By this time the older daughter had married and moved north to Marin County, so Bobbie Jean took the other girl and came north to live with the married one until she could find a job and a place of her own. She’d had the job and the place two years now, the second daughter was eighteen and out on her own, and by Bobbie Jean’s own admission she was “reasonably content” with her new life as a middle-aged single woman. “Single till I die,” she said. “I’ve learned my lesson. As far as I’m concerned, marriage is a dirty word.”

That comment endeared her to Kerry, if not to Eberhardt. He scowled when she said it; he thought marriage was a sacred institution, one that everybody should be locked up in, and had been looking to be recommitted ever since his divorce from Dana a few years back. Kerry and Bobbie Jean yakked about the evils of marriage all the way to Jack London Square. Eberhardt didn’t have much to say and neither did I. I didn’t necessarily agree with his attitude toward marriage, but on the other hand I was hardly a militant opponent. I wouldn’t have minded being institutionalized with Kerry; I had even proposed to her a couple of times. But she’d had a pretty bad marriage herself. In fact, her ex-husband was a certifiable lunatic. He’d recently discovered fundamentalist religion (after first discovering Eastern religion and living in a commune), was now a member of the Right Reverend Clyde T. Daybreak’s Church of the Holy Mission in San Jose, and as of a few weeks ago had been hassling Kerry to renew their old vows and join him in his weekly fireside chats with God. He seemed to have given up on that last quest as a result of a little talk Kerry had had with the Right Reverend Clyde T., but with a wacko like Ray Dunston you couldn’t take anything for granted.

So it was no wonder Kerry was sour on marriage. I couldn’t blame her for not wanting to tie the knot again, especially with an overweight private detective who was more than a dozen years her senior and who wore his poor lovesick heart on his sleeve most of the time. But there were times-tonight, for instance, while I listened to her and Bobbie Jean verbally abusing the concept of matrimony-when I still wished I could talk her into legalizing our relationship.