Reading Impressions: After Twenty Years by O. Henry

Two friends make a promise to meet outside a shop after twenty years. One turns up. Does the other one?

Like with a lot of O. Henry's stories, the answer is direct but not straightforward. In the four pages that take you to read the story, you sense the sweep - of ambition, of hunger, of a yearning to return to innocence, of inner conflict, of something soft and sweet as friendship, and of something large and harsh as time.

You get a glimpse of a neighborhood that has changed over the years, even though the weather has not. O. Henri's description of a man's attire takes you to a simpler world where men wore jewelled tie pins and suits for dinners. You get a sense of the average New Yorker unwilling to budge from the city. You peek into the psyche of someone who wanted to move to the West for a larger chance in life.

By the third page, you sense loss. Then you sense hope again. And then a slight twist in the tale. 

And maybe because of the time and the weather you are living in now, you reconcile to the fact that this is as good it could get. 

With that, you call it a night.