a/n: originally written october 2018
The first sign I had that something was going to go wrong was when Arnie told me he was taking Christine to his parents' house for the weekend. He was pretty nonspecific with his reasoning except to say he didn't want her around "those shitters", but I understood what he meant—Darnell's was finally transferring legal ownership to his name, and as such all weekend it would be invaded by people neither Arnie or Christine knew. Arnie didn't even really like leaving her in the student parking lot all day because people looked at her—they were always talking in class about that fucking car, as though we didn't all know perfectly well which car was being referred to. No one was stupid enough in Libertyville to so much as breathe on her, but I knew Arnie didn't trust anyone near Christine aside from myself.
"Why don't you bring her to my place?" I asked, thinking of Regina. The Cunningham's garage was more than big enough for Christine but even now with Arnie over eighteen and the worst of the trouble past she still hated having "that car" parked in her driveway. "She knows it, my family won't care—" Ellie was actually fascinated by Christine, in a morbid way; she'd ridden in the backseat once or twice without anything happening to her, but I figured it would be better not to remind Arnie of that right now.
"It's too far," Arnie muttered to his desk. He was digging at the dead skin around his thumbnail. Blood had gathered in the beds. Our houses were within driving distance of each other, but I knew what he meant by that too—if he had Christine out and couldn't see her, if he couldn't walk out and touch her, sit in her, if he needed, he got… weird. The only time it was okay was if she was in the garage, where he knew she was locked up and protected.
"Okay," I said, placating. I watched him drag his bloody thumb through a groove in the desk, the charred wood where some kid had burnt out a cigarette. Next to it a series of cut scars like knife marks. "Is Regina—"
His mouth tensed at his mother's name. "She'll deal with it," he said, short, and I knew the conversation was over. Not long after the bell rang and he hurried out, leaving me to follow in his sullen, irritated wake. I stopped in the science building where they had a vending machine and bought for us bags of Lays. Then I followed him out where he was already leaning in the parking lot against Christine's hood, smoking his cigarette, staring at the pines against the sky. I tossed him his chips and ripped mine open.
"Careful," he muttered, with no real threat in his voice. Behind us Christine's windows rolled down and we could hear the Stones' "Play With Fire"; she was on occasion more receptive to music made after '58 if Arnie was there and in one of his moods. We stood for a while in silence, eating our chips, smoking—eventually he sighed and knocked his foot against mine. When he smiled—corner of his mouth—I saw a flash of his old self there. It would come up from time to time—though less and less, these days—and there was always a soft pang when I saw it. I loved him in any form, but I was only human, after all.
And the chauffer drives your car, you let everybody know…
"No he doesn't," Arnie said, laughing.
I laughed too. "No, he doesn't," I said, and let him tangle our fingers together.
The second sign I had came the following morning, and it was less a sign than a blaring alarm, going off too late for me to do anything about it. It was Saturday, and I was trying to sleep, but the phone rang around nine, and while I lay there with my pillow over my head resenting whichever of my mother's friends just couldn't wait a few more hours to tell her about the latest sale at Macy's, my little sister answered. And a moment later she was knocking softly on my door and then walking in. That was when I started worrying—Ellie never went in my room in the mornings anymore, not after she'd walked in on me sleeping naked one summer three years prior. I pushed myself up on the elbows and squinted at her.
"El, what—"
"It's Mrs. Cunningham," she said, biting her lip. "She sounds—funny."
I rolled my eyes. "That's just average for her—"
"No, but really," Ellie said. "She doesn't sound right. She said something's wrong." A pause. "Something's wrong with Arnie."
Something cold sliced through my chest. I scrambled up and went downstairs with Ellie on my heels. She'd left the receiver on the kitchen counter and I picked it up.
"Regina—"
"Dennis." The sharp, cold voice verged on hysteria. "You have to come over here right now. Arnie's—" Her voice broke. "He's in a bad way."
"I'll be right there," I said, and hung up before Regina could continue on some kind of tirade. As I ran upstairs and dressed I thought of the possibilities—likely Arnie bringing Christine home the night previous had resulted in some kind of blowout between him and his parents and now he was sulking in their basement. Regina was probably just overreacting to whatever attitude Arnie was giving her. All the same I raced through putting on my jacket and shoes and snatching up my car keys from the bowl by the door. I told Ellie not to worry. Then I headed out.
At the Cunninghams' place Michael and Regina were both standing in the front yard. They weren't standing next to Christine nor even within five feet of her, but it was clear as I pulled up that they were talking or trying to talk to Arnie, who was sitting in her driver's seat. He had the windows rolled up and as I killed my engine I could hear even before I opened the door the harsh blare of his music—Chuck Berry.
"Dennis," Regina screamed as soon as I got out of my car. "He's locked himself in there. You get him out right now."
I didn't see what was wrong with Arnie sitting in his own car. Perhaps this sentiment showed on my face because she added, "He's been in there since last night," and then Michael said,
"He's talking to himself," which made Regina moan, and drag her hands down her face.
I walked up to Christine. Arnie was indeed talking; his mouth was moving and he was staring at the dashboard with that peculiar intensity he took up in his car. His cheeks were a little flushed. His eyes cut to me when I approached and then down again. Christine rumbled a greeting, and I judged it safe to knock my fingers against the window.
After a moment he rolled it down, just enough that he could talk to me. I could feel the gust of cool air from inside. "What."
"Arn, hey," I said. "I, uh—I heard you've been in here since last night."
His shoulders shifted. "So?"
"So maybe it's time to get out now—"
"Don't you start, Dennis," Arnie snarled. His hands were flexing on the steering wheel; the knuckles were white. "Don't you fucking start too."
"Hey," I said, holding my hands up, placating. "I'm on your side—"
"Are you?" The side of his mouth curled up, bitter and sneering. "'cause it seems to me that I've been surrounded by nothing but shitters since we came home last night."
