Free Eagle Eye by Hortense Calisher

Europe, running around all the circles we left it for—what do you know?” Buddy turned round, choked on his fury, yellow with it, clutching the curtain behind him. Whenever he grew fat and waxy, he dieted himself thin, until the newsboy’s face sat on his fifty-year-old shoulders. And had his blood run through all sorts of purifications, and returned to him—maybe not for health alone. “Knapsacking around, never coming home, God forbid we should die and who do we notify— poste restante ? A street address two weeks old, in Bombay? In Holland a nightclub—who goes to nightclubs in Holland? And once in a while—lucky lucky—the American Express … What do you know about it all?”
    “About what, Buddy?” He knew the question well. Asked of himself at every address.
    “About life in this country. About what goes on here, has to be done here.”
    “Compromises?” He could never raise his voice to match Buddy’s. Maybe only fathers could manage it. He thought of Tarzan.
    “About what”—Buddy’s voice sank to a wheeze. “About what can be done in this country.” His eyes bulged; he was tallying it. Opera houses. Prisons. Landmarks. Wayward boys.
    A swinging door opened. A capped maid peered in to see what the rumpus was. Buddy waved her back, with a drowning gesture. The door closed.
    “Maybe you forgot, Dad, hmm. Did you? Why I left.”
    Homerun. How quickly the honeybrown, moneybrown eyes went wet, covered themselves with a hand.
    He could hear murmurs in the kitchen. To one side of the tapestry there was one of those portholes. He crossed the floor to peer in, seeing only black, but waiting for Buddy to compose his face. When he did turn, Buddy was toeing the safari bag. “Still got it, huh.”
    He crossed the floor and stood beside him, nodding. Carry it everywhere. It’s my life.
    Lips tucked in, they nodded at each other with the barely perceptible orbit of mourners. But it was also as if his father, hands clasped, was worshipping him.
    Yes, I’m your riches, your only. You helped hide me, or would have. What can an idol not made of stone say to you?
    “Papa. You want me to wash?”

H IS ROOM ON THE second floor was so like the hotel, his foot stopped at the door, as if another step would sink him deep in a cloud. A matter of wood that was old and marble that was cheap, how had she caught that plain, sweet meagerness, even here? Of a room privy to anything, but in-the-faith. She hadn’t imitated any one thing, and she had remembered to include Marlene’s old bureau. There was no more bookspace, though, than at Montecatini—a small ledge. She knew he couldn’t stay. The room told him what she had observed. Was meant to. When a man keeps telling a woman she’s smart, he wondered, when does she catch on he means smart but, even if he doesn’t know it yet? From the first?
    A few minutes later, he and Buddy, standing on a balcony overlooking the main hall—you had to call it a hall—were still avoiding her. To do so together was a comfort, and therefore worse. He put his head down and muttered something.
    “What?” Buddy said.
    “Oh, nothing.” He had caught his own words just in time, always unnerving. Comforts are aging —Jasmin would have laughed. “Who built this place, some dictator?” Two steps more and they could look down unseen, from a prayer-corner torn from some church.
    “Dunno. Man I bought it from was a former tenor at the Met. See those spotlights in the ceiling? Work out fine for the art.” Buddy coughed. There was pride here.
    “Rothko’s, are they? And Clifford Still.” Down below, each panel glowed like a looking-glass entrance to a provence just behind it. Or an exit.
    “You know about them, huh. What do you know!” Buddy held out his hand. “Sorry kid. What I said. Go round the world again, you want to.”
    “Please.” Button up.
    “Right. But we won’t move from here. You can depend on it.”
    What a place to stop. Even the pictures want out.
    “Some