The Evening Star (27 page)

It was only later, when Pascal’s mettle had been proven, more or less, and she allowed him to bring a little cheese and the rest of the wine to bed, that she learned that the slight problem she had experienced at the onset had been caused by the fact that Pascal had a crooked penis.

“It became bent when I was young,” he told her, with a rather endearing smile.

“What?” Aurora said. “You mean at my age I’ve been made love to by a bent dick? This I have to see.”

“It’s not bent when it’s little,” Pascal said. “It’s only bent when it gets big.”

“Then let’s have it big,” Aurora said. Indeed, there was little to see, as matters stood.

“I don’t know about right now,” Pascal said, twinkling a little in his happiness. “You should have looked when you had the chance,” he added.

“But I don’t usually look the first time,” Aurora said. “I’ve never heard of such a thing as a bent penis. Now you’ve got my scientific curiosity aroused.”

“I’ve got you all aroused,” Pascal said, watching her stretch.

“I suppose you have, but I’m not sure I’d have proceeded if I’d known you were deformed,” Aurora said.

“No, I was normal,” Pascal assured her. “It became bent when I was fourteen. The girls didn’t like me then, and I was making love to a hole in the fence. A boy was on the other side of the fence—I didn’t know this. He took a piece of board and chopped at my penis. Since then it’s been crooked.”

“Good lord,” Aurora said, setting her wineglass on the table. “If I’d been there at the time I doubt you would have had to be engaged with a hole in the fence.”

She gave him a winy, urgent kiss. “Come on,” she said. “I remember some of your vast claims. Now I want proof.”

“I’ve taken vitamin E for years,” Pascal informed her.

“By golly, it
is
bent—it’s a wonder this worked at all,” she said, a little later. “It’s a good thing you’ve learned to compensate—I suppose having to compensate is what’s given you your resourceful air, Pascal. Your resourceful air is one of the things I like best about you.”

“Besides that, I took all the vitamin E,” Pascal reminded her.

Later, though, driving home from her tryst, Aurora’s exultant mood began to seep away. Little by little it seeped away, until there came a time when the last drop of it had seeped; she felt lonely, disarrayed, dejected, and depressed. She reached such a low state in her feelings that she didn’t think it was quite wise to drive, although she was only a few blocks from her house. She pulled to the curb and sat, and before she knew it she was weeping. She had no desire to go back to Pascal, who had already been talking excitedly of taking her to Paris, Morocco, Istanbul, and various other places he felt sure she would enjoy. Lust had been sated, but at what price? She was certainly fond of Pascal, but also, just as certainly, wasn’t in love with him, although now she had gotten him ever more madly in love with her. He was jealous, too—he had made as much of a fuss as he dared just because she was going home to Hector. He had already suggested that she shouldn’t sleep in the same bed as Hector. Problems of that nature were sure to plague their future relations.

Also, sitting in dejection in her car, she was aware of a certain lurking dishonesty in her behavior. Had she finally
slept with Pascal because she wanted to, or because she felt that after years of flirtation she owed him a fling? Or could it be that a darker, more particular fear had driven her into the arms she had spent the afternoon in? She knew perfectly well what the more complex fear was, but alone in her car, she didn’t want to think about it—and yet if she went home and tried to talk it out with Rosie, Hector might eavesdrop or get wind of her distress somehow, and what that might lead to in terms of quarrels, sadness, questions, or apprehensions she didn’t want to contemplate. Suave and sophisticated as Hector had tried to appear when he suggested that she was in love with Jerry Bruckner, she knew that he was merely putting up a cool front while fishing for information. If she gave him the information, particularly the information that she was having an affair with Pascal, his arch rival, his reaction would be anything but suave and sophisticated. He would be mad as hell, and their life together would be a good deal more tormented than it was already.

Drying her eyes, she noticed that the man of the house whose lawn she had parked in front of had come out to move his sprinklers and was looking at her. To her horror she noticed that the man was Hargreave Goulding, her insurance agent. Hargreave was a very presentable man who sold insurance to half the people in their neighborhood. She hadn’t noticed that she was in front of his house when she became too dejected to drive and had stopped to cry. The last thing she wanted was for Hargreave Goulding to come over and ask her what was the matter. For one thing, he was a very attractive man, and the two of them had spent thirty years flirting at parties; if he came over and tried to comfort her while she was in a vulnerable state, she might end up in even hotter water than she was in anyway. He was a widower, too—though well supplied with lady friends, he was also probably the type who felt he could always handle one more.