I glanced at Michael and Regina. Regina had her hand over her mouth; her eyes were tear-filled but blazing with anger, and I knew without having to ask that she had not, in fact, dealt with it as Arnie had hoped she would. "Look, man," I began, "why don't you just get out of Christine for a second and we can talk about this—"
"Fuck you, Dennis," Arnie said. His tone was so flat it made me shiver. "Just leave us alone." He stroked Christine's wheel. "Just get the fuck out of here and let us be."
I swallowed. Arnie got weird when he couldn't touch or see Christine for an extended time, but he also got weird if he spent too much time near her. It made me a little concerned for the road trip he and I planned to take after graduation—not that I would say anything, and perhaps by then he'd have learned to control it better, but there was always something of Christine's own cruelty which inadvertently slipped into him when he sat in her like this. I could see in his eyes he was lost to some unseen world; the wildness in his gaze, the savagery. I wiped at my mouth with the back of my hand. I said,
"Do you want me to come in there with you?" and he shook his head once, sharply, and rolled the window up.
I sighed. I stepped back. The thing to do, and I knew Regina would never agree to it, would be to just let Arnie alone. Christine could take care of him for the remainder of the weekend; Monday morning likely she would just start herself up and take him to school and there wouldn't be any real issue. But as I approached the Cunninghams I could see already that I had failed in their eyes; and indeed as soon as I said,
"He won't come out,"
Regina's fists tightened and she turned smartly on her heel and stormed into the house. Michael shook his head at me. Dennis Guilder, the disappointing second son. Nearly twelve years of knowing them had flown out the window once I'd made it clear I was still on Arnie's side even with Christine in his life. Then Michael's eyes shifted over my shoulder to Arnie; he took several tentative steps forward, he said,
"Arnie, isn't it time to stop fooling around now—" and then I saw what Regina had, in her pride, refused to tell me: Arnie's head snapped up. His lip curled. The expression in his eyes was so cold it made me take an involuntary step back.
"You get back, you shitter," I could just hear him say through the glass. On the radio one of the thousand versions of "I Put a Spell on You" was starting up; the devastating, cruel opening chords.
I put a spell on you, because you're mine…
"Don't you use that language around me," Michael said, ineffectually. Arnie started laughing; his lips were moving again, he was talking rapidly, furiously. Regina came rushing out; she came closer to Christine than I would've thought she'd dare; her hand shot out like to grab at the door handle and Christine revved her engine. I couldn't tell if she was doing it or if Arnie was, but I supposed it didn't really matter.
"I've called the police," Regina screamed through the glass. "I've called the police, young man, and they're going to be here any second, so you'd better straighten up your act—"
Arnie flipped her off, still laughing. He was rocking back and forth. The music was piercing in the still morning. You better watch out, I ain't lyin'.
It turned out Regina had not in fact called the police but an ambulance; I wondered why she'd lied to him, and if it would've made any difference had she not. The ambulance pulled up alongside my car and I winced, watching the tight gap it left. Several paramedics rushed out at once and approached Christine with looks like war vets going back into the jungle. Behind the glass I saw Arnie's eyes get wide; his mouth fell a little slack, and the engine, the music, cut off abruptly, leaving in its wake a ringing silence. I saw his mouth clearly form the words: fuck you, but he opened the door. He got out. I knew he didn't want them touching Christine. He leaned back against her, fingers scrabbling desperately against her side. He glanced at me. I wondered if he was seeing me at all.
"Arnold Cunningham," said one of the paramedics, "son, you've gotta come with us now."
"Am I in trouble?" Arnie asked, false worry in his voice. I could tell he was trying not to laugh. That is, he was trying not to until one of the paramedics walked towards him and pushed against Christine in order to get his hands so she could cuff his wrists. Then his face changed; it twisted, he bore his teeth like an animal. His arm shot out and hit her so hard in the face I heard her teeth snap together.
"Don't you fucking touch her!" he roared, while the other two paramedics tackled him to the ground. "You shitters!" His eyes sought mine again from the cement; the desperation, the panic. As they pulled him to his feet and began leading him towards the ambulance he screamed,
"Don't let them take her, Dennis! Don't fucking let them touch her!" His voice cracked. The ambulance door slammed. Across the street one of the neighbors had come out to see the commotion; Regina moaned, trying to hide her face.
The ambulance started up again and left, wailing, down the street. In its wake everything was very, very still.
Michael looked at his sobbing wife. Then he looked at me. He said,
"You get that piece of shit out of here," and taking Regina by the shoulders he led her inside and slammed the door shut behind them.
Sunday evening I was driving home from Gino's when I saw a familiar figure slouching down the side of the road: Arnie, in my Harvard sweatshirt which he'd borrowed and never returned, and an ancient, fraying pair of jeans. His head was down; he had earphones on, hands jammed into his pockets.
I slowed down and rolled down my window. "Arnie," I called. "Arn. Hey."
Slowly his head turned towards me. There were dark circles under his eyes—well, there were always shadows under his eyes, but they were even more prominent than usual. He tried to smile at me. He slipped one headphone off.
"Hey, Guilder," he called back.
I pulled off the street into the bike lane. "I didn't know you got out," I said. In fact I was more than a little surprised; the hospital was more than two miles from where Arnie lived, and it was chilly; the sun had already mostly gone down.
His shoulders shifted. "Yeah," he said.
"You could've called me," I said.
Another shrug. No answer. I took a breath.
"You want a ride?"
He shook his head. "I'm okay," he said.
I bit my lower lip. "Arnie, it's forty-five degrees," I said. "Come on, man—"
He shook his head again. There was a building desperation in his eyes, and suddenly I realized what the issue was. I cleared my throat. I said,
"Christine's at my place, Arn. She's been there since yesterday morning. She didn't know any more than I did when you were coming out or else I would've driven her up to get you. You know that."
