The Evening Star (56 page)

Rosie didn’t take that view—Willie’s habit of doing as little as possible just when things really needed doing had more than once caused her to want to punch him in the nose.

“Willie, you could be helpful, go upstairs and get a couple of pillows,” she commanded.

She herself immediately got a bowl of ice cubes, a dish towel, and a couple of washrags, all of which she passed to Theo.

“Thank you, are you Rosie?” he asked gravely.

“Sure am, what’s your name?” she asked.

“I am Theo Petrakis,” he said, reaching across Aurora’s prone body to offer his hand.

“Rosie Dunlup,” Rosie said, shaking hands with him. “Can I just call you Theo? I think I can remember that.”

“Of course,” Theo said gravely. “Now that we are introduced I guess we better get to work. You got a dishpan?”

“Did you mean a bed pillow or a couch pillow?” Willie asked. He had moved to the foot of the stairs. At such a moment of crisis he didn’t want to make any mistakes, and the only way not to was to ask.

“A bed pillow, Willie—I mean two bed pillows,” Rosie
said, trying not to sound as put out as she felt. “Why would I send you upstairs to get a couch pillow when there’s couches all over the place?”

Willie, abashed that he had managed to annoy Rosie at a time of crisis, hurried upstairs.

Working from opposite sides of her body, Rosie and Theo began to bathe Aurora’s temples.

“He was a prison guard until he got on dope,” Rosie said, once Willie left. “He’s cured now, but I still have to tell him everything.”

“I am on dope too, Excedrin,” Theo said. “I think you better get the dishpan. This lady drank four bottles of retsina. My brother and I, we drank too, but we didn’t drink no four bottles.”

“I don’t even know what it is you’re talking about, but if she drank four bottles of it we may need more than a dish-pan,” Rosie said. “We may need a bathtub.”

“Wouldn’t hurt,” Theo admitted.

At that moment Aurora made a whimpering sound and gritted her teeth.

“Oh boy,” she said, without opening her eyes.

“Willie, get down here with them pillows, she’s coming to,” Rosie yelled.

“Rosie, don’t yell,” Aurora said. “My head is splitting. I must have got a bump.”

Her eyes were still closed.

“Hon, you fell and hit your head on the door,” Rosie said, bathing Aurora’s temple lightly with an ice cube held in a washrag.

Willie had made the mistake of attempting to decide which pillows were the most suitable, a hopeless task. In desperation he grabbed five and hurried downstairs.

Aurora yawned.

“That feels good,” she said, as more ice was applied to her temples. “Did Theo leave?”

“Theo is at your service,” Theo said.

“You sound as if you’re also at my elbow,” Aurora said, her eyes still closed.

“My God, I didn’t say bring a hundred pillows,” Rosie said irritably. It annoyed her that Aurora’s boyfriends were always able to muster more presence of mind than her own. Theo seemed to be a source of great strength compared to Willie, who was mainly a source of great irritation.

“Couldn’t decide,” Willie said.

“Rosie, must you pick on Willie when my head hurts so?” Aurora asked.

“I wasn’t picking on him much,” Rosie said, trying to get a grip. “He just brought a few too many pillows, but we might need them before we’re done.”

“Theo, are you near?” Aurora inquired, tentatively opening one eye. The room immediately began to swirl like a merry-go-round. She tried to swivel a bit so as to counteract the swirl, but it didn’t work; the swirl got faster, and she was forced to close her eye again.

“Oh boy, troops,” she said. Though her eye was now firmly closed, parts of her body were still participating in the swirling of the room. She realized too late that opening the one eye had been a serious mistake—now the room wouldn’t stop swirling and
she
couldn’t stop swirling, even though she was lying flat on the floor. Very soon, and very ominously, her stomach showed signs of wanting to join the universal swirl.

“Could someone please assist me to the bathroom?” she said, or rather, whispered. She was afraid that any attempt to use her voice normally might precipitate the crisis.

Rosie looked at Theo, who surveyed the surroundings with the practiced eye of the barkeeper.

“The sink’s close,” he remarked.

“Theo, I know you’re just trying to be practical, but I would prefer not to be sick in a sink,” Aurora whispered. She was still hoping against hope that somehow the swirling would cease, or at least slow down, but every syllable she uttered seemed to make the swirling speed up. It seemed to her that the room was already swirling through space at the speed of a galaxy or something—astronomy had not been one of her best subjects.

