The Evening Star (31 page)

She wandered on down the hall, as far as the hall went, recovering from her shock. Her first impulse had been to leave, but her second impulse was to hang around and get a better look at the girl; the second impulse won. She went back along the hall, tiptoed past Pascal’s room, and waited in the little waiting room by the nurse’s station. She was leafing through a ragged copy of
McCall’s
when she heard the click-click of heels coming with what sounded like Parisian haste from the direction of Pascal’s room. The girl passed within ten feet of her. She was skinny and no beauty, but she had a certain chic and a Hermes bag over her shoulder. She looked to be, at most, a year or two older than Melanie, of whom Aurora only had to think momentarily to feel a kind of ache: the ache of missing.

Aurora decided that five minutes would constitute a decent interval between bedside visits, but discontented with the magazine, not to mention life, she cut it to one minute, and went back to the room. Pascal was not in bed when she arrived but she could hear him in the tiny bathroom. She settled herself in a green chair and waited silently for his return. If he emerged looking frail and pitiful she was prepared to forgive all—who could begrudge a frail old Frenchman a skinny mademoiselle or two?

Unfortunately for him, Pascal strode out of the bathroom looking cocky—though all the cockiness left him instantly when he saw Aurora sitting in the chair by his bed. His first feeling was relief—Solange had left. But then, she had only
just
left: what if Aurora had noticed her? Solange would never pay any attention to a woman Aurora’s age, even if she had seen her, but what about Aurora? His shock was so great he gasped. He had been feeling vigorous and had even been thinking of asking the doctor if he could go home, but his sense of vigor declined sharply when he caught sight of his visitor. The spring immediately went out of his walk and the blood out of his face. So great was his shock that he ceased to be able to walk straight and had to grasp the railing at the end of the bed to keep from veering off toward the corner where the television hung. Indeed, before Aurora had had time to say a word, he had more or less become the pitiful old Frenchman she had expected to find in the first place.

See that her mere arrival on the heels of his departing guest constituted a kind of overkill, Aurora immediately got up and helped him get around the bed and back under the covers. She felt like saying “Gotcha!” but managed to hold her tongue.

Pascal had no trouble holding his tongue. He had a feeling Aurora knew everything—if she had so much as glimpsed Solange in the hall she would immediately have figured it out. If she knew everything, then he was at her mercy and he had better keep quiet. A false word at such a time would seal his doom. She hadn’t kissed him, which probably meant that his doom was already sealed, but while there was a chance, the best strategy was to remain quiet and look sick. Since he suddenly felt quite sick, there was no problem with that part of his strategy, nor, since he was terrified, with the first part of the strategy either.

Aurora sat down again and they both were silent. Pascal considered trying to groan, calling for the nurse, taking a pill, or just keeping his eyes shut, but he did none of these things.

Aurora soon got tired of what felt like a very silly silence. “Well, Pascal, what an old bamboozler you are,” she said mildly. “Ten minutes ago you were chattering amorously with your young girlfriend, but so far you haven’t said a single word to your old girlfriend. It makes me feel rather unwanted, just when I was hoping to feel wanted.”

“I want!” Pascal said, taking hope from her mild tone. “I was coming to save you when I had the wreck. I ranned the stop sign.”

“You may have run it but you didn’t ranned it, unless you mean rammed it,” Aurora said. “You don’t have to start talking like Peter Sellers just because I caught you with Mademoiselle. You can speak excellent English, and you’d better, or I’m marching out of here never to be seen again.”

“I forgot the stop sign, that was the problem,” Pascal said. “I forgot it and I fell into a pickup. It was because I was so afraid you were kidnapped.”

“You thought I was kidnapped?” Aurora said.

“Yes, the Mafia,” Pascal said vaguely, realizing that in the sober light of day his kidnapping theory must seem a little silly.

“The Mafia indeed,” Aurora said. “In fact, on the day in question I merely happened to linger with
my
young sweetie a little longer than usual.”

“Oh,” Pascal said. It seemed like a simple explanation until he happened to remember what had happened a little earlier on the day in question—at least he was fairly sure it was the day in question. What had happened was that they had made love not once, but twice, in his apartment, on his new mauve sheets.