His expression shifted a little—just a little, like glass in clear water. "You have Christine?"
"I have Christine."
He hesitated. Then very quickly like a fox he rushed to my car and sat hard in the passenger seat. His Walkman was blaring; Bowie's Station to Station. His hands were skittering up and down his thighs. As I put the car in drive again and started down the road I reached over; squeezed his leg.
Two weekends after Arnie came home from the psych ward I went to stay at his house for a few days. Regina wasn't very happy about it—don't you have homework to do, Dennis? Aren't you supposed to be studying for finals? (The fact that it was March did not faze her.) Don't you have college applications to complete? Eventually she talked herself out of it—I think it was her bringing up college that got her to settle down, because as I set myself up on the couch in the basement she said,
"You know, if you find any good colleges to apply for, you should tell Arnie about them. You should talk to him," and then, in a lowered tone: "I'm so worried about him, Dennis; even with those new meds he's not functioning. I think if you bring up the idea of higher education he'll come back to Earth." Evidently she didn't know her son—Arnie wasn't taking any of the meds the doctor had sent home with him, nor was he even considering college; there was a good technical school near where I'd applied, and he was going to go learn mechanics so he could work in a shop full time, but Regina and Michael didn't need to know that yet. So I just smiled a little, nodding, and she walked out.
Arnie came downstairs a few minutes later. Wrapping his arms around my waist he kissed the side of my neck in greeting; he smelled like the car, which meant he was going to be in a good mood for a while. I could smell the sharp scent of the special-order pomade he used to grease his hair back, and the leather of his jacket, and the stale cigarette smoke that clung now perpetually to his clothes.
"'m glad you're here," he mumbled into my skin. "Regina's driving me up the fucking wall with her bullshit about lithium this, serotonin that—as if she knows what the hell she's talking about." He shook his head a little; stepping away from me I noticed he looked more tired than usual. I touched his cheek.
"You all right?"
"Yeah, I'm just… I'm fine." He folded his arms across his chest. "Recovery's a bitch," he said, and glanced, he probably thought surreptitiously, out the high window near the ceiling, which looked out towards the road. He'd told me once he could feel her in him; the pulse in his blood, Christine, Christine. I had the idea that she was settling into him, his joints into her axles, transmission into muscle, bone to engine. I'm not giving it up, this feeling; not for anything. You need to know that, he'd told me, not one week previous—the electric shock she gave him, his brain, like nothing else, nothing like what those medications would do for him. To him. He'd chase Christine's high the rest of his life. All I could do was hold him, love him as best I could.
He said, "You want chips? We're not gonna let the shitters fuck up our weekend," and two hours later we were sitting with his Atari hooked up to the basement ten-inch, a half-empty bag of Doritos on the floor, our Cokes leaving stains on the table. Through the high narrow window, the pale afternoon light illuminated Arnie's face, the sharp juts of his cheekbones and the swanlike arch of his neck. He had his knees pulled up to his chest and his arms wrapped around them as he smashed the controller with his thumbs.
Then suddenly Arnie was hissing shit through his teeth. He paused the game. He got halfway to his feet, but there was already piss streaking down his jeans. It puddled under him on the cheap linoleum.
"Fuck," Arnie said, softly, squeezing his thighs together. His eyes were shut, he looked almost pained. He reached down to adjust himself and I watched another huge leak spurt down his thigh. "Fuck, Den."
He pissed for what felt like a full minute. When it was over his cheeks were flushed with high color and he was breathing hard; he said,
"I guess I really had to go," but he sounded confused about it. He looked at me; there was something almost upset in his eyes I couldn't read, and he was worrying his lower lip with his teeth, which I hadn't seen him do in a while. I stood; I helped him to his feet. His jeans were soaked. So was the floor.
"Fuck," he said again.
"Hey, it's okay," I said. My knee was twinging from having sat for so long and it was almost a relief to lead him into the bathroom where we stripped together in the tiny basement tub. I needed to piss pretty bad too, which I knew he'd like, so I pissed into the drain; let him hold my dick to aim it. He kissed my shoulders and leaned against me, forehead against my skin, while I ran the water to rinse us off. I got Clorox and threadbare towels and cleaned up his mess while he sat in fresh sweatpants watching me with his head tilted a little. By the time I was done he looked almost normal again; I crawled into his lap and he kissed me, sucking on my lower lip.
"That was pretty hot," he said, smiling against my mouth. "I guess my body got sick of me putting you through shit all the time so it wanted to sympathize a little."
I laughed. "Kind of you, Cunningham."
"That's me," he said. "Always thinking of others."
Monday morning Regina breathed a sigh of relief—in less than an hour, Dennis Guilder would be gone from her home. Not that she didn't respect the boy, or anything like that, but it was unnatural for her son to only have one close friend. Herself in high school and college she'd had plenty of friends—it wasn't her fault all those women had decided to call her a "shrill, unhinged bitch" at the last reunion ten years ago. Now that it was so close to graduation Arnie needed to be thinking of branching out his interests, his social circle—perhaps he could call that girl that he'd been seeing in the latter half of '78, that Leigh Cabot. Certainly he needed time away from that car of his, and being with Dennis wasn't going to help that—Dennis was now An Enabler, and Regina couldn't abide Enablers.
Prior to her son and his friend coming downstairs she reached in the back of the kitchen cabinet where Arnie never looked and took out his bottle of lithium. The stamp from the doctor was still fresh—Arnold Cunningham, Lithium, 500 mg, prescribed March 12, 1979. Refill: call Dr. Joshua Eberhardt. She was going to have to remember that, she thought as she shook three of the pills out in her hand and set them on the counter. There were thirty pills total, and she'd given Arnie six in the last five days—one a day didn't seem to be cutting it, though, because he was still spending time working on that damn car, and with Dennis, neglecting his studies, smoking those cigarettes. Occasionally she'd woken up at three or four in the morning and found Arnie on the sofa, watching some late-night program with dull eyes, eating cereal or some other small snack. So she didn't feel guilty about crushing the pills up and slipping them into Arnie's orange juice. They dissolved easily enough into the liquid; by the time he came downstairs—Dennis on his heels, sweatpants hanging off his hips in a way that made Regina blush and feel further relief that he was getting out of her house soon—there was no trace of the medication. Arnie drank and ate with the same flat expression he did everything these days, except work on that car. She could only hope that with the lithium in his system, he'd perk up. She wondered how long it would be until she could purchase a For Sale sign for his car.
