“What’d she mean by that?” George said.
“I don’t know.”
“You look tired, Ruby.”
“You’re always telling me that.”
“Am I? I’m sorry. I can’t help paying attention to how you look. It’s getting to be a habit, I guess. Will you be warm enough in that suit?”
“It’s getting late—”
“You can’t turn me down all the time. Anyway, it’s Saturday night, and everybody celebrates on Saturday night.”
“What do they celebrate?” Ruby said dully.
“Anything.” He held the screen door open and she went out on the porch. “Are you going to be warm enough? Maybe you’d better get a coat.”
“No, I’ll be all right.”
He put his hand on her elbow, and guided her down the porch steps and across the clay path that substituted for a sidewalk. She didn’t shrink away from him as she usually did. She felt too remote to bother about it, as if she had had a great deal to drink and while she was still conscious of what was happening to her she had no interest in it.
George started the car. “Is there any special place you’d like to go?”
“No.”
“We’ll just drive around then.”
“Where’s Garcia Road?”
“What number?”
“Twenty-three hundred.”
“That’d be up in the hills. Why?”
“Nothing. I just overheard a — a customer say he lived there, that’s all. I wondered what it was like.”
“We’ll go and find out,” George said cheerfully. “Got to check up on our customers, see that they come from the right kind of houses.”
“No — no, I’d just as soon not. I’d just as soon drive along the beach.”
“All right.” He sent her a quick, puzzled glance. Her evasions irritated him. She had no reason to treat him as if he were a district attorney and she was accused of a crime. Yet this was actually how he felt about her. He wanted to put her on a spot and question her about herself, find out a few things about her. Her face rarely revealed anything but a kind of resigned unhappiness, and it was this expression of hers that agitated him. If she had cause for her unhappiness — money troubles? sickness in the family? loneliness? — he wanted her to break down and tell him, to bawl on his shoulder the way Hazel used to do.
They drove along toward the Mesa and George thought about Hazel and the night she had said out of a blue sky, “Jesus, I feel just like bawling the house down.” And bawl the house down she did, for a solid hour, until the police drove up to the front of the house, summoned by a neighbor to stop George from beating his wife. Hazel was delighted and she brought out two quarts of beer to celebrate the unexpected company. Neither of the two policemen could drink anything, since they were on duty, but Hazel invited them to come back during their off hours. They came back every now and then, bringing a friend or two, until eventually Hazel knew the whole police department.
“It must be lonely for you,” George said, “not knowing anyone in town.”
“I get along,” Ruby said. “I — read a lot. And write letters home.”
“How are your mother and father?”
“Fine.”
“Don’t you miss the big city?”
“Sometimes.”
“And your friends?”
“I’m not much for parties or things like that.”
“Maybe you should get out more, have a little fun and excitement.”
“I’d just be bored.”
“You should try it anyway.”
“I used to go to parties at school. I never had a good time. I was scared to death of the boys. I couldn’t even open my mouth.”
“You still are,” George said. “Scared, I mean.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Of me, anyway.”
“No.”
“Then I wish you were. I’d like to think I rang some kind of a bell with you somehow.” He kept his attention for a minute on the narrow winding road that crept up the Mesa. Then he said, “I need a drink. How about you?”
“If you want one, all right.”
“You certainly are an enthusiastic gal tonight. Is there anything worrying you?”
“No.”
“And you wouldn’t tell me anyway, I get it.” He made a right turn at the next crossing. “Here’s your Garcia Road.”
“I didn’t want to— Say, what’s the big idea anyway?”
“I didn’t believe that about ‘one of the customers.’”
“I don’t care what you believe, Mr. Anderson.”
“Here’s your twenty-three hundred.” George put the car in low and they went very slowly past a white frame ranch house. “Satisfied?”
She didn’t even look at the house. “Yes, thank you.”
“Who lives there?”
“I don’t know.”
“I can easily look it up in the City Directory.”
“Why bother?”
“Because it worries me. I think you told me a lie. Who lives there?”
“One of the customers, I don’t know his name. And you can let me out of this car right now. I’ll walk home. I never wanted to come anyway. You’re always accusing me of things.”
Instead of stopping the car he raced the engine and they shot ahead, up the hill.
“Why should I lie?” Ruby said. “If it was anyone I knew lived in that house why should I have mentioned it?”
“Maybe you thought I was too dumb to catch on, eh?”
“You can’t catch on when there’s nothing to catch on to, no matter how smart you are.”
“I didn’t say I was smart. I only want to be sure. I suppose I’m jealous of you, but if I tell you that you’ll only say I have no right to be jealous of you. Which is perfectly true.”
“Well, it is.”
“I said it first,” George said flatly. “Where do you want to go for a drink?”
“Anywhere.”
“You know what? I’d like to see you drunk sometime, Ruby. I bet you can be pretty vicious.”
“You’ll never find out,” she said with a sharp laugh.
“I wouldn’t want to. I like you better the way you are, so full of secrets you’re bursting at the seams.”
“You certainly have some funny ideas about me, Mr. Anderson. I can’t understand why you want to take me out all the time, when all you do is quarrel with me. Maybe you’re just a bully.”
“I’d hate to think that.”
“And whenever we’re out together all you want to talk about is me and what’s the matter with me and what a funny girl I am. I don’t talk about you like that.”
“That’s because you’re not interested.”
“Why can’t we ever talk about something else for a change? I’m — I’m so sick of myself I never even want to hear my own name again.” She covered her face with her hands, and with her closed eyes she saw Gordon looking at her with such quiet loathing that she wanted to tear at her own face for inspiring such a look. “I’m so sick of myself I could die. I hate—”
“Be quiet,” George said harshly. “That’s a hell of a way to talk.”
“I hate my own face, I hate it so much I’d like to slash it with a razor, I’d like to slash everything, everything I see!”
He pulled the car over to the curb and turned off the ignition. He said, with pain in his voice, “That’s kid stuff, Ruby, stop it.”
“A lot you know about it!”
“I do. You’re just depressed. You’ll snap out of it.”
She shook her head over and over again, refusing to be comforted. Powerless, he listened to her flow of words: it was a bad world, with bad people in it, she was as bad as the rest, worse, hateful.
Finally he started the car again. He didn’t know what to do about Ruby. He couldn’t force himself to try and stop her hysteria with a slap, and he couldn’t take her back to Mrs. Freeman’s until she calmed down.