“Oh, not often, Aurora,” he said. “Once a month maybe. No more.”
Aurora stopped polishing her rings. She looked at him, quite silent. In an instant her look had become grave. “What did you say, Edward?” she asked.
“Very infrequently,” he said. “Very infrequently, Aurora.”
He was aware from the way her face had changed that he had made a real blunder, something far more serious than ordering from the busboy. She was looking him in the eye and she wasn’t smiling. He felt a coward suddenly. He often had, with Aurora, but never so much. Something was wrong—it had never been right. He was a bank vice-president, an important man, he controlled millions, he was known and looked up to; an Aurora Greenway was none of those things. She was well known to be flighty; he didn’t even know why he was courting her, why he wanted to marry someone whose mere look made him quail inside. But it was happening. Why was he wasting time, spending money, making a fool of himself, all for a woman he was scared to death of. It made no sense, but he was sure he was in love with her. She was an awful lot livelier than his wife had ever been—his wife had never been able to tell a pompano from a carp—yet there was terror at the heart of it, simple terror. He didn’t know what to do or say when Aurora leveled her blue eyes at him. Why wasn’t he the man he seemed to be when he was around men? Why didn’t he defend himself better, or attack her in return? Why did he have such a feeling of not knowing what to do?
“You mean to say, Edward,” Aurora said quietly, “that you bring young women here, where you’ve brought me?”
“Oh, trivial, Aurora,” he said. “Of no consequence. Not relevant at all, really. Just secretaries. I mean for company.”
He paused. The pompano arrived. Aurora received it in total silence. The maitre d’ had started to suggest a wine, but she chilled him with one look. She considered the fish for a moment but did not pick up her fork.
“What’s a man to do?” Edward Johnson said nervously, thinking out loud.
Aurora sat quietly looking at nothing for what seemed to Edward Johnson like a very long time. She did not touch her fork, and he didn’t dare touch his.
“I believe you have proposed marriage to me, haven’t you, Edward?” she said, looking at him quite expressionlessly.
“Of course, of course,” he blurted. His stomach had stopped being a sac—it felt more like a kernel.
“Did you mean it?” Aurora asked.
“Of course, Aurora,” he said, his heart suddenly leaping up irrationally. “You know I’m nearly… crazy… to marry you. I’d marry you this afternoon, right here in this restaurant.”
Aurora frowned, but only slightly. “The best marriages are not performed in cheap restaurants, Edward,” she said. “Though it isn’t really a restaurant, is it? It’s more a sort of seraglio, if I’m not confusing my terms. And I’ve let you bring me to it, haven’t I?”
“Marry you this afternoon,” Edward Johnson repeated passionately, thinking from her strange manner that there must be some chance.
“Uum,” Aurora said with no expression at all. “I do hope my memory isn’t failing me, Edward. I’m a little too young to have my memory fail me just now. If it hasn’t already begun to slip, then I seem to recall that you have often said I was the only woman in your life.”
“Oh, you are,” he said urgently. “No doubt of that, Aurora. Why even before Marian died I was crazy about you.”
Aurora frowned again, still very slightly.
“I should think insulting me would be quite enough for you, Edward,” she said. “I don’t believe it’s necessary for you to go on and insult the memory of your dead wife. I’m sure she had more than enough of that to put up with while she was alive.”
“Oh, no, I’m sorry, you misunderstood. No insult,” Edward Johnson said, lacking any clue as to what he ought to say. “Last thing I would ever do.”
Aurora began matter-of-factly to fold her napkin. “In point of fact it is not the last thing you’ll ever do, Edward,” she said, looking at him coolly, “not, at least, unless you propose to perform hari-kari with that butter knife. You’re holding it in the wrong hand, by the way. At least it’s the wrong hand for buttering—I’m not versed in the etiquette of hari-kari.” She stopped and looked at him silently. Edward Johnson changed hands with his butter knife.
