Falling in Place (49 page)
Authors: Ann Beattie
Tags: #Man-Woman Relationships, #Man-Woman Relationships - Fiction, #New York (N.Y.), #General, #Literary, #Fiction, #Domestic Fiction, #New York (N.Y.) - Fiction
The next time she raised the binoculars, she saw Spangle, sitting on the front step of the building, eating an ice-cream cone. She stared, pressing the binoculars hard against her eyes. Finally he looked her way, stood up. He saw her. He was smiling. She could see that, as he ran, getting larger and larger, until he was right on her, a blur.
“Save me,” she said, half-jokingly, falling against him without ever lowering the binoculars.
“I was locked out,” he said. “Jonathan and I were broke one night in Madrid, and he made a wish by throwing the key into a fountain.”
“What did he wish for?” she said, head buried in his shoulder.
“I don’t know,” Spangle said. “The usual, I guess.”
Ann Beattie lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, with her husband, the painter Lincoln Perry.
