Free The Evening Star by Larry McMurtry

had a reckless look in her eye. She wanted to talk about movie stars or presidents’ wives sleeping with people. She had even suggested that she wouldn’t mind being a lewd old woman. Could she be doing what Americans called “coming on”?
    Watching her closely, Pascal decided that that was exactly what was happening—why had he been surprised? His lifelong assumption, borne out many times, was that all women wanted him: Aurora had just taken longer than most to let him know it. He took a sip of wine and grasped her hand. He expected that this first sally might be rebuffed, but it wasn’t. Aurora let him keep holding her hand.

    “If you want to be lewd we should be upstairs,” Pascal said, smiling. “ They should be downstairs—people can talk about Lithuania anywhere. Upstairs we could be lewd all night.”
    “All night, at your age?” Aurora said, aware that two of her suitor’s appetites had just come in conflict with each other. Pascal was trying to finish his Camembert while keeping a firm grip on her hand—rather too firm a grip, in fact, if seduction was his purpose. She felt an old restlessness take her—it was no doubt quite immoral for her to lead this little man on, but she was doing it anyway, as she had many times in her life, with men small or large, just to see what would happen. Would Pascal Ferney at last fight his way through her taunts, or would he retreat to cheese and wine?
    “If we were upstairs you’d be surprised,” Pascal said. “Not all of me is old.”
    “Not all of me is dumb, either,” Aurora said. “As you correctly point out, people can talk of Lithuania anywhere, but I don’t believe that’s the only thing that can be done anywhere. In my youth I knew people who were capable of committing lewd behavior in a quite surprising variety of places. In fact, I rather frequently found myself doing that sort of thing too—all over the house, or even out-of-doors, if the mood took me. If you don’t mind my saying so, Pascal, the notion that carnal actions of a lengthy duration can only occur in a bedroom on the second floor of my house is rather un-Gallic, is it not? Somehow I had imbibed the myth that the French can do it anywhere, anytime. What a pity it’s only a myth.”
    Pascal was thunderstruck. Convinced as he was that all women did want him, and want him a lot, he could scarcely believe his ears. This woman, who had never given him more than a kiss and a squeeze now and then, was accusing him of being too conventional in his approach to sex.
    “Besides that, we’re not arm wrestling,” she said, before he could collect his thoughts. “Stop squeezing my hand so hard. Having my fingers crushed is not my idea of foreplay.”
    Pascal turned red in the face, dropped her hand, then immediatelytried to take it again. Aurora jerked it away. Pascal had been about to take a swallow of wine, but the jerk caused it to slosh out of his glass and splash his tie. All the while, Aurora was looking at him in a reckless way, a way that he had not seen her look before. He felt a coward—she was making him feel a coward with her reckless look.
    “Pascal, you seem to be falling apart before my very eyes,” Aurora said. Her demon was out, and she was in a mood to destroy him utterly, since nothing else was happening. “Now you’ve managed to waste my wine and ruin your tie in the same motion. Isn’t that the tie I bought you in Paris?”
    Pascal jumped up in a fury. “I’ll throw you on the couch!” he said. “You’ll see what happens then.”
    “Pooh, sticks and stones,” Aurora said. “I don’t believe you’ll throw me anywhere, or do anything else very interesting, either.”
    Pascal felt a blind rage coming over him. He rushed around the table, meaning to grab Aurora by the throat and still her merciless tongue forever. He did grab her by the throat, but before he could get on with the business of strangling her a young voice at his elbow said, “Hey, what do you