By the evening on Sunday Arnie seemed to have compartmentalized the events of Friday into an on-purpose event. "I thought it would be hot," he told me, while we waited for his mom to go to sleep so I could sneak upstairs with him and let him fuck me on his bed. "Like—a show of appreciation for you. For everything you've done for us recently." I let it go, of course—you didn't argue with Arnie—but I couldn't forget the strain in his voice. The confused expression. The way he'd slumped against me in the shower. More than all that the way he'd gone around the house for the remainder of the weekend, tired even for him. Once I'd come into the bathroom and found him just standing there, staring blankly at the mirror. He'd claimed he just hadn't slept much the night before. But Arnie never slept, and I knew he generally functioned like a normal person even when he'd stayed all night at the garage. It concerned me. Yet of course I didn't bring it up with him—you didn't show concern for Arnie, either.
Monday we were halfway to school when Arnie fell asleep in the driver's seat. It was just for a second, at a stoplight—he was muttering something about feeling exhausted, a little nauseous, and his head kind of careened backwards and hit the seat. Then he jolted upright looking alarmed, glancing at me:
"Did I just fall asleep?"
Alarm bells were going off in my head. Pull over, I wanted to say. Get to a payphone. Call an ambulance. Something's wrong. His eyes were a little out of focus, the pupils like pinpricks in the early morning sun—or anyway that's what I told myself. I told myself a lot of things right then—he hadn't slept much all weekend, like I said. His body was just trying to get him to relax for a second. He loved Christine and I knew she loved him in her own way but maybe she was just pulling a little too intensely right now. We neither of us understood the full effects she might have on him—likely it was just some kind of symptom of a larger issue which the car was causing, which meant of course Arnie would never do anything about it. I shook away the sirens screaming in my head to get Arnie off the road. I said,
"Yeah, man, but like—not for long." I rubbed the back of my neck. "Maybe, uh—Christine could drive the rest of the way, though?"
I thought he would argue, or at least give me one of his looks—no one suggested anything for Christine to do except Arnie. So it was another, sharper pang of worry when after a moment he shifted his shoulders and said,
"Yeah, maybe," and let his hands slide from the wheel. He spent the rest of the ride to school sleeping. When we got there he grabbed a Coke from the vending machine; he said his stomach was still giving him trouble. By third period or so he was feeling a little better, or anyway enough to grab me on my way to study hall and get me to suck his dick in the bathroom of the science building. His eyes had lost that coked-out look. He was even smiling a little when we went to lunch and ate our flat burgers and pale pickles on top of Christine.
"Fall asleep in any classes?" I asked, casually.
I watched him stroke his hand across her hood, the flex of his thumb. "No," he said, a little evasively. "I was kind of zoning out most of first period, but you see I'm okay now." He glanced at me. "Don't mother me, okay, Guilder?" It was all the warning I knew I'd get, and I sighed.
"No problem, Arn," I said. And I meant it. He was acting normal enough now that I figured the weekend was maybe some kind of fluke—maybe Christine really was just affecting him in a way we hadn't yet discovered. At any rate it wasn't long after that that Arnie hopped off her hood and coaxed me out to the football field so we could sit in the bleachers and smoke until the bell rang. The ground was packed hard from winter, the grass dead and brittle under our feet. He pressed the side of his foot to mine as we stared out over the ragged painted lines and the goalposts. He rubbed my knee. And I didn't let myself think.
He wasn't feeling weird, just kind of disoriented. He wasn't feeling weird, just kind of tired. He wasn't feeling weird, he wasn't feeling weird, he wasn't feeling weird; he was feeling fine. He'd been up for seventy-two hours before working on Christine; this was just like that feeling, wrung out, off balance, like walking a very delicate tightrope. His eyes were hot. He felt like he was watching the world through smeared glass. If he let himself sit for too long the out of focus dizziness grew worse.
Someone was snapping their fingers. It was Dennis. (It was Dennis, wasn't it?) Dennis with his hand on Arnie's shoulder, shaking it. "Hey, man—" That tight worry in his voice. "Hey, Arn?"
His voice was pitching, coming from somewhere very far away. It took Arnie a moment to realize he was sitting in his desk in Lundstrom's English AP, the ugly graffiti scrawled along the edges, courtesy of Buddy fucking Repperton, back when he'd still been alive and not smashed to shit in some snowbank—
Someone was laughing. There was a tight ringing in Arnie's ears. Someone was laughing through that; the ringing was increasing and the laughter sounded hollow and false and grating—
"Arnie, Jesus," Dennis yelled, and smacked the desk with the flat of his hand.
Arnie blinked. He could feel his own mouth stretched into a smile. Had it been him laughing? The ringing was fading in his ears, shrill, Doppler Effect. He licked his gums. They tasted dry. Strange.
"Hey, Den," Arnie said. "What're you doin' in here, man; this class is for smart people."
"Shut up," Dennis muttered. His eyebrows furrowed over his nose. "Are you drunk?"
"I am not an idiot, Dennis," Arnie said, perhaps with more force than necessary. His stomach twisted; he'd been having sharp pains all week. They'd started Monday. He thought he'd drunk more Coke this week than he'd drunk in his entire life. He wondered if they would rename the company after him. Cunningham-Cola. That would show the shitters—
"—understand you—Arn, you listening to me?"
