He’d once accused the place of deliberately trying to make him crazy. Its treachery, he’d announced to the man next to him at the bar where he’d been drinking steadily for some time, was now clear to him. Cannery Row wanted his soul. Well, he’d said, he’d be damned if he’d let any building built of fish stink and oil have him. He’d leave, by God, and leave that night.

Of course, he hadn’t. He’d meant to. He’d even gone so far as to pack a suitcase. But somewhere between trying to choose what undershirts to take and which to leave behind, he’d fallen tiredly onto his bed and fallen asleep. In the morning he’d woken up, eyed the suitcase suspiciously as if it had crept into the room during the night and meant to rob him, and tried to remember why he’d gone to sleep with his boots on.

He’d since come to accept the Row as a reality. Still, he resented it, insulted it in his thoughts, if not to its person, lest it hear him and exact some kind of revenge. He regarded it the way he regarded immunizations, or the United States Congress. It wasn’t for him to understand, but he respected it as something capable of both great harm and great good.

Now, having left Tom at his own doorstep, he wondered if maybe he wasn’t wrong about taking such a stance. For it seemed to him that the Row was becoming a harder and harder master. It was asking too much of its people. They were tired. He saw it in their faces. He felt it in his bones.

Look at Tom. Something was making him unhappy. While the obvious source of misery was usually a wife, Charlie suspected that Alice was no worse nor no better than any other woman. It was something else that was eating at Tom and making him act the way he did. And Charlie had felt it too. It was like something had bit him, and now the itch was starting to get too bad to ignore.

He reached his boarding house and went up to his room. He was too late for supper, and he didn’t want to ask Mrs. Ring to make him up a plate, even though he knew she’d do it.

She’d cleaned his room. The floor was swept, and the window was open. He’d left it closed. Now the air came in. It smelled like sardines. He closed the window, then took his boots off. He didn’t sit on the bed. Instead, he removed his overalls and carried them into the bathroom. He’d taken the room because of the bathroom. He didn’t like to share, didn’t like people knowing the secrets of his body.