in the costume of a young labor leader from the 1930s. Again Arnie had that feeling of living in some marvellous dream that might at any moment skew off into nightmare … perhaps it had already begun to happen.
She was too close to the edge—he took her arm and pulled her gently backward. The ground up here was dry and crumbly. There was no fence or guardrail. If the earth at the edge let go, Leigh would be gone; she would land somewhere in the suburban development loosely scattered around the Liberty Hill Drive-In.
The Embankment had been the local lovers’ lane since time out of mind. It was at the end of Stanson Road, a long, meandering stretch of two-lane blacktop that first curved out of town and then hooked back toward it, dead-ending on Libertyville Heights, where there had once been a farm.
It was November 4, and the rain that had begun earlier that Saturday night had turned to a light sleet. They had the Embankment and the free (if silent) view of the drive-in to themselves. He got her back into the car—she came willingly enough—thinking it was sleet on her cheeks. It was only inside, by the ghostly green glow of the dashboard lights, that he saw for sure she was crying.
“What’s the matter?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”
She shook her head and cried harder.
“Did I … was it something you didn’t want to do?” He swallowed and made himself say it. “Touch me like that?”
She shook her head again, but he wasn’t sure what that meant. Arnie held her, clumsy and worried. And in the back of his mind he was thinking about the sleet, the trip back down, and the fact that he had no snow tires on Christine as yet.
“I never did that for any boy,” she said against his shoulder. “That’s the first time I ever touched … you know. I did it because I wanted to. Because I wanted to, that’s all.”
“Then what is it?”
“I can’t … here.” The words came out slowly and painfully, one at a time, with an almost awful reluctance.
“The Embankment?” Arnie said, gazing around, thinking stupidly that maybe she thought he had really brought them up here so they could watch F•I•S•T free.
“In this car!” she shouted at him suddenly. “I can’t make love to you in this car!”
“Huh?” He stared at her, thunderstruck. “What are you talking about? Why not?”
“Because … because … I don’t know!” She struggled to say something else and then burst into fresh tears. Arnie held her again until she quieted.
“It’s just that I don’t know which you love more,” Leigh said when she was able.
“That’s …” Arnie paused, shook his head, smiled. “Leigh, that’s crazy.”
“Is it?” she asked, searching his face. “Which of us do you spend more time with? Me … or her?”
“You mean Christine?” He looked around him, smiling that puzzled smile that she could find either lovely and lovable or horridly hateful—sometimes both at once.
“Yes,” she said tonelessly. “I do.” She looked down at her hands, lying lifelessly on her blue woollen slacks. “I suppose it
’s stupid.”
“I spend a lot more time with you,” Arnie said. He shook his head. “This is crazy. Or maybe it’s normal—maybe it just seems crazy to me because I never had a girl before.” He reached out and touched the fall of her hair where it spilled over one shoulder of her open coat. The T-shirt beneath read GIVE ME LIBERTYVILLE OR GIVE ME DEATH, and her nipples poked at the thin cotton cloth in a sexy way that made Arnie feel a little delirious.
“I thought girls were supposed to be jealous of other girls. Not cars.”
Leigh laughed shortly. “You’re right. It must be because you’ve never had a girl before. Cars are girls. Didn’t you know that?”
“Oh, come on—”
“Then why don’t you call this Christopher?” And she suddenly slammed her open palm down on the seat, hard. Arnie winced.
“Come on, Leigh. Don’t.”
“Don’t like me slapping your girl?” she asked with sudden and unexpected venom. Then she saw the hurt look in his eyes. “Arnie, I’m sorry.”
“Are you?” he asked, looking at her expressionlessly. “Seems like nobody likes my car these days—you, my dad and mom, even Dennis. I worked my ass off on it, and it means zero to everybody.”
“It means something to me,” she said softly. “The effort it took.”
“Yeah,” he said morosely. The passion, the heat, had fled. He felt cold and a little sick to his stomach. “Look, we better get going. I don’t have any snow tires. Your folks’d think it was cute, us going bowling and then getting racked up on Stanson Road.”
She giggled. “They don’t know where Stanson Road ends up.”
He cocked an eyebrow at her, some of his good humor returning. “That’s what you think,” he said.
• • •
He drove back down toward town slowly, and Christine managed the twisting, steeply descending road with easy surefootedness. The sprinkle of earth-stars that was Libertyville and Monroeville grew larger and drew closer together and then ceased to have any pattern at all. Leigh watched this a little sadly, feeling that the best part of a potentially wonderful evening had somehow slipped away. She felt irritated, chafed, out of sorts with herself—unfulfilled, she supposed. There was a dull ache in her breasts. She didn’t know if she had meant to let him go what was euphemistically known as “all the way” or not, but after things had reached a certain point, nothing had gone as she had hoped … all because she had to open her big fat mouth.
Her body was in a mess, and her thoughts were the same way. Again and again on the mostly silent drive back down she opened her mouth to try to clarify how she felt … and then closed it again, afraid of being misunderstood, because she didn’t understand how she felt herself.
She didn’t feel jealous of Christine … and yet she did. About that Arnie hadn’t told the truth. She had a good idea of how much time he spent tinkering on the car, but was that so wrong? He was good with his hands, he liked to work on it, and it ran like a watch … except for that funny little glitch with the odometer numbers running backward.
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, get 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 really 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 trunk; 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 always 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 roller-coaster 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 gl
ass, smearing the red idiot lights from the dash inside, and he wondered passingly what the source of that particular bit of slang was—idiot lights; it was an unpleasant term. Then that was wiped out by the more important consideration. 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 Champion and—
Which of us do you spend more time with? Me … or her?
The smile returned, but this time it was uneasy. Well, he spent more time around cars in general—of course. That came of working for Will. But it was ridiculous to think that…
You lied to her. That’s the truth, isn’t it?
No, he answered himself uneasily. No, I don’t think you could say I really lied to her …
No? Then just what do you call it?
For the first and only time since he had taken her to the football game at Hidden Hills, he had told her a big fat lie. Because the truth was, he spent more time with Christine, and he hated having her parked in the thirty-day section of the airport parking lot, out in the wind and rain, soon to be snow—
He had lied to her.
He spent more time with Christine.
And that was—
Was—
“Wrong,” he croaked, and the word was almost lost in the slick, mysterious sound of the falling sleet.
He stood on the walk, looking at his stalled car, marvellously resurrected time traveller from the era of Buddy Holly and Khrushchev and Laika the Space Dog, and suddenly he hated it. It had done something to him, he wasn’t sure what. Something.
The idiot lights, blurred into football-shaped red eyes by the moisture on the window, seemed to mock him and reproach him at the same time.
He opened the driver’s side door, slipped behind the wheel, and pulled the door shut again. He closed his eyes. Peace flowed over him and things seemed to come back together. He had lied to her, yes, but it was a little lie. A mostly unimportant lie. No—a completely unimportant lie.
