“I asked you who you were spending the night with,” the General said tightly. “I’ve asked you several times. Of course if you don’t choose to answer, that’s your business.”
“Oh, pooh, you’re much too touchy, Hector,” Aurora said. “I was merely trying to make you realize that my whereabouts at six A.M. is somewhat subject to whimsey. I might have decided to dance until dawn, or then again I might be off taking a cruise in the Caribbean with one of your rivals. You really don’t seem to have much sense of sport, you know. It’s something you really might try to cultivate before you get any older.”
The General felt deeply relieved. “Aurora, can I ask you one favor?” he said. “If you’re going out today would you give me a ride to the grocery store? I’m afraid my car has broken down.”
Aurora smiled to herself. “Well, that’s rather a prosaic favor, Hector, when one considers all you might have asked for,” she said, “but it’s certainly one I can manage. If you’re sitting over there starving, my bills can certainly wait. I’ll just pull myself together and you and I can go out for a nice drive. Who knows but what you’ll weaken and buy me lunch.”
“Aurora, that would be wonderful,” the General said.
“Tricked him into it, didn’t you?” Rosie said when her boss hung up. “Didn’t take much trickin’, did it?”
Aurora stood up, scattering her neat stack of bills back into disarray. She went to her window and looked out on the sunlit back yard. It was a brilliant day, with deep patches of blue between huge snowy April clouds.
“Men who are free all day have such an advantage over men who aren’t,” she said by way of reply.
“You like ’em randy too, don’t you?” Rosie said.
“You hush,” Aurora said. “I like a great many more things than you do, apparently. You don’t seem to want to do anything except torment me and poor Royce. If you ask me, you’re lucky to have kept that man so long, the way you treat him.”
“Royce’d sink like a rock if he didn’t have me to rag him,” Rosie said confidently. “What you gonna wear? You know how quick the General is. He’s probably already standing at the door. His wife never made him wait in forty-three years. He’ll probably whop you with his umbrella if you don’t hustle right over.”
Aurora stretched and opened her windows a little wider. It was really exhilarating to be going out into such a day, even with someone as importunate as Hector Scott was apt to be. Rosie came over and looked out the window with her. She too was perked, and what perked her was the knowledge that Aurora was going out. It meant she had the whole house to herself to poke around in. Besides, Aurora would do almost anything to avoid paying her bills, and if she stayed home she would just avoid it by flirting with Royce. With Aurora gone she herself could spend a pleasant lunch hour lecturing Royce on his many shortcomings.
“Now look at this day,” Aurora said. “Isn’t it splendid? If I could only get myself into the right state of mind I’m quite sure I could be happy just with the trees and the sky. I only wish Emma responded to such things the way I do. Probably she’s sitting over there in that miserable garage right now, gloomy as she can be. I don’t know what she’s going to do with a baby if she doesn’t learn to take advantage of a day like this.”
“She better bring it over here and let us raise it,” Rosie said. “I hate for any kid of Emma’s to have to grow up around Flap. If you an’ me had a couple of Emma’s kids to play with I might not have to have no more.”
“Well, anything to slow you down,” Aurora said, though actually on such a lovely day even the thought of Rosie pregnant couldn’t drag her spirits down. “I believe I’ll wear that dress I just paid for,” she said, and went to the closet and found it. It was a flowered silk dress, light blue, and it did practically everything a dress should, both for her flesh and for her spirit. Without further delay she flung herself into dressing, happily convinced that seventy-eight dollars, at least, had been well spent.
2.
SOMETHING OVER an hour later she eased the Cadillac into the General’s driveway. F.V. was standing in his chauffeur’s pants and an undershirt idly watering the lawn. He was incorrigibly addicted to going around in his undershirt, a Cajun habit even the General’s iron discipline had not been able to affect. He was a short little fellow and he looked perpetually mournful.
Aurora didn’t care. “There you are again, F.V.,” she said. “I do wish you wouldn’t go around in your undershirt. No one I know likes the sight of a man in his undershirt. Also I don’t quite see why you’ve chosen to waste water that way. In a city where it rains twice a day it is hardly necessary to water lawns.”
