“Well, I’m in the car with you,” Jerry said. “I ate barbecue with you. It may not be much, but it’s not nothing, either.”
“From where I sit there’s a pretty thin line separating this from nothing,” Patsy said.
Fifty miles passed in silence, and Patsy began to ask about Aurora.
“Did the General’s death change anything?” she asked.
“It ended the affair,” Jerry said.
“Well, that’s news,” Patsy said.
“Why did it end the affair?” she asked a minute later, after waiting in vain for Jerry to amplify the information.
“Aurora’s in mourning,” he said.
“As well she should be,” Patsy said. “The General stood by her through some pretty thin times.”
“Yes, that’s what she said,” Jerry agreed. “I only saw the man three or four times myself.”
“They were an odd fit, but I guess they were a fit,” Patsy said. “Did Aurora ever think you were really going to be her therapist, or was that just a ruse?”
“Aurora’s not much for ruses,” Jerry said.
“Well, neither am I, unless you consider hitting on you in a grocery store to be a ruse,” Patsy said.
Jerry didn’t respond to that remark—he let a minute go by in silence.
“Is it that you’d just rather not be wanted, or that you’re at a loss for words when you discover that you are wanted?” Patsy asked.
“I think of myself as the prime wanter, actually,” Jerry said.
Patsy thought he must be joking, but when she looked at him he looked back at her gravely.
“The prime wanter?” she said. “If that’s how you think of yourself you certainly disguise your wantings pretty well. Other than Algerian mustard, I’d be hard put to name a single thing you seem to want particularly. You certainly don’t appear to want me.”
“I want you but I’m blocked,” Jerry said, still solemn. “You’re too educated. I know it’s silly to be so scared of educated women, but I can’t help it.”
“Uh-hum, and how long have you had this problem, Doctor?” Patsy asked.
“Since I left Las Vegas,” Jerry said. “When I went to New York to try and be a comic I had it really badly.”
Patsy waited. Jerry seemed to have forgotten that they were talking, but then he sensed her impatience, looked over at her, and grinned.
“In New York I went out with a beautiful widow,” he said. “Her husband had been a socially prominent stockbroker—he lost a lot of money and jumped out of a window. She had been to medical school and was a top cancer researcher. She was one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever gone out with, and she was nice, too. She had been to school in France, and also to the Harvard Medical School.”
Again he stopped, shrugged, and said no more.
“Well, those things aren’t sins,” Patsy said. “So what’s the deal? What happened?”
“I was paralyzed—I just couldn’t deal with that much education,” Jerry said. “I think we went out eighteen times and I never so much as kissed her.”
“If it’s any help, I didn’t go to school in France, or to the Harvard Medical School either,” Patsy said.
“The General told me something interesting the one time I saw him alone,” Jerry said.
“You’re the worst sidestepper I’ve ever known,” Patsy said. “I’ll bite, though—there being nothing else to do. What interesting thing did the General tell you?”
“That if Aurora died suddenly he intended to try and marry Rosie,” Jerry said.
“Men are lazy,” Patsy told him. “Why go to all the trouble of looking for a new woman when there’s one you’ve known for twenty years right in the house? I think that’s how men reason, if you can call that reason.
“So what about Aurora?” Patsy asked. She had killed her motor—they were just sitting in the empty parking lot, watching clouds roll over. “Do you think the affair’s really ended?”
Jerry considered. The truth was, sorrow lent Aurora something. She was more silent, for one thing. She wasn’t always talking, chattering, singing. From being sexually bold or even coarse, she had become dignified, reserved, and withdrawn. She took her mourning seriously enough to dress more soberly, too. She wasn’t always in black, but she avoided wild colors and often wore a scarf over her hair.
She wouldn’t let Jerry get near her, either—not even to hold her hand or offer a comforting hug.
“I suppose I feel a certain guilt,” Aurora admitted to him. “Death often makes much of life seem unseemly, you know.”
