It was a month before he got a date with her, and after the dance he drove out the north end of town on Highway 99. The moon was showing over the Sierras, bright on the mountaintops. V’s face was serene and cold in the cold moonlight, and the wind that swept over the windshield blew her hair around her face. She had bent the rear-view mirror askew when she had made up her mouth; it was what she had always done, and he had never been able to make her remember to turn it back again. He felt a strong emotion made up of nostalgia and a hundred other indefinable things, and he forced his attention on the road ahead.
They had driven the other way on this road the night they had left the ranch. V had been crying, without making a sound she had cried all the way into Bakersfield. Jack grimaced and reached up to straighten the mirror, and then he swung the car out of the traffic and onto a side road. The Ford coasted down a slope, he stepped on the accelerator to take it over the railroad levee, then guided it down two rutted, winding tracks that led across a field. At the end of the tracks a grove of eucalyptus trees loomed against the sky. He parked in their shadow, and, still bent over the steering wheel with his fingers on the ignition switch, watched V out of the corners of his eyes.
She was staring at the mountains. Her face was cleanly profiled, her hair a tangled, ghostly white, and beyond her, headlights from the highway cut across the fields, sudden swaths of white light that bathed the ground and illuminated the blonde, splotched trunks of the trees. V sat neither close nor far from him, sitting at an uncomfortable, halfway distance, and Jack pushed the spadeshaped ignition switch up and down, listening to its metallic clicking.
She didn’t speak when he put his arm around her. She didn’t move, didn’t resist in any way, but she was merely something soft and vaguely warm under his arm. He had the angry thought that this was mechanical with her, that she was doing only what was expected; he was merely one of her friends, nothing more, he had no special qualifications, no special rights. He felt his lips tighten painfully over his teeth. He pulled his arm down hard against her neck, tensing it, forcing her against his shoulder, but she seemed not to notice.
“V,” he said. He cursed her silently for not noticing the pressure of his arm, for not speaking. He wanted her to look at him. “V,” he said again.
When she turned, the dark of her lips framed a calm, sure smile. She said, “Did you ever get your radio fixed, Jack?”
He waited patiently for the anger to leave him. Finally he said, “No. It’s all shot.”
She put out her hand and turned the knob. The dial glowed yellow. Jack quickly turned it off. “V,” he said. “Come back.”
“What?”
He tried to press her closer but her body seemed heavy and unwieldy. He lifted his arm and pushed her away and she looked off at the mountains again. After a moment he squeezed his eyes closed. “I guess somebody’s told you you look like Carole Lombard,” he said thickly. “It’s a good profile, all right.”
“Do you like it?”
“It’s great. How do the others like it? I’ll bet it creams them too.”
“What?” She looked at him coolly.
“Skip it. Well, you really learned how to get along, didn’t you, V?”
“You taught me, you know. I had a fine teacher.”
“I did, didn’t I? Well, you got to be a hell of a lot better than teacher, didn’t you?”
He saw her lick her lips and she looked down at her watch.
“Well, now you’ve shown me,” Jack continued. “You want to go on and play some more, or you want to quit now?”
“It’s late, Jack,” V said. “We’d better go.”
He snapped on the ignition and pushed his foot down on the starter. The wheels spun in the dirt when he let the clutch out and he raced the car up the rutted tracks to the highway.
When he skidded to a stop in front of the three-story building where she roomed, V opened her door and got out before he had shut off the motor. Her heels rapped sharply on the sidewalk with their own familiar rhythm. Jack followed her up the steps. At the front door she turned. “Thanks for a nice time, Jack.”
He stopped on the step below her and they stood looking at each other. When he kissed her the step made them the same height and he kept his eyes open; he looked into her open eyes. Her hand brushed the nape of his neck, and she kissed him in return. Her kiss was as impersonal as a new pair of shoes. She was just kissing someone on the front porch after a date. Dozens of girls were doing the same thing on dozens of porches all over town, and afterward they would say good night and go inside and undress and get into bed and go to sleep.
Her lips opened under his, but abruptly he moved away. He heard her say, “Good night,” as he walked down to his car, but he didn’t look back. Anger and humiliation made him feel incredibly lonely, and he felt as though he had been given a drink of ginger ale when he needed a straight shot. He wondered what she was thinking now. Did she feel completely indifferent? Did she pity him? He wondered if she were laughing at him, getting undressed and into bed and laughing softly, and that night, unable to sleep, he told himself he was through. He was through with her for good.