Arnie felt his gaze slide back up to Dennis' face. He wondered when he'd stopped looking at him. "Yeah," he lied. "As much as I can listen to your boring ass, anyway."
Dennis shook his head. "So you're not drunk?"
"What is this, twenty fucking questions? No, I already said I'm not."
"Okay, well… the bell rang ten minutes ago. You're missing lunch. Come on."
Arnie shrugged. "I'm not hungry."
Something passed over Dennis' face, unrecognizable, gone too quickly for Arnie to identify. He wanted to put his head down. He was so tired. He couldn't remember ever being this fucking tired.
"At least come sit out with me," Dennis said, quietly. "It's chilly."
"You're so fucking queer," Arnie said, but he stood up. Or he thought he did. He stood up, but he was still sitting down. His hands white-knuckled against the side of the desk. Someone in his head was screaming—
"Arn?" Dennis. At the door. When had he gotten there? Teleport?
"Yeah, I'm coming," Arnie said, and stood—really, this time, forcing down the dizziness, the rush in his head like nausea. He took a deep breath—then another. Walking was like swimming. His eyes were still burning. Maybe he could catch a nap against Dennis' shoulder outside.
Saturday morning when I stopped by the garage Arnie wasn't there. Christine sat alone, quiet, patient, waiting. "Hey, old girl," I said, resting my hand on her hood, trying not to worry. "What's going on with Arnie?"
She rumbled softly. Little bitty pretty one… He and I had danced to this not long after everything had ended with Leigh. Christine had played it on loop, hours on end, and Arnie had pulled me against him and rested his head on my shoulder. Don't leave me, Dennis, he'd said, rough, in my ear. I need you. It had been the first time since October that I'd felt like I was talking to Arnie—that he wasn't somewhere slipping away from me, that I wasn't looking at some disjointed 3D photograph of him, holding the glasses wrong so that the red image and the blue image stood out a little from each other, a child's drawing of a cube. Now something was—
He'd been acting odd all week. I knew it, Christine knew it—she'd taken to driving us herself, automatically, which she never did, because Arnie liked doing it himself so much. I couldn't ask Regina or Michael because talking to them wasn't beneficial in any situation but I'd had dinner with them a few times and Regina spent the entire meal watching Arnie. There'd been a tight frown on her face the whole time. Arnie had shifted his food around on his plate listlessly with his fork for a while and then said he was going up to bed early, he was tired. She'd screamed at him about rudeness, that's no way to treat a guest, even if you've known them for a long time, but he'd ignored her. The circles under his eyes more prominent than usual. He'd stumbled when he'd gotten up.
"I'm fine, Den," he told me, when I followed him upstairs. "I'm just not sleeping as much. Fuck. I keep having to go to the garage in the middle of the night. I have these weird fucking dreams about Christine."
"Weird dreams, like—"
"Like that she's busted up again, only it's permanent. Or that she's on fire. Or that—" He wiped at his mouth with the back of his wrist. He looked like he was going to be sick. "I dream that Regina's selling her and I can't do anything because I'm tied to a tree. So I wake up sweating and I have to go see about her." He twisted his hands together. He hadn't done that in a long time—like being thrust in cold water I remembered how he'd worried his mouth the weekend previous, after he'd pissed himself.
"It's okay," I said. He was staring in the mirror. "Arn, that's normal. It's okay. It'll be better once we've graduated and gotten the hell out of here, huh?"
He tilted his head. In the mirror his reflection did the same—both their mouths quirked into a half-smile. "Yeah," he said.
That was on Tuesday. Thursday, the second dinner I had with them, Arnie said he wanted to go check something in the TV room and didn't come back for so long I went to get him—found him passed out on the couch. Friday he spaced out before lunch. Saturday he wasn't at the garage. He was always at the garage on weekends. He'd walk through a tornado to get to the garage on Saturdays if he had to.
"I think he's sick," I told Christine. "He's so stubborn he'll probably never tell any of us until he's got a one hundred and four degree fever and ends up in the hospital."
Another soft rumble. I wished I could really talk to her, the way Arnie had told me he could. I was past the point now of thinking it was something she was doing, even involuntarily. I patted her headlight and made my way out, hitting my door opener as I left. It was a half mile to Arnie's and I took it at a jog. Regina and Michael were out, so I let myself in. Arnie was on the couch, staring at the TV, glassy eyed, slack-mouthed. He didn't really look up as I walked towards him. It seemed to take great effort for him to move over on the cushions to let me sit. There was a basketball game on, the sound muted.
"Hey, Arn."
"What're you doin' in my house, Guilder," Arnie asked. He sounded like he'd just woken up, or else like he was drunk. He wasn't forming all of his words correctly. His cheeks were flushed, and I reached over to feel his forehead. He flinched away from me. I noticed his hands were trembling on his thighs.
"I came to check on you," I said. "You weren't at the garage."
"Mm," said Arnie.
"It's Saturday," I said.
He reached up and brushed at his forehead, like he was trying to push back hair. "Okay," he said. Flat. Disinterested. His eyes sought mine with that same tremendous effort he'd used to move over. "Could you grab me a Coke, Den? I don't—fuckin' feel so hot."
There were Cokes lined up like soldiers going into battle on the coffee table. I grabbed one and handed it to him. His hands shook so badly he couldn't open it; I could hear the fizz bubbling around inside. When I took the can from him to pop it open myself I felt the heat of his skin.
"You've got a fever," I said. "Have you told your mom you're sick?"
"What the fuck would Regina do about it?" he snarled. Wha' th'fuck wou' 'Gina do 'bou-it? "She just—she'll just tell me to take those fuckin'… those fuckin' pills. Threw 'em out a long time ago. Can't do shit." He took the Coke back from me and pressed it for a moment to his lips before drinking it down. "I can take care of myself. Me an' Christine."