“What?” he said, thinking he must have misunderstood, or at the very least, have got his days mixed up. If the day in question was the day they had made love twice, then what nonsense was Aurora talking? On such a day all she needed to do was go home, and without giving the matter further thought, he said as much.

“You should have just gone home,” he said, feeling a little confused but also a little indignant.

“Now, now,” Aurora said. “This is obviously a loose confederation we’re in, and you mustn’t be telling me what I should have done. If you, at your age, can have a skinny mademoiselle, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t avail myself of a vigorous young monsieur.”

“But,” Pascal said, and stopped. He felt himself growing
indignant, the very thing his doctors insisted that he not do. He had been strongly advised to keep calm, but how could one keep calm with Aurora sitting there bragging about the vigor of her young lover? In view of his health, which he had sacrificed in an effort to save her from the Mafia, she should not be talking such talk.

“But there is no need!” he said, making what seemed to him a generous—even overgenerous—effort to be reasonable. “You have me.”

“Yes, but you have Mademoiselle what might her name be?” Aurora asked.

“Solange,” Pascal said automatically.

“Ah, Solange,” Aurora said. “My young man is named Sam. They don’t quite rhyme but their names do start with the same letter.”

“Sam, this is too much!” Pascal said, his voice rising. “How old is this Sam?”

“Why, he’s almost eighteen,” Aurora said.

“Eighteen!” Pascal said, almost yelling. “You sleep with me and then you run around and sleep with someone who is
eighteen?
I am disgusted.”

“But why, dear?” Aurora asked. “You know how fond I am of science, and according to the scientists young men hit their natural peak at around eighteen. I don’t see why you should find it disgusting that I might want to help Sam enjoy his natural peak.”

“You are a monster, you have destroyed me, I thought we were in love,” Pascal said in one breath.

“Who says we aren’t?” Aurora wondered. “And calm down while you’re at it, before you have a stroke. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if you deserved a stroke, but I don’t want to get blamed for it if you have one.”

“You should be blamed for everything!” Pascal insisted. He knew he should calm down, but in fact he was getting angrier.

“So I have to compete with an eighteen-year-old!” he said loudly. “At my age this is bad news.”

“Really, Pascal, this is America,” Aurora said. “We Americans
believe that competition is good at any age. It makes one work harder at one’s appointed tasks.”

“I wish I had strangled you,” Pascal said. “You sit there and break my heart when I am sick. I thought you had kindness, but you have no kindness. You just like to break my heart.

“Can’t you see that I’m sick?” he added as an afterthought, yelling it nearly at the top of his lungs.

“On the contrary, I can hear that you aren’t particularly sick,” Aurora said. “Everyone on this floor can hear it, too. Pipe down, or I’m leaving.”

Pascal found that he had yelled out the last of his anger trying to explain to Aurora how sick he was. What was left, now that anger was gone, was a profound hopelessness. Aurora would probably never come back to his apartment to have lunch with him and make love on his mauve sheets. Why would she, when she could make love to an eighteen-year-old whose penis probably wasn’t even bent?

It seemed to him it was all the fault of the stop sign. If he hadn’t run it and hit the pickup he would not be in the hospital and Aurora would not have come to visit, in which event she would not have caught him with Solange. One stop sign, and his life was ruined! One stop sign!

“It was because of the stop sign,” he said hopelessly, before beginning to cry.

“Good lord, now you’re going to cry,” Aurora said. She sat on the bed and put her arms around him, but Pascal went on crying. A nurse peeked in, saw that yet another woman was hugging the patient, and went away.

“Can’t you men take a little teasing?” Aurora said, when Pascal was calm enough to listen. “I was just teasing. I wasn’t
that
annoyed by Mademoiselle. And there is no young Monsieur Sam, if it will make you feel any better.”

“No Monsieur Sam?” Pascal said. “I thought he was seventeen or eighteen—a teenager.”

“Pascal, he was just a hasty invention,” Aurora said.

“Am I your one and only then?” he asked, wiping his eyes with a fistful of Kleenex she handed him.

“One and only” was an American phrase he had always liked. Just saying it made him feel better. Aurora had allowed him to rest his head on her bosom. She seemed to be feeling sorry for him at last. The only good thing about being in the hospital was that women would come and feel sorry for him.

Following up on that thought, he allowed one hand to begin a feeble probe under her skirt.

