The Evening Star Read Free Page A

did he flash?” Aurora asked. “For an ancient person on crutches he’s developed quite an extensive repertoire.”
    “He left his pajamas unbuttoned,” Rosie said. “I think the next time he goes that route I might spill a glass of ice water in his lap, or a little hot tea or something.”
    “Yes, do that,” Aurora said. “At least he didn’t pull the crutches trick, which he’s very prone to pulling when I’m his target.”
    “What’s the crutches trick?” Rosie asked.
    “He hoists himself on his crutches and then contrives to let his bathrobe fall open,” Aurora said. “Then he just stands there grinning. He looks like a mummy on crutches.”
    “Well, he’s eighty-six,” Rosie said, softening her stance a bit.
    “Why is that relevant?” Aurora asked. “You yourself are not exactly a maiden, but you don’t stand around lolling out of your bathrobe.”
    “I’m too flat-chested, there’s nothing to loll,” Rosie said. “We may not be no spring chickens but we ain’t really old like the General, either.”
    Aurora gave her maid a quizzical look. “I’m afraid I don’t quite take your point, if you have one,” she said. “Is there any reason why the old shouldn’t be expected to behave as well as the middle-aged?”
    “Middle-aged?” Rosie said. “Do you think we’re still middle-aged?”
    “Well, why aren’t we?” Aurora asked. She opened the glove compartment and poked around in it hopefully—she had the vague suspicion that she might have hidden some money in it at some point.

    “You’re kidding yourself,” Rosie informed her. “We ain’t been middle-aged for twenty years.”
    To her delight, Aurora discovered just what she had been hoping to find: twenty-four dollars, tucked into a city map.
    “Why, there’s my twenty-four dollars, let’s stop at the flower shop,” she said. “As for middle-aged, you’re quite wrong. There’s a category called late middle age which has rather indefinite boundaries. I think we’re both still well inside them—or at least I am.”
    “The backyard’s nothing but flowers, why do you want to buy more?” Rosie asked. She was not keen on stopping at the flower shop.
    “You’re right, go home—flowers are a job for Pascal,” Aurora said. “I’ll call him and tell him to bring over twenty-four dollars’ worth next time he shows up.”
    “What if he don’t want to? Pascal ain’t rich, you know.” Rosie said.
    “No, but I don’t see anything extravagant about asking him to bring me twenty-four dollars’ worth of flowers, since that’s the precise amount I found in my glove compartment,” Aurora said, grinning. “How could anyone argue with the logic of that?”
    Rosie didn’t care about the logic—it was the first time Aurora had smiled since leaving the prison. If it cost Pascal twenty-four dollars, it was worth it.
    Still, she had not quite finished making her point about the General and his new fondness for flashing. That was one subject, but it was connected to a second subject, and the second subject—of profound interest to Rosie—was whether Aurora and the General still had sex.
    Obviously the General was plenty randy in his head, but that didn’t necessarily mean he was randy elsewhere, nor did it offer the slightest clue as to Aurora’s position on the matter. And Aurora, no prude, and no enemy of plain speech, either, had ceased to be either forthcoming or plain about that aspect of her life with the General.
    Rosie ached to know, partly out of simple curiosity and partly because a little more information might help her witha dilemma of her own—her boyfriend, C. C. Granby, once as feisty as a rooster, seemed to be losing his roosterlike propensities at an alarming rate. Rosie couldn’t figure out if it was her fault or his, and could not quite get up her nerve to apply to Aurora for an opinion.
    “What I meant about the General not buttoning his pajamas or letting his bathrobe flop open is that we’re