The Evening Star (50 page)

Lorna, an elderly waitress who had served the two women often, came tripping over to the table with a steaming pot of coffee. She meant to freshen their cups, and was just about to tip the pot and pour a little coffee over Rosie’s Sweet ’n Low, when for some reason she happened to glance at General Scott, who was dead.

Lorna had worked at the Pig Stand for many years, and had seen much, but even for a woman of her experience it was a shock to see a dead general sitting in one of her booths.

“Oh, good lord,” she said, in a tone that caused Rosie to look up. The same tone had no effect on Aurora, who, when engaged with a crossword, seldom looked up.

Rosie thought for a second that Lorna must have spilled the coffee, which would have been unusual. Lorna was such a good waitress that she could pour coffee from ten feet away. But there was no spilled coffee on the table, and when Rosie looked up Lorna tactfully inclined her head, with its blue perm, in the direction of the General, who seemed to be napping comfortably against Aurora’s shoulder. His mouth was open, it was true, but he wasn’t snoring.

A second later, Rosie realized why the General wasn’t snoring—why he would snore no more. Shock hit—she felt dizzy for a second, but only for a second. There was Aurora
to think of—Aurora hadn’t realized yet that a dead man, not a live man, leaned against her shoulder. She was tapping one finger impatiently against the table—she often tapped one finger when she was about to get a word.

Rosie looked to Lorna for help, but Lorna was finding herself a little more unnerved by this development than was good. The hand that held the coffeepot began to shake, forcing her to give up the idea of pouring Rosie some more coffee.

Rosie looked at Aurora, hoping she would look up—one look would do it.

“Hon,” Rosie said, and stopped.

Aurora began to get a feeling she had had before—a sense of disquiet. Her feeling told her that something she wasn’t going to want to know about had happened. Around her in the restaurant there had been a change of atmosphere. Things had become too quiet. No glasses were rattling. Silence was spreading through the Pig Stand, a place that was usually full of the noise of life.

“Hon,” Rosie said again.

Aurora reluctantly looked at Rosie, who was very pale. She looked at Lorna, who had been forced to set the coffeepot on a nearby table. Lorna was also pale—she seemed to be trembling. Finally, Aurora looked at Hector, who was leaning rather too heavily against her shoulder. She knew at once that she wouldn’t be finishing her crossword, not just then. The reason for the quiet in the restaurant was clear, and her feeling about the something she didn’t want to know had been accurate.

Carefully, Aurora put the cap back on her fountain pen.

“Well, Hector, you would,” she said in a small voice. “You . . . would, and just when I was beginning to like you again, too.”

“He had a good life, I guess, your old boyfriend,” Rosie said.

3

Melanie had only been back from the General’s funeral two hours when Bruce told her he was sleeping with Katie. He had been pretty distant when he met her at LAX, and that was why. On the drive over to the Valley they had a hard time making conversation—even before they got to the apartment Melanie had begun to wonder why she had even come back. She had stayed in Houston ten days—her granny and Rosie were adjusting, there was no real reason for her to stay longer. When she talked to Bruce on the phone it made her nervous—it kind of made her wonder. He wouldn’t tip one way or another on the question of her coming back. He wouldn’t say he wanted her to, but he also wouldn’t say he
didn’t
want her to. His voice had an aggrieved tone, as if talking to her at all was this enormous burden. After just about every conversation, Melanie cried. She missed him and wanted him to say he missed her, but he didn’t say it, and if his tone of voice was any indication, didn’t miss her either.

“So why go back?” Rosie asked once, when Melanie was crying. “If he can’t come up with a better conversation than
that, then he’s a jerk, and if he’s a jerk, why go back? Stay here and help me with your grandmother.”

“Stay here and help you with
you,
I believe you mean,” Aurora said. “Sometimes I think you miss Hector more than I do.”

“I do, I miss him terrible, I don’t know why,” Rosie said. “I wish I could just hear his cranky old voice one more time.”

“People are odd,” Aurora said. “But that’s not Melly’s problem. There’s no reason she should sit around here being depressed by two moldering old women.”

“But Bruce is a jerk,” Rosie said. “He’s a stupid little two-timing jerk, and I thought so the minute I saw him.”

