Orrie's Story by Thomas Berger Read Free Book Online Page A

mention the missing Gena.
    Esther had uncrossed her legs and left her knees just far enough apart so that someone directly opposite her could hardly avoid noticing. Augie was revolted by the display. As yet he had had nothing from his fiancée but lukewarm kisses. Cassie was not a sensual young woman. Now and again throughout the years he had had his genital needs met by whores, but fear of disease and an utter lack of the personal in such connections made that almost as unsatisfying as masturbation. One thing he could say of Esther: even after he was aware of her flagrant infidelity, he had almost never been impotent with her. And she had never given him reason to believe that her disdain for him in his other husbandly functions extended to his performance in bed. Perhaps she was insatiable, and if so he did not really condemn her though it might be perverse of him. He could not have revealed this truth to anybody, including his conscious self, but was well aware of it in that part of the soul that is never taken aback by any erotic phenomenon.
    â€œSo,” she said, smirking. “Nobody gets a divorce just to be alone. You bring back some captured German girl?”
    At last he found the nerve to do what he should have done long since and stated a few details about Cassie.
    â€œShe’s just a kid,” said Esther. “You’re robbing the cradle.” Her lips were twitching, but he was not sure what that could mean.
    â€œShe’s very religious,” Augie said quickly, stiffly, in an effort to head off any assumption that his want was for young flesh.
    â€œI’m sure,” said Esther. “So you want to marry her?”
    It was as awkward as he had anticipated to talk of the subject with this woman to whom he had been legally married for going on twenty years.
    â€œYes, I do.”
    â€œYou haven’t got her pregnant?”
    â€œI’ve never been to bed with her. Neither has anybody else.”
    â€œOh, for God’s sake.” Esther threw her head back and guffawed.
    Augie was furious, but mostly with himself. He had given Esther every advantage over him. It was as if he had never gone to war, proved himself as a man, come home a hero! That he had not actually done these things was beside the point. It was terrible to realize that his wife would have been quite as disdainful of him had he been a genuine combat, veteran.
    â€œLet’s be polite. I’m not going to say anything against Erie.”
    She bridled. “He saved your skin.”
    â€œYes, and I happen to know he didn’t lose any money when he took the store off my hands and terminated it.”
    â€œWhat’s that supposed to mean?”
    â€œThat he managed to find a good many more assets than liabilities.”
    She had returned to her habitual sneer. “What do you think has been keeping us going these four years around here? Those shitty little checks you send?”
    Augie was now very sorry that he had come back. He could have done what was required by mail, through a lawyer, and passed up the chance to strut at the Idle Hour. Cassie knew nothing of his existing wife and family, but in her superstitious way she had worried about his trip North, had seen in a characteristic dream that he would come to some grief there and never return to her. He loved her for such apprehensions: never had his existence been so valuable to another human being.
    He stood up. “This was a mistake. I should have stayed away.”
    She rose and came to him. In high-heeled mules she seemed taller than he: he had forgotten that, unless she had grown in four years. She was somewhat fleshier but not unattractively so. She had been the most voluptuously built teenager in town: a pound more, breasts an inch larger, she would have gone over the line, he had then believed. But in fact she did put on weight once they were married; yet owing to the concomitant increase in height, had gone from being the kind