He found himself remembering how on one summer
morning they two had started from New York in search of happiness. They
had never expected to find it, perhaps, yet in itself that quest had
been happier than anything he expected forevermore. Life, it seemed,
must be a setting up of props around one--otherwise it was disaster.
There was no rest, no quiet. He had been futile in longing to drift and
dream; no one drifted except to maelstroms, no one dreamed, without his
dreams becoming fantastic nightmares of indecision and regret.
Pelham! They had quarrelled in Pelham because Gloria must drive. And
when she set her little foot on the accelerator the car had jumped off
spunkily, and their two heads had jerked back like marionettes worked by
a single string.
The Bronx--the houses gathering and gleaming in the sun, which was
falling now through wide refulgent skies and tumbling caravans of light
down into the streets. New York, he supposed, was home--the city of
luxury and mystery, of preposterous hopes and exotic dreams. Here on the
outskirts absurd stucco palaces reared themselves in the cool sunset,
poised for an instant in cool unreality, glided off far away, succeeded
by the mazed confusion of the Harlem River.
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