Manhattan Beach

by Jennifer Egan

Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.

This truth was never mentioned but ever present.

Eddie wasn’t fooled by Dunellen then or now; he knew the bully would protect him after that. And so it had been: the stronger the bond, the more flagrant Dunellen’s disregard. He loved Eddie deeply.

it was a restless, desperate wish for something to change. Anything. Even if the change brought a certain danger. He’d take danger over sorrow every time.

He’d no idea how to be rich—so little, in fact, that he thought he was rich.

She rather enjoyed watching them take charge of men, even as the men believed they were in charge.

“We work in the realm of the impression.”

There was no such thing as silence on a beach; wind, gulls, and splashing waves filled the void of conversation.

At times her secret clanged inside her so loudly that she wanted to cover her ears and scream.

I suppose you were never as wild as you seemed.” “It doesn’t wear well,” he said, but her remark had cut him.

A good deed needs no excuse.

You may feel differently, of course. Not everyone has the stomach for that sort of thing.” “I’ve a strong stomach,” Anna said. She felt like Alice in Wonderland, fitting herself through smaller and smaller doors with no idea where they might lead.

He could not repress his impatience. Problems he couldn’t solve made him angry.

It appeared to be that rare thing: a genuine question asked from curiosity, nothing else.

It seemed to him now that this wish was long-standing. He was filled with impatience at not yet having achieved it.

Only when she turned to walk toward her own streetcar stop on Hudson did solitude engulf her. In daylight it retreated; she’d tried in vain, during diving school, even to remember what it felt like. But at dusk it closed back around her with macabre comfort. It had a pulse and a heartbeat.

I keep expecting to wake up one morning and know what to do, the way I knew to come to New York after high school. But any decision I make seems to last about twenty-four hours, if that.

routine began to neutralize discomfort.

“I like not knowing what will happen, not waking up at any certain time, drinking champagne at ten in the morning if I’ve a mind to. And don’t think this is the end for me—I’ve big plans, make no mistake.”

inertia to stave off disaster.

“I like to be near water whenever possible, don’t you?” he said, gazing into the dark. “Melville put it best: ‘Nothing will content men but the extremest limit of the land’—but that’s not it, I can’t recall the quote. It’s in our nature to seek out the edge.

“It’s a pity we’re forced to make the choices that govern the whole of our lives when we’re so goddamn young.” “If they’re the wrong choices, then we have to make new ones,” Dexter said. “Even late in the day.”

If I were you, I’d stay exactly where I was. Recognize the myriad advantages of your position and enjoy them. Trying to change the position midstream is likely to mean losing those advantages without gaining any new ones.”

“We all pay for our advantages,” the old man said, with meaning. “There’s not a man in this world who hasn’t, and I include the priests. Every man has his secrets, his costs of doing business.

She left his office feeling buoyed by the flattery and guilty for enjoying it.

each windless day felt like ten. Their discouragement was compounded by occasional zephyrs for which they raised the sail, full of hope, only to have the wind die twenty minutes later.

Anna pictured all this with wistful resignation; so quickly, she had consigned that life to the past. Its telescopic fading was the price of hurtling forward into whatever smoldering promise issued from that orange blaze. She hungered toward it, longing for the future it contained.