It was late in the summer before he even saw her again. When finally he did, one night at the Hitching Post, he began seeing her often, running into her at a movie, or at a ball game, or glimpsing her blonde head moving among the other dancers at the Chamber of Commerce Hall. Then one night he took her to a movie himself, and stopped the next day at Deterle’s to see her, and all at once he was stopping at the drive-in every day after work, and making a date with her whenever he could.
After the first few times she dropped the mask she had put on for her battle for Jack. One night it was gone completely, and she never again put it on when she was with Ben, as though she had felt him out and knew he was to be trusted, or as though he did not matter enough for her to go to the trouble of wearing it. She was more sure of herself now, more wary, as though the stubborn, desperate singleness of her purpose had tempered her to a hardness she could not throw off. But the honesty remained, her straightforwardness was still there. The new, sleek smile he hated was gone with her pose, for Ben she smiled her old smile, and for him her eyes held the round, grave, innocent look he could never forget.
He couldn’t stay away from her. He had to see her even though she looked upon him as Jack’s friend more than her own, even though the few times she kissed him he had the jealous revulsion afterward that it had been Jack she was kissing. Finally she seemed to know what was the matter with him and he began to understand he was being handled, gently and carefully. Somehow he did not mind.
One afternoon when he had stopped at Deterle’s after work, she was talking to an old man in a black Lincoln convertible. She waved to Ben but stayed and talked to the old man while he waited impatiently, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel and watching them.
The Lincoln was new and the man’s head was small and gray, sticking up over the edge of the door as though he were a turtle peering out of his shell. He was smoking a cigarette in a long holder, and Ben didn’t like the way V was talking to him.
“Who was that?” he asked, when the Lincoln had gone and V came across the asphalt to him.
“Roger Denton. He has a ranch out near my father’s.”
“That the guy you go see every Sunday?”
V nodded. “He’s my best friend. He and you, Ben.” She seemed happy about something. The color was high on her cheeks and her eyes shone.
“He’s old, isn’t he?” Ben said coldly.
“What? Oh. Yes, I’ve known him since I was a little kid. He gave me a quarter-horse when I was sixteen.”
“I didn’t like the way you were talking to him.”
Her smile faded and she looked at him anxiously. Suddenly he felt foolish and tried to grin it off. “Guess what I’ve got,” V said.
“What?”
“Guess.”
“I can’t. What is it?”
She took a letter from the pocket of her skirt and showed him the return address on the envelope. “From Jack, unh?” Ben said, and he felt lonely and tired. “What’s he say, V?”
“He’s on Guam in the Seabees,” V said, and her voice was deep and happy. “He sent me a picture and he says he’s sending me a souvenir he picked up. It’s a wonderful letter, Ben.”
He fished a cigarette from his shirt pocket and stuck it between his lips, fumbling for a match. “I guess our boys get lonely out there,” he said.
“Please, Ben, don’t go sour like that.”
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.