Aurora started her car with a jerk and turned the nearest corner, causing two children on bicycles to dash up a driveway. Her house was almost in sight, but she didn’t go there—she
had a sense that it might be fatal to face Hector, feeling as she did.

Without quite knowing why she was doing it, she drove rather reluctantly in the direction of Bellaire and soon found herself driving just as reluctantly in front of Jerry Bruckner’s house. Unable to bring herself to stop, she drove right on past it. Then she circled the block and drove past it three more times, slowing for a moment each time, but never quite working up to stopping.

Finally, on the fourth pass, she did stop, so close to the curb that she felt sure her tires would scrape, although they didn’t; she stopped, but refrained from killing her motor—she hoped that at any moment she would get control of her sinking emotions and drive back into her sensible—or, at least, mostly manageable—life. She looked at herself in the mirror several times, but made no repairs. It was getting dark. Soon Hector and Rosie would begin to be worried about her. Her phobia about driving after dark was even more intense than her phobia about scraping her tires. She knew she ought to rush home and reassure them, and yet she felt paralyzed. All she could do was sit in front of Jerry Bruckner’s house, twisting her emerald ring round and round her finger while dripping hopeless tears.

While she was twisting her ring, there was a tap on her window. Jerry Bruckner stood there, in jogging clothes. He seemed quite sweaty and had obviously been jogging. He tapped on the window again, looking in with his mild smile. Aurora felt her paralysis deepen. She didn’t do anything; she even stopped twisting her ring. She just sat, leaving the matter, and all matters, to Jerry. She didn’t even roll down the window; she just sat with her hands in her lap.

After another unanswered tap or two, Jerry came around to the driver’s side of the car. Aurora looked at him hopelessly. He made a motion that she couldn’t interpret. When she did nothing, he put his face as close to the window as he could.

“Please roll down the window!” he shouted. “Or unlock the door, so I can talk to you!”

Aurora noticed that he was still attractive, though sweaty.
Something about him was a little too doglike, though—she had felt that the first time she saw him and she registered the impression again—but then, there must be something to be said for dogs, or people wouldn’t be having them as pets.

She looked at the lock on her door and decided she might as well unlock it. When she tried to roll down her windows they sometimes slipped off their track, which meant a trip to the garage, a place she hated. Rosie had once been capable of putting her windows right, but Rosie was no longer the mechanic she had once been. Now she sometimes took weeks to accomplish the simplest repair.

That being the case, she ruled out rolling down the windows, and unlocked her door.

“Thanks,” Jerry said, immediately opening the door. Aurora noticed that he did smell quite sweaty, but then, she had never been one to balk at a little sweat.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, squatting by the car and looking up at her. Just then a car swooshed by—Aurora felt quite sure Jerry would be hit and killed if he kept squatting where he was.

“I just slept with a Frenchman with a crooked penis in order to stop myself from sleeping with you,” she said.

Jerry Bruckner looked surprised—a little more than mildly so, if she was any judge of surprised men. On the other hand, he was not thunderstruck. In fact, after a pause, he chuckled. Usually his chuckle—deep, like his voice—delighted her, but this time for some reason it irritated her.

“If you want to discuss this distasteful episode, you’ll have to get in,” Aurora said. “Squatting as you are, I’m sure you’ll be killed within the next few minutes.”

“That’s what I was trying to do to begin with, but you had all the doors locked,” Jerry said. He reached in, unlocked the door to the backseat, crawled across it, unlocked the other door to the front seat, and was soon seated in the front seat, where Hector usually sat.

“I was afraid to risk walking around the car,” he said. “You might have locked me out again.”

“Quite true,” Aurora said dejectedly. “An old woman who’s capable of sleeping with a Frenchman with a crooked penis might well be capable of other very bad acts.”

“I’ve never seen a crooked penis,” Jerry said. “How did it get crooked?”

