Free Overhead in a Balloon by Mavis Gallant Page B

your phone bill.”
    Walter was surprised at the abruptness of the deadlock. Aymeric did not so much change the subject as tear it up. Walter could not understand many things – the amount of his telephone bill, for instance. He did most of his calling from the gallery, dialling his parents in Bern with the warm feeling that he was putting one over on Trout Face. He had been astonished to learn that he was supposed to pay a monthly fee for using the elevator. Apparently, it was the custom of the house. Aymeric was turning out to be less of a new religion than Walter had expected. For one thing, he was seldom there. His old lifemoved on, in an unseen direction, and he did not offer to bring Walter along. He seemed idle yet at the same time busy. He hardly ever sat down without giving the impression that he was trying to get to his feet; barely entered a room without starting to edge his way out of it. Running his fingers through his pale, abundant hair, he said, “I’ve got an awful lot to do.”
    Reading in bed one night, Walter glanced up and had the eerie sight of a doorknob silently turning. “Let me in,” Robert’s mother called. Her voice was sweet and pitched to childhood. “The latch is caught, and I can’t use both hands.” Walter tied the sash of the Old England dressing gown his employer had given him one Christmas, when they were still getting along.
    She had put on lipstick and eye-shadow. “I’m taking my children to Mass,” she said, “and I thought I’d just leave this with you.” She opened her fist, clenched like a baby’s, and offered Walter a round gold snuffbox with a cameo portrait on its lid. He set the box down on a marble-topped table and led her through a labyrinth of low-ceilinged rooms to Robert’s bedroom door, where he left her. She went straight in, turning on an overhead light.
    By morning, the box had drawn in the cold of the marble, but it became warm in Walter’s hand. He and his employer were barely speaking; they often used sign language to show that something had to be moved or hung up or taken down. Walter seemed to be trying to play a guessing game until he opened his hand, as Robert’s mother had done.
    “Just something I picked up,” he said, as if he had been combing second-hand junk stores and was no fool.
    “Picked up where?” said his employer, appreciating the weight and feel of the gold. He changed his spectacles for a stronger pair, ran his thumb lightly and affectionately over thecameo. “Messalina,” he said. “Look at those curls.” He held the box at eye level, tipping it slightly, and said, “Glued on. An amateur job. Where did you say you got it?”
    “I happened to pick it up.”
    “Well, you’d better put it back.” A bright spot moved on his bald head as he leaned into the light. “Or, wait; leave it. I’ll look at it again.” He wrapped the box in a paper handkerchief and locked it up in his safe.
    “I brought it just to show you,” said Walter.
    His employer motioned as if he were pushing a curtain aside with the back of his right hand. It meant, Go away.
    R obert was in charge of a small laboratory on the Rue de Vaugirard. He sat counting blood cells in a basement room. Walter imagined Robert pushing cells along the wire of an abacus, counting them off by ten. (He was gently discouraged from paying a visit. Robert explained there was no extra chair.) In the laboratory they drew and analyzed blood samples. Patients came in with their doctor’s instructions, Social Security number, often a thick file of medical history they tried to get Robert to read, and blood was taken from a vein in the crook of the arm. The specimen had to be drawn before breakfast; even a cup of coffee could spoil the result. Sometimes patients fainted and were late for appointments. Robert revived them with red wine.
    Each morning, Robert put on a track suit and ran in the Luxembourg Gardens, adroitly slipping past runners whose training program had them