by Oakley Hall
He cupped his hands around the match and lit his cigarette. “Was it what you wanted, V?” he said.
“Yes,” she said, looking at him strangely. “It’s what I wanted.”
He switched on the ignition, kicked the starter and raced the motor. “Haven’t we got a date tonight?” V asked.
“You don’t want to go out with me.”
“What do you mean, Ben?”
“I thought you’d want to go to bed with that letter.”
Her eyes clouded and he was instantly sorry. He hadn’t meant to say that. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean that. I’ll see you at eight, V.”
She nodded and, without speaking, turned away. He watched her walk across the pavement, the short blue skirt flicking across the backs of her bare legs.
He was early that evening, pausing to smoke a cigarette outside her apartment house before he went up. When he knocked she called to him to come in. Her apartment was a two-room affair, with a davenport and an easy chair and a false fireplace in the living room. Ben lit another cigarette and found himself an ashtray and sat down in the easy chair. “Do you want me to put my hair up?” V called from the bedroom.
“Why don’t you leave it down?”
“Where are we going?”
“Somewhere and talk,” he said.
He smoked his cigarette, looking around him at this room, which had nothing of V in it, and then, on the mantelpiece, he saw a small photograph propped against the wall. He went over to look, bending forward but not touching it; Jack was standing with two other men beside a slanting palm tree. They all wore dungarees and sailor caps and their faces were indistinct and heavy with shadow. Ben went back and sat down again.
“What’re you going to say to Jack when you write?” he called.
She didn’t answer, and coldly furious, he knew what she was going to write to Jack. He waited silently, staring across the room at the photograph on the mantel. From where he sat he could not make out which of the three was Jack.
When V came out she had on a plain black dress with padded shoulders, and her hair hung loosely around her face. Her face looked very white, her lipstick very red. She carried a cigarette and an ashtray and she sat down on the davenport, crossed her legs and arranged her skirt over her knees. Ben knew what she was going to write to Jack.
“Well, you’re going to keep it up, aren’t you?” he said slowly, through his teeth.
“I have to make sure,” V said, and she bent her head to rearrange her dress over her knees. “I have to…”
“You damn fool.”
She shook her head. “I’m afraid. I know this works.” She took a deep breath and said, “Till he gets back.”
“Okay,” Ben said. “But just don’t use me. Keep me out of it or I’ll write and tell him you’re a liar!”
She didn’t speak, she didn’t look up, and he said, “You don’t care how much he hates you and hates himself, do you? Just so you get him.”
“I can fix that when I see him again,” V said. “I can’t take a chance now.” When she raised her head her face was wooden and stiff, and she smoked her cigarette nervously, tapping it into the ashtray each time she took it from her lips.
“Well, you’re a fool,” Ben said.
He snuffed out his own cigarette, waiting for her to speak. But suddenly he said, “I don’t know why I give a damn. I don’t know why I give one Goddam, how you ruin it,” staring at the photograph on the mantel. But he was lying; he did know. He hated to see her ruin it because she was killing something that was now rooted irrevocably in him. Together she and Jack had killed it, or would kill it. He knew the goal she had stubbornly kept in sight was marriage to Jack, but the getting and the marriage would be built upon and cursed by hate and jealousy and distrust, and it would be cursed now, too, by the death of Red.
I know this works, she had said, but if it did work, what would she have? He wished he had let it alone, let it alone from the beginning, so that now it might be dead instead of alive and rotten with disease. He wished he could have let it alone.
“It’s just that Jack’s my best friend,” he said, and he got to his feet. “I’m pretty sick of the whole thing, V.”
She was looking at him, and she said quietly, “I’ve hurt you, too, haven’t I? You’ve changed, too. You’re not…Everyone I like I hurt some way,” she said, and she closed her eyes tiredly. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s the way I feel about you,” Ben said. “You know. It’s pretty rough.”
She rose, stepped across to him, and laid her hand on his arm. He could feel it, soft and light, through his coat. “I guess you know how I feel, don’t you?” he said. “I think you’ve known for a long time.”
“Yes,” she said.
“I guess you can see how it’s pretty rough, unh?”
“Yes,” she said. “I can see. I’m sorry, Ben.”
“Well, it’s pretty impossible, I guess.”
“I love Jack. I always will. You know that.”
“I figured it out.” He moved toward the door, but she tightened her grip on his arm. Her eyes probed his, liquid and pitying. He hated the pity in them.
“You want me, don’t you, Ben?”
“That’s why I’m going.”
“I don’t want to hurt you, Ben. I don’t want to hurt anybody.”
He laughed bitterly, thinking about Jack, but he didn’t understand what she had meant until she caught his eye again. Then he knew, and it shocked him. He felt his face flush painfully, felt anger, felt the anger leave him. He touched her hair.
“No,” he said, and he said it not merely because Jack was watching this from the mantelpiece, and Jack was his friend, not merely because this would only be borrowed temporarily and would soon have to be returned to its owner and after it there would be nothing else. He had to say no because of his whole life, because of what he had always been and had always tried to be, and because of Jack, and because of V herself, and because of Doris, and, strangely, Arlene. But mostly because of himself, he said, “No.” V’s hand left his arm. He didn’t look at her as he stumbled out the door.
