Hard Rain Falling (New York Review Books Classics)

by Don Carpenter

He could see them out there, obsessed not with their destinies but by some simple problem of today: to do a piece of business, to finish shopping, to catch a bus, to bum a cigarette. Nothing important, except to themselves. The only difference is that I am in here, and they are out there. What do we want?

Nature here was not more beautiful than the works of man, because nature had forgotten to air-condition the place or clean it up, and only the distant view was attractive. After a few minutes, Jack no longer believed in air conditioning—it did not seem possible that any place could be cool when it was so hot.

She watched him from the beach as he went farther and farther out on the reef, and saw him at last on the final edge, staring toward the open sea, breakers crashing beside his tiny figure, and she knew there were all sorts of romantic ideas pouring through his mind about life, the sea, nature, the size of the universe, man is a tiny creature, etc. etc. But she did not feel like sneering at him for it; she began to have images of this man, locked somewhere in a prison cell away from all possible thoughts of immensity, and she felt a great wave of pity for him, for the loss of his youth, for his naive, childlike expectation that the past was all over and he could just start from where he was and bury it all behind him and become a cultured person. It made her feel so bitter she wanted to cry.