Eagle Eye Read Online Free Page A

Reeves. Maeve I have to hand it to you. She’ll have to come.”
    “Why?” Bunty said.
    “She’s running for Assembly,” his father said. “But why Wednesday?”
    “They have a house in Delaware. They fly down every weekend, I hear. In a private plane. She often stops in here before.”
    “Why, Maeve. ”
    “Then they must use the stuff she buys,” he said.
    “Shut up, Bunt,” his father said. On the way out, he added “I won’t be sore though, giving up those Sundays. Looking forward to enjoying my posture chair.”
    “Not giving them up.” Maeve pushed forward into the wind like a masthead.
    Buddy groaned. “That ragtail and bobtail.”
    “It’ll get better. You’ll see.”
    “Cocktails. When Bunty and I are practically the only males.”
    “Bring some from the office.”
    These days, at any mention of the office, where his mother never went now even with him, his father turned vague. “Changes are being made. Maybe later on, Maeve. Not just now.” He turned full at her though, so she could see his smile. “Anyhow, you sure learn quick.”
    “People have to go somewhere on Sunday. Even wanted people. I came from a small town. I know.”
    “Maeve …” Buddy said. “Want to go to a show tonight? I’ve got an in with that ticket broker at the Waldorf. We could.”
    When his mother’s face broke open like that he could see why Witty had called her a sparkle-plenty dame, and had approved her legs. She shifted her head then, slightly toward himself.
    “Bunty, you’re old enough to stay alone,” his father said. “Aren’t you?”
    “Sure.” He straightened up and made his heels ring. We can’t embarrass him much longer with a sitter, Buddy had said to her in the bathroom sometime back. The two bathrooms, his and theirs, were end to end, and the old building not as soundproof as Maeve made out; what he heard there would have been useful found goods, except that the Bunty discussed there seemed not himself but a kind of mule-stupid dollbaby he scarcely recognized.
    “Maybe I’ll call Witkower.” He would never. He would hanker to, but never trust himself near the phone, to cross the weekend barrier. Four times a night, some schooldays, but tonight, what Witty would think? Foreigners—they probably had a huge family intimacy going.
    Home came quickly. The street was never that mysterious, going back. He stood in the foyer his mother had set up with a mirror, chest and chair, though not the same ones, and tried to remember the last foyer. He already knew what it was like to be alone here—they’d forgotten they had already left him, once. Now and then it was a little scary, if you had one of those moments when you looked at your hands, saw your feet, shifted awareness with a jolt, realizing for an eerie minute that you were—yourself. And the place was not consoling.
    Maeve was marking the calendar by the phone. “Wednesday,” she muttered.
    Buddy smiled at him. “Your mother’s the smartest little secretary a man ever had.” He seemed dimmer, Quentin again.
    “I’m not sure I don’t think Witty is too old for you,” Maeve said, turning suddenly. He had a feeling she might grab him, the bathroom Bunty, and whip him off to a department store. She was always Maeve. Buddy was Quentin also; he would never make Bunt his pawn. He had said Bunt was old enough. Funny though, how they never saw the real things were where you had to have your alternatives. It was possible to think them shabby. But he would never be ashamed of them.
    “That Mrs. Reeves,” he said. “Her mother must be a million years old.”
    He could always break them up. That cheered him.
    Already he had begun to feel himself the guardian of the real things—though he didn’t yet know what these were.

M RS. REEVES WAS UNABLE after all to come to them on the Wednesday arranged for her—on what he heard the gathered women tell one another was a perfectly good excuse. But one Sunday weeks later, met by the Bronsteins,