Sailors on the Inward Sea Read Online Free

expressions, the almost bullying tone of his voice, all of which made it a bit unclear whether or not I was compromising myself, but he had given me a way to hang on to my self-esteem and once I knew that it was all over.
    â€œThere’s no one I’d rather do a favor for,” I said with a grin.
    After stopping at my bank, we went to his office, where his clerkdrew up the bill of sale. We signed and then the clerk handed it over to me and I held it reverently, our signatures still wet, the Nellie ’s name as big and bold as a lighthouse. The document had the gravity of a sacred text for me and I must have looked rather foolish staring at it, though Harrison was discreet as always. Once the clerk had put it in a thick envelope, Harrison produced a bottle and we had a drink to celebrate, reminiscing a little about the old days. He said he hoped we might all get together again and I told him we would. We both missed those gatherings, missed the camaraderie, the interesting talk, and looking back on that moment now I seem to remember that my nostalgia and probably Harrison’s as well was colored with a desire to defy time and turn back the clock awhile to happier days. We had a drink to that too, and when we touched our glasses we looked into each other’s eyes and what I saw in Harrison’s he must have seen in mine, an acknowledgment of all the years that had slipped through our hands.
    He accompanied me out to the street, where we said good-bye. I watched him go back inside, disappearing like an apparition into that blank-faced building where I had just escaped meeting Simmons, acutely aware of how unpredictable events are, how often what we think will happen turns out to be a surprise for good or ill. For most of my life an unexpected piece of good luck has generally made me suspicious. I am not sure I understand exactly why that is the case; maybe it has to do with seeing too many things go bad for no apparent reason in my own life as well as in others’, but as a consequence I usually test my luck, weigh it carefully in my mind. But that day I was in no mood to scrutinize. My luck was as solid as a piece of gold. I walked away from the Port Authority in a kind of ecstasy, oblivious to the heat that only hours earlier had oppressed me, the Nellie floating in my mind’s eye like some fine vessel in a dream.
    I hailed a cab and returned to the boardinghouse, poking myhead into the kitchen to tell the landlord I was leaving before I hurried upstairs and stuffed my belongings in a battered sea chest. It made a terrible racket thudding on the stairs as I dragged it down to the foyer, though to me it sounded like a fanfare. I paid my bill with what must have been a rather foolish grin, and when the landlord asked if I were moving to another boardinghouse I said, no, I was through with boardinghouses, which was not to say that I hadn’t thoroughly enjoyed living awhile in his. The fact of the matter was that I had just bought as fine a boat as he had ever seen and was about to move aboard.
    At the docks I tipped the cabdriver lavishly after he helped me carry the chest below. It was late afternoon by the time he left, getting on toward six o’clock. On its way down through the haze, the sun brought out a glow in the sickly yellow air that must have been a depressing sight for the citizens of the town, a perfect color for the predictors of the Apocalypse who were very likely still wandering through the park. I felt sorry for the city’s good citizens and fanatics alike, sympathizing with everyone who could not see that the sky was really burning like gold leaf, like a dome in St. Petersburg, on fire with color fit for a czar. I believe that I watched it as reverentially as a Druid peering along a sighting-line at Stonehenge until the brightness began to fade.
    And then, in the last soft light of dusk, with the estuary turning more deeply violet by the minute, I went aft and put my hands on