He continued down the bicycle path toward the piers that had been transformed into a sprawling, modern waterside park. There were creatively designed play areas for children—rocky water parks, dangerous-looking rope swings, towering slides, a gigantic soccer pitch, basketball courts, a roller-skating rink, barbecue areas, grassy knolls and beaches, docks for sailboats and kayaks, dog runs, a bridge made of rope and wood, and benches facing New York Harbor and the endlessly entertaining view of the Brooklyn Bridge and Lower Manhattan off to the right, Governors Island and the Statue of Liberty off to the left. Roy had taken numerous photos of the sunset from there when they’d first moved, and sent them to his young agent in London. She’d assumed he’d used an effect of some kind on his camera. It was that breathtaking.

Lower Manhattan was all tall, sleek steel and glass. Wendy’s office was in one of those buildings. The Brooklyn Bridge hung majestically over the sun-dappled water, as if suspended invisibly from a more old-fashioned place, where everything existed in tones of sepia and brown. He’d read the bridge’s story, how people had died building it, how the men had wanted to give up and the women had shown their mettle. It was the type of story a more ambitious writer might incorporate into a sweeping mega-saga.

Whether they knew the bridge’s story or not, a never-ending queue of tourists tramped across it from Manhattan with no objective except maybe to eat a good slice of Brooklyn pizza. It always alarmed him how many of them there were. Roy turned away from the bridge and circled back toward Cobble Hill. The skyline lowered and his confidence returned. He walked up Congress Street, across Hicks Street and then Henry Street, and into Cobble Hill Park.

It was a tiny, pretty, stop-and-rest sort of park, with carefully tended flowers and protective old trees. A generous number of wooden benches beckoned to him: “Write here!” But writing on a laptop out of doors never worked. The sun glared from the screen and made his eyes tear. He was always too hot or too cold. The benches were hard. There were mosquitoes, barking dogs, screaming toddlers.

He kept walking. A couple of blocks down Henry was a bar he’d passed many times and never gone into. The Horn and Duck was closer to home, but the food was too pretentious—they made their own ketchup; Heinz was better—and the staff were too chatty. He never got anything done there. This bar looked quiet.

Monte—that was the name of the bar. Not Monte’s, just Monte, with a Budweiser light glowing tiredly in the window. It was barely noon, but the bar was open. Roy pushed open the smudged glass door and went inside.