Free Bread Upon the Waters by Irwin Shaw Page B

ball games on the little portable TV set in the bedroom, while Leslie gives her lessons in the living room.” The TV set had been a present from Eleanor, although Strand didn’t feel he had to tell Hazen that. “I love to watch the Yankees play. I was a dud at sports when I was young and I suppose that when I see Reggie Jackson striding to the plate, all power and purpose, I somehow feel that I know what it’s like to be dangerous and gifted and knowing that millions of people are cheering you or hating you.” He laughed. “Leslie rations me. Only two games a week.”
    Strand felt that this man, whose idea of pleasure was to pore over a pile of legal papers in a deserted office, was looking at him curiously, as though he had come upon a species that was new and unfamiliar to him.
    “Do you get up to the Stadium often?”
    “Rarely.”
    “I have a standing invitation to use the owner’s box there. Maybe on a nice Saturday afternoon I’ll forget my office and we could sneak up and watch a game. Would you like that?”
    “I certainly would.”
    “Maybe when Boston comes to town. I’ll look at the schedule. How about the winter?”
    “What?”
    “I mean what do you do on Saturdays in the winter?”
    “Well,” Strand said, “when they’re showing an old movie I like at the Modern Museum, I try to get in.”
    Hazen smacked his fist into the palm of his other hand. “That’s it. The Modern Museum. That’s where I’ve seen you. The Buster Keaton picture.”
    “You like Buster Keaton?” Strand asked, a little incredulously.
    “I mark his pictures on the schedule they send me and if it’s at all possible I sneak off and see it.” Hazen grinned, which made the various colors of his battered face take on new patterns. “Anybody who doesn’t appreciate Buster Keaton,” he said with mock gravity, “should be denied the vote. However,” he added, “I try to see all the Garbo pictures. She reminds me of how the times have deteriorated. We used to have a goddess as our ideal and now what have we got? Carhops. Doris Day, that Fawcett woman.” He looked at his watch again. “I like to keep to my schedule. I arrive every Saturday at the office at one o’clock sharp. If I’m two minutes late, the watchman downstairs who checks me in will call the police. We’ll talk about the beauties of the past some other time. I hope. And if you want to see a Yankee game, let me know.”
    They shook hands.
    “I’ve enjoyed our walk,” Hazen said. “Perhaps, if we’re both in town next Saturday morning, we can do it again.”
    “I’ll be in town,” Strand said.
    “I’ll call you. Enjoy Berlioz.”
    Strand watched as Hazen got spryly into a cab, his big form filling the doorway.
    Buster Keaton, for God’s sake. As the cab sped away Strand took the envelope out of his pocket and looked at the tickets. They were for fifth row orchestra. The glorious uses of money, he thought. He put the tickets back into his pocket with a tingle of pleasure and started toward home.

4
    B ERLIOZ. A ROARING FLOOD of dark sound. Unfairly treated by posterity.
    A cool, woman’s hand on his forehead. “I need you,” someone had said. He tried to open his eyes to see whose hand it was on his forehead, but the effort was too great. Whoever …
    “I don’t get it,” the boy was saying in Strand’s little office. Strand had told Romero that he would like to see him for a moment after classes were over and had been a little surprised when the boy actually appeared.
    “I explained to you,” Strand said, “that I mentioned you to a…a friend of mine, a new friend, who happens to be an influential man, and he said that if you were interested in continuing your education he would try to get you a scholarship…”
    “Yeah, yeah,” Romero said impatiently. “I heard all that. I mean, man, why’s he picking on me?”
    “I said you were promising,” Strand said.
    “I’m not making any promises,” Romero said sullenly.
    “I