'must you chase your destiny like a harpoonist?'

She left him on the desk and walked out onto a small wooden balcony. There she adopted a rentier's stance—arms spread, hands on the rail. She would track down an interesting job, she vowed. She would study Hesse and Mann. She would refuse to make a nightly fourth at bridge, and to pay calls on local drips. This austerity would clear her decks for action. Still she wondered: did the present deliver up the future, or must you chase your destiny like a harpoonist?

—Edith Pearlman, "Hanging Fire," Binocular Vision: New and Selected Stories (2011) (originally published in The Massachusetts Review, Vol. 18, No. 1, Spring, 1977)