I took a breath. Something was lingering in my head, sour, poisonous—it felt like I was dreaming, because I couldn't grasp what it was. "You've been weird all week, man," I said. "Even being in Christine's not helping, is it?"
"Just hard to recover," Arnie mumbled into his Coke.
"This isn't just recovery, Arn," I said. "You're sick, you've got the flu or something." I reached out; he didn't flinch back again, but it was a near thing. I got my hand on his arm and he was still trembling, softly, like a current threading under his skin. "You need to go to the doctor. You know Christine'll take you—"
"Dennis." He looked at me. His eyes were so out of focus I couldn't hold his gaze. "Don't fucking tell me what—"
The front door slammed. Regina came rushing in with groceries. There was something in her expression I didn't like as she looked at us—me to Arnie, Arnie to me. Lingering on Arnie. Couldn't she see he was sick? Regina, eagle eye, fanatical germophobe. I wanted to grab her by the shoulders and scream at her. Instead I felt my own face beginning to burn. I didn't know why I felt like I'd been caught at something forbidden, as though we were six years old again, coloring on the baseboards in Michael's office.
"Dennis," she said, short. "Don't you have homework to do?" In other words: get the fuck out.
I stood up. "Arnie's not feeling well," I said. "I came over to see about him—"
"He's fine," she snapped. She set the groceries down and crossed the room in three quick strides. Wrist to his forehead. Mouth tightened. She glared at me. "He's just not sleeping enough. He's still spending too much time at that damn garage."
I thought of Christine sitting there, alone. Something sharp lanced its way through my chest. "He's sick," I began, and her nostrils flared.
"He will be fine," she said, "once he regulates his sleeping schedule back to normal and resumes studying like he's supposed to. Isn't that right, Arnie?"
Arnie made a noise; I couldn't tell if it was affirmative. He'd slumped down even further into the cushions. His empty Coke can rolled onto the floor. I remembered him pissing everywhere. I hoped he would again. I hoped he'd piss all over her fucking couch.
"Now go home," Regina said to me, "and make your parents proud of you."
I made it halfway down the block before I had to double over some bushes to throw up.
Arnie wasn't getting better. That much was clear. But it wasn't Regina's fault. That was clear, too. Regina didn't fuck things up. Other people fucked things up. Arnie had fucked up buying that damn car in the first place. Michael had fucked up not being more of a man to raise his son. Dennis had fucked up not being able to talk Arnie out of it despite the long years they'd known each other. Regina was just here to clean up the messes they'd all made. And if she could clean up Arnie, the rest would follow like dominos.
She crushed up four lithium pills. She'd been giving him three a day for the past week, but perhaps three was imbalanced, perhaps the solution was to give him an even number. As she poured the powder into Arnie's apple juice she glanced inside the bottle and was unnerved to see she was already down to the last five pills. She would have to call Dr. Eberhardt soon for a refill. The question was how to get him to refill so soon after the initial diagnosis.
Her hand trembled over her hair. The swell of her breast. She was still a woman, after all. Just because Michael hadn't wanted to touch her in months didn't mean she'd lost anything. Dr. Eberhardt, she would say. May I call you Joshua? And touch his hand, the back of his hand. Men liked to have the backs of their hands touched, for no particular reason. Today at the store she would buy mouthwash. She would wear her red lipstick. She would make Arnie better.
Saturday evening I was watching Happy Days with Ellie, letting her gab on about how hot she thought Henry Winkler was, when the phone rang. The receiver was closer to me and I grabbed it before Ellie could; I was hoping it was one of her friends, so I could tease them all about "The Fonz" and make Ellie whack me on the shoulder.
Instead I heard for a moment the sound of harsh breathing, rapid staccato unnatural pace. Then Arnie's voice, that same strange, slurred tone to it from earlier:
"Dennis—you… what're you doing right now?"
I sat up. I tried not to let Ellie see how hard my heart had started pounding. "Nothing, nothing, why?"
More unsteady breathing. Then: "Come to the garage." G'rage. "I finally made it over."
"Okay," I said, as calmly as I could. "Do you want me to bring anything?"
"Nah," Arnie said. In the background I could hear the blare of his radio. "Just your pretty face." Then he hung up.
"What's wrong?" Ellie asked, as I grabbed my jacket and car keys.
"Nothing," I lied.
"Is it Arnie again?"
I took a deep breath. I reached over and squeezed her shoulder. "Everything's fine," I told her. "Tell Mom and Dad I had to go run an errand if they ask where I am, okay? Just something real quick for work."
"You're a shitty liar," Ellie called after me, but I was already out the door. Darnell's/Cunningham's was two miles from my place, and the drive felt like it took forever. When I got there I saw first that the garage door was open, then that Christine was already sitting outside, Arnie leaning against the driver's side door. He was picking at the skin around his nails. His shoulders were slumped. When he saw me get out of my own car he tried to smile, but it was like the muscles around his mouth weren't working right. He looked somehow even worse than he had earlier that afternoon on his couch.
"Wanna run an errand with me?" he asked as I approached. One of his hands came up to rub hard at his left eye; the sclera and the skin around it was red, and it kept twitching at the corner. "Only you gotta sit in the driver's seat, 'cause I—" His hand flexed against Christine's door. "I can't see so good."
Pinkeye. Strep. Meningitis. God, was he going blind? Was that even possible? I remembered learning about Helen Keller, how she'd had scarlet fever as an infant and gone blind and deaf from it. But Arnie was eighteen; surely that couldn't be happening to him… surely even with an untreated fever his body wouldn't react that way…
I said, "Sure—isn't Christine going to drive anyway, though?"
He gave me a look; when he pushed off from the door I saw he was trembling again, swaying in one spot. "Just do what I say, okay?" He held onto her as he walked around to the passenger side and got in. I heard him moan as he hit the seat. By the time I got in the car he was already asleep; his eyes were shifting back and forth beneath the lids. As Christine's ignition turned over—tell me why everything turned around—he woke back up, but I could see he wasn't really all the way there. He squinted at the radio.