“Oh dear, I’m afraid the matter’s become urgent,” she said. “I’m afraid the wisest if not the only course is to get me somewhere quickly.”

Even as she said it she marveled at her own capacity to speak in complete and even lucid sentences at such a moment of crisis—it had always been thus, and it often had a tendency to make the crisis worse, since her lucidity often infuriated her helpmates, most of whom could scarcely speak in a complete sentence at the calmest moments of their lives.

Theo decided he had better pick Aurora up to facilitate rapid transport, so he slid his arms under her and did just that, to the surprise of everyone, particularly Aurora.

“What’s happening, is gravity annulled?” she inquired as she felt herself being lifted into the air.

“Shut up or you’ll puke sooner,” Theo advised.

“Theo, you’re in great shape, I’ll say that for you,” Rosie commented, although Aurora’s large body almost entirely blocked her view of the man she was complimenting.

“If Willie tried to pick Aurora up he’d be down in his back for a week,” she added, with a baleful glance at the useless Willie.

“He gets down in the back just from bringing in a bag of ice,” she continued mercilessly.

“Ice—that’s it—I need ice,” Aurora whimpered.

“Where are we going with her?” Theo asked—Aurora was carryable, but that didn’t mean she was light.

“Think you could carry her upstairs? It’s just one flight,” Rosie asked.

“I could carry her for three days,” Theo boasted, hoping Aurora was listening.

“Oh, Theo,” Aurora said, peeking briefly, to observe herself in the bare muscular arms of her rescuer, who smelled of strong tobacco.

“Let’s hit it,” Rosie commanded, heading up the stairs.

Midway up the stairs Theo began to get a painful cramp in his left leg, but he limped stoically on upward, stair by stair, until he was able to deposit Aurora safely on a blue rug in
her own bathroom—an easy crawl, in his judgment, to either the bathtub or the toilet. He limped out, but Rosie lingered with Aurora, trying to help with cold rags. Before he was well out the door Theo heard Aurora begin to throw up. Still Rosie lingered in order to flush the toilet as often as possible.

“Rosie, do go out, I don’t require attendance while I’m losing my retsina,” Aurora said in a very weak voice.

Theo looked only briefly at Aurora’s bedroom before limping on downstairs. He didn’t feel it was mannerly to inspect a lady’s bedroom while she was ill. Bedrooms were for times of health, or for laying out bodies. He looked forward to seeing Aurora in her bedroom in a time of health.

Downstairs, he dropped into a chair and began to massage his cramping leg.

Willie, very anxious, immediately set a cup of coffee in front of Theo.

“We got plenty,” he said. “What’s the verdict on Mrs. Greenway?”

“Drunk, that’s the verdict,” Theo said, just as Rosie came tripping downstairs.

“She swears she can crawl to the bed when she gets through puking, but I don’t know—maybe, maybe not,” Rosie said. “I left her a pillow and a dishpan.”

“A dishpan?” Theo inquired.

“Yeah, in case she can’t raise up high enough to puke in the toilet,” Rosie said. “She says she thinks she might vomit all day, so she don’t want to be bothered, but tomorrow night you and your brother are invited to dinner, for being so nice to her.”

“I ain’t bringing Vassily, I don’t like him,” Theo said. “When she passed out the first time, he wanted to put her in jail. Why should she feed him?”

“Oh, well, be that as it may,” Rosie said, stealing one of Aurora’s favorite phrases. “What do you take in your coffee? I’m glad Willie at least offered you some.”

She felt increasingly ticked at Willie. He was a much larger man than Theo—why hadn’t he carried Aurora upstairs?

“Blacker coffee, I’m Greek,” Theo said.

“You’re strong—do you exercise or are you a weight lifter or what?” Rosie asked.

“I don’t do no exercise—I used to carry sacks off ships,” Theo explained.

Willie began to feel sad—he wished very much that he could shoot up. Everyone in the world was more competent than he was, he knew. Rosie was more competent, and the Greek man, Theo, was also. He himself had not even been able to make the coffee black enough to suit their guest, which put him, in his own view, pretty much at the bottom of the ladder, competence-wise. It was depressing to be so useless, but dope made it better.

“Got any toothpicks?” Theo asked.

