Read Online The Evening Star by Larry McMurtry - Free Book Online Page B

also likely to reduce the likelihood of his jumping at her. Looking over his head, she noticed that, as usual, he had left the lights of his small crumpled Peugeot blazing brightly.
    “Am I late or early?” Pascal asked. “I lose all sense of time when I visit you.”
    “You’re more or less on schedule, but once again you’ve left your lights on,” Aurora said. “I do hope they aren’t stuck. I wish you would remember to turn them off, Pascal. Therest of humanity remembers to turn their lights off, and I’m sure you could, too, if you concentrate. My reputation will suffer, if it hasn’t already, if my lovers insist on coming over here and leaving every light blazing.”
    “Oh, merde! ” Pascal said—it irked him that once again he had forgotten to turn off his lights. He raced across the lawn, whacked them off, and slammed the car door violently. Then he raced back across the lawn and arrived again at Aurora’s side. Encouraged by the fact that she had moved him, at least conversationally, into the category of lover, he tried to resume their hug, but with no success. Aurora merely caught his arm and ushered him inside.
    “I lose all sense of time when I visit you,” Pascal repeated. He was a little breathless from his double dash across the lawn.
    “I lose all sense of everything when I visit you,” he added. “Everything becomes—topsy-turkey, is that correct?”
    “Topsy-turvy,” Aurora corrected, amused. For all his faults, Pascal had a twinkle, and some resilience; slapped down a million times, he would still come twinkling back, and she had never been able to entirely resist men who managed to twinkle, General Scott, on the other hand, had yet to twinkle his first twinkle—or, at least, his first in her company. She had upbraided him for this inability many times, but to no avail.
    Aurora kept a firm grip on Pascal’s arm until she had him firmly installed in the study—if left to roam unchecked, Pascal was apt to dart upstairs for a minute in a misguided attempt to be sociable. Once there he was apt to burst out with niceties which were more or less the moral equivalent of “Vive la France!” His sudden appearances startled both Hector and Rosie, neither of whom ever knew what to say. Once, in a moment of embarrassment, Rosie asked him to join them in a domino game, an invitation that ruined everyone’s evening. Pascal had chattered so that neither the General nor Rosie nor her calculator could add accurately, causing the General to lose his temper and stomp off to bed. That, of course, had been back in the days when he could stomp.

    “What do they do up there?” Pascal asked, glancing hastily upstairs as Aurora marched him along.
    “Oh, don’t mind them, you know how serious they are,” Aurora said. “They’re sorting out the fate of Lithuania, or perhaps Lebanon.”
    “They should talk to me then,” Pascal said. “I was once in Vilnius for three years.”
    “I don’t want to hear the word Lithuania out of you tonight, Pascal,” Aurora informed him. “If I hear it again you’re out on your ear. Sit yourself down and eat this food. I’d like to hear some gossip about Madame Mitterrand, if you have any, and if you don’t, then how about some gossip about Catherine Deneuve?”
    “Madame Mitterrand is very serious,” Pascal said cautiously. He had a sense that this was one of those times when he had better be careful. He had better try to say what Aurora wanted to hear, and yet he had no idea what that might be.
    “I don’t know if Catherine Deneuve is so serious,” he added.
    “You are from France, after all, Pascal,” Aurora said. “What makes you think I care whether they’re serious or not? Who are they sleeping with? Who is anybody sleeping with? Here I sit, dying for a little gossip, and you won’t give me any. I guess it’s not as easy to be a lewd old woman as I’d always hoped it would be.”
    Pascal was so startled that he almost dropped his pear. Aurora