15
He had carefully avoided any place he might meet her, and it was almost two years later and the war was over before he saw her again. But one day he got a letter from Slim Farley, and Slim had seen Jack in San Diego.
Somehow he was sure V did not know Jack was back and out of the Navy. He cursed Slim for ever writing, for now he did not know whether he should tell her or not. He did not know what was right, and he had no way of knowing. He did not know what had happened between them. He sweated over the decision, telling himself over and over again to stay out of it. Stay out of it; he should stay out of it, and at first he determined he would.
But all he had wanted for them came back to him; he became half-convinced that if he told V now, he might be giving them the one more chance which they all needed. Jack was back, and maybe V did not know. Maybe it was his duty to tell her, and then leave it up to her. One day he looked for her name in the phone book to see if she still lived at the same place. She did. He stared down at the name—“Baird, Vassilia Caroline”—as though trying to discover in it whether he was doing the right thing or not. But it told him nothing, and so, finally, he drove over to her apartment.
He walked up the green-carpeted steps to the second floor. There were thirteen steps, he remembered, but he counted them as he climbed. At the top was a railing and a round-topped newel post and across from the newel post was V’s door. He stood motionless in front of it for a long time before he knocked.
She was in a blue bathrobe when she opened the door, and her face lit up and she put her hand out to him. He pressed her hand, and released it. It was cold. She looked older, more than two years older, her face had lost its youthful fullness, and her eyes and mouth looked larger in it.
Ben stood at the door, his hat in his hands, staring at her. She had just come out of the shower and her hair was damp and pinned up
on top of her head. Her mouth was pink, without lipstick, and shining beads of perspiration dotted her upper lip. “Won’t you come in, Ben?” she said.
“There’s something I guess you ought to know, V,” he said, and then he said quickly, “Heard from Jack lately?”
She shook her head and repeated, “Won’t you come in, Ben?”
“I can’t stay but a minute. Jack’s in San Diego, V.”
She put her hand up to the edge of the door and her eyes became smaller. “How do you know?”
“I got a letter from a friend of mine down there.”
“From Jack?”
“No.”
“How long…? How long has he been…?”
“I guess two or three months,” Ben said.
“Oh.” She inclined her head and he could see her throat working. “Are you sure?” she said shakily.
“Yeah.”
“Why didn’t he tell me he was back?” she whispered. “Why didn’t he write and tell me? Why didn’t he come back here? He said he was going to. Oh, damn!” she almost sobbed.
Ben said, “He’s working for an outfit called Hogan and Griffith. They’re on a job at Kearny Mesa, north of Dago. That’s all I know, V.”
She nodded.
“Well, that’s it,” he said. “So long, V.” She still did not speak and he turned to go. He put his hand on the newel post, sliding it around as he stepped down the first step. V stood motionless; she had raised her head and was staring past him. He took another step, still sliding his hand around the newel post. He could see the beads of perspiration on her upper lip, her round, brown, staring eyes, her down-bent mouth. A wisp of hair had come loose and curled down over her forehead. He took another step and let his hand drop. She was still staring past him when he lost sight of her.
A few weeks later he read in the paper that she was marrying a man named Roger Denton, and he realized with a shock that Denton was the old rancher he had seen that day in the drive-in. The news startled and confused him. He tried to understand it, but he could not. And then she tried to phone him. The landlady gave him her name and telephone number, and said he was to call her back. But he didn’t, and the next day she called again while he was gone. This time there was a message. She wanted him to give her away at her wedding.
But he didn’t call her, and he couldn’t bring himself to go to the wedding.
He always wondered if she had gone to San Diego to see Jack. He had thought that was what she was going to do when he had seen her the last time. He had thought she was planning it when she stared past him.
He couldn’t stop himself from thinking about her, wondering what had happened, and one day after he had gone to work for the local, he telephoned the Denton ranch on the sudden impulse that he had to talk to her. But she wasn’t there, he was disgusted with himself for phoning, and he didn’t ask where she was.
And then Slim had written him from San Diego, enclosing the newspaper clippings. Among the clippings were photographs of Jack, of a dark-haired girl with big eyes, and a blurred, unrecognizable photograph of V smiling, and under it the caption that was blatant, and meaningless, and without dignity: “Murdered Blonde in Love Triangle.”
Part III
MARIAN HUBER
1
Marian put two slices of toast into the toaster. Waiting for it to pop up she pushed the sugar bowl and the cream pitcher over toward Arch, who was eating his egg with a fork in one hand and a piece of buttered toast in the other. He had on a clean dungaree jacket and his khaki shirt was buttoned at the neck, and Marian could tell by the way his forehead was wrinkled that he was thinking hard about something.
Arch was easy to read. In the seventeen years they had been married, Marian had come to know him much better than she knew herself. She knew when he could be managed, and she knew when he was going to be stubborn and she had better not push him too far. She knew when he was contented, and when something was bothering him, and something was bothering him now.
“What’s the matter, Arch?” she said.
He didn’t seem to have heard. “Arch,” she said, but he didn’t look up, forking egg into his mouth and following each bite of egg with a bite of toast.
