Outerbridge Reach Read Free Page A

to Seventh Avenue, an image of the old Penn Station came to him as he had first seen it as a child. He had tried to embrace the ponderous columns whose span defied the human scale. They had been still standing when he left for Annapolis the first time. Vanished sunlight came to his recollection, streaming through enormous windows in great beams and bursts, streaming from the throne of heaven.
    Hearing his own echoing footsteps, he turned to look over his shoulder. Outside, teenagers debouching from a concert drifted along Seventh Avenue, looking covert and disorderly. Browne walked around the corner to the suburban-limousine ramp and boarded a car for home.
    His house was old and outsized, a mansion on the edge of a slum in an unprestigious outer suburb. Undoing the locks, he awakened his wife. When he went into the bedroom, she smiled and raised her arms to him. On a wooden tray beside her bed stood an empty bottle of white wine, a glass and a jug of water.
    â€œOh,” he said, “you’re in good spirits, are you?”
    She laughed. “Yes, I’ve been writing all day. And listening to music and waiting for you.”
    â€œGood,” he said. He sat down on the bed beside her. “Christ, what a dumb couple of days. Between the boat and the market.”
    â€œRoss says they can fix it,” Anne told him.
    â€œYou talked to him?”
    â€œI called to give him a piece of my mind. You might have gotten wet out there.”
    â€œPoor guy,” Browne said.
    â€œI think I really gave him a scare. He thought I was calling for the magazine.”
    â€œRoss is scared of you anyway,” Browne said. “You’re too much lady for him.”
    He was suddenly moved to desire, wild with it. It was as though various hungers had combined to focus themselves on the woman beside him. He surprised them both with his avidity.
    â€œOh my dear,” she said softly.
    When they were done he lay awake listening to police sirens on the highway across the marsh. He felt as resigned to his private discontents as to the world’s.

2
    A GOVERNMENT marimba band was playing in the lobby of the hotel when Strickland came down to pay off his crew. The sound man and cameraman were brothers named Serrano who Strickland believed had been charged by their government with reporting on his activities. The brothers Serrano took their leave with unsmiling formality. Strickland paid them in dollars. As he walked away toward the garden lounge, he heard one of them imitating his stammer. He did not turn around.
    For a moment, he stood in the doorway of the garden and watched the declining sun settle into the mountains. Then he saw his colleague Biaggio at a poolside table. Biaggio was signaling, urging him nearer, coaxing with both hands like the landing control man on an aircraft carrier. He went over to Biaggio’s table and sat down.
    â€œEh,” he said, “Biaggio.” He enjoyed saying it.
    His friend Biaggio was in something of a state. Normally the man reposed within an aura of lassitude that weighted his every gesture.
    â€œI’m in love,” he told Strickland.
    â€œYou’d . . . d . . don’t know what love is, Biaggio.”
    â€œHa,” Biaggio told him, “it’s you who don’t know.”
    Strickland shook his head with an air of tolerant disgust.
    â€œYou really have to dick everything that comes your way, don’t you? You’re like a fucking insect.”
    The languid Swiss journalist regarded Strickland with an expression of intelligent distress.
    â€œThe earth is rising on new foundations,” he explained. “In the air—vitality. New beginnings. And this itself makes the heart prone.”
    â€œAnd the weenie vertical,” Strickland said. He looked around for a waiter but there were none in sight. “Who’s the lucky lady, I wonder?”
    â€œBut you know her, Strickland. She’s named Charlotte. Charlotte