Manhattan Beach

by Jennifer Egan

The specter of that slap still haunted Anna, with the odd effect of heightening her boldness, in defiance of it.

Anna crouched beside the disjointed tracks and proffered her services. She could feel the logic of mechanical parts in her fingertips; this came so naturally that she could only think that other people didn’t really try. They always looked, which was as useless when assembling things as studying a picture by touching it.

Anna watched the sea. There was a feeling she had, standing at its edge: an electric mix of attraction and dread.

And yet it could still be so sweet. Dusk falling blue outside the windows, Brianne’s rum pleasantly clouding his thoughts, his daughters nudging him like kittens. Ellington on the radio, the month’s rent paid; things could be worse—were worse for many a man in the dregs of 1934. Eddie felt a lulling possibility of happiness pulling at him like sleep. But rebellion jerked him back to awareness: No, I cannot accept this, I will not be made happy by this.

the stronger the bond, the more flagrant Dunellen’s disregard. He loved Eddie deeply.

He’d take danger over sorrow every time.

He was of no more consequence than an empty cigarette packet. At times the brusque mass of everything that was not him seemed likely to crush Eddie into dust the way he crushed the dried-out moths that collected in piles on the protectory windowsills. At times he wanted to be crushed.

The Civil War left us with a federal government. The Great War made us a creditor nation. As bankers, we must anticipate what changes this war will thrust upon us.”

our dominance won’t arise from subjugating peoples. We’ll emerge from this war victorious and unscathed, and become bankers to the world. We’ll export our dreams, our language, our culture, our way of life. And it will prove irresistible.”

You wanted a mick to help you dream up schemes, but in the end you needed a wop or a Jew or a Polack to bring them off.

an agricultural economy that dated back to the previous century, when he’d arrived by clipper ship as a young man and found Brooklyn teeming with farms.

this was the problem of men and women, what made the professional harmony he envisaged so difficult to achieve. Men ran the world, and they wanted to fuck the women. Men said “Girls are weak” when in fact girls made them weak.

Lust made an idiot of everyone it touched—Dexter felt stupidity shrouding his head like a hood in the shape of a dunce’s cap.

Eddie had never noticed how much of his own speech derived from the sea, from “keeled over” to “learning the ropes” to “catching the drift” to “freeloader” to “gripe” to “brace up” to “taken aback” to “leeway” to “low profile” to “the bitter end,” or the very last link on a chain.

African golf, as craps were known—an

The captain had so much luck, he’d luck to spare, Eddie told himself—enough for fifty-six men, he hoped.

“I’ve never cared for wine,” Eddie admitted, although he did like champagne mixed with Guinness—black velvet, they called it.

Eddie had craved such luck all his life—reached for it every way he could. Perhaps having luck meant you didn’t have to reach.

They saw night rainbows.