"Fleetwood Mac," he mumbled. Patted her seat. "Good girl." He smiled at me, lazy, beautiful—I was so scared I was almost sick again. "Start driving," he said. "I'll tell you when to stop."
Was it a gas station? The sign said Standard Gas, but it kept flickering, like neon projected very badly over film. When Arnie got out of Christine the pretty gas station attendant—hair pinned back, poodle skirt—came over and asked if he wanted to pump the gas himself. Her voice sounded like static. Oil leaked from the corner of one eye.
"Uh," said Arnie. "You—"
"Arn, what are we doing here?" Dennis asked.
Arnie spun around. There were Dennis and Christine—the engine ticking as it cooled. They'd parked at an abandoned gas station—pale lights flickering just out of reach of his eyes. He could see vines crawling up the supports. They were totally alone—from inside the (decaying, fresh) diner adjacent he could hear the jukebox playing Buddy Holly, and see the girls going by on roller skates, serving hamburgers to the jocks in their letterman jackets. Outside their cars parked, getting serviced by pale-faced, pockmarked attendants. They were alone. The girl was touching his shoulder. He shook her off. Her face flickered; it was Dennis standing there, looking hurt, trying to hide it. They were alone. They were alone.
"Arn?"
He reached up, rubbed at his eye. "Yeah?"
"What are we doing here, man?" His tone was gentle, but the question sounded familiar. Had he heard it before?
"Have you asked me that before?"
"Yeah," Dennis said. His knuckles were rubbing against Arnie's arm. On the jukebox the song had switched over to Ritchie Valens. "Arnie, I'm scared for you—"
Arnie shook his head. The movement jostled something loose in his ear. There was a sharp piercing whistle like a train and he moaned and clutched at the side of his head. He could feel Christine beneath him/around him/inside him, the thrum of her engine, but it was dulled. Hard to reach. He wanted it back. He wanted to sleep. When he brought his hand back from his ear it was shaking. His mouth was so dry.
"Don't start that shit again—"
"It's not about Christine," Dennis said. His mouth moved and the words came after. "It's you—it's you being sick." Sick echoed with a sound like squalling feedback. Arnie sighed; he turned a little, pressed his forehead to Christine. Every few seconds distorted images would flash across his eyes—echoes of laughter, roller skate girls going past, pump attendants. The smell of fried food drifting through the open door. The bright flare of fluorescent lights. Chuck Berry: go Johnny go. The sounds would rush up through his ears the way he sometimes heard voices when he was overtired—when he was getting ready for bed. Not like this. Not so tired he couldn't see. Couldn't think. Couldn't really breathe.
"I'm not sick," Arnie mumbled, pushing off Christine, limbs weighing a thousand pounds. "She needs gas." He patted her side. "Gotta take care of my baby." Gripping the door handle he made his slow way around the car—the concrete seemed like to suck him down into the earth. He could feel Dennis following him. The smack of some girl's chewing gum. The fizz and pop of soda. The wind rushing through the long-abandoned—
"Arn, there's no gas here," Dennis said. His hand was still on Arnie's arm—Arnie was leaning against the trunk of the car. He was breathing hard and shaky into his hand. He felt like he'd just thrown up, although there was no stain on the ground. "This station's been defunct for like a decade; I remember when it went down. Don't you remember, your dad went on that tirade about wasting natural resources, it's the only time I've ever seen him get—"
"Shh," Arnie whispered. When he pressed his finger to Dennis' mouth it was trembling. He couldn't keep his eyes on Dennis' face so he let them slide out of focus. The ringing in his ears kept fading and growing again, looping, in time with the pounding of his head and the surges of nausea in his stomach. "You go inside and get me a Coke," he said. "I'm gonna get Christine's food now."
Dennis bit his lip. "There's nothing here, Arn—"
Arnie closed his eyes. He was so hot. So hot.
"Christine doesn't need gasoline, anyway," Dennis' voice said from somewhere near the gas station cover, fifty miles up. "You know that; she runs on her own—"
Give the man a leech, said the roller skate/attendant girl, with oil streaming from her nose. He needs bleeding out, he's dying. He felt something tighten in his chest; when he fell to the concrete it was almost a relief. He could see Dennis through a fog above him, mouth wide, moving—then he passed out.
It was close to one in the morning before Arnie was moved from the ICU to a private room for recovery, and Regina was at last allowed upstairs. The doctor who met Regina at the door to Arnie's hospital room was not Dr. Joshua Eberhardt. His nametag said Ricardo, and he was a half inch shorter than her. He was holding a chart a little ways away from him and squinting at it. He had glasses pushed so far to the front of his nose it was a wonder they didn't fall off. Incompetent medical professionals made Regina bristle with irritation.
"Who are you?" she snapped. "Where is my son?"
Dr. Ricardo looked up at her and smiled—blinding flash of teeth beneath a short, bushy mustache. He looked like Desi Arnaz's mentally retarded cousin. "You must be Mrs. Cunningham."
"Of course I am," Regina said. "Where is Arnie?"
"He's sleeping in that room," Dr. Ricardo said, gesturing behind him with one thumb. The nail was dirty. God, what kind of a hospital was this? Then it dawned on Regina that of course Dennis had taken Arnie here—Dennis, who couldn't be relied on for anything. She tried to settle her racing heart. Once things were cleared up with this doctor she'd have Arnie moved.
"Let me see him," Regina said. "Let me see my son."
"Just a moment," said Dr. Ricardo. He was smiling pleasantly, looking from her to the chart and back. He reached up and pushed his glasses back towards his eyes. "Ah—much better. Here you see it says your son collapsed outside of an abandoned gas station at approximately 8:55 p.m. and was admitted to this hospital after being driven here by a Dennis Guilder?"
