East of Eden

Joe got up at ten in the morning and ate a monster breakfast at Pop Ernst’s. In the early afternoon he took a bus to Watsonville and played three games of snooker with a friend who came to meet him in answer to a phone call. Joe won the last game and racked his cue. He handed his friend two ten-dollar bills.

“Hell,” said his friend, “I don’t want your money.”

“Take it,” said Joe.

“It ain’t like I give you anything.”

“You give me plenty. You say she ain’t here and you’re the baby that would know.”

“Can’t tell me what you want her for?”

“Wilson, I tol’ you right first an’ I tell you now, I don’t know. I’m jus’ doing a job of work.”

“Well, that’s all I can do. Seems like there was this convention—what was it?—dentists, or maybe Owls. I don’t know whether she said she was going or I just figured it myself. I got it stuck in my mind. Give Santa Cruz a whirl. Know anybody?”

“I got a few acquaintances,” said Joe.

“Look up H. V. Mahler, Hal Mahler. He runs Hal’s poolroom. Got a game in back.”

“Thanks,” said Joe.

“No—look, Joe. I don’t want your money.”

“It ain’t my money—buy a cigar,” said Joe.

The bus dropped him two doors from Hal’s place. It was suppertime but the stud game was still going. It was an hour before Hal got up to go to the can and Joe could follow and make a connection. Hal peered at Joe with large pale eyes made huge by thick glasses. He buttoned his fly slowly and adjusted his black alpaca sleeve guards and squared his green eyeshade. “Stick around till the game breaks,” he said. “Care to sit in?”

“How many playing for you, Hal?”

“Only one.”

“I’ll play for you.”

“Five bucks an hour,” said Hal.

“An’ ten per cent if I win?”

“Well, okay. Sandy-haired fella Williams is the house.”

At one o’clock in the morning Hal and Joe went to Barlow’s Grill. “Two rib steaks and french fries. You want soup?” Hal asked Joe.

“No. And no french fries. They bind me up.”

“Me too,” said Hal. “But I eat them just the same. I don’t get enough exercise.”

Hal was a silent man until he was eating. He rarely spoke unless his mouth was full. “What’s your pitch?” he asked around steak.

“Just a job. I make a hundred bucks and you get twenty-five—okay?”

“Got to have like proof—like papers?”

“No. Be good but I’ll get by without them.”

“Well, she come in and wants me to steer for her. She wasn’t no good. I didn’t take twenty a week off her. I probably wouldn’t of knew what become of her only Bill Primus seen her in my place and when they found her he come in an’ ast me about her. Nice fella, Bill. We got a nice force here.”

Ethel was not a bad woman—lazy, sloppy, but good-hearted. She wanted dignity and importance. She was just not very bright and not very pretty and, because of these two lacks, not very lucky. It would have bothered Ethel if she had known that when they pulled her out of the sand where waves had left her half buried, her skirts were pulled around her ass. She would have liked more dignity.

Hal said, “We got some crazy bohunk bastards in the sardine fleet. Get loaded with ink an’ they go nuts. Way I figure, one of them sardine crews took her out an’ then jus’ pushed her overboard. I don’t see how else she’d get in the water.”

“Maybe she jumped off the pier?”

“Her?” said Hal through potatoes. “Hell, no! She was too blamed lazy to kill herself. You want to check?”

“If you say it’s her, it’s her,” said Joe, and he pushed a twenty and a five across the table.

Hal rolled the bills like a cigarette and put them in his vest pocket. He cut out the triangle of meat from the rib steak and put it in his mouth. “It was her,” he said. “Want a piece of pie?”

Joe meant to sleep until noon but he awakened at seven and lay in bed for quite a long time. He planned not to get back to Salinas until after midnight. He needed more time to think.

When he got up he looked in the mirror and inspected the expression he planned to wear. He wanted to look disappointed but not too disappointed. Kate was so goddam clever. Let her lead. Just follow suit. She was about as wide open as a fist. Joe had to admit that he was scared to death of her.

His caution said to him, “Just go in and tell her and get your five hundred.”

And he answered his caution savagely, “Breaks. How many breaks did I ever get? Part of the breaks is knowing a break when you get it. Do I want to be a lousy pimp all my life? Just play it close. Let her do the talking. No harm in that. I can always tell her later like I just found out if it don’t go good.”

“She could have you in a cell block in six hours flat.”

“Not if I play ’em close. What I got to lose? What breaks did I ever get?”

4

Kate was feeling better. The new medicine seemed to be doing her some good. The pain in her hands was abated, and it seemed to her that her fingers were straighter, the knuckles not so swollen. She had had a good night’s sleep, the first in a long time, and she felt good, even a little excited. She planned to have a boiled egg for breakfast. She got up and put on a dressing gown and brought a hand mirror back to the bed. Lying high against the pillows, she studied her face.

The rest had done wonders. Pain makes you set your jaw, and your eyes grow falsely bright with anxiety, and the muscles over the temples and along the cheeks, even the weak muscles near to the nose, stand out a little, and that is the look of sickness and of resistance to suffering.

The difference in her rested face was amazing. She looked ten years younger. She opened her lips and looked at her teeth. Time to go for a cleaning. She took care of her teeth. The gold bridge where the molars were gone was the only repair in her mouth. It was remarkable how young she looked, Kate thought. Just one night’s sleep and she snapped back. That was another thing that fooled them. They thought she would be weak and delicate. She smiled to herself—delicate like a steel trap. But then she always took care of herself—no liquor, no drugs, and recently she had stopped drinking coffee. And it paid off. She had an angelic face. She put the mirror a little higher so that the crepe at her throat did not reflect.