A/N: Takes place when Carl first arrives in Boston and is still getting used to everything. Please read and review.
Lose
something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the
hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then
practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and
where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring
disaster.
I
lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of
three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
I
lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned,
two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a
disaster.(from
The Art of Losing by Elizabeth Bishop)
He stared out the window of his huge corner office. It was supposed to be magnificent. But the skyscrapers didn't loom high enough. The sky was too bright and even with all the noises of the city, there was something missing.
There was color, to be sure, but it was different. Gone were blinking neon signs and splashes of yellow as taxi cabs zipped by. In their place were dour dusty brick-red buildings that had been there for centuries, cobblestone paths that converged at important historical sites.
He could do dour. He knew how to be old-money when it suited him. But there was a certain sharpness missing. The edge—the bigness—of New York City was gone. He had the feeling at times—especially when within the walls of Crane, Poole & Schmidt—that he was not in the big-leagues any more.
While he enjoyed the quiet – the peace of his tastefully decorated brownstone – Carl had to admit occasionally longing for the more eclectic bachelor pad he'd left behind in Uptown Manhattan.
Of course there was a reason he'd left the City. He didn't prefer the apartment over the brownstone any less. But he much preferred her over any apartment, any place, really. And that made up for the loss—at least he told himself it did.