He thought again about leaving. Maybe there was nothing for him on Cannery Row anymore. Maybe, like the girl, he’d run out of things to say to it. And then he thought that maybe that was what was making Tom and so many of the other men so itchy. Maybe they couldn’t be married to the canneries and their wives too. That’s why they were restless, because they were in love with Cannery Row like they would be with a girl, loving her even though she made them miserable.

Pleased with himself at having arrived at such a profound conclusion, Charlie lay down on the bed. He told himself that the next time he wrote to Pete he would tell them that he was married, married to an ugly, snarling girl with breath like the hold of a boat. He imagined Pete scratching his head and reading Charlie’s letter to his wife, and he laughed.

Hudson, having finished the chicken, set the carton down. He scrawled a note on the margin of the manuscript, reminding himself to look into something he recalled reading in a Steinbeck biography but couldn’t quite place. Then he gathered up the remnants of his dinner and carried them to the kitchen.

I should cook, he told himself. After all, he had the time, and the kitchen was well stocked. But it seemed like a lot of effort to cook for just himself. At least at home he had Marty. Alone, he found it hard to muster the enthusiasm to settle on a recipe, shop for the ingredients, and then actually put it all together. It was so much easier to just look at a menu and wait.

The cleaning up accomplished in under a minute, he thought about his next step. Tomorrow he would make a visit to the Steinbeck Center in nearby Salinas. He had no idea what he would find there, or whether it would bring his journey to a screeching halt, but he was excited. Whatever happened, he was getting closer to an answer.

As he was throwing away the bag his food had come in, he noticed that he’d failed to open his fortune cookie. After snapping it in half, he removed the slip of paper and looked at it. “ ‘What you look for is not always what you find,’ ” he read aloud. “Great. Just what I needed to hear. Nothing like a cookie to make you neurotic.”

He crumpled it up and tossed the fortune into the trash along with the uneaten pieces.

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 15

Hearing the hiss of water turning to steam, Ben turned from where he was slicing a tomato at the sink just in time to see the pot on the stove boil over. Dropping the knife in his hand, he went to the stove, cursing his lapse in concentration, and turned the flame down. The foaming water in the pot quieted, and he repositioned the pot on the burner.