“Ain’t rained in two weeks, Miz Greenway,” F.V. said mournfully. “The General put me to doin’ it.”
“Oh, the General’s too impatient,” Aurora said. “If you want to stay on my good side I think you should turn that hose off and go iron yourself a nice fresh shirt.”
F.V. only looked more mournful and swished the hose around indecisively. One of the things he prayed for, on the rare occasions when he prayed, was that Mrs. Greenway would remain unyielding in her refusal to marry the General. The General was a stern taskmaster, but at least with him a man knew where he was. F.V. never had any idea where he was with Mrs. Greenway. It seldom took her more than two minutes to put him between the horns of a dilemma, as she just had, and the thought of having to live his life between the horns of thousands of dilemmas was more than F.V. could face.
Fortunately just at that moment General Scott stepped out of his house. He had been watching Aurora’s approach through his binoculars and he was ready. He wore, as he always had since laying aside his uniform, an expensive charcoal gray suit and a blue-striped shirt. Even Aurora had been forced to admit that he dressed impeccably. His ties were always red, and his eyes always blue. The only thing about him that wasn’t precisely as it had been was the hair that ought to have been on his head; to his annoyance most of it had vanished between his sixty-third and his sixty-fifth year.
“Aurora, you look wonderful,” he said, coming around to her side of the car and bending in to kiss her cheek. “That dress was made for you.”
“Yes, literally, I’m afraid,” Aurora said, looking him over. “I just paid the bill this morning. Do get in right away, Hector. Doing so much addition has given me a ravening appetite and I thought we might just drive into the country and eat at our favorite little seafood house, if that suits you.”
“Perfectly,” the General said. “Quit swishing that hose, F.V. You almost swished me. Just keep it pointed at the yard until we’re gone.”
“Miz Greenway told me to turn it off anyway,” F.V. said. “She wants me to go iron a shirt.”
He dropped the hose, as if so many and such conflicting responsibilities had suddenly crushed out the last of his spirit, and to the General’s amazement went slogging through the wet yard toward the house. He disappeared without so much as bothering to turn off the hose.
“He acts like he’s going in there to commit suicide,” the General said. “What did you say to him?”
“I admonished him about wearing those undershirts,” Aurora said. “My traditional admonition. Perhaps if I honk at him he’ll come back out.”
Aurora had always considered the horn to be practically the most useful part of the car, and her use of it was frequent and uninhibited. It took her only ten seconds to honk F.V. back out of the house.
“See here, turn off that hose if you’re not going to water,” the General said, a little confused. Aurora’s honking unnerved him, so that he could think of no other instructions. He associated loud noises with battles and didn’t know quite what to make of one when it was occurring right in his own driveway.
F.V. picked up the hose again and approached the car so distractedly that both Aurora and the General were afraid he was going to poke it in the window and douse them both. Fortunately he stopped just short of the driveway.
“Miz Greenway, can I borrow Rosie
?” he asked plaintively. “I ain’t never gonna get that Packard fixed unless she helps me. It sure does prey on my mind.”
“Yes, of course, anything—help yourself,” Aurora said, backing suddenly. The hose was considerably too close for comfort, and F.V. seemed to be losing his grip on things. In five seconds she and the General were safely on their way.
“You know, F.V. was never in the service,” the General said wistfully, once they were gone. “I wonder if that’s the reason he’s the way he is.”
3.
HALFWAY THROUGH lunch Aurora realized she was being too nice, but the food was so delicious that she couldn’t stop. Excellent food had been her undoing more than once in life. The thing that had attracted her to Rud, aside from his height, was that he had known the whereabouts of every good restaurant on the East Coast; though, unhappily, as soon as they married he forgot them all and developed a fondness for pimento cheese sandwiches that was to prove lifelong. Excellent food swept away her defenses-she could not eat well and bristle too—and by the time she had lapped up every drop of her lobster bisque and started on her pompano she was feeling extremely gay.