“That description more or less fits the male gender, you know,” Aurora said.

“It didn’t fit Willie, I just wish he was back,” Rosie said, wiping her eyes. She had to wipe them every time Willie’s name came up.

Aurora sighed, but she didn’t cry. She looked at her granddaughter, chubby and dispirited, and considered what to advise. Very probably Rosie was right about the young man, Bruce, but the fact that very probably she was right was no help to Melanie, who seemed to love him.

“Why don’t you two run off to your gym and bob up and down for a while?” Aurora said to Rosie. “Melly could stand to lose two or three pounds, and you need to get your mind off Willie, if it is humanly possible for you to get your mind off Willie.”

Only the day before they had received the bad news that Willie’s therapy was not going well and that he might have to be in Alabama for as much as another month. The news convinced Rosie of what she had been more or less convinced of anyway, which was that Willie, cured or not, didn’t want to be her boyfriend anymore and would never come back. Willie called collect every two or three days and said exactly the opposite—that he couldn’t wait to come back, that he
did
still want to be Rosie’s boyfriend—but Rosie in her heart of hearts didn’t believe him.

The next day, Melanie began to get the feeling that it was
now or never. She made a plane reservation, called Bruce, and flew into LAX. Another bad sign was that Bruce hadn’t really wanted to come meet her plane. He said he had been working a double shift at the gas station and was too bummed to drive that far. He actually tried to talk her in to taking a bus over to Hollywood-Burbank airport, which would be a lot easier for him.

“Bruce, I’m coming in at eleven-forty—nearly midnight,” Melanie explained. “Am I really going to have to ride a bus all the way across L.A. at midnight?”

Then Bruce suggested that maybe her grandmother could give her enough money to take a taxi—he acknowledged that getting a bus at midnight was no fun. Melanie was getting close to losing her temper—he was just being
so
reluctant—and she was also getting close to crying when Bruce finally gave in and said, rather meekly, okay, he’d come and get her.

He was there, too, looking nervous, and he didn’t kiss her on the mouth when she came bouncing up to hug him. She didn’t know if it was deliberate; maybe he was just shy, with all the strangers milling around them, but it sort of left her with a sinking feeling—not a good feeling to have when you were just getting home at midnight. It was hard to come back and start trying again, with Bruce acting so reluctant. She asked about his acting class, and what movies he’d seen and stuff, but Bruce just drove. He didn’t look at her, he wasn’t cooperative when she tried to hold his hand, and when they got back to the apartment and she made a pass—after all, it was her first night back—he just deflected the pass by saying he was tired.

“Okay,” Melanie said. After all, it was one in the morning by then and he did work in a gas station, maybe he
was
tired. But the fact that he hadn’t kissed her on the mouth at the airport and then had deflected the pass, too, had begun to get her down. It wasn’t too often that Bruce deflected a pass—sex was kind of the one sure thing they had, and now the vibe she was getting was that maybe they didn’t have it anymore.

Then, since she felt he wouldn’t talk and she felt too jittery
just to get in bed and try to sleep, she started unpacking her suitcase and went to hang up her funeral dress and stuff, and that was when she got the big shock. They had only one closet, and it was always jammed, but now it wasn’t, and the reason it wasn’t was that none of Bruce’s clothes were in it anymore.

“Bruce, where’s your clothes, was it a robbery?” she asked, panicky for a moment.

“It wasn’t a robbery,” Bruce assured her, looking guilty and hangdog.

“Then where’s your stupid clothes?” Melanie asked, almost yelling—she was getting in a bad panic. Maybe she shouldn’t have called them stupid, Bruce had some pretty good clothes, but still—

He was just acting real reluctant—he didn’t even say one word.

“Bruce, where’s your clothes?” she demanded. She couldn’t help it, she was getting wrought up.

“I’m living with Katie now,” he said finally. “I took my clothes to her house.”

