“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.”
But then a lurking guilt pounced and made her doubt that she should indulge in this little outing. It was already dark, and she was never out after dark unless she was being driven by someone competent. What would Hector and Rosie be thinking?
“Do you really want to do this?” she asked, almost hoping Jerry had changed his mind. It had grown too dark for her to see his face clearly; she couldn’t tell if he still had the look of longing on his face. Oddly, seeing that look had made her less afraid of him; in fact, she no longer felt afraid of him at all.
“Sure, let’s go eat,” Jerry said. “Ever since you became my patient I’ve been wanting to have a nonprofessional conversation with you. The dinner at your house didn’t count because it was a dinner and you had to be a hostess.”
Aurora smiled. “All my talks are nonprofessional, including our so-called therapeutic sessions,” she said. “What will we talk about first?”
“About why you think it would be a particularly bad thing if we were lovers,” Jerry said.
“It would not merely be a bad thing, it would be a terrible thing,” Aurora said. “It would mean I was lost, that’s all.”
“Come on,” Jerry said. “You wouldn’t be lost. That’s silly.”
Aurora was silent for a moment. She was sorry darkness had fallen—she would have liked to look at this man clearly. Of course, she had an appointment with him in two days: she could look at him clearly then. But his last remark was disappointing, and her spirits, which had shown signs of rising at the prospect of several pig sandwiches and a lot of pie, began to sink again. It was not going to happen—at least not with this man, on this night.
“Get out,” she said. “Calling me silly was a serious mistake. We won’t be going to dinner tonight, I’m afraid.”
Jerry was taken aback. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean that you were silly.”
“Sure you did,” Aurora said. “It’s pointless for you to sit there and quibble. What I said about being lost if I slept with you wasn’t silly, it was merely true, and if you can’t understand that, then I don’t think you should be hanging around here playing at doctoring. At the very least, you lack understanding, and understanding is itself the very least one should be able to expect from one’s doctor. I now see that I can’t expect it from you, and I don’t want to go to dinner with you, or to discuss this unseemly attraction of mine ever again.”
“Can’t I apologize?” Jerry asked, at a loss to know what to do.
“You did apologize, and if there’s anything I hate in a man it’s the habit of excessive apology,” Aurora said. “One apology is quite enough. You made it. Now get out.”
Jerry started to try again, but Aurora anticipated him and cut him off.
“Get out, please,” she repeated. “That is a verdict from which there’s no appeal. If you try to appeal at this moment I’ll cancel my next appointment and I’ll never speak to you again.”
Jerry opened the car door, which made the overhead light come on. He was beginning to feel very depressed—in fact, the depression he felt he might have if Aurora left had arrived while she was still there. He had lived through many quarrels with women, but every time, the depression that always followed struck h
im with fresh force—and it was now striking him with a lot of force. He thought Aurora might notice, relent, take pity. But Aurora looked him over and did neither. She merely waited silently for him to get out of her car, and finally he did.
He turned and looked in one more time before shutting the door, and this time Aurora’s look was not quite so cold.
“Who are you sleeping with now, by the way?” she asked in a flat tone.
“Uh, she’s a waitress,” Jerry said.
“No surprise,” Aurora said. “Please shut the door.”
Jerry did, and she drove off.
5
At Aurora’s house, Rosie and the General were growing desperate. It was almost an hour after dark and Aurora wasn’t home, nor had she called. This was an unheard-of occurrence. They were both in the kitchen—Rosie was pacing and smoking—and, due to her health regimen, she had not smoked in a year. The General couldn’t pace very well, thanks to his crutches, and was sitting stoically at the table, an unfinished game of solitaire in front of him. Rosie had the TV on, tuned to a local news channel.
“That way if she’s been killed on the freeway, they’re bound to show it,” Rosie said.
“Bound to show it to you, maybe,” the General said. “If Aurora’s been killed on a freeway, I don’t want to look. Why would she go on a freeway anyway? She hates freeways.”
“They say most accidents occur within three blocks of home,” Rosie remembered. “Maybe I ought to go up to the corner and look. She could be dead and not three blocks away.”
“Rosie, please stop saying she’s dead,” the General pleaded. “We have no reason to think she’s dead, and if she is I don’t know what we’ll do.”
“Well, I don’t know what we’ll do either, but shit happens,” Rosie informed him.
They had already called Teddy and Jane, neither of whom had heard from Aurora that day. In desperation, as dusk was turning to darkness, the General even urged Rosie to call Pascal. He had long suspected that something might be going on between Aurora and Pascal—what had probably happened, in his view, was that Aurora had dumped Pascal in favor of Jerry Bruckner, and Pascal had strangled her.
“The French make a big thing of amour propre” he told Rosie. “They murder women constantly. Call Pascal and ask him if he murdered Aurora.”
To his astonishment, Rosie did just that.
“Hi, Pascal, did you murder Aurora?” Rosie asked, to the General’s horror.
“I didn’t mean really strangled her,” he whispered, as Rosie was on the phone.
Pascal, for his part, was so startled to hear that Aurora wasn’t home that he readily admitted they had had lunch—although he didn’t admit they had had it in his apartment.
“What if she was kidnapped?” he asked, plunging immediately into wild, irrational worry.
“He thinks she was kidnapped,” Rosie told the General.
“But why would anyone want to kidnap Aurora?” the General asked.
But then he too was filled with his share of wild, irrational worries. Perhaps she had been kidnapped. What else could keep her out so late?
“Ask him if he has any idea who kidnapped her,” the General requested.
“Maybe it had to do with drugs,” Pascal said, when asked. It was a wild guess, prompted by the fact that he had recently been in Colombia, where most kidnappings had to do with drugs.
