At first it had been fine. He had been charmed by V, by her naivete, her complete trust. He knew she worshipped him and she never bored him. He enjoyed teaching her to dance and to swim and he enjoyed learning how to bowl with her; they always had a good time together. Always, with her, everything they did was slightly different than it had ever been before, new, and exciting. But this newness and excitement puzzled him, and sometimes he was ashamed of it.
Sometimes he was ashamed of it because he felt himself being carried along in her enthusiasm for everything they did together, as though they were children, or puppies. He had never seen anyone so completely happy; he could feel it in her and she told him of it time and time again, as though she had never been happy before, and he had always thought about happiness as being something you either had or didn’t have, and which there wasn’t much use thinking about.
She had no shame with him and no false modesty; she said always what she thought or felt, or showed him what she thought or felt, and although many times it thrilled him deeply, as many times he was embarrassed by it. But she must have known, instinctively, what it took him most of his life to find out: that especially when they made love they had something between them they could never equal elsewhere, that lived just in them and because of them, realized a thousand times beyond itself because of them; a perfection to be found once in their lives and only once. V had known—she must have known, must have realized it deeply, or, when she had lost him, she would not have tried so fiercely and ruthlessly to get him back—but he had been unable to recognize it for what it was.
It was as though he was incapable of any kind of perfection. He had mistrusted it, had been afraid of it. He had been afraid of being moved so completely by anything, and he had to obliterate it, smudge it with dirt, shy away. He had been incapable of what they had.
And there was the nagging suspicion that he had been trapped. He had always told himself he wanted to be free and he felt himself held by something mysteriously strong. The feeling grew on him that he had broken some vague rule in the game, either in taking her, a virgin, or in the slip when he had spoken of marriage. He felt there was a debt he owed, a bill he should pay.
And the fact that he had not known about the bill until now made him rebellious. He knew the bill was fair and he didn’t want to be a welsher, a poor loser, but he was not ready to get married, and he was sure it would be happy for neither of them if they did. Something seemed to demand that he not hurt her, for he was aware that she was not like the other girls he knew, but much as he liked her, he hated the bonds she was imposing on him. He felt guilty and frightened about what he had done to her, about what she might become. He felt responsible, and he hated it, for he wanted no responsibilities. They had no part in his life.
Ben Proctor had thrown them up to him one day, and Ben was the only person whose opinion he cared about. Ben’s judgment of him hurt him, and he was hurt more when he came to the conclusion that Ben must be in love with V. When, without notice, Ben left town, this seemed confirmed, and he thought bitterly how it must have been for Ben to see what he had seen. The whole thing had turned bad. He wished he had never seen V, that he had never taken the job dozing stumps for her father. It was something strange and complicated and frighteningly strong in his mouth, and it had to be spat out.
He had thought it was to be finished the night of Push’s birthday party at the Hitching Post, and he was so ashamed of that night that whenever afterward he remembered it, he would feel himself flush and his eyes would grow hot and he would curse himself, trying not to think about it. He had been drunk, there with V and Push and Harry and Petey Willing and three other girls, all of them drunk except V.
He remembered arguing with Petey. Petey had wanted to play Rose of San Antone on the jukebox for Carol Lester, who was from Texas, and Jack had insisted on playing The One O’Clock Jump over and over again. Carol sat on Petey’s lap, crying because she wanted to hear Rose of San Antone, her lipstick smeared all around her mouth and around Petey’s mouth. Harry was telling jokes, and Push and the two other girls were leaning on the table, listening to him. The girls snickered from time to time. V sat silently beside Jack.
Petey had upset his glass and when Peggy came over to mop up the liquor, Jack patted her on the hip. “Hi, honey,” he said. She smiled down at him and he put his arm around her waist and pulled her onto his lap.
Peggy smelled of cheap perfume and face powder. She took his face between her hands and kissed him, long and sloppily, and he kissed her back. He tightened his grip when she tried to pull away, a little sickened by the smell of her. And V was watching.
“Whew,” Peggy said, when he let her go. “Your little girl’ll be mad, honey.”
“To hell with her,” Jack said. “She’s a sorehead, anyway.” He didn’t look around at V. Push was watching him from across the table, his eyes fixed on a point at the exact center of Jack’s forehead. Jack kissed Peggy again. He put his hand up under her dress, but suddenly he felt sick. He jerked his head away. V was gone.
Push was looking toward the door, an expression around his mouth as though he had tasted something rotten. Rose of San Antone was playing on the jukebox. Jack thrust Peggy from his lap and got to his feet, holding onto the back of the chair.
“Goddamn you, Petey, you bastard,” he said. “Did you change that record?”
“You leave him alone!” Carol said.
“Somebody else changed it,” Petey said.
“You better…”
“Why don’t you go away?” Carol said. “You’re filthy!”