Jerry, who had never particularly wanted to sleep with Aurora when she was pursuing him, now found that he missed being in bed with her; but instead of waiting for a moment when Aurora might feel yielding again, he had started going to the movies and then to bed with another tall country girl with slightly crooked teeth. Her name was Lalani, she was twenty-two, she hoped to be a beautician, and she worked at the Winchell’s Doughnut House six blocks from his home, where he often went for coffee. Lalani had grown up in Odessa.
“Oil-field trash and proud of it,” she said brightly. “I guess that’s why I like this dirty ol’ fucking so much.” She had greenish eyes and a large collection of Harlequin romances, which she added to, on her afternoons off, at a paperback exchange on Airline Road.
“It’s a long way to drive but they got the most Harlequins,” Lalani said. She lived on onion rings, cheeseburgers, and Winchell’s doughnuts; she had no interest in exercise, unless activities of a sexual nature counted as exercise.
“Why’d I want to run around pounding my legs on the pavement when I can sweat off just as much weight bouncing on this nice old bed with you?” she asked, when Jerry invited her to jog with him.
Jerry decided not to mention Lalani to Patsy—Patsy was irritated enough as it was. He eased out of the evening by offering to lend her a book she had happened to mention, which he happened to own. It was a book on subconscious language, by a Hungarian analyst named Thaas-Thienemann.
Patsy drove home thinking Jerry was a jerk—it was too humiliating, she would never attempt to ambush him at Jamail’s again; but—again—she changed her mind and they sparred through six more lengthy evenings before she finally decided that the only way it was going to happen was if she took matters into her own hands, which she did one afternoon not five minutes after Aurora Greenway had walked out of Jerry’s door. Patsy had been on her way over, meaning to return Jerry’s book, saw Aurora’s Cadillac at the curb, and was about to drive on, more annoyed than ever, when she saw Aurora step out of his house. She quickly turned right, hoping Aurora hadn’t seen her, and then drove around the block, and around another block, wondering why she was bothering with this man. Anyone who liked Aurora Greenway as much as Jerry seemed to couldn’t be that interesting, anyway.
But, after whistling along several nondescript sururban blocks, she turned back to Jerry’s street. The Cadillac was gone. Patsy was too annoyed to reflect, and one of the things she was annoyed with was her own tendency to last-minute timidities. She was always backing out at the last minute; both her girls were always telling her she was too chicken, too conservative, when it came to men. Both girls were appalled, or, at least, professed to be appalled, by their mother’s long celibate stretches, the most recent of which was getting on toward a year and a half.
“You just need to get laid, Mom—maybe you wouldn’t be so critical,” Katie told her in their most recent telephone conversation.
Patsy started to ring Jerry’s doorbell, but then decided to try the door instead. It opened, and she stepped into his house. Jerry sat in the living room, in shorts and an old blue T-shirt. He had been reading the sports page. He looked up at Patsy, a little surprised but not alarmed.
“I brought your book back,” Patsy said, her timidity rising. What was she doing, marching into this man’s living room?
“What’d you think of it?” Jerry asked.
“I’m not thinking just now, I want
to kiss you,” Patsy said, taking his paper and folding it carefully before she trapped him on his couch, her body across his legs.
“I don’t want you to give me any trouble—I don’t want you to deny me anymore,” she said, sliding her fingers up his neck, into his hair.
6
When Aurora walked into Jerry’s house early the next morning, the first thing she noticed was Patsy Carpenter’s yellow belt lying on Jerry’s old couch.
Since Hector’s death, she had formed the habit of driving over to Jerry’s early to have a cup of coffee with him before his first patient appeared. She seldom stayed more than fifteen or twenty minutes. Willie was back, apparently cured, and he and Rosie had taken to staying in bed rather late, which left Aurora with no one in the early mornings, a time when she particularly liked to have someone to have a cup of coffee or a bite of breakfast with. On a few occasions she had summoned Pascal, but Pascal was not what one would call a morning person. He was either silent and half-asleep or he was wide-awake and petulant, at a time when a petulant man was the last thing Aurora was interested in seeing across her breakfast table.
