Young Hearts Crying Read Online Free PDF

Horse famous (“And we never even saw him in there,” Michael would complain for years afterwards. “Isn’t that the damndest thing? Sat around the Horse almost every night and never even saw the man – and how could anybody miss a face like that? Christ’s sake, I didn’t even know he was in America when he died.”)
    As a consequence of that death it seemed that everyone in New York wanted to come and drink at the White Horse every night – and so the place lost much of its appeal.
    But by the spring of that year the city itself was no longer very appealing for the Davenports. Their daughter was four, and itseemed only reasonable to look for a place in the suburbs – assuming, of course, that they could remain within easy commuting distance.
    The town they chose was Larchmont, because it struck Lucy as being more “civilized” than the others they visited, and the house they found to rent there seemed to meet their immediate needs. It was nice: a good place to work, a good place to rest; and it had a good, grassy backyard for Laura to play in.
    “Suburbia!” Bill Brock cried as dramatically as a man discovering the shore of a new continent, and he brandished the bottle of bourbon he had brought as a housewarming gift. Close beside him and clasping his arm with both hands, Diana Maitland pressed her laughing face against his coat as if to suggest that this kind of clowning was the very thing she had always loved best about him.
    And as they made their slow, mirth-encumbered way up the short path from the Larchmont sidewalk into the Larchmont house, Bill seemed reluctant to break the pattern of his own hilarity. “My God,” he said, “look at this! Look at the two of you! You’re like a couple of young marrieds in the movies – or in
Good Housekeeping!”
    There was nothing for the Davenports to do but go along with the laughs as best they could, even after drinks were poured and they were settled in a conversational group around the living room, though Michael had begun to hope the teasing would soon be over. But Bill Brock wasn’t quite finished: he extended the index finger of the hand that held his glass, aimed it first at Lucy and then at Michael, who were sitting together on the sofa, and said “Blondie and Dagwood.”
    And Diana almost fell out of her chair. It was the first time Michael had ever disliked her. Worse still, the second time camelater that same night, long after the talk had turned to other things and the tension had dissolved. Brock, as if in partial apology for his earlier comments, expressed a nonhumorous interest in seeing what the town was like, so the four of them took a long walk through the leaf-shadowed evening streets. And Michael was tentatively pleased because this was indeed the best time for a tour of Larchmont: all its glaring, oppressive tidiness was softened and made gentle in the dark. Its lighted windows, as seen through their dappling of green in house after house, suggested calm and order and well-earned peace. It was very quiet, and the air smelled wonderful.
    “…  No, I can certainly understand the appeal of it,” Bill Brock was saying. “Nothing’s awry, nothing’s screwed up, nothing’s ever out of whack. That’s certainly what you’d want, I guess, if you’re – married and have a family and all that. Matter of fact there must be millions of people who’d give anything for a chance to live here – an awful lot of the guys I worked with in the union, for example. Still, for some temperaments it just wouldn’t ever be right.” And here he gave his girl a little squeeze. “Can you imagine Paul in a place like this?”
    “God,” Diana said quietly, and she gave an audible shudder that reverberated down Michael’s spine. “He’d die. Paul would absolutely, literally die here.”
    “…  And I mean couldn’t she see what a tactless fucking thing that was to say?” Michael demanded of his wife after their guests had gone. “What the hell