Melanie was so stunned she couldn’t speak—but she should have spoken, because at that point Bruce just stood up, stuck a couple of twenty-dollar bills on top of the TV, and walked out. By the time she was ready to speak he was gone and there was no one to speak to—really there wasn’t even anyone to call. Her one semi-friend in L.A. was Katie, the little skinny yuppie who had just taken her boyfriend. Melanie would have liked to spend about a hundred hours talking to either one of them, or to both of them together, but of course that couldn’t happen—she was obviously the last person either of them would want to talk to. Bruce had had his chance, and probably hadn’t uttered thirty words all told, in the two hours she’d been with him.

But it was so weird—the two of them had just been getting to know Katie a little. She had come out to her mother’s beach house a lot while Melanie was there recuperating from her miscarriage. Usually she had a guy, and usually they surfed. Sometimes all four of them went down the road and
had Chinese. All Bruce could talk about afterward was what a complete yuppie Katie was. Melanie had even defended her, pointing out that she came by her yuppiness naturally. After all, nice as Patsy was, she was still pretty much a yuppie, and Katie was her daughter. Bruce even made fun of Katie’s skinny legs; Melanie had even said, Come on, she’s nice, she can’t help it if she has skinny legs.

Three days after Melanie got back to town, Bruce called and asked if she’d send him his mail, and Melanie couldn’t help bursting out. “I guess you managed to get over your phobia about skinny legs, didn’t you, asshole!” she yelled.

Bruce, since he wasn’t there facing her—he was safe at the other end of the phone—came on real calm and mature, which, considering the mood she was in, didn’t help matters at all.

“You told me yourself I needed to get over that,” he pointed out.

“If you were falling in love with her, why didn’t you tell me when I was in Houston?” she asked. “Why’d you let me come all the way back out here if you were already in love with Katie?”

“It’s not so much that I’m in love,” Bruce said—he seemed to be real calm. It was as if he had just decided to meditate now about it all over the phone with her, real calm, as if he had done yoga all night or something. Just when she was so wrought up she could have smashed him with a club, he was suddenly Mr. Cool. It was extremely irritating. Melanie had all she could do to keep from screaming into the phone at the top of her lungs.

“If you’re not in love, why’d you do this to me?” she asked.

“Melly, it wasn’t like this was aimed at you,” Bruce said. “It wasn’t aimed at anybody. It just sort of happened.”

“It may not have been aimed at me, but it hit me,” Melanie said. “Now I lost my job—they said at the restaurant that I stayed away three days too long. So now I don’t have a job and I don’t have you—I don’t have anything. I wish you’d told me before I came back here. All I do all day is sit and feel like a fucking fool.”

“You need to get a little more positive about things,” Bruce said blandly.

“Positive about what, you fuckhead!” Melanie yelled. “What do I have to be positive about? I’ve got about five dollars, the rent’s due, and now I’m going to have to ask Granny for money, which I absolutely hate doing.”

“I don’t see why you hate it so much,” Bruce said. “She’s your grandmother. She’s not going to mind.”

“She may not mind about the money but she’s gonna mind that I wasted my time with an asshole like you,” Melanie said. “I talked myself hoarse defending you and then this happened.”

“Are my
Varietys
still coming to the apartment?” Bruce asked, trying to change the subject. “I sent a forwarding address but they haven’t started showing up over here yet.”

“Yeah, they’re here, you wanta come and get them?” Melanie asked. For a moment she had the faint hope that if she could just get him in her presence for a moment he might come back to her. He might have just got dazzled briefly—Katie
was
very good-looking in her yuppie way. Also, Katie totally couldn’t exist without a guy—she went through every second of her life being vulnerable—maybe Bruce had fallen for the vulnerability. Maybe if he came back to get his mail he’d get some perspective and realize that Katie wasn’t really his type. At least it went through her head. At least she’d get to see him face to face. But a second later she was sorry she’d asked, because Bruce immediately made five or six excuses and got off the phone. When he hung up she felt so bleak she didn’t even move for at least an hour. There was nothing to move for. Who knew if she would even get to hear his voice on the phone again? He was a total wimp when it came to pressure—the mere thought that she wanted him to come over would probably be enough to keep him from coming over.

While she was feeling so bleak she couldn’t move the phone rang and it was her granny—she had just called on a hunch. Her granny often had hunches where Melanie was concerned, and her hunches were usually right. They were so right that Aurora didn’t even bother chatting for a while to
see if it came out that her hunch was right. This time she just bore right in.