Free Terms of Endearment by Larry McMurtry Page A

Johnson. A man who would order pompano from a busboy was hardly inspiring. On the whole, men who stood in awe of her were even worse than men who didn’t, and Edward Johnson seemed mired at least hip deep in awe. He had lapsed into nervous silence and was munching a piece of celery that seemed to her much too wet.
    “You had better put a napkin in your lap if you intend to keep eating that celery, Edward,” she said. “I’m afraid it’s dripping on you. On the whole you don’t seem quite attentive to things today. I hope you haven’t had setbacks at the bank.”
    “Oh, no,” Edward Johnson said. “Everything’s going just fine, Aurora.” He wished some real food would come. If there wassome real food on the table to talk about he might stand a chance of saying something sensible; there would be less risk that ridiculous remarks would pop out of his mouth to embarrass him.
    Aurora quickly found herself driven to the wall with boredom, as was usually the case when she lunched with Edward Johnson. He was so afraid of making a fool of himself that he said nothing at all; the best he could offer in the way of conversation was to munch his celery as loudly as possible. She took refuge, as was her custom, in a minute examination of everyone in the restaurant—an examination that was hardly reassuring. A number of well-dressed and obviously influential men were lunching with women much too young for them. Most of the women were young enough to be their escorts’ daughters, but Aurora doubted very much that that was the case.
    “Humph,” she said, offended by the sight. “All is not well in the land.”
    “Where?” Edward Johnson said, jumping a little. He assumed that he had spilled something on himself, but he couldn’t imagine what, since he had stopped eating celery and was sitting with both hands in his lap. Perhaps the busboy had spilled something on him in revenge.
    “Well, I must say the evidence is all around us, Edward, if you’d only open your eyes and look,” Aurora said. “I distinctly dislike seeing young women debauched. A great many of them are probably secretaries, and I doubt they can have had much experience of the world. I suppose when I am not able to lunch with you you resort to younger women, don’t you, Edward?”
    The accusation left Edward Johnson momentarily speechless. It was, in fact, true, and he hadn’t the slightest notion how Aurora had found it out, or any hint of how much she knew, not that there was much to know. In the four years since his wife’s death he had wined and dined at least thirty of the youngest and most inexperienced secretaries he could find, hoping that some one of them would be impressed enough with his rank or his table manners to sleep with him, but it had been a forlorn effort. Even the greenest little eighteen-year-olds, out of Conroe or Nacogdoches, had no trouble finding ways around him. Scores of fancy meals and hours of his suavest conversation had not sofar swayed any of them even to the point of holding hands with him. In truth, he was not far from despair with it all, and his most cherished dream was that maybe someday Aurora Greenway, through some whimsy of the heart, would suddenly decide to marry him and save him from such punishing pursuits.
    “You don’t seem to be speaking up, Edward,” Aurora said, looking at him closely. She had not really meant anything by her accusation—it was her habit, on occasion, to toss out nets of accusation just to see what she could drag in. Those with any sense denied everything at once. The denials might fall on deaf ears; but more often the ears they fell on were just disinterested, Aurora’s thoughts having wandered away in the time it took the accused to frame his denial.
    The only thoroughly stupid tactic possible when faced with one of Aurora’s accusations was to confess; it was the tactic Edward Johnson immediately took. He had meant to lie—he almost always lied to Aurora about