The thought of V, married, tortured him. Waking in the night with Gene asleep beside him, he would wonder about V, imagining, playing scenes between her and her husband in his mind. He hated to think of her being as happy with her husband as she had been, for a time, with him in Bakersfield; he hated to think of her expressing her feelings and emotions to her husband as she had expressed them to him, for that had been first with him, and so, he felt, should always remain his.
He had finally placed Denton as the rancher V had talked about when he had first known her. He remembered V saying he was an old man. He tried to comfort himself with this, but somehow, at times, it made him furious. He told himself she could not be happy in bed with this old man, but thinking of that, he wanted her, and when he wanted her he would wonder if he were happy now with Gene. And he hated to wonder about his life with Gene, because he had told himself over and over again that it was right, that he was happy, and that this was the way it should be.
He tried to tell himself calmly that everything was over between V and himself, that all there was left of V was a lot of memories, and the good memories would soon be disposed of by the bad ones. He told himself that he loved Gene and that he was coming to love her more every day. He wanted his marriage to be good. It was a bargain he had made; he would stick to it and do the best he could by it. Gene was the anchor he had needed badly. She was the fixed point for him now, for gone completely was the feeling that he wanted to be free of any ties, gone with the loneliness of Tarawa and Guam and Maui.
Yet there were times when the aching need for V came back as overpoweringly strong as ever. He cursed it. He tried to shout it down, to shout down with it the dread that Gene did not, could not, satisfy. He cursed the longing and the knowledge and himself as stupid, unclean, despicable, but it was more and more with him. And it was as though V had felt it in him two hundred and fifty miles away, for she came back. She phoned him on the job one day and he went to her, coldly, and alone and defeated, and making no excuses to himself.
He stopped her when she started to tell him about her husband. Denton was in the hospital and would not bother them; that was all he needed to know. He didn’t want to know anything else about Denton, he didn’t want to have to think about him. So they never spoke of Denton or of Gene, and for a while, together, there were just two of them, and for a while he thought V had been right when she had said it could have been good.
But the disease was there. There was guiltiness in them both now. Even if it could have been good, it was cursed by what he was doing to Gene, by what V was doing to Denton. Anything they did, any time they were together, they were hurting someone. It did not matter that they hurt themselves; that was only of and between themselves and perhaps could pass. But there was always someone else they betrayed, or damaged, or destroyed.
He had resolved to end it before Gene confronted him. He had made up his mind to take Gene away somewhere where V could never find them again. That way it could be finished. And the fact that now Gene knew, only made him more determined. He and Gene had gone to Oregon.
There, he had felt confident it was over. He was whole at last and the evil had been exorcised. He felt that he could free himself from V by absorbing himself completely in Gene. He did everything he could to make amends to her for what had happened; he had dedicated himself to her and there was no more room for V.
It had been simple and logical that they return to San Diego. When the job at Pendleton was almost over, there was a letter from Smitty offering him more pay than he had ever earned before, and a good chance to go higher. And he was sure of himself now. Six months had passed. But still he felt a twinge of fear when Gene suggested they go to La Jolla for dinner on their anniversary. La Jolla was where V had been staying.
But it had been logical that they go to La Jolla. He had proposed to Gene in the dining room of the Casa del Mar, and they would go there again on their anniversary. And, afterward, he supposed it was perfectly logical too, that V would still be there.
The waiter had just brought them their dessert when she came in. As she passed she looked at him with no surprise, almost with no recognition, and she sat down at the table behind Gene. With her was a skinny little man with dark glasses, whom Jack took to be Denton, and when he could think again he felt angered and cheated that Denton was not old, as he had believed. Then he was angered still more at the realization that this was not Denton.
V sat opposite him, one table removed. He had to look at her when he looked at Gene, with the man’s dark, cropped head between. He had to look at her but she did not meet his eyes, talking animatedly to her escort. Her hair was blonder, drawn back high on her head, and her face was deeply tanned. She looked shiny and expensive in a gold dress that was cut low to show the cleft of her breasts.
Then he could bear seeing her no longer and his fury turned on Gene because he could not get her out of the dining room quickly enough. Waiting in the lobby while Gene went to the powder room, he was sick with anger and impatience and desire. He lit a cigarette and immediately strode to the tall blue-and-white vase that stood by the door, to grind it out in the sand. He turned toward the entrance to the dining room. Helplessly he walked in.
He made his way across to the table where V was sitting. He put his hands on the tabletop, leaning forward and searching her eyes for a look he knew must be there, a flicker, a shadow, something to show she knew she had caught him again. She put her hand to her throat. A ring sparkled on her finger. He heard the man say something.
“Call me in half an hour,” he said steadily, tight-lipped, to V. “Franklin 5852-R.”
“I beg your pardon,” the man said. He put his napkin on the table and moved to get up. He had on a tuxedo and a black tie and his nails had been manicured.
“Never mind it,” Jack said to him. It seemed unfair that V should be attractive to men like this, who wore tuxedos to dinner and had educated accents and manicured fingers, and probably bought a new Cadillac every year. He grimaced and looked back at V and said, “Franklin 5852-R.”
“See here, get out of here!” the man said, and Jack turned and walked away from the table. Gene was waiting in the lobby. She had just had a permanent and her hair was stiff and tightly curled. He came up behind her and took her arm.
Driving home, he wondered what there was in him that V wanted. For he had known she had wanted him tonight; even though she had looked at him with no expression on her face, even though she had not said a word, and he knew she would phone him. But suddenly completely conscious of what he was, he wondered why she wanted him. He saw himself as a big, cheap grade foreman who didn’t know how to speak properly and had no manners, who worked with his hands and wore dirty clothes all day and had dirt permanently imbedded under his fingernails, whom she had seen drunken and despicable and cruel, who had killed a man in an animal fight, who had forced her to leave him once and had left her twice; why did she want him? He did not know, but for the first time he was jealous of her and not of someone else. She had started no better than he, but now she was better. She had money now, expensive clothes, jewelry; she was beautiful and desired by men who would not have spit on him had they even thought of him. He wondered at it, watching the streets and lampposts and houses flash by, and he was afraid to look at Gene, who sat silently beside him, staring up at his face with worried eyes.
V called him that night and he went to her. What had never stopped had started again.