Eagle Eye (11 page)

“For winter.”

Locking her thumbs in the coat’s lapels, she hung on. She knew when not to say anything. Did she suspect he didn’t have to leave? What did she think of him, more or less?

Downstairs, under the canopy, she bent back, gazing up at it. White, with three twined initials in gold braid. Like a monogrammed sheet. “Get
me
a cab?”

He ran for one. Fifth Avenue had none; he picked up one on Madison, rode it back and jumped out just in time. She was just walking away, head down. Toward the park.

“You have to expect more,” he said, grabbing her. She let him tuck her in. When he gave the driver some bills, she glowed.

“He wants to know where.” She could go to a hotel. But of course she knew that.

Leaning forward, she told the driver to go down Columbus Avenue. “Eighty-third or fourth, maybe.” A bar called the Lotos, on the west side of the street. “No, maybe seventy-third. I’ll show him where.” Freddie Felipe could trust her still. Her shrug was merry. “Our bathroom and kitchen facilities. We walk to it.”

He reached through the window to squeeze her hand. “Check you at the Lotos, sometime.”

“What are you, a talent scout?”

As the cab pulled away, though, she leaned out and gave him the sign he’d gone around the world with. Be with it. Right on. Peace. Whatever you took it to be. He’d made her happy then, or generous. He took it that he still could be proud of his heart.

Upstairs again, waiting for someone to come and deal with the three locks that told who the Bronsteins were, he still smiled, for the generalized love that only the ones who were his age, stamping forward and along the old lottery paths, knew how to take.

Whoever had come to the door was having trouble.

For the moment while the locks clicked; number one—human manual, number two—electronic Siamese, number three—a soft slatching, like the roller-bearings at Dachau, he ducked into one of his mowzels and was back with his own kind. Damphaired fur, close rawhide, thong and toe, calico smoke. Wherever the drum thumps, the poetry machines are grinding for the night. The swish of the snares, seineing the bottoms for no meaning, is always a beach sound. What-ho the bonny crevices of all the wars you’re not going to. Heave-to, to the bonny advices of all the girls who are not ashamed of it. Lie down with us, in the drag-wail of the dixie cups. Onka-bonka, what a boss drummer. Going to the front, onka-bonka. Right here.

His father opened the door to him. “’Bout time. She’s got a birthday cake.” Down the years, he and Bunt had disavowed the sentiment of it, two boys together under Maeve’s silly yoke.

As Buddy shunted them down the necessary halls to the dining room, he swung a locker-room arm up and over Bunt’s shoulder. “Don’t want to butt in, you and girls, Bunt. Far from. But at your age, I sure hate to see money have to change hands.”

They had stopped dead anyway. He slipped Buddy’s arm off. Size had never been a sorrow between them. But it was time his father dealt with all six-and-a-half feet of him. “Be a Montefiore, Buddy? Not a Rothschild?”

Sure, he had hit him. Maybe it was time to say anything. Without being depressed.

The dining room, full up now, was a shock. All those faces, hanging over the pink-linen trough the main table had been made into, hobbling at him monkey-eyed, ass-chinned, kitty-smooching, diminishing down the room in one of those longshots cameramen took kneeling, out of some nice A-rated movie that had broken its guarantee not to turn into a dream. The sad fact was, it took youth not to look like some other animal than our brand. They all looked like they knew their own ravages. And were counting on a good boy like him to be the kinder for it. They were still in the saddle—and he had better watch it; they wanted to take him along. Oh, he knew where he was, all right. Maybe the women weren’t decked out like the Brooklyn of those days, but he knew the smell of those salted almonds. The wine in these glasses might be a little better, and technically this wasn’t a hall—but after all, he was older than the usual candidate.

Just then, Doughty pranced in and up to him. A Harlequin Dane wasn’t his style, up to now not the Bronsteins’ either, but a dog is a dog. An animal that is an animal. He fed him a couple of almonds, making the picture they were planned to. “Doughty,” he said to the cocked ear, “bet you never been to a bar mitzvah before.”

He’d been seated at the big table’s far end, his parents at the other. Looking down the line, he saw that Maeve’s “do” hadn’t changed much—the people maybe, but not their categories. Leskel, the man on his left, was the one who had asked to meet Buddy, at his own graduation. The lady on his right, a nice camel with big droopy eyes, said, “We’re in your parents’ box.” The opera. On her right was a big tawny-haired man Leskel introduced as Dr. Somebody. The hair long for these parts. Or for him. On Leskel’s left, the gal who had admired the rug informed him she was from Maeve’s class at the Alliance Française. His parents hadn’t thank God placed him between the two of them. There were no place cards. “Just sprinkle,” was what Maeve would have said, or Buddy. There wasn’t that much time, to know who your friends were.