“Pascal, you need to change your shampoo,” Aurora said. It was a fact she couldn’t help noticing, since she was looking at the top of his head. The hand under the skirt she permitted, feeling that perhaps she had indulged in a little too much overkill.

“You are not romantic,” Pascal said, still sad. He tossed the Kleenex on the floor in what was meant to seem like a gesture of despair.

“I love you but you are just not romantic,” he repeated, hoping she would deny it.

Aurora hugged him, let him fumble a little, said nothing. Her thoughts had drifted to Jerry Bruckner. It was about the time of day when he jogged, and it occurred to her that she might intercept him in his jog. She hadn’t talked to him since making him get out of her car, canceling two appointments in order to avoid it. But now it might be time to resume relations. Mainly she wanted a look at his legs, which held promise of being even more exciting than his wrists or his lower lip. It had been a little too dark to correctly appraise legs when he had returned from his jog the other day.

For amusement she gave Pascal a little nip on the earlobe, but what she really had in mind was to catch Jerry Bruckner jogging and have a look at his legs. And if that meant she wasn’t romantic, then so be it.

“Very probably you’re right, Pascal,” Aurora said, slipping off the bed. “Very probably I’m not romantic—very probably I never was. But I am
something,
wouldn’t you admit?”

“I admit,” Pascal said gloomily, wondering if she’d even give him a kiss before she left.

10

Aurora spent nearly thirty minutes driving around Jerry Bruckner’s neighborhood, hoping to spot him jogging, but she didn’t spot him jogging. There was a high school not far from his home with a track behind it where a number of people of both sexes were jogging—but Jerry Bruckner was not among them. She parked for a bit, hoping Jerry would miraculously jog past, but he didn’t. Teddy, Tommy, and Melanie, while in high school, had competed in sports events on the playing field behind the high school, and Aurora and Rosie had sometimes come to watch them, which was why she knew about the school track. None of them had been very good at sports, but then none of them had cared much that they weren’t good, so little harm was done, she supposed.

Another reason why she remembered the track was that one day, years before, while she and Rosie had been looking for the school in order to attend one of Tommy’s first sports events, a dismal soccer match in which he managed to get a concussion and a dislocated shoulder at the same time, Aurora had stumbled upon a palm reader named Carmen, who
had a sign in her yard featuring a large palm. To Rosie’s annoyance, they had missed the start of the soccer match because Aurora insisted on stopping immediately to have her palm read. Rosie, in the course of raising her seven children, had attended several thousand sports events and believed one of the chief duties of a parent was to be on time at such events.

“I never missed a one if one of my kids was playing, and I’ve never been late either,” Rosie had declared at the time. “I don’t believe in fortune-telling, and even if I did I wouldn’t try it because it might be mostly bad news and if it is I don’t want it.”

“On the other hand it might be good news, and if it is I
do
want it,” Aurora said, marching into the house.

Carmen turned out to be a tiny Spanish woman who chewed gum a bit too loudly for Aurora’s taste; she had long, lustrous black hair, which she continued to brush while she gave the reading. Also, she was nearsighted and had to practically stick her nose into Aurora’s palm in order to see the future, but these small debits were more than made up for by her frank prediction that Aurora would enjoy a long and richly lascivious future.

“The guys like you” was the way Carmen put it. “You gonna get ’em in all sizes and shapes.”

This theme was repeated and elaborated on in Aurora’s many subsequent visits. Nearsighted though she may have been, Carmen was quick to perceive that Aurora had no inclination to spinsterishness, nor did she flinch from frank language.

“You’re still gonna be doing it when you’re eighty, honey,” Carmen told her once; it was on the day Melanie dropped the shot-put on her foot, an accident Aurora arrived just in time to witness.

When pressed as to whom she might have found to do it with when she was eighty, Carmen shrugged, smacked her gum, looked wicked, and just said, “Guys”—the ones, presumably, who would come in all sizes and shapes. By the time Melanie finally graduated and there were no more
games to go to in Bellaire, the sign with the palm on it badly needed repainting, and Carmen herself wasn’t looking so good. The fall after Melanie’s graduation, one day while in a low mood, Aurora had driven to Bellaire alone; she and the General were in a slack period and she felt like hearing that she might soon be getting guys in all sizes and shapes. But when she knocked, a portly man with a scar that ran from his eyelid to his lower lip informed her that Carmen was dead.