“I saw him before.”
“When was this?”
“What’re all these questions? He came by the day he got out.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I guess I forgot.”
“That’s a good one.” Tully placed the meat in the black encrusted frying pan, pushing in the edge of fat until the steak lay flat.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“I heard what you said.”
“Then why’d you ask?”
“You think I’m lying to you.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You don’t trust me, do you?”
“All I’m trying to do,” said Tully, now opening a can of peas, “is make us our supper.”
“You’re so goddamn high and mighty.”
“If I didn’t cook it we wouldn’t eat it.”
“Nobody asked you to fix me anything.”
“I know. You’d just as soon drink yours.”
“If you don’t want to make me any, you don’t have to.”
“I’m making it.”
“You’d rather not.”
“I got it right here.”
“I don’t have to eat.”
“I’m making it for you!” shouted Tully.
“Then I won’t eat it if you feel that way about it.”
“I want you to eat it! I’m cooking it because I want you to eat it. I can’t eat all this food myself.” Dumping the peas into a discolored pot, he heard her voice again, quieter, sighing, resigned.
“I didn’t say anything and you get that pissed off.” He made no reply.
“Now he’s mad. He’s not speaking.”
He turned over the steak in a noisy sputter and stood staring down at the peas until they were violently boiling.
Through the first mouthful of rare meat he said, sitting opposite Oma at the table: “Eat your food before it gets cold.” In her hand was a tumbler of wine.
“I don’t take orders from you.”
“You need your protein.”
“I’m not going to eat with somebody who talks to me like you do.”
“You want to starve to death?”
“That’s what you’d like, isn’t it?”
Tully cut off another bloody chunk of steak before saying no.
“That would solve everything for you, wouldn’t it?”
“I just asked a simple question,” he said, chewing. “Go on, eat.”
“Maybe I don’t want to eat. Maybe I don’t like how it’s cooked.”
“All right, don’t eat it. Go hungry. I don’t care. That’s good food. I make you a good dinner and you don’t even appreciate it. So just forget it. I’ll put it away and eat it tomorrow.”
As he reached across to her plate, she clutched it, crying: “I want it. I’m going to eat it.”
“I don’t want you to eat it!” he shouted, pulling on the plate.
“Now you won’t even let me have my dinner. You won’t even let me eat.”
Surrendering, he slumped back into his chair. With tears running down her cheeks, Oma filled her mouth with peas. Tully’s appetite was lost under a wave of hostile despair. She’s out of her mind, he thought. Feeling suddenly gorged, he forced himself to go on eating, for the nourishment. “So?” he murmured.
“Huh?”
“Well? Do you like it?”
“What?”
“Nothing. Forget it.”
“Well, for Christ’s sake, don’t ask something and then not even say what you mean.”
“Supper.”
“All right, why couldn’t you say it? It’s fine.”
“I thought maybe you’d know what I meant, seeing as how you’re not having any trouble eating it.”
“You don’t want me to eat it?”
“Of course I want you to. I just meant now you’re eating.”
“I’m eating. Sure, I’m eating.”
“So what was the big fuss about?”
Her fork slammed down on the table. “Will you stop needling me? The big fuss is that nobody could eat with you sitting across the table.”
“You never had it so good. There isn’t another guy in town would make you your supper so you could get something in your gut besides that goddamn juice.”
“Very funny.”
“I’m serious. Will you show me the common decency of a serious answer?”
“Common decency. You wouldn’t know any if you saw it.”
“Will you give me a straight answer or won’t you?”
“Will you stop doing this to me?”
“Doing what? What the hell are you yelling about? All I asked for was a simple answer.”
“You rotten-ass bastard! You’re determined not to let me eat this food.”
“Oh, for God’s sake. I give up,” said Tully, pushing back his chair and rising. “All I been trying to do is get you to eat. If you don’t want my company just say so and I’ll get out of your way.” He went to the closet, and as he was taking down his jacket his eyes were drawn again to the dustless square on the floor.
“Where are you going?”
“Think I’ll take a walk around the block so you can eat in peace, since that’s what you want.”
“Can I go with you?”
“I’ll be right back.”
“You’re going out for a drink and leaving me here.”
“I’m fighting in a week. You think I’d go out drinking?”
“You won’t take me out but you sneak off the first chance you get.”
“That’s right, everything I do is wrong. Not a goddamn thing suits you, does it?”
“Billy, wait for me. Let me get ready. Just let me comb my hair. Are my shoes over there?”
He went out the door. Her cries pursuing him, he trotted lightly down the stairs. Outside, alone at last, striding rapidly along the wet pavement, Tully experienced a moment of communion with his wife. It was so strong he was sure that wherever she was she must be thinking of him just at that moment. It seemed impossible she would not still be single. Unable to visualize her, he could not imagine her life as anything but emptiness.
In an uptown bar where Oma was not likely to look for him, he felt her presence still depleting him. Now he thought he should have waited for her. Though he did not want her around, he felt guilty for not taking her with him, and he hated her for this inevitable confusion. He seemed unable to do what he wanted. What he did was either what she wanted or else was spoiled for him because it went against her wishes. Tormented, he longed to be rid of her. If Earl wants her he can have her, he thought resentfully. Only why would he? She was white; maybe that was enough. For the first time Tully realized he could leave with a clear conscience. There was someone to take his place. And knowing he had been avoiding that realization, he felt a palpitant anxiety.
Why he phoned Ruben Luna again he was not entirely certain. What he did convey was that he was drunk, because his manager came and got him. “She’s destroying me,” Tully said in the car. “You’re right about this. I know it.”
While Ruben’s wife, short and plump, in flowered robe and fur slippers, her long black hair in a single braid, stood in the hall doorway, Ruben made him a bed on the pink sofa.
20
The northbound Greyhound droned into Stockton’s fume-filled terminal, and among the passengers who filed stiffly out was a short Mexican wearing a camel’s-hair overcoat and pointed, high-heeled, yellow gaiter shoes. Arcadio Lucero, with a throbbing head and churning bowels after a long ride from Calexico, pushed open the door to the depot lobby and climbed the steps to the men’s room, where, in a dim stall, he stared without comprehension at an inscription scratched across the metal dispenser of toilet seat covers. Mexican dinner jackets.
In the waiting room Lucero bought a pack of gum and a newspaper. Chewing vigorously, he carried his bulging, expansible, strap-cinched leather suitcase several blocks to the Lincoln Hotel. In the closet of a room overlooking the lights and traffic of El Dorado Street, he hung the overcoat on a wire hanger. He was dressed in a wrinkled turquoise suit and a white knit shirt. The coat was long, with two low-set buttons. Under it crossed the straps of suspenders and a shoulder holster. With a hand over the long fly of his trousers, his coat open, he lay on the bed listening to the sounds in the street and in his own abdomen.