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

of girl who at thirteen was ample enough to evoke the whistles and catcalls of passing male youth (and the leers of their elders) to a statuesque woman.
    â€œDon’t go away mad,” Esther said now, her voice falling off on the last word, her eyelids lowering as if of their own heaviness. She was almost touching him with her luxurious body, and had to step back two inches to make room in which to raise her hand and run an index finger, with a nail conspicuously too long and colored maroon, across his ribbons.
    â€œSo you really were good as a soldier.” She raised her dark eyes. “Did you kill a lot of them?”
    He could remember the answer to a similar question he himself had put when buying the uniform from Captain Delaney, the debt-ridden officer who had earned the ribbons: “It’s hard to tell, at the usual range.” The captain had gone on to explain that, at least in the sectors in which he had seen action, hand-to-hand fighting was much rarer than you would think from motion pictures. But Augie suspected that Esther would not be impressed by the modest truth.
    â€œIt’s not something I like to talk about. It’s not nice and neat, like the movies.”
    â€œNothing is,” said Esther, looking intently at him.
    At this moment he lost everything he had gained in four years, and of course she saw that immediately.
    â€œGo take a quick bath,” she said, and made a gesture as if pushing him slightly though not making actual contact. “I’ll wait for you in our bedroom. We’ve got lots of time. She stays late at school today.”
    Augie found the bathroom to be what it had always been, small and without cross ventilation. And without a shower, which is what he really wanted, being in no mood to lie back and soak, then scrub…
    Esther burst in without warning. “You’ll need this. It’s a warm day.” She turned on the electric fan on the shelf above the end of the tub; its wire went to the female plug that had replaced the bulb in the old-fashioned wall sconce that was supposed to supply light to the alcove.
    He was embarrassed though having as yet removed nothing but the officer’s tunic, which he had hung on the corner of the linen-closet door.
    She quickly left, but her intrusion had broken his rhythm. He now could not evade a horrified reflection on what he was doing. He was no longer as drunk in the mind as he had been only a few instants before, but, absurdly, his physical coordination now began to fail. He almost fell into the tub as, trying to balance one leg at a time, he struggled with his trousers. Apparently no one noticed that the uniform was not an exact fit. The jacket was a size larger than his, and the pants, of the same heavy, beautiful twill, though buff as opposed to the dark olive of the tunic, were slightly too long, touching the ground at the heel of the plain brown shoes he had had to buy separately, Captain Delaney not having had boots to spare.
    He would bathe and shave and change into the civilian clothes from the suitcase he had brought along to the bathroom. But it was clear that he must leave immediately thereafter, even if it meant not having seen Ellie. He could not conspire with Esther in his further unmanning. He began to run water into the tub.

4
    Outside the bathroom door Esther was listening to the water filling the tub in which her husband was to be electrocuted, when who should appear at the top of stairs, frightening her for an instant, but E.G. Luckily the same water noise that had deafened her to his coming would have obscured the event from Augie.
    She rushed to him, pressed his elbow, whispered and pointed, and led him downstairs and back to the kitchen, where, though now distant from their intended prey, she continued to speak in an urgent undertone.
    â€œHow did I know when he’d get here?”
    E.G. was snarling. “Why’d you let him start the bath already? I told you to wait