Eagle Eye by Hortense Calisher Page B

that?”
    “Where’d you grow up? They hire them. To watch.” She came up to him, tugged his jacket. “I was going to scram. All by myself. Couldn’t you see that? Want your money back?”
    “Is Freddie real? Fred I mean. Felipe.”
    It took her a while. “He has a bad sphincter muscle. And a citation. But they still throw him out for it. He soils sheets. And her mother hand-knits them, probably.”
    “Do you really sleep in the park?”
    “Not always. Last night we did. Near the chess place. It depends. Sometimes I can get him to check in somewhere. If he has a stake. Sometimes somebody asks us in.”
    In the corner there was a flowered sink, with a wastebasket underneath. He watched her empty the leather pouch, daintily clean it out, fill the washbowl again and sink into it to her upper arms. The soap was perfumed. She inhaled deeply. “Luxury is everywhere.”
    It was always one of the good times out, seeing a pretty woman wash. There would always be a little more to this one’s story than she said. Or a little less. It was attractive, the way laziness was. And crummy bars. And runt dogs.
    “No, please keep the money. But I’d love to know where you stashed it. I couldn’t figure out.”
    She picked up her tam by its button and held it aloft. The money wafted slowly past her grave face, and down.
    For some reason, that killed him. Her too. A feeling that felt it could shed itself, pressed them together.
    Not misery but the excitement that came of it, more from her, but some from him. Under her dress she had nothing on—when he looked surprised, she murmured, “Threw them away this morning. They threw themselves away. My pants.” As he closed with her, he murmured back, “No, I’m just always surprised it’s the same shape.” They crushed briefly together. He should have locked the door first, but no one came in anyway. What he’d meant about shape was that women who came on like a pack of assorted … cared—deuces and treys, eights and aces—ought to show it down there somehow. What did it matter. Almost at once he was able to offer his handkerchief to tuck between her legs. She did that. Locked against his chest, she listened to what couldn’t get out of there, the heart he wanted to be proud of. Holding her head, he heard the tears that couldn’t fall. This was the kind of girl he always got.
    She was at the sink again when she said, “I wanted to be in a house, that’s all.”
    “I was overseas. But not with the war.”
    When they left the room she had the silver salver in her hand; she had polished it. “I’ll leave it with the Pinkerton.” He waited for her at the housedoor, in front of the Nevelson. She came back, dreamily. “He wasn’t there. But he’ll know. He saw me take it. Anyway, I won’t be coming back here.”
    “Wait.”
    He ran back through the house and up the stairs. The bedrooms were new to him, but much the same. In the one that must be Maeve’s, he went straight to the double armoire where her coats would be. There they were, in a sequence like a memory, all the way back to the department stores. He chose one from somewhere before the middle of them—brown and thick, not seen for a long time. Then switched it for a prettier one, with fur. Down the back way, he met no one.
    She was still standing there. Something she must have done to herself while he was away had made her look to him as she had in the beginning. Women never looked too bad when they were waiting like that. She didn’t move when he draped the coat on her.
    “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