Free Terms of Endearment by Larry McMurtry

recall. Late as I usually am, one of my escorts might grow dizzy from hunger and fall in front of a bus if I did that. Given a choice, I’d far rather my escorts applied their time to seeing that we get a good table.”
    “Oh, sure, sure,” Edward Johnson said. “You take your time. I’ll just run back in and see about ours right now.”
    Ten minutes later Aurora stepped into the restaurant and smiled at him as if she had not seen him in weeks. “Why there you are, Edward, as usual,” she said. Thanks to nervousness his kiss landed somewhere between her cheek and her ear, but she seemed not to notice. Her stockings were on, but the backdraft from another passing bus had blown her abundant hair into a wild upward shape, and she paused a moment to comb it down.
    Aurora never allowed herself to take the slightest notice of the reputation of restaurants—not in America, at any rate—and in her view it was quite obvious that no self-respecting French restaurant would have allowed itself to be in Houston anyway. She soon swept on toward the dining room, trailing Edward Johnson behind her. The maitre d’ saw them coming and rushed to confront them—Aurora had always unnerved him, and she did it again. He saw her patting a few vagrant locks into place and failed to realize that in her view her appearance was quite as it should be. He himself was fond of mirrors and at once suggested one.
    “Bonjour, madame,” he said. “Madame would like the ladies’ room?”
    “Thank you, no, and it’s not quite your place to raise such topics, monsieur,” Aurora said, walking right past him. “I hope we’re going to be seated well, Edward. You know how I adore watching people come in. I’ve been rushing, as you can see. Probably you’re very annoyed with me for being so tardy.”
    “No, of course not, Aurora,” Mr. Johnson said. “Are you feeling well?”
    Aurora nodded, glancing around the restaurant with happy disdain. “Why yes,” she said. “I hope we’re having pompano, and as soon as it’s practicable. You know I love it above all fish. If you had a bit more initiative you might have ordered it in advance, Edward. You are rather passive, you know. If you had ordered it in advance we could be eating it now. There was little enough likelihood that I would have wanted anything else.”
    “Certainly, Aurora,” he said.
    “Uh, pompano,” he said to the first passing busboy, who looked at him blankly.
    “That’s a busboy, Edward,” Aurora said. “Busboys do not take orders. The waiters are the ones in the dinner jackets. I do think a man in your position ought to keep these distinctions a little more clearly in mind.”
    Edward Johnson could have bitten his tongue off. Almost always Aurora’s mere presence was enough to cause him to say things that made him want to bite his tongue off. It was absolutely inexplicable. He had known the difference between waiters and busboys for at least thirty years. He had even been a busboy himself once, as a teenager in Southampton. Yet the minute he sat down beside Aurora Greenway foolish remarks of a sort he would never otherwise have made seemed to pop out of his mouth with no warning. It was some sort of vicious circle. Aurora was not one to let foolish remarks pass, and the more she didn’t let them pass the more he seemed compelled to make them. He had been courting her for three years and could not remember a single foolish remark that she had ever let pass.
    “I’m sorry,” he said humbly.
    “Well, I don’t think I want to hear about it,” Aurora said, looking him in the eye. “I’ve always thought that people who are too quick with their apologies can’t have a very healthy attitude.”
    She took off a few of her rings and began to shine them up with her napkin. Napkins seemed to work better on rings than anything else, and as far as she could see, the fact that the restaurant had nice napkins was about the only justification for having lunch with Edward