And then the first block, from Twelfth Avenue to Eleventh Avenue, with its truck docks and warehouses, redolent with the spices of the Indies, the Volkswagens of Europe, the dried fish of Ultima Thule. And the second block, Eleventh Avenue to Tenth Avenue, bracketed by the TraveLodge, where the same rinky-dink is going on as back at the Sheraton Motor Inn.
Then the first half-block, Tenth Avenue to Dyer Avenue, the latter being the Lincoln Tunnel exit, bringing into the city the rich, faintly foreign life-stream of Hudson and Bergen counties, culminating in the huge white-faced parking garage with its mouth open like the open maw of a whale, waiting to swallow all the Jersey Jonahs. But even before that — oh, lest we forget — the West Side Airlines Terminal, first step on the anxiety-ridden voyage to Newark Airport, that complex organism spread out like a gigantic complex watch ticking away across the Hudson River.
And now the pace quickens. Dyer Avenue to Ninth Avenue, and three theaters all in a row: Mermaid, Midway, and Maidman (the way men like ’em). Ninth Avenue to Eighth Avenue, the McGraw-Hill Building — a book publisher, standing for book publishers everywhere in this giant Gotham, keepers of the flame, promulgators of culture to the masses. Eighth Avenue to Seventh Avenue, where Broadway angles in from the main theater district to form Times Square, not very far from the building where the Times is housed; along here, the movie palaces, the all-night grind houses where broken men, haunted by their past, can spend a few pitiful hours in Sneaky Pete and celluloid forgetfulness in dreams dreamed by other dreamers. New York, New York, is sure some town.
Times Square to Sixth Avenue: girlie-magazine stores, movie theaters, and upstairs in the grimy offices the import-export men with the code books hidden in the chandelier, the “model” agencies, the check-cashing services where a million life stories a day are told across a grubby wooden counter in wrinkled dollar bills.
But now the block that Fred Dingbat loved the most — remember Fred? — that between Sixth and Fifth Avenues. On the left, until it went bust, Stern’s mighty department store, conservatory of the myriad artifacts of our busy time. And on the right, the main branch of the New York Public Library, and Bryant Park, and ... the Bryant Park Comfort Station. For here was man in sum and essence, in his every facet. On the left, in the store that was and the stores that still struggle on, man the Builder, man the Acquisitor. On the right, in the Public Library, the treasure-house of thought, of philosophy, and of story (never denigrate it), was man the Divine, reaching out for knowledge and truth and wisdom and understanding and meaning and that Divine spark which gives to man his touch of the Divine. And in Bryant Park, man the Agrarian, man the Cultivator. And in the Comfort Station, the admission that man is still human, still man the Animal.
In the center of the center of the center of the world, man was still not entirely his own noble creation.
From here, the blocks accelerated. Madison, Park, Lexington, Third — nobody seems to know what happened to Fourth — and before Second Avenue was reached, the captains of industry had been tolled in their upthrust quarries. The Lincoln Building, the Chanin Building, the Socony Mobil Building, the Chrysler Building and Chrysler Building East, the Lorillard Building, and the Daily News Building. And in its midst, Grand Central Station, crossroads of a million private lives, tangential thread of so many tangled tales it would take one hell of a tale untangler to untangle them all. Or even half. And beside it, the Commodore Hotel, with even more carryings-on, as well as the Dartmouth College Club.
And then, finally, the final block to the United Nations Building, haven of peace, where men of a hundred nationalities walk the corridors, worrying about their private problems.
But is this all? It is not. On the return trip, /• backwards.
And every time, every successful journey from East River to Hudson River, or from Hudson River to East River, there at the center of it all was the Bryant Park Comfort Station, a present comfort in time of need. Men only, like McSorley’s.
Fred grinned at the Comfort Station through the rain drenching an already-drenched city, and told himself it was all right. He would think of Korea no more today. Or so he thought.
7:00 A.M
Mo Mowgli was late again.
Why was it, he thought, standing there in the rain pouring down on him from the sky, which was above the city, that he couldn’t seem to get to work on time anymore? Was it that he had lost that finely honed sense of purpose, almost of passion, which had ever inspired him to do his duty at whatever the task life had put before him? Was that it? Was it?
It was true his dreams of responsibility had not come true, regardless of the many correspondence courses he had taken. He had learned to be a detective through the mails, and still possessed the handcuffs, though he couldn’t seem to find the key anymore. He had studied hotel management by mail, had boned up in the same postal manner on air traffic controlling, library science, brain surgery, interior decoration, and post office operations. In the privacy of his own home he still occasionally walked around with his earphones on, the last legacy of his radio broadcaster course, now and again tripping over the trailing wire and catapulting into some portion of his meager furnishings. But with all of that preparation, all of that theoretical expertise, and with a soul more than willing to face the constant piling-up of crises and emergencies he knew faced those in positions of responsibility — who had troubles enough at home — where had life chosen to place him in the greater scheme of things?
He was the custodian of the Bryant Park Comfort Station.
Ah, well, he thought, as he hunched his shoulders against the rain drenching an already-drenched city, here too there was executive responsibility of a sort. For wasn’t the Bryant Park Comfort Station the very center of Manhattan, the crossroads of a million private lives, most of them troubled? It was.
So why couldn’t he get to work on time? It was a problem.
Looking now to his left along West 42nd Street, Mo saw at last the Crosstown bus coming his way. He would be no more than five or ten minutes late today: not good, but better than his recent average.
Perhaps if he lived closer to midtown it would be easier to get to work on time, but somehow Mo couldn’t bring himself to move out of the little apartment uptown, the meagerly furnished three rooms in which he lived alone, except for his correspondence courses and a cat called Bitsy, who occasionally came in from her usual haunt on the fire escape to eat roaches and condescend to join Mo in a saucer of milk. So it was that every morning he took a bus down Ninth Avenue to West 42nd Street, where he transferred to the Crosstown bus for the straight run to the Comfort Station. Usually arriving late.
It didn’t always matter if he was late. Most of the time there was no one around at seven in the morning anyway, no one to care if the Comfort Station was open or closed. But every once in a while Mo would alight late from the Crosstown bus to find some poor wayfarer hopping up and down on the sidewalk out front, his agony mirrored in his expression, which was agonized. At those moments of emergency and crisis, Mo always acted with instinctive speed and precision, unlocking the door, switching on the lights, assuring himself there was sufficient paper in the stalls, and at the same time feeling deep inside the gnawing knowledge of his own failure, his own inattention. He should have been here on time; it was his fault and no one else’s that the poor wayfarer had been reduced to hopping up and down on the sidewalk for ten minutes or fifteen minutes or even twenty minutes. At such times, Mo promised himself never to be late again, but his resolution never seemed to last very long: the next day, or the day after that, he would be late again.