"That's his best friend," Regina said tightly. "Let me see him—"
"One moment," Dr. Ricardo repeated. His eyes were scanning the page, and as they did, something in his smile slipped a little. Regina did not feel fear, because she was never out of control, but something passed through her chest like water. She said,
"Let me in," and finally, third time's the charm, he stepped aside. He said,
"He might not be awake, Mrs. Cunningham," but Regina stepped hastily past him and into Arnie's room.
Arnie was half-laying in his bed, eyes shut. An IV was hooked from his left arm going into a bag full of clear liquid. He looked so small laying there against the white sheets. So small and thin. Her son. His hair like a spill of ink against the pillow. Mouth a little open. She walked up to him, pressed her hand to his forehead. His skin was clammy, warm.
"Oh, sweetheart…" she whispered. When he came home she would refill his prescription post-haste. She would fuck Dr. Eberhardt if she had to. Clearly not even four lithium a day was cutting it; up the dosage, cure the patient. Like taking multiple aspirin an hour for a migraine. She took Arnie's hand and sat in the chair beside the bed. She could feel his skin stretched out over his bones. The weak thready pulse of his heart in his wrist. She looked away from his face for a moment out the window and when she looked back he was awake and watching her.
"Oh, Arnie—"
"Mom…" Arnie's voice was hoarse, soft. He sounded like a child again, like he was nine and sick with chicken pox. "What—uh, what happened?" The smallness of his voice was such that Regina nearly shouted in triumph—she could already see that goddamn car receding in the distance. College applications would pile up on the table. The fifties wardrobe and the expensive custom-made hair gel would disappear. Girls would come. The chess club would gather in the basement. It wasn't too late for him to rent a tuxedo for prom—
"You collapsed," Regina told him. "At an abandoned gas—Arnold, what in the hell were you doing at an abandoned gas station? Don't you know how dangerous that could've been? You could've been killed by some crazy—"
"Dennis was there," Arnie said.
"Dennis would've been killed too!" Regina nearly shouted, before remembering where she was. She listened to Arnie's heartrate on the monitor spike for a moment before coming back down and forced herself to smile. "Sweetheart, I'm just trying to get you to see common sense—you can't just drive wherever you like and park that car of yours at all hours of the night—" She paused. He was watching her face very closely, with that intensity he'd started using since he'd brought home the car. It almost made her nervous—but she didn't get nervous. Certainly not of her own son. She cleared her throat.
"Have you been taking your medication?"
His eyebrows furrowed. "What?"
"The lithium tablets that doctor gave you," she said. If you won't take them yourself, I am still your mother. I can force you to do anything I want. "You've been acting so strange lately, I wonder—"
"No," said Arnie, slowly. "I haven't been taking that lithium shit."
"Well then, that's why—"
"Which is really weird, Ma, because Dr. Ricardo said there were massive traces of it in my bloodstream."
More water passed over her heart. Cold as ice, sharp shards of—yes, fear. For the first time Regina found she could not speak. She remembered Ricardo's expression as he'd scanned the chart.
"They said they couldn't figure out what was wrong with me right away because Dennis was describing symptoms of strep, but I didn't have the virus. Then he started telling them I've been shaking pretty much nonstop since the week started and that I don't eat and I'm pissing all the fucking time—"
Regina flinched backwards, almost violently.
"—and my speech has been slurred, and they did a toxicology scan. I overdosed on lithium. They had to fucking pump my stomach twice." His eyes were those same flat, dead things Regina knew all too well—every time he spoke of the car in her presence. He sat up a little straighter; he leaned towards her.
"What the fuck did you do to me?" he whispered, and she burst into tears.
"Arnie, I tried—I thought you needed it, I knew you would never take it, I wanted you to get better—"
"You almost killed me, Regina," Arnie snarled. He wrenched his hand out of her grasp. "I'm not getting out of here for another three days at least. My body's all fucked up from however much you've given me. What's wrong with you?"
She found once again that she could not speak. When Dr. Ricardo came in and asked her to please leave she discovered she couldn't stop crying. Downstairs in the waiting room Dennis was slumped over a chair watching MASH; when she walked past him he held up one middle finger. She wanted to slap him. Instead she walked out into the cold of the night. There were no stars out, and no moon. Just the wind, endless, and the streetlamps, and Christine, waiting with her grille out. Cold and silent and shining.
Regina hurried past her son's car, heels echoing on the concrete, but it still felt ridiculously as though it was watching her.
When Arnie came home with me my parents and Ellie were out; they'd gone to a movie. We drove home in Christine; I sat in the driver's seat, and he spent the whole ride stroking her leather, her dashboard, until finally I said,
"Hey, should I just maybe pull over? Give you two some alone time?"
"Maybe later, Dennis," Arnie said seriously, but he was smiling, small private thing tucked into his cheek. I began to laugh; I reached over and took his hand. Christine quietly turned a corner as I leaned across the bench seat to kiss him. He moved up and over, soft eager noises spilling from his throat, hand in my hair, fingers on my scalp. His tongue came out to brush at my lower lip as we pulled into my parents' driveway. I found I was trembling all over and couldn't stop. I said,
"She already knows home," and Arnie rolled his eyes:
"Don't get all mushy on me now, Guilder," but he was still smiling. I started to get out of the car but he stopped me, hand on my wrist. Christine's radio came on—Zeppelin's "In the Light". Arnie's hand slid from my wrist to my hip. He pushed me back against the driver's side door, crawling as much as he could into my lap.
"You're a terrible influence on her," I told him, meaning the music. He huffed out a laugh. The dragging whining chords twining around us as he pushed his other hand up my shirt. His thumb found my nipple. I gasped at the shocking feeling of it, the rough catch of skin on skin. My head thunked back against the window.
"Let us show you," he breathed, mouth slowly making its way down my neck, "how much we appreciate everything you've done to save our lives."