Maeve was still here. He kept an eye on her.

“The best gilt glasses, Buddy. I see you kept those.” His father was pouring him wine. The glasses were from the last place, and really something. They’d never drunk from them before.

“When it gets to be art, you can keep it on,” his father said. “All the years it took to find that out. Something is gone though. Thought you’d notice right out.”

“Never thought you noticed I noticed … It would’ve looked like fool, with that harpsichord.”

“Would it? Anyway, I saved it. You’ll see. That little Kranich & Bach has integrity.” Buddy winked.

He winked back. Like he knew his father was a tried man. “Okay, saved by a piano.” He put a hand on Buddy’s shoulder, locker-room style. “Okay, we’re still in love.”

Leskel was envying them. His hair still had a round cut; the trim bags under his eyes were impressionist. “You know my boy Johnny? He’s living with a girl.”

That’s Johnny-boy. “Not to worry.” Bunt said. “They all come from very good families.”

“Oh, I know.” Leskel brightened. “The mother and father came to look us over. To plead us to do something. When they saw how we lived—they calmed down. We even had a foursome of bridge. Best partners Dollie and I ever had.”

“Maybe they’ll make it legal someday.”

“Think there’s a chance?”

“The foursome? Oh—the best.” He leaned forward; a glint had caught his eye. But the tawny man had turned his back.

Mrs. Camel was waiting for Bunt’s regard. “I saw the way you looked at us. Can’t blame you. But wait ’til it’s your turn.” She had a smiling competence he recognized, but couldn’t place. Direct, and hopeful-hopeless.

“Oh, I won’t mind so much getting old. If I can get my life right. But I’ll hate it for the girls I know.”

“Oh, they’ll manage.” When she laughed, the eyes lifted. The red hair looked real as his own. “You just stop being a girl.”

He saw Maeve slip out again.

“You look a little like a girl I knew.” Monica’s eyes went that way, already. “But with her anything can happen. She’s a speed freak.”

“Oh, so are mine. All six of them. The situation around our house is terrible. Eight cars of course. But then, four Hondas and a hovercraft. Plus the two planes.”

Some mothers—that’s what he’d recognized. Where there were a lot of kids, like once. She could hang on, or let go; whether or not she knew the score, she was the center of it. At graduation there had been some like her. “You married? I mean—” He blushed.

She exploded.

So did he. “I mean you’re not a widow or anything.”

“My husband flew us in. I expect he’s in Honduras by now.”

“Airline pilot?”

She smiled a no.

“Revolutionary?”

“You are a romantic, aren’t you.”

“No, a wit. I mean, who else would have six kids. Except maybe the Kennedys.”

“He owns the airline.”

“Oh, that’s right. Silly of me.” The opera box. They were rich enough to have six kids, not poor enough to. And Maeve’s pick-up’s husbands so often had business elsewhere.

“You Catholic?” he said. It was on his mind, that he might give in.

“My husband is. And the children, of course.”

“You women. You can do anything.”

“
You women.
Where did you pick that up?”

He looked her over. Yes, she looks like Paulina, like—like any of them, when you get down to it. Like all of them, at that certain moment when. If he said—Let’s go somewhere, you and me; let’s get out of here; see here, I have this awful hangnail I need help about; or even, you’re pretty vulnerable, you need to talk; or any of the one-hundred-ninety-seven unconsecrated versions of it—more variations than his knife had, and more reliable—she’d give in. Maybe she didn’t know that yet; maybe she thought he didn’t. Asking is the flattery. More than anything. He wouldn’t though. No one over thirty, so far. So far, no one over twenty-six, which is what Jasmin is. Keep the bloodlines clear.

“I’m scared I’ll be too adjustable, that’s all. It’s the one thing scares me blue.”

“Your principles, you mean?” She was already over the romantic hump, examining her rings with a tycooness cool that made him think less of her. You could commit hara-kiri on anyone of them. But she had asked.

“I’m only romantic about what I want. Or I will be. Not over the rest of it.”

She closed her eyes and said something to herself.

Jesus,
he thought it was. Appropriate, for a convert.

On her right, the big fellow Leskel had introduced as Doctor, leaned forward. “I hear you say you want to live right?”

