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had gone right to that place where their expectations for him lived the most strongly, and he had done it with a ruthless expediency that surprised me. I’m not sure that lesser tactics would have worked against Regina, but that Arnie had actually been able to do it surprised me. In fact, it surprised the shit out of me. What it boiled down to was if Arnie spent his senior year in V.T., college went out the window. And to Michael and Regina, that was an impossibility.
    â€œSo they just. . . gave up?” It was close to punch-in time, but I couldn’t let this go until I knew everything.
    â€œNot just like that, no. I told them I’d find garage space for it and that I wouldn’t try to have it inspected or registered until I had their approval.”
    â€œDo you think you’re going to get that?”
    He flashed me a grim smile that was somehow both confident and scary. It was the smile of a bulldozer operator lowering the blade of a D-9 Cat in front of a particularly difficult stump.
    â€œI’ll get it,” he said. “When I’m ready, I’ll get it.”
    And you know what? I believed he would.

4
    Arnie Gets Married
    We could have had two hours of overtime that Friday evening, but we declined it. We picked up our checks in the office and drove down to the Libertyville branch of Pittsburgh Savings and Loan and cashed them. I dumped most of mine into my savings account, put fifty into my checking account (just having one of those made me feel disquietingly adult—the feeling, I suppose, wears off), and held onto twenty in cash.
    Arnie drew all of his in cash.
    â€œHere,” he said, holding out a ten-spot.
    â€œNo,” I said. “You hang onto it, man. You’ll need every penny of it before you’re through with that clunk.”
    â€œTake it,” he said. “I pay my debts, Dennis.”
    â€œKeep it. Really.”
    â€œTake it.” He held the money out inexorably.
    I took it. But I made him take out the dollar he had coming back. He didn’t want to do that.
    Driving across town to LeBay’s tract house, Arnie got more jittery, playing the radio too loud, beating boogie riffs first on his thighs and then on the dashboard. Foreigner came on, singing “Dirty White Boy.”
    â€œStory of my life, Arnie my man,” I said, and he laughed too loud and too long.
    He was acting like a man waiting for his wife to have a baby. At last I guessed he was scared LeBay had sold the car out from under him.
    â€œArnie,” I said, “stay cool. It’ll be there.”
    â€œI’m cool, I’m cool,” he said, and offered me a large, glowing, false smile. His complexion that day was the worst I ever saw it, and I wondered (not for the first time, or the last) what it must be like to be Arnie Cunningham, trapped behind that oozing face from second to second and minute to minute and . . .
    â€œWell, just stop sweating. You act like you’re going to make lemonade in your pants before we get there.”
    â€œI’m not,” he said, and beat another quick, nervous riff on the dashboard just to show me how nervous he wasn’t. “Dirty White Boy” by Foreigner gave way to “Jukebox Heroes” by Foreigner. It was Friday afternoon, and the Block Party Weekend had started on FM-104. When I look back on that year, my senior year, it seems to me that I could measure it out in blocks of rock . . . and an escalating, dreamlike sense of terror.
    â€œWhat exactly is it?” I asked. “What is it about this car?”
    He sat looking out at Libertyville Avenue without saying anything for a long time, and then he turned off the radio with a quick snap, cutting off Foreigner in mid-flight.
    â€œI don’t know exactly,” he said. “Maybe it’s because for the first time since I was eleven and started getting pimples, I’ve seen something even uglier than I am. Is