Binocular Vision: New & Selected Stories Read Online Free PDF Page A

if shaking him off.
    Was the child laughing at him? No, it was only one of those wet smiles. Robert dutifully mimicked Jaime’s come-hither movement. He felt like a cop directing traffic. He felt like a dirty old man. Jaime grinned and banged out. Robert bolted for the bathroom.
    H E SPENT Y OM K IPPUR E VE with a gaggle of gentiles. They weren’t bad, Lex’s fellow workers. A high-minded couple in their sixties, slack of belly, gray of hair, giving their final years to just causes. A pretty young nurse. A second, older nurse, freckled and tough. Some others. They ate rice and beans, expertly seasoned by Lex. Jaime played on the floor. Occasionally he whined for Lex’s attention. Lex would finish what he’d been saying, then he’d turn his eyes to the boy and listen to the high voice repeating short, insistent phrases, and reply with a “sí” or a “no” or some grave explanation.
    The adults talked of the torments of the country, the centuries of cruelty as one generation mistreated the next. “The church has a lot to answer for,” said a fierce Canadian woman. “Those first missionary schools—they taught us how to inflict pain.” He wondered what she meant by “us”; then he remembered that she was a Native American, a member of an indigenous people. He had met her earlier in the week when she’d dropped by. With her untidy hair and glasses and dissatisfied mouth she’d reminded him of his cousin from the Bronx. He’d met the churchy couple earlier also, at an evening lecture on cooperatives that Lex had taken him to. But this was the first social gathering Robert had attended, and he realized belatedly, when it was almost over, that it was a party in his honor.
    Early the next morning they packed up the Jeep. They were to spend the weekend visiting orphanages in the mountains—Robert, Lex, Jaime, and Janet—the freckled nurse, not the pretty one.
    Janet did the driving. She knew how to handle a Jeep. She drove fast on the two-lane highway, passing whenever she could. When they were stopped by a pair of very young men in fatigues, each holding a tommy gun, she answered their questions with such authority that Robert expected the teenage soldiers to stick out their tongues for her inspection. Instead they waved the Jeep on. Robert jounced along in the front seat. In the back Lex showed Jaime how the big bricks of Legos fit together. Jaime watched indifferently, his fingers around his toy car.
    They stopped late in the morning in a lush little town. There were coffee estates nearby, Janet said. In the courtyard of a restaurant, parrots watched from fronds. Jaime ran toward a cat he knew and settled down in a corner of the courtyard. The proprietress-cook brought the child a dish of pasta before welcoming the others in perfect English. She had a large, curved nose and a wide smile. “She’s Chilean,” Janet said when the woman had returned to the kitchen. “Her corn lasagna is terrific. She’s been active in revolutionary politics.” Robert understood: arms smuggling.
    Two graceful waiters with angelic faces served them. Robert knew not to take their androgyny seriously. “Girlish on the outside, tough guys within,” Lex had said about similar men. “Not gay.” Robert did not ask whether Lex had enjoyed a native lover. Some years ago he had ascertained that his son practiced safe sex; he and Betsy wanted to know nothing further.
    The corn lasagna was indeed delicious. Jaime shared his pasta with the cat. Robert would have liked to linger over coffee, to walk around this town and visit its museum of martyrs; to return at the cocktail hour and enjoy an aperitif with the South American adventuress while the parrots dozed. Instead he paid the bill and shook her hand and bid good-bye to the birds with the proper summoning gesture.
    In an hour they had left the highway and were climbing. Farms gave way to trees, boulders, scrub. Janet expertly circled craters in the road. Bracing himself against the