Free Eagle Eye by Hortense Calisher Page A

South American had the place before that. The original owner, I don’t know.”
    People should save those things. There ought to be a bank for it.
    “Gangsters maybe? Al Capone, that period? Those peepholes.” The niche they were standing in came from a church, maybe forty years back. It would be an interesting place to take a girl.
    “Bunt, the whole place went up only five years ago.”
    “Wuddya know.” Already he was talking like Buddy. “Well, let’s not lurk.”
    “I don’t see your mother down there. Maybe she’s in the terrarium.”
    “Where’s that?”
    “We couldn’t put it on the Avenue side. Around the corner, on the court. Even for that, we had to have a variance.” He cast Bunt a look. “I’ve had to take an interest. More and more.”
    There were about fourteen people down there, wandering party-style, their heads vulnerable to any boy on a viaduct. He saw that it was old party-style, twos and threes. No clusters, nobody on the floor. A grouty homesickness jumped him from behind and hung on him like an ape-girl, from that world of fur pillows, jack-in-the-beanstalk boots, cavalier hair, and music cuffing the neck like a steady training partner, which he had made for and hit in any town in Europe. If he turned his head, he would surely see her topaz lantern-eyes, blubbery from the smoke-tickle. A lovely gorilla girl, with a look of Jane Fonda about her little nose. Then she would get off his back, and turn into maybe a girl in a shabby greatcoat with a pile like rinsed feathers—Clara Rentschle, Dutch girl working for Air France as an airport-meeter for middle-aged Americans who liked to be shoe-horned into their hotels—saying “You’re new to Lipps. Care to join us in a kir ?” And the town would begin.
    Trouble was, he didn’t want to go back. He wanted it to begin here.
    “Maybe Maeve doesn’t want to see us.” Or me.
    From as far back as summer camp, they had always written jointly, the same couple of pages, rambling over the sparse facts, and full of their dependable duty to him.
    “Come on. I just told her a later plane, so we could have our talk.”
    “Do I see a couple of priests down there?”
    A wheelchair, containing a clawy little creature in a church hat, was being pushed toward the pair by a figure in blue. No Maeve.
    “Only two? Soon they’ll send the army. Bunt, I should warn you. You’re the one really bought this place.”
    “Me? Gramp’s policy? You’re kidding.” A twenty-year endowment for $10,000, payable on his majority. In the load of insurance Buddy had mortgaged for his stake, that had been the only one left out. Thanks kid, it won’t help.
    “My sacred promise to the old lady. To get her down here.”
    “You don’t mean you promised? That we’d convert?” After the funeral visit, there’d been a breath of it. If they’d send him up there to St. Joseph’s-in-the-Valley, Mother MacNeil would board the New York orphan, as well as reform him. Cut her Mother’s throat first, Maeve said.
    “Me, they’re satisfied if I go back to being a good Jew. The church is very liberal these days. You’re the tender morsel they’re hungry for.”
    “Sonofa gun.”
    “So I’m a rascal. Allow me, once.”
    They were both grinning.
    “How do I know I brought you up right? I have my guilts.”
    “You know I’ve never been anything. You took advantage of it.”
    “What a thing to say, you’re a nothing. No, I only took advantage you’re young. It’s your turn now.”
    “Jesus, what a birthday present.”
    “You want the farm?” Swiftly. “You can have it. I won’t sell it, then.”
    Canny canny. He turned on his heel in the prie-dieu, puzzling.
    “Mother MacNeil loves it up here. Brings up her portable Virgin every day.”
    Maybe the old Brooklyn money-fear wasn’t so false. Deuces wild, the money says to you. You have a fantasy?—act it out. You can move. You’re not hemmed in.
    “I’ll h-have a cow, maybe.”
    “Fine. She’ll look just