With the seafood so excellent, it was necessary for both of them to consume quite a lot of white wine, and by the time Aurora had worked her way into a salad and had begun to think in vague terms of the problem of getting home, the General was feeling even gayer and had begun to reach across the table every two minutes to squeeze her arm and compliment her on her dress and her complexion. Nothing was more apt to bring out her best lights than a fine meal, and long before this one was over her best lights were flashing so brilliantly that the General was just short of being in a state.
“Evelyn always pecked at her food,” he said. “Somehow she always just pecked. Even in France she didn’t seem to want to eat. I never knew why.”
“Maybe the poor thing had something stuck in her windpipe,” Aurora said, happily scooping up the last of some cherries she was having. If the food hadn’t been so good she would have endeavored to damp her glow a little, but there was really no knowing where her next cherries jubilee would come from and she was not inclined to waste any. When she finished she poked her tongue into the several corners of her mouth, hoping to locate whatever particles of the meal that might have strayed; while she was searching she sat back and surveyed the restaurant merrily. She had been too busy eating even to observe who was there. It was an unrewarding survey, however; while they had been eating, the lunch hour had ended, and only she and the General and two or three stragglers were left.
With the food gone there was no way she could avoid noticing that her friend General Scott was approaching a state. His face was almost as red as his necktie, and he had begun to talk of foreign climes—always one of the worst signs with him.
“Aurora, if you’d just come with me to Tahiti,” he said as they were walking to the car. “If we could just be together in Tahiti for a little while I’m sure you’d see matters in a different light.”
“Why, Hector, look around you,” Aurora said, gesturing toward the blue sky. “The light is wonderful here. I don’t know that I’d trade it for the light in Polynesia, if that’s where you want me to go.”
“No, you misinterpret me,” the General said. “I meant that with a little more time you might come to think differently about me. Foreign climes sometimes do wonders. Old habits fall by the wayside.”
“But, Hector, I’m quite fond of my habits,” Aurora said. “It’s nice of you to think of me, dear, but I really don’t see why I should have to go all the way to Tahiti to get rid of habits I’m perfectly comfortable with right here.”
“Well, I’m not perfectly comfortable with them,” the General said. “I’m goddamn frustrated, if you want to know the truth.” Seeing that the parking lot was empty except for their car, he immediately demonstrated the nature of his frustration by launching a quick assault. He disguised it for two seconds by pretending that all he meant to do was hold the door open for her, but Aurora wasn’t fooled. The General was seldom able to restrain himself completely, particularly not when he had grown so red in the face, but she had had a good deal of experience with his little physical blitzkriegs and knew they posed no serious threat either to her person or her mood.
She squirmed right through the one in progress, searching in her purse for her keys all the while, and aside from having to straighten her dress a bit and comb her hair—things she would have had to do in any case—she got through it with her gaiety intact.
“Hector, you do beat all,” she said happily, putting her twisted key in the ignition. “I can’t think why you’d think I’d go to Tahiti with you if you’re going to leap on me in every parking lot in town. If that’s the way you behave I don’t see why you think anyone would want to marry you.”
The General’s passionate state had curdled somewhat from lack of success, and he was sitting on his side of the car with his arms crossed and his lips compressed. He was not so much annoyed with Aurora as he was at his dead wife, Evelyn. The crux of his annoyance with Evelyn was that she had been such poor preparation for Aurora. To begin with, Evelyn had been petite, whereas Aurora was large. He could never quite figure out where to grasp her, and before he could get anything like a secure hold she managed to squirm her way into some corner or other, where she could not possibly be embraced. Evelyn had failed to provide him with any practice at all, since she was the soul of patience and docility and had never squirmed in her life that he could remember. She had always stopped whatever she was doing the minute he touched her, and in some cases even before he touched her. In fact, she was never doing much anyway and considered his embraces to be a nice change of pace.
Aurora’s kind of pace was something else again, and in retrospect he couldn’t imagine why Evelyn had been so docile.