“Why, got coffee in your teeth?” Rosie asked, grinning. She liked Theo. A house containing no one but herself, Aurora, and Willie was, in her view, a pretty boresome house. Theo had a novel way of putting things, and, besides, he was cute. She had once considered Willie cute in a chunky sort of way, but she no longer thought Willie was particularly cute. He might be her problem, or her mainstay, but he wasn’t cute. Theo had a brother—maybe he was cute too. Maybe she and Aurora and Theo and his brother could even double-date. What she would do with Willie if such a thing happened was a question she decided she would think about later.

“I can play cards too,” Theo remarked. “If we ain’t gonna play for money, at least we could play for toothpicks.”

Two hours later, when they stopped playing cards, Theo had won the whole box of toothpicks. He attempted to teach Rosie and Willie several new card games, but their grasp of the games was imperfect, and Theo always won. The only sound from upstairs was the occasional faint flush of a toilet. When he had won all the toothpicks, Theo decided to go.

“I guess she ain’t gonna come back downstairs today,” he concluded, a little sadly. He had hung around hoping for one more glimpse of Aurora—he also wanted her to have one more glimpse of him. People who got very drunk sometimes didn’t remember a thing about the experience. Certain levels
of drunkenness often canceled all memory, both of the place and of the people who had been around during the drunkenness. Aurora had been at a pretty deep level of drunkenness—four bottles of retsina was not nothing. She might not remember him, his brother, or McCarty Street. If he turned up at her dinner the next night, with or without Vassily, Aurora might not have the faintest idea who he was. He himself had once forgotten a whole marriage due to drunkenness—one that had taken place in Egypt. He had married an Egyptian woman, lived with her for the better part of a week in a state of deep drunkenness caused by drinking too many Egyptian liquors that his system was not familiar with, and, once back to sea and sober, forgot all about it. He might never have remembered the marriage at all if it had not been for the fact that on his next trip to Alexandria he had happened to bump into his wife in a tobacco shop. She was with her new husband, an Englishman, and thus did not comment much on the fact that he had forgotten not only their nuptials but the whole week of their marriage.

All this led him to conclude that Aurora might be too drunk to remember him, which might mean that he would never see her again. Since he was now in love with her, this was a discouraging prospect, and he said as much to Rosie, who seemed trustworthy.

“What if she don’t remember nothing?” he asked. “Lots of drunks don’t remember nothing. She ain’t gonna want somebody she don’t remember showing up for dinner.”

“Aurora won’t forget you,” Rosie assured him. “She’s got a project, and it’s to remember every single day of her life, even back to when she was a baby.”

“Lots of luck,” Willie remarked. “I can’t remember nothing before third grade.”

“And not much after,” Rosie commented. “But then you ain’t Aurora. Once she gets after something she’s determined. It wouldn’t surprise me a bit if she remembered every day of her life. She’s got all her old calendars and she goes out in the garage and works at it.”

“Sounds dopey to me,” Theo said. “Why would anyone
want to remember every day of their life?” It would take up all the space in their head.”

“I don’t know, maybe you can ask her tomorrow,” Rosie said.

“I can’t remember but about three days of my life,” Theo said. “The day the war ended was one.”

The more he thought about Aurora’s project, the weirder it seemed. Still, he wanted to see more of her if he possibly could.

“She said to be sure and get your phone number, in case she can’t remember the name of your bar,” Rosie said. “She said she might want to talk when she feels better.”

She offered to call Theo a cab, but he looked at her as if she were crazy, before trudging off to catch the bus.

“He said he learned most of them card games in Yugoslavia,” Rosie reported later to a very weak Aurora, pale as a ghost in her bed.

“That’s fine, I like a well-traveled man,” Aurora said.

8

For most of that day, Aurora was too sick to care whether she lived or died, recovered or perished, had a lover or didn’t have a lover. Rosie peeked in about noon to see if she was well enough to consider a snack, only to discover Aurora lying on the floor midway between bathroom and bed.

“I’m not dead, I’m resting, go away,” Aurora said.

“Hon, if you’re too weak even to crawl, then you need help,” Rosie informed her. She noticed that Aurora had pulled most of the bedcovers off the bed and had constructed a kind of nest for herself on the floor, near the window nook.

“I’ll proceed to my nest in a moment,” Aurora said. “Did my Greek leave?”