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, had 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.