Aurora, for her part, was keeping one eye on him and the other on the road. The sight of him sitting with his arms crossed was so comical that she couldn’t repress a chuckle.
“Hector, you can’t know how amusing you are at these times,” she said. “I’m not sure your sense of humor is quite all it ought to be. There you are sulking, if I’m not mistaken, just because I won’t let you work your will upon me in a parking lot. I’ve heard that teenagers go in for that sort of thing, but you and I are some ways out of our teens, you must admit.”
“Oh, hush, Aurora, you almost hit that mailbox,” the General said. “Can’t you drive a little closer to the center of the road?” Her penchant for driving with one wheel off the pavement annoyed him almost as much as her penchant for parking three feet from the curb.
“Well, just to oblige you I’ll try,” Aurora said, verging left a tiny fraction. “You know I don’t like to be too close to the center line. Suppose I wobbled just as I was meeting someone. Frankly if you’re going to sulk all the way back home I don’t care if I do hit a mailbox. I was not brought up around sulky men, I can tell you that.”
“God damn it, I’m not sulking,” the General said. “You’re making me desperate, Aurora. It’s easy for you to talk about parking lots and working my will, but in fact you know damn well I never get a chance to work it anywhere else. You won’t let me in your house and you won’t come in mine. I haven’t worked my will in years anyway. I’m not drinking from the fountain of youth, you know. I’m sixty-seven. If I don’t work it pretty soon it’s not apt to be workable.”
Aurora glanced over at him and was forced to sigh. He had a point. “Dear, you put that rather sweetly,” she said, reaching over and making him uncross his arms so she could give his hand a squeeze. “I do wish I was feeling more compliant these days, but the fact is I’m just not.”
“You don’t try!” the General burst out. “I should think you’d at least try! How many four-star generals do you think are going to come your way?”
“Now, you see, you always go one sentence too far, Hector,” she said. “If you’d just try shortening your speeches by one sentence each I might find myself feeling
a little more compliant one of these days.”
Despite her earlier promise, the Cadillac’s right wheels were off the pavement and edging farther and farther toward the ditch all the time, but the General compressed his lips and said nothing about it. He considered that the responsibility was mostly his anyway—he was well aware that she wasn’t to be trusted on the open road and should not have let her bring him to a restaurant thirty miles out of town.
“Be that as it may, I still think you might try,” he said irascibly.
Aurora ignored his tone and drove a mile or two in silence. Then she reached over and squeezed his hand again.
“Trying is not precisely what’s required, Hector,” she said. “I am not by any means the most experienced woman in the world, but I do know that much. You have such wonderful taste in food, dear, that I really hate to let you go, but I’m afraid I may have to. I seem to be very set in my attitudes these days, and I don’t think even a trip to Tahiti would change me very much.”
“What are you talking about, Aurora?” the General asked, disturbed by what he was hearing. “Why would you let me go, and where do you think I’d go if you did?”
“Well, as you pointed out, I’m behaving in a rather frustrating manner,” Aurora said. “I’ve no doubt you’d be better off if I let you go. I’m sure there are any number of nice ladies around Houston who’d simply be delighted to have a four-star general come their way.”
“Not as nice as you,” the General said, almost before her mouth was closed.
Aurora shrugged and glanced at herself briefly in her rearview mirror—as usual it was turned so she could see herself better than she could see the road.
“Hector, that’s very romantic of you,” she said, “but I think we’re both aware that whatever charms I may have are more than offset by my difficulties. Everybody knows I’m impossible, and you might just as well admit it and quit wasting what time you’ve got left. I’m afraid I’ve come to share the general view. I’m haughty and willful and very sharp-tongued. You and I irritate one another in a number of ways and I don’t think we could keep the same roof over our heads for six days, even if we tried our best. Anyone as particular as myself deserves to have to live alone, as I shall probably have to. It’s purely self-defeating for you to sit there training your binoculars on my garage and dreaming your dreams. Find some nice woman with a taste for good food and whisk her right off to Tahiti. You’re a military man and I think it’s high time you regained the habit of command.”