Jerry Bruckner was not much of a morning person either, but he wasn’t French, and thus was far less likely to ruin her morning with complaints, as Pascal so often did. At their most recent breakfast Pascal had upbraided her bitterly because she had allowed herself to run out of raspberry jam although she was well aware that raspberry was his favorite jam.
“Pascal, I’m in mourning, don’t talk to me like that just because I forgot your raspberry jam,” Aurora said before crying briefly.
Patsy Carpenter’s yellow belt had a certain dash—sufficient dash, in fact, that Aurora had once been moved to compliment her on it. She had even asked Patsy where she got the belt, thinking she might want to locate something comparable for herself.
“I got it at the Broadway in Sherman Oaks,” Patsy said. “I went to shop for towels and ended up buying this belt. Want me to get you a swell belt, Aurora, next time I go?”
“Well, if you see one that says ‘Aurora’ to you, you might,” Aurora said.
Now the same yellow belt was lying on Jerry Bruckner’s living-room couch, and the somewhat squashed cushions of the old couch caused Aurora to picture the two bodies, Jerry’s and Patsy’s, fervent and sweaty, in the act of love. The image had such impact that she felt weak—she didn’t take another step forward. Jerry had left the front door open for her, but he was not in the room. Often she slipped in while he was showering; she would be sitting at the kitchen table, sipping tea, when he appeared, looking clean-shaven, boyish, a little sleepy, his hair still wet.
The morning there would be no coffee. Aurora could hear the shower running down the hall. She felt as if she had been kicked in the gut. Quietly, hoping Jerry wouldn’t hear her, she backed out the door and closed it behind her. Her main hope was that her car would start smoothly so she could make her way off and not have to see or speak to Jerry Bruckner just then. The Cadillac had been rather prone to stalls lately—it often didn’t seem quite ready to start when she turned the key. Her one hope, this time, was that it would at least run long enough to get her around the corner, out of sight, so that her humiliation would not be witnessed by the young man she had so foolishly insisted on flinging herself at. Again, the image of his body and Patsy’s on the couch came to mind, so clearly that she could scarcely see the sidewalk ahead of her.
Fortunately, the Cadillac started immediately and she was able to ease away. At the corner she looked back, fearing she might see Jerry running down the sidewalk after her, or else just standing on his front step, wondering why she was leaving without so much as a sip of coffee. But there was no one on the sidewalk or on the step. She was safe.
She thought of going to Pascal’s—there was a chance he would rise to the occasion and provide her with an emotional refuge for a bit. For all his petulance about raspberry jam, he was rather a knowing man—that was the good part about his being French.
On the other hand, he was a very selfish man—he might try to take advantage of her in her distress. In fact, that would be just like him. He had already offended her several times by being callous about Hector’s death. Only last week he had offended her at lunch by suggesting pointedly that she had mourned long enough.
“Life is for the living,” he said.
“Yes, I know, I’m living right now,” Aurora said.
“You are not living—you are not active,” Pascal said. “My wife died, I was sad, but I put it behind. I became active again.”
“I’ve had a sample of your activity,” Aurora reminded him. “It’s fine, but for the moment I prefer my grief, if you don’t mind. For all his persnickitiness Hector Scott meant a lot to me. I hope I don’t have to remind you of that too many more times, Pascal.”
His views on activity and inactivity being what they were, she decided it was not the moment to present herself to Pascal. She thought of the Pig Stand and of a waffle house she was fond of, but with no enthusiasm: the punch she had just received seemed to have taken away her appetite. She felt too punched to eat, or cry. She thought of going to Galveston and watching the ocean all day, but there would be traffic, her car might stop, it was a long way to drive. She had come out barefoot, in her gown and housecoat, which would leave her feeling at a disadvantage if she had to talk to policemen or tow-truck people, which could well be the case if her car did stop.