He felt himself flush. “Shut up!” he said. He didn’t look at Push. He crossed unsteadily to the machine, put in a quarter and punched number 19 five times. He knew what was the matter with that little Texas bitch; she’d been on the make for him ever since she’d come to town, and he’d never even looked at her. Then he remembered that this was Push’s birthday party and Push had been talking about it for a month. He wondered where V had gone. He stood punching the red plastic button, feeling sick, feeling as he had when he’d shot his first rabbit and it had screamed and jerked its mangled body around on the ground until he could get his father’s old shotgun reloaded and kill it.
He started back to the table. He changed his course and made for the door. Hurrying, he bumped into a chair, and he stopped to set it on its feet again. “Oh, you bastard,” he muttered. “Oh, you bastard.” Behind him The One O’Clock Jump blared.
V was packing her bags when he came into the room. Her hair parted up the back of her head as she leaned forward over the bed, folding her clothes into one of the suitcases. The other was already closed and strapped. She didn’t look up as he stood just inside the door, watching her, and finally he stepped forward and grasped her elbow and turned her around. She was limp and unresisting, but she turned her face away from him.
“Listen, V,” he said. No more words seemed to come and after a moment he let her go and sat down on the other bed. V returned to her packing, and Jack stared at the bags, remembering when he had seen them in the darkness on the driveway at the ranch. V was folding the black dress he had bought her the first day she had been in Bakersfield. “Listen, V,” he began again, and finally he said, “Where you going?”
“Away.”
“What do you mean, away? Where?”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“Listen, what the hell’s the matter with you?”
She closed the suitcase and snapped the locks and buckled the straps. She turned to face him. He looked down and shook a cigarette from his pack and lit it. He blew a cloud of smoke between them. “Well, what the hell’s the matter?” he said.
“This is what you wanted, wasn’t it?”
“What?”
She laughed shakily and he couldn’t meet her eyes anymore. “Hell,” he said. He could feel her eyes seeing him. “Listen, V,” he said. “I’m tight. Let’s talk this over tomorrow, unh?”
“No,” she said. “You’re not drunk anymore. I know when you’re drunk.”
His hand trembled as he raised the cigarette to his lips. He blinked smoke out of his eyes. “You’re all mixed up,” V said. “Aren’t you? I always thought you knew what you wanted. You always said so. But you’re all mixed up.”
“Yeah,” he said, grimacing. “I’m tight, is all. We ought to talk this over, though. There’s a lot of things I got to explain.”
He lowered his head. She was waiting for him to go on, but he didn’t know what to say or how to say it. After a long time she put out her hand. “Goodbye,” she said.
He pretended not to see the hand and she let it drop to her side. The streamliner went by in the yards with a long sucking rush, its horn blaring. He heard it slowing down.
“Goodbye,” V said again.
“Well, okay,” Jack said. “If that’s the way you want it. Will I see you again?”
“Do you want to?”
“Sure.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “Why not?”
“You’ll see me again if you want to enough,” V said.
“Oh, Jesus, now you’re getting cute with me.” She didn’t say anything, and he added, “You’re not leaving town, unh?”
“I don’t think so. Maybe I will.”
Jack took out his wallet and slid the bills from it. There were two twenties, a ten, and two fives, and he replaced the two fives in the wallet, and the wallet in his hip pocket. He stood up unsteadily and held the money out to her.
“Have you got any dough?” he asked. He knew she hadn’t. “Here,” he said. “You’ll need this.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Take it.”
“No!” she said tightly.
He grasped her hand and pushed the money into it. “Take it, for Christ’s sake! You don’t have a damn cent.”
She stood looking down at the three bills that lay in her hand. It was a long time before she spoke. She said, “I guess we know what this makes me.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Jack said. He sat down again.
V looked at the bills. He saw that her face was flushed now, and suddenly she looked up at him. “Goddamn you,” she said dispassionately.
Jack’s mouth dropped open. He had heard her swear before; it had been a joke between them, because she didn’t know what she was saying. But she meant this, and it shocked him.
“Aren’t you even sorry?” she said slowly. “Can’t you…Jack, isn’t there anything in you for me at all?”
“If you need any more…”
She looked as though she were going to cry. Her face twisted to one side, her mouth was pulled down at the corners, her eyes were round. But she said, “Goddamn you, Jack,” in the same dispassionate voice, her voice shaking now, and tiredly she picked up the two bags. He watched her carry them to the door.
“Wait,” he said. “Don’t go, V.”
She dropped the bags and turned toward him. Her eyes, wide open, blazed. “Ask me to stay,” she whispered. “Go ahead and ask me, Jack.”
“Stay.”
“Do you want me to?”
“Yeah,” he said. He started to get up.
He saw her throat work and her lips jerked upward into a tight, hard smile. Then she went out. He could hear the suitcases bumping on the steps as she went downstairs.
He got up and closed the door and then he sat down on the bed again, feeling vaguely angry with himself, and then blusteringly angry at V, and then, all at once, he loathed himself.
He lay back with his hands locked beneath his head. He turned his face to one side so he could survey the empty room, waiting patiently for the feeling to leave him. After a while the thought passed through his mind that the least he could have done was carry her bags downstairs and take her wherever it was she had wanted to go.