“Speak to me, Aurora,” he said, completely panicked. “Don’t look like that. Those women were just kids. Just teenagers. Inconsequential. I just take them out because they’re young.”
Aurora chuckled dryly. “Edward, I can assure you you don’t have to convince me they were young,” she said. “No doubt some of them are seated here under my very eyes. I imagine you and your fellow executives have worked out some satisfactory method of exchange between yourselves. In any case it’s your business, not mine. I’m only curious about one thing. If you have been telling me, as you admit you have, that I’m the only woman in your life, what am I to think you’ve been telling your teenagers?”
“Uh, nothing,” Edward Johnson said. “I never promise them anything.” He could not at that moment remember anything he had ever said to a secretary. A nightmare was happening—he had been a lunatic to ask such a frightening woman to lunch when he could have gone to his club and had a nice game of golf. And yet he couldn’t stand the thought of losing her completely. He wanted desperately to wrest control of the situation, to show Aurora that he was a man she could respect. She was looking at him with a strange, remote expressionlessness, as if in her view he was of less account than the parsley that lay uneaten on their two plates.
At that point, to his great relief, the wine steward appeared with a bottle of white wine. He showed it briefly to Edward Johnson, who nodded cheerfully; then the steward whipped out his corkscrew.
“I don’t believe we chose a wine,” Aurora said at once.
“I chose, madame,” the maitre d’ said, popping up at her elbow with a thin smile. The very sight of Aurora filled him with spleen.
Aurora took her eyes off Edward Johnson for a moment and faced the maitre d’. “That’s twice you’ve acted out of turn, monsieur,” she said. “I would rather you didn’t stand so close to my elbow.”
The maitre d’s smile grew even thinner. “Madame should eat her fish,” he said. “Very excellent pompano, and it’s getting cold.”
Without the slightest hesitation Aurora took her plate and turned it upside down. “So much for your fish, monsieur,” she said. “The gentleman seated across from me has just confessed to statutory rape, which makes you little more than a brothel keeper. I am prepared to be quite vehement in insisting that you don’t presume to choose my wines.”
“Please, Aurora, please,” Edward Johnson said. “None of us want a scene.”
“Why, I don’t expect you do,” Aurora said, “but the fact is I have already made one. I was brought up never to flinch from a scene when a scene is called for. All that remains to be determined is the extent of the scene I shall make.”
The maitre d’, judging correctly that there was nothing to be done but back away from her, accordingly backed away. Aurora gathered up her keys and pointedly ignored the many heads that were turned. Edward Johnson sat stupefied, aware that the principal hope of what remained of his life was in the process of being crushed.
“Aurora, I never did anything,” he said. “I never did anything.”
“Why not, Edward?” Aurora asked. She looked in her mirror for a moment and then looked back at him.
“None of them would let me,” he said simply. “I just don’t know how to talk when I’m around you,” he added. “I guess you do something to me and it makes my brain stop working.”
Aurora stood up, met the maitre d’s outraged eye once more, and then looked down at what remained of her bank vice-president.
“Well, it’s extremely fortunate for me that I have that effect on you, Edward,” she said, standing up to leave. “Otherwise I don’t know how long it would have taken me to find out the truth
about you. Those girls you’ve been misleading are the age of my daughter, or younger. I’ll have to ask you to cancel my crullers at once.”
For a moment Edward Johnson couldn’t remember what crullers were. Whatever had happened had all been too brutal. He had planned what he thought would be an exceptionally nice lunch, and now suddenly his relationship with Aurora Greenway seemed to be ending, right at one of the best tables in the best French restaurant in Houston. He was wearing his nicest suit, and somehow he had been sure Aurora would finally be impressed. He tried desperately to think of something to say that might put things right.
“I’m a widower,” he said. “You don’t know how it is.”
“You’re speaking to a widow, Edward,” Aurora said, and left.
4.