“Arch Huber!”
He raised his head; a slight, brown man with a narrow long face, the plainest man she had ever known. Not ugly, just plain; sometimes so easygoing and sometimes mule-stubborn. He certainly had his faults, but she wouldn’t trade him for any man she’d heard of yet; certainly not for that Mr. Foley. Mr. Foley, who lived next door, was an insurance salesman, and when Marian had told Mrs. Foley that Arch ran a grader, and then what a grader was, Mrs. Foley had acted as though Arch were a common laborer. So Marian had told her how much Arch made a week and asked her how much Mr. Foley made, and since then they had only nodded to each other. She wished she had told Mrs. Foley that Arch was a man and a damn good operator, and not a miserable pot-bellied little suck-up of an insurance salesman.
She scowled and said, “What’re you thinking about, Arch?”
“Nothing.” He glanced at his watch and his throat worked as he took a swallow of coffee.
“You’re thinking about that Jack Ward.”
“All right,” Arch said. “If you knew, why’d you have to ask?” He finished the last of his egg, took another piece of toast from the toaster and began to butter it.
“Arch, you’re not going to see him. I thought we decided that.”
He broke his toast in half and scraped his plate with it.
“Arch!”
“Well, maybe he needs something. Cigarettes or something. Somebody ought to go see if he needs anything.”
“He’s going to get what he needs. Now you leave him alone.”
Arch grunted and Marian saw he was not going to be stubborn about this. Evidently he had not made up his mind. He was still frowning, however, and he said, “Say, you suppose Gene goes to see him, hon?”
“I should hope not. She’s just lucky it wasn’t her.”
“Well, somebody ought to.”
“There’s no reason for you to. He doesn’t want to see you. You told me yourself you hadn’t said two words to him since…”
“Damn it, somebody ought to,” Arch said, and his voice took on a stubborn tone. “He’s a cat skinner, isn’t he? I stood up for him when he got married, didn’t I? Maybe I ought to go see if I can do something for him.”
“Please, Arch. You stay out of it, won’t you? I’d be real upset.”
Arch looked at his watch, wiped his mouth on his paper napkin and got to his feet. His legs were bowed and skinny in his levis. He came over, kissed her absently on the forehead and started for the door.
“Arch, please!”
“Oh, okay,” he said, without looking back. The door whuffed shut behind him, she heard him swinging the garage doors open, and, after a moment, the erratic grind of the starter of the Studebaker.
When he was gone she lit a cigarette and sipped her coffee, thinking about the murder. The murder had confused her; Jack, whom she had known and liked, murdering someone, confused and frightened her, and seemed in some way to involve her personally. She wondered how she had known that it was wrong for Gene to marry Jack. She had known that then, but she had never conceived of anything like this. And even if she had, she knew she would have foreseen Gene killing Jack, or Jack killing Gene, but this made no sense to her.
She did not feel as strongly about the murder as she did about what Jack had done to Gene. Mrs. Denton had probably deserved what she got. Marian had only seen her twice, and then not closely, seeing only a tall, blonde, overdressed girl, the kind who always looked as though she were walking into the wind.
Marian had immediately despised her, because of Gene, she told herself; because right away she had known this woman was Jack’s mistress. But then, uncomfortably, she remembered that when they had been seeing a lot of Jack, she had thought she wouldn’t mind going to bed with him herself. She wondered if she really would have, ha
d the chance arisen. She supposed not.
He had affected her that way, though; he had made her feel like she wanted to stretch; those tiny hips and big shoulders, those yellow slanting eyes, and the way he looked at you, politely but thoroughly, as though he didn’t miss a thing, and the way he talked, half-shy, half-bold, so you didn’t know whether to try to make him feel more at ease, or to spit in his eye.
But when he had started cheating on Gene, she had hated him. Gene was so helpless, not at all able to take care of herself or to hold onto Jack—she had told Arch that all along. Just from the two times she had seen this Mrs. Denton she had known Gene didn’t have a chance, but this had seemed to her all the more reason why Jack should have been scrupulously faithful.
Arch had met Jack on the job at Kearney Mesa. They had been living in the auto court near Five Points then, and whenever she wanted to use the car, Arch had ridden to and from the Mesa with Jack. She remembered that Arch had felt they should ask Jack to stop by some night and eat steaks with them.
He had come on a Friday night with a bottle of bourbon and they had had a good time, and after that he had come over to dinner almost every week. She had been immediately attracted to him. Before she had married Arch, she had always liked wild, hell-raising men, and she was certain Jack had been one of these in his time. And she remembered the strange combination of jealousy and gratification she had felt the night Jack told them he was thinking about getting married.
2
She had been in the kitchen starting dinner. The kitchen was separated from the other room by a low partition and she could talk to Arch and Jack while she skinned the potatoes. Jack was sitting on the studio couch with his long legs stretched out in front of him and a highball in his hand, and he and Arch were talking about the job.
Then, after a silence, Marian heard Jack say, “Well, I’m thinking about getting married, Arch.” He said it casually, and she craned her neck to see him.
“What’s that, Jack?” she called.
He flushed and turned toward her and repeated the words.