“A youthful accident caused it to become somewhat bent,” Aurora said. “However, if the crook in my lover’s penis is all you’re interested in, you’ve unlocked all those doors for nothing. I think I’ll go home.”

“Be fair,” Jerry said. “If someone told you about a man with a crooked penis, wouldn’t you ask how it got bent?”

“Not if I had more serious matters to discuss,” Aurora said. “I’m not sure you took in the import of my original remark, or if you did then you probably just think it was just one more remark made by another of the many lustful old women you probably have for patients. I think I want to go home.”

In fact, she did want to leave. She felt that coming to Jerry’s house had been a terrible mistake, one she would never have made had she not been in terrible disarray. She had revealed herself in a way that made her acutely uncomfortable—and so far Jerry had not responded in any fashion that was likely to relieve her discomfort.

“I heard what you said, and I’m glad you said it,” Jerry said. “Did you think you had to go to this length to stop yourself from sleeping with me because I’m your doctor?”

“Hardly,” Aurora said with a snort. “I don’t even think you are a doctor. I think you’re just a seducer with a weird couch. In my view it would be a toss-up between that couch and a crooked penis, if one were thinking of amour.”

Aurora Greenway had been a surprise Jerry had not quite taken the measure of, but he did know that she was one of the most immediately appealing women he had ever met. Already, despite the age difference, it was often Aurora, not his present girlfriend, Sondra, that he had begun to think of when he was alone and thinking about sex. Sondra, the long, lanky East Texas waitress that he was actually sleeping with, and was also very fond of, scarcely figured in his fantasy life at all.

“I’m not a normal psychiatrist, maybe, but I do make my living trying to make people feel better,” Jerry said. He tried to put his hand on Aurora’s shoulder in a friendly way, but Aurora flinched and drew away.

“Keep off, and that’s a serious warning, Doctor,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” Jerry said. “I’ve never seen you this disturbed. In fact, I’ve never seen you disturbed at all. I’d like to help but I’m not sure I know where to start.”

“Start anyway,” Aurora said. “If you don’t, I’m going away. I was a terrible fool to come here. I’ve often felt a fool, but I guess this is the first time in my life that I’ve felt like an
old
fool.”

“I don’t think about your age when I’m with you,” Jerry said. “I doubt that anyone does.”

“Oh, someone does,” Aurora said. “
I
do. The difference between being a foolish woman and a foolish old woman looms large in my mind. I’m sorry I came here and I’m sorry I disturbed you, but I think you had better get out now. If you wish to help me you’re failing, and I had better just go home.”

“Would you like to go to dinner?” Jerry asked. He realized that he was going to be very depressed if he let her just drive off—if he could just delay her, maybe her mood would improve. Under the circumstance, asking her to dinner sounded weird, but it was the only thing that came to mind that she might consider.

Aurora was astounded—he was a complete mess, he was in jogging clothes, and he was asking her to dinner. But when she turned to him to tell him how absurd his suggestion was, and why, he looked at her with such a childlike look of longing that, without quite fathoming what the longing might be for, she gave an answer that was less unfriendly than the one she had been prepared to give.

“Do we look in any shape to dine?” she asked. “I’m soaked in tears and you’re soaked in sweat. A decent hamburger joint would probably turn us away, looking as we do.”

“You’ve been crying, but you’re wearing a very nice dress,” Jerry said. “I live in this house you’re parked in front
of. I could shower and you could fix up a little. We could just go to a Greek place, or a Cajun place or something. We wouldn’t have to look too fancy.”

“Do you mean this?” Aurora asked. “Are you actually asking me to dinner?”

“Yes, why not?” Jerry said.

Aurora felt a little lifted by the fact that he had noticed she was actually wearing a nice dress. He was right, and his suggestion was sensible, more or less. She
could
wash her face, and they could go somewhere not too fancy. Also, she had experienced a great deal of distress since eating Pascal’s lamb. She was hungry.

“I suppose we could go to the Pig Stand,” she said. “I always go there after visiting my grandson, the murderer, and I’m certainly not looking my best on those occasions—no one who frequents the Pig Stand seems to be looking their best. They just look how they look, and they eat a lot. In my present mood I believe I could eat a lot.”