“He thinks she’s a drug addict,” Rosie reported.
“Aurora?” the General said. “That’s the trouble with the French, they always come up with wild theories.”
Rosie waited, receiver in hand. “Is that what I’m supposed to tell Pascal?” she said.
“Of course not,” the General said. “You weren’t supposed to tell him I thought he might have murdered her, either. That was my wild theory. Why don’t you ask him to come over? Maybe if we put our heads together we can figure this out.”
“I will be right there!” Pascal assured them. As he was rushing out the door it occurred to him that Aurora might have driven to Galveston and drowned herself. Though she had seemed to enjoy making love, just as he had, he did remember that she seemed to be becoming a little depressed as she was leaving. Perhaps she had construed their lovemaking as adultery of some sort, become more depressed, and dashed down to Galveston to drown herself in the ocean.
Before he got his Peugeot started, this passing thought had become a conviction—one which made him very nervous. Not only was there the possibility that Aurora was gone forever just as their romance was finally starting, but it would, at some point, entail admitting to General Scott that he had seduced his girlfriend, thereby causing her fatal despair. General Scott didn’t like him anyway and might well kill him when he heard this news.
Worries piled up as Pascal dashed away from his apartment building—he wanted to get over to Aurora’s as quickly as possible. Nothing he could think of would make him so happy as to rush over there and see that her Cadillac had returned and was parked safely, its rear end sticking out of her garage. If it were only there, he wouldn’t have to go in and confess to the General that he had seduced Aurora; he could just turn quietly around and go back to his apartment.
In his hurry to determine if his fate was to be torment or relief, Pascal plunged straight through the stop sign at the end of his block, a stop sign he had run successfully many times when he was in a hurry. This time, though, he realized a second too late that he shouldn’t have run the stop sign. A giant thing, a pickup with tires the size of whole cars, appeared out of nowhere in front of him, and the Peugeot plowed straight into it, hitting it just in front of its giant rear tire. Pascal, who in his haste had not bothered with his seat belt, crashed through his own windshield and landed in the back of the pickup, cutting his face badly, cracking his skull in two places, and knocking himself out so soundly that he didn’t regain consciousness until more than thirty hours later. When he came to, he was in a hospital, his head hurt, and he had the vague sense that someone had drowned—he just couldn’t think who.
Meanwhile, at Aurora’s house, no one had any notion that Pascal had been in a car wreck. Aurora still wasn’t back, and neither had Pascal arrived to elaborate on his theory of a kidnapping. Rosie had smoked an entire pack of cigarettes and was feeling guilty about it, but not guilty enough to stop her from opening a second pack. The General still sat at the table, his game of solitaire still unfinished, popping with annoyance that Pascal hadn’t bothered to show up.
“It’s what I’ve been telling Aurora all along,” the General said. “He probably had a date or something. He probably never had any intention of coming. He might have even had a date with Aurora. I thought she might be in love with Jerry Bruckner, but now I think she’s probably in love with that lying little Frenchman. They’re probably off having a fancy meal right now, while we sit here and suffer.”
“No way,” Rosie protested. “I know Aurora better than you do. If she was going to go off and have a fancy dinner she’d have come home and changed. She ain’t the kind of woman who would wear the same dress to lunch and dinner both.”
“She might if she’d just fallen madly in love,” the General said darkly. “That’s the one thing that might take her mind off her goddamn clothes.”
“If that’s it, it ain’t Pascal, then,” Rosie said. “I doubt he could keep her mind off clothes for five minutes.”
That sentiment reassured the General somewhat, but not much.
“You know, we have got to go to the prison tomorrow—she’s probably upset about that,” Rosie said. “She’s getting worse and worse upset about Tommy, and you can’t blame her.”
“No,” the General said, reflecting. “Of course you can’t blame her for that. You think that’s why she’s not here?”
“That could be it,” Rosie said. “She’s really getting where she hates to go see Tommy—it’s just that she hates chickening out about it worse.”
“Well, if that’s it, where would she go?” the General wondered.
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“She’d go to the Pig Stand,” Rosie said. “That’s where we always go, after we see Tommy. Maybe this time she just decided to go there first.”
“Oh, that place where she gets the mince pie?” the General inquired. “I went there once. I liked the pork chops. I doubt Aurora would risk it at night, though. You know how paranoid she is about being raped and murdered.”
“She’d risk it at night if she was depressed enough,” Rosie said. “Once Aurora gets depressed enough she forgets she don’t want to be raped and murdered. And if she was hungry, that might push her over the edge.”
“I suppose it’s possible she’s there,” the General said. “Do you think we should call and ask?”
“We could,” Rosie said. “On the other hand, you know how she hates snoops. If we call and she’s there, it might piss her off.”
“Undoubtedly, but call anyway,” the General commanded. “Do you remember what color dress she was wearing?”
“Yellow,” Rosie said. “Why?”
“If she’s not at the Pig Stand I guess we should call the police and see if any dead woman in a yellow dress has turned up at the morgue,” the General said. His spirits had suddenly taken a downward turn.
“Ain’t that a little drastic?” Rosie asked. “She’s late but she ain’t that late.”
“Rosie, this is very irregular,” the General insisted. His spirits had sunk to their lowest point in years, and indeed he was beginning to feel desperate. Even Omaha Beach hadn’t made him feel as desperate as he was beginning to feel—though Omaha Beach had been pretty bad. But on D day it had been his life that had been in danger; now it was Aurora’s. He felt extremely worried.
“The only reason Aurora and I have gotten along as well as we have all these years is because we’re both extremely regular in our habits,” he said. “There’ve been lots of fights, but at least both of us turn up when we’re expected, in order to have the fights. In all these years Aurora’s never failed to turn up, and now she’s not turning up.”