And the voice whispered out of his lower consciousness, the dark questioning voice: How did you hurt your back? How did you hurt your back? How did you hurt your back, Arnie?
It was a question he shrank from. He was afraid of the answer.
My baby drove up in a brand-new Cadillac,
She said, “Hey, come here, Daddy, I ain’t never comin back!”
Baby, baby, won’t you hear my plea?
Come on, sugar, come on back to me!
She said, “Balls to you, big daddy, I ain’t never comin back!”
It was a grey day, threatening snow, but Arnie was right on both counts—they had a good time and he wasn’t weird. Mrs Cabot had been at home when Arnie got there, and her initial reception was cool. But it was a long time—perhaps twenty minutes—before Leigh came downstairs, wearing a caramel-coloured sweater that clung lovingly to her breasts and a new pair of cranberry-coloured slacks that clung lovingly to her hips. This inexplicable lateness in a girl who was almost always perfectly on time might have been on purpose. Arnie asked her later and Leigh denied it with an innocence that was perhaps just a little too wide-eyed, but in any case it served its purpose.
Arnie could be charming when he had to be, and he went to work on Mrs Cabot with a will. Before Leigh finally came bouncing downstairs, twisting her hair into a ponytail, Mrs Cabot had thawed. She had gotten Arnie a Pepsi-Cola and was listening raptly as he regaled her with tales of the chess club.
“It’s the only civilized extra-curricular activity I’ve ever heard of,” she told Leigh, and smiled approvingly at Arnie.
“BORRRRR-ing,” Leigh trumpeted. She put an arm around Arnie’s waist and smacked him loudly on the cheek.
“Leigh Cabot!”
“Sorry, Mums, but he looks cute in lipstick, doesn’t he? Wait a minute, Arnie, I’ve got a Kleenex. Don’t claw at it.” She dug in her purse for a tissue. Arnie looked at Mrs Cabot and rolled his eyes. Natalie Cabot put a hand to her mouth and giggled. The rapprochement between her and Arnie was complete.
Arnie and Leigh went to Baskin-Robbins, where an initial awkwardness, left over from the phone conversation of the night before, finally melted away. Arnie had had a vague fear that Christine would not run well, or that Leigh would find something nasty to say about her; she had never liked riding in his car. Both were needless worries. Christine ran like a fine Swiss watch, and the only things Leigh had to say about her rang of pleasure and amazement.
“I never would have believed it,” she said as they drove out of the ice-cream parlour’s small parking lot and joined the flow of traffic beaded toward the Monroeville Mall. “You must have worked like a dog.”
“It wasn’t as bad as it probably looked to you,” Arnie said. “Mind some music?”
“No, of course not.”
Arnie turned on the radio—The Silhouettes were kip-kipping and boom-booming through “Get a Job.” Leigh made a face. “DIL, yuck. Can I change it?”
“Be my guest.”
Leigh switched it to a Pittsburgh rock station and got Billy Joel. “You may be right,” Billy admitted cheerfully, “I may be crazy.” This was followed by Billy telling his girl Virginia that Catholic girls started much too late—it was the Block Party Weekend. Now, Arnie thought. Now she’ll start to hitch… back off… something. But Christine only went rolling along.
The mall was thronged with hectic but mostly good-natured shoppers; the last frantic and sometimes ugly Christmas rush was better than two weeks off. The Yuletide spirit was still new enough to be novel, and it was possible to look at the tinsel strung through the wide mall hallways without feeling sour and Ebenezer Scroogey. The steady ringing of the Salvation Army Santas” bells had not yet become a guilty annoyance; they still chanted good tidings and good will rather than the monotonous, metallic chant of The poor have no Christmas the poor have no Christmas the poor have no Christmas that Arnie always seemed to hear as the day grew closer and both the shopgirls and the Salvation Army Santas grew more harried and hollow-eyed.