WHEN SHE arrived at her home, unfed, the indefatigable Rosie had finished with the house and was washing down the driveway and watering the grass. It was a hot day—the smell of wet concrete and wet grass was pleasant on such a hot day. Aurora stopped the Cadillac and sat in it for several minutes, neither moving nor thinking.
When Rosie had watered to her satisfaction she turned off the hose and came over. “What are you sittin’ there for?” she asked.
“Don’t nag me right now,” Aurora said.
“I guess somethin’ went wrong,” Rosie said. She walked around and got in the front seat of the car, in the mood to sit for a minute with her boss.
“Yes, you’re extremely perceptive,” Aurora said.
“He run off with a twelve-year-old, or somethin’ like that?”
“I’m sure I should be grateful,” Aurora said. “He was so scared of me he couldn’t look me in the eye anyway.”
“What’d you do to get back at him?” Rosie asked. She couldn’t read well enough to enjoy True Confessions, so she had to make do for excitement with whatever was happening to Aurora.
“Very little,” Aurora said. “I turned a perfectly nice fish upside down, but that was to annoy the maitre d’. Edward got off lightly.”
“I doubt it,” Rosie said.
Aurora sighed. “He was so apologetic it brought out my mean streak,” she said. “I guess I’m down to three.”
“That’s plenty,” Rosie said. “One fella with his tongue hanging out’s always been as much as I could put up with.”
“Yes, but yours hasn’t died,” Aurora said. “If God were ever to take Royce you’d be in the same pickle I’m in.”
“God’s got a million like Royce,” Rosie said unromantically.
The two of them sat in comfortable silence for a few minutes. When she thought about it, Aurora decided that being free of Edward Johnson left her feeling more relieved than not. The crullers had been too rich, besides.
“You better get out of this car if you expect me to wash it today,” Rosie said. “I ain’t washing no cars after three o’clock.”
“All right, all right,” Aurora said. “I never told you you had to wash the car. But have it your own way. You always do. I’m going in to see which of my possessions you’ve lost or hidden.”
“Nothing wears a piece of furniture out quicker than leavin’ it in the same place,” Rosie said a little defensively. “That’s a home truth, and you can believe it.”
“It’s a home truth that’s stripped me of most of what I started out with,” Aurora said. “I hope you’ve left me some gumbo at least. He was not even forceful enough to see that I stayed and ate my lunch.”
She took off her sunglasses and looked at Rosie. Edward Johnson was no great loss, but despite the nice smells of spring she felt slightly downcast. While she was sitting she had allowed herself to wonder what the point of it all was—a mistake she seldom made.
“Pore thing,” Rosie said. Nothing touched her sympathies like Aurora having lost a beau. It made her think of all the beaus she herself would probably have lost if Royce hadn’t been around. She became sad herself at the mere thought of the injustices that might have been done her. Also, Aurora was easier to like when she was down. The minute her spirits rose she became contrary again.
The words of sympathy were scarcely out of her mouth before Aurora became contrary again.
“Don’t you poor-thing me,” she said, looking Rosie over critically. “You’re the one who only weighs sixteen pounds. I’ll have you know that I’m in perfect mental and physical health, and I’m not at all to be pitied. You’ll be lucky to last another five years, at the rate you smoke, and I don’t think your husband is very happy either. Every time I see Royce he’s looking gloomy, and I see him every day. Doesn’t he ever look happy?”
“What’s happy got to do with it?” Rosie said hotly. “I don’t know what Royce Dunlup has got to be happy about.”
“That’s an awful thing to say,” Aurora said. “What kind of wife are you?”
“One with some sense,” Rosie said. “Royce has got bills to pay and me and the kids to look after. That man’s got to keep his shoulder to the wheel—he ain’t got time for sport. Besides, all he wants to do is shack up with you, and you know where I stand on that.”
Aurora smiled. “Still jealous, are you?” she said.
“You know me,” Rosie said. “I ain’t one to take nothin’ lightly.”