“Listen, I was only trying to say anything. Anything I really thought. It was an experiment.”

“How’d it work out?”

Bunty looked him over closer. In profile, the man’s hedge of hair really vibrated up, like an electric shoe-brusher with a kind forehead. Or a man on the hotseat, smiling all the same.

“Too easy, if you want to know. When a place is not your style, anyway. And it doesn’t get you anywhere.”

“You don’t like it here?” she interrupted. “The son of the house?” South American curves on top she had, and under the table what he’d bet would be long country-club stems. He had a suspicion that, closer to forty, which she must be, the attraction was that the parts didn’t match. But what he wanted to see was that doctor’s ear.

“Everybody has his own way of dwarfing the world,” he said, low. “This just isn’t mine.”

“Where
do
you want to go?” The doctor’s voice.

Back to where it hurts, is Jasmin’s idea. She said she intends to spend the rest of her life there.

He raised his eyes. “You our new family doctor?”

“Partly.” He had a way of listening in profile, eyes cocked sideways. Like a teaching nun. Or a monk. Or one of the children at their skirts.

Right on. “You’re Buddy’s shrink.”

He winced. And there it was, the thin gold wire in the bush of his sideburn. Like one more gold hair, thickened with listening. There couldn’t be two of them with that in an ear.

Should he ask, or leave it be. Choose.

“You’re Janacek, aren’t you? The child psychologist?”

He bowed. “And you are Bunt.”

Who floats in Buddy’s mind, like a hovercraft? “How’d you come to know—us?”

Leskel spoke. “Through us.”

He was stunned at the way it could work out. And encouraged. Chance can happen. Good or bad, you have to cherish it. “Aren’t you a child psychiatrist?”

Another bow. “Sometimes the children are—grown. You know my work?”

“I—knew one of them.”

Janacek smiled, but didn’t ask who. Probably gets it all the time; there are so many of them. Besides the one he’s married to.

It didn’t take a minute, to dovetail her story with this bowing man’s. And feel for both of them. “A dirty story he had nothing to do with,” she said. “Ten years old at Buchenwald, Bunt—Long Island is full of them. And Washington Heights.” But his mother had been a camp guard. And was still alive. Until recently. He wore the wire, Jasmin said, for kids to focus on. And it’s true, Bunt—you look at it, in that hair, and you’re back in fairyland where the grass has eyes, and there’s a gold ring in the pond. “He has very strong lines of force,” she said, “but he doesn’t hurt enough, anymore.”

He was exerting them. “Like to talk to you, Bronstein. About your parents. And you of course.”

K-k-k,
Bronstein. The story attracts
you.

“S-sorry. Thanks though.”

“Why not?”

Up at the head of the table, Buddy tapped a fork against a glass. It rang true, of course.

“There’s my majority coming up. Let’s leave it at that.”

“You could help so.”

“I plan to.”

“Why not let me help you to?”

“Hold it, Kid Bronstein,” Buddy had seen Maeve was gone. “A slight delay. Practice your speech.”

He saluted. “
Coming, Father
!” Buddy and Ike’s favorite comic, the early days. A comic son.

“You’re a very interesting young man. You could help
me.
”

He puts his empathy right in your hand, Jasmin says. He has to have you have it. That’s why she left; that’s why she goes back. It’s the secret of his success with the kids, she said. He’s non-rejectable.

He could try. “Thanks. But I don’t think you’re the teddy bear I always wanted.”

He looks puzzled. Human flesh shows no prints. At least, mine doesn’t yet. And maybe she never went back to him. But the echoes of people in one another last on and on.

As is my hope.

“We—have met?” Echoes were the man’s trade, after all.

He could pass it up. Chance strolled by him, a gainly dog; he gave it his hand to bite. “Yes, we have, Dr. Jannie. In a launderette. You came by with Jasmin’s check.”

Janacek knew her habits, she said, and couldn’t give the habit up. In bed after, in the room paid for by the check perhaps, he’d felt uneasy, but she’d said not to; she didn’t need the money, really. Let Jannie think he was protecting her. She let him come back sometimes—yes, into bed even—because she was the only one with whom he could be a child. They’d agreed not to have them because of his work. And her views. “It’s a rotten sell for kids these days. I shan’t have one.” She’d agreed to have Jannie though, not knowing. “You can’t desert a child,” she said, laughing, and tugged at his own red hair. “Kangaroo-oo.”