Carefully, using an old route remembered from the days when Houston had no freeway, Aurora inched north across the bayou and east through the railroad yards until she was in the region of the Ship Channel. Somewhere on McCarty Street she remembered seeing an open-air Greek bar where the sailors came to drink and play cards. It was in sight of the great refineries to the south—the air smelled of oil and salt. But she remembered it as friendly, and friendly at the moment was all she hoped for from life.
Sure enough, the bar—actually, little more than a shed—was there, open to the breezes from the Gulf, and to the traffic from McCarty Street as well. Two old Greek men in undershirts were sitting at a little rickety table, shuffling little ivory dominoes. Both were stocky, both had white hair, both were smoking, and neither seemed at all surprised when a large barefooted woman in a gown and housecoat got out of an old Cadillac and picked her way across the strip of shaley gravel that functioned as their parking lot.
“Got any retsina this morning?” Aurora asked, with the best smile she was capable of.
The Greek on her right raised his eyebrows and smiled. “You lose your shoes?” he asked.
“Shut up! She left them at the dance,” the Greek on her left said. He rose and went to retrieve a wobbly-looking green chair that someone had kicked into the parking lot in the course of the night. Aurora had almost hit it while attempting to park correctly. The man set it carefully on the somewhat uneven concrete floor of the bar.
“Sit, be comfortable,” he said. “It’s a beautiful day.”
The other man got up, disappeared briefly, and returned with a bottle of retsina and a glass.
“Don’t drop it, it’s the last glass,” he said, setting bottle and glass in front of Aurora. “I may go buy some more today if it don’t get too hazy.
“It’s a beautiful day, it ain’t gonna get hazy,” he added, for Aurora’s benefit.
It was rather a beautiful day, Aurora decided. Sunlight was slanting through a number of holes in the roof, which seemed to be affixed to the walls at a rather tipsy angle.
“The hurricane blew the roof off, but we stuck it back,” the other man informed her. “We didn’t stick it back too straight.”
“It don’t look heavy, but it’s heavy,” the other man informed her.
“It’s also rather punctured,” Aurora observed, pouring herself a retsina. “Don’t you get wet when it rains?”
“We don’t come here when it rains,” one of the Greeks admitted.
Aurora quickly drank about half of the glass of retsina, watched impassively
by the two men. Both had huge bags under their eyes—identical bags. The longer she inspected them, the more identicalities she noticed. They had identical bellies, identical undershirts, identically muscular shoulders, and identical white hair. Besides, the looks they fixed on her were also identical: profoundly world-weary, and yet alert. They were men, she was a woman, she had walked into their lives, and they were sizing matters up.
“My goodness, I’ve figured it out, you’re twins,” Aurora announced.
The two men shook their heads. “Brothers, not twins,” one said.
“Do I get to know your names?” Aurora asked.
“Petrakis,” one said. “I’m Theo and he’s Vassily.”
“Well, I’m Aurora. I like this retsina, but I hate to be the only one drinking, particularly at such an early hour,” she said.
“It don’t matter when you drink,” Theo said. “Your stomach don’t know what time it is.”
“Are you sure this is the only glass?” Aurora asked. “What kind of bar just owns one glass?”
“A Greek kind of bar,” Vassily remarked. “Everybody that comes here thinks he has to be a Greek and break glasses. I wanted to get plastic but Theo won’t have no plastic.”
“We argue,” Theo said. “I think plastic is tacky.”
“I absolutely agree,” Aurora said, just as a large oil truck, running a bit too close to the edge of the road, whooshed a gust of hot exhaust into the bar, causing her to cough.
When she stopped coughing, the two Greeks were still looking at her.
“You two look as if you’ve seen it all, and I guess if it’s Western civilization we’re talking about, you have,” Aurora said.
The men had no comment on that observation.
“If you two are not twins, who’s the elder?” Aurora asked, hoping to milk a little volubility out of them.
“I was born first,” Theo said. “I beat him by a year.”
“It’s my bar, though,” Vassily said. “He just works here.”