“Well, it must be an awful way to be,” Aurora said, tapping the steering wheel thoughtfully with a fingernail. “The more things one can take lightly, the better chance one has. In any case, you’re probably wrong about me. I doubt that Royce entertains masculine thoughts about me, at my age.”
“You’re full of prunes if you think he don’t,” Rosie said. She opened the glove compartment and began to weed its contents. Aurora watched with some interest. She seldom remembered having a glove compartment herself, and its contents were something of a revelation to her. A pair of sandals emerged, as well as an amber necklace that she had been hunting for months.
“Why there it is,” she said. “What a place for it to be.”
“You’re full of prunes if you think he don’t,” Rosie repeated. She dragged out a fistful of costume jewelry and a number of income tax statements.
“Oh, well, I’m sure we’ve talked of this before,” Aurora said. She gave Rosie a lazy look in which there was much unconcern for the topic at hand.
“It’s not always easy to tell when men are having masculine thoughts,” she added. “I suppose I’ve stopped noticing. You’re welcome to keep him out of my kitchen if you’re so worried.”
“No, then he’d just take up with some slut,” Rosie said. “Them bars he delivers to is full of sluts. No telling what would happen then.”
Aurora opened her door. “There is very little telling what will happen ever,” she said. “I believe I’ll muddle on in.”
“Gumbo’s on the stove,” Rosie said. “I’m taking the green stamps if I find any. I’m saving up for one of them home beauty parlors. Maybe what I need to be is a beautician.”
“Anything you want, just keep it away from me,” Aurora said. She slipped off her shoes and stockings before she got out. The bright green grass of her lawn was nice and wet and she took her time walking across it. Somehow being barefoot always made her feel more the way she liked to feel. It was so much easier to be enthusiastic when her feet were touching something besides shoes. Time and again she had had to fight down an urge to throw all her shoes in the garbage and begin a retreat from life—it was one of her strongest if most unladylike urges. She had never gone and done it, but she was not above throwing away five or six pair when she thought Rosie wouldn’t notice. All her life she had looked for shoes she liked, but the truth was there just weren’t any; it seemed to her that the only events that made shoes worth it at all were concerts. At concerts, if the music was truly good, shoes ceased to matter; social engagements were a different matter. No matter what the scale or tone of the engagement, she seldom felt quite right until she was back home and the wood of her floors or the tile of her patio or perhaps the velour of her bedroom rug was under her bare feet again.
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She lingered on her lawn, feeling better and better about things, and by the time she actually got to her doorstep she looked back and saw that Rosie, that demon of energy, had already got a chamois and a bucket and some water and had covered half the Cadillac with soapsuds. She went in and got a large bowl of gumbo and a piece of nice bread that had come from an Argentine bakery nearby and went back to sit on her steps and eat while Rosie went at the chrome. “You’ll have a fit, working so hard in that sun,” she called out, but Rosie flapped the chamois at her contemptuously and went on happily about her work. She had just finished polishing the chrome when Royce Dunlup drove up in his baby blue delivery truck to take her home.
CHAPTER IV
1.
EMMA HAD learned something about heat from life in Houston. Heat was an aid to suspension, and there were times when suspension was an aid to life. When she really didn’t know what to do with herself, she had learned to do nothing at all. It was not an approach her mother would have approved of, or Flap either, but then neither of them was ever around when feelings of purposelessness seized her, so it didn’t matter. If it was very hot and she felt really purposeless, she did nothing at all. She took off most of her clothes and sat on her bed staring at the bureau. The reason she stared at it was because it happened to stand against the wall, exactly opposite her bed. She didn’t read at such times, though often she took a book along for a prop. What she did was suspend herself and stare at the bureau. She ceased to have definite thoughts or feelings, definite wishes, definite needs. It was enough to sit on the bed staring at the bureau. It was not really like living, but it didn’t hurt. It was not boredom, not despair, not anything. It was just sitting. It was certainly not a state she tried to guard. Anyone could interrupt it if they chose, but she herself didn’t particularly try to avoid it.