a thousand furnished rooms

Crossing the wide expanse of 42nd Street, I almost stopped and laughed at the swarm of people crossing in both directions. 42nd is double the width of the surrounding streets and, of course, the hub of the theater district. The sidewalks too are extra wide there, so when the signal changed to "walk" the center of the street was suddenly—how to best say this— a crush of people. What was so striking, though, was how many people had umbrellas. Carrying an umbrella has the odd effect of making someone, at first glance, faceless—you can't immediately tell if someone is coming or going—so the center of 42nd street was momentarily jammed with people seemingly going in every direction at once. I found myself halting for a moment and nearly laughing before I caught myself.

A few blocks before this, I had one of those moments I seem to have all the time in New York City. Stopped at the 46th street light, I caught the glance of a guy, my guess a local, who was clearly impressed with something. I followed his gaze to the woman next to me at the light, who, I suddenly realized, was beautiful and underdressed. The rain had been really coming down for a minute—anyone with an umbrella had raised it—but here she was, leather jacket open, shirt open several buttons, and her magnificent cleavage catching as much of the rain as the biggest of the umbrellas. She was talking with a guy whom I can only describe as an aging,vaguely cleaned-up version of Ratso Rizzo. Picture Ratso, later in life, in a bad suit. I glanced long enough to catch her eye, then his, and offered what I hoped was the perfect, brief ironic look, as if to say, "It's raining, I had a moment here at the light and glanced at you, but don't read anything more into it than that. You have your business and I have mine." Mercifully, they kept right on talking, I turned to face front again, and the light changed. The local guy stumbled off the curb a step ahead of me—he was drunk I now realized, which explained his momentarily extra long look at the couple. Had I read his condition more quickly, I wouldn't have followed his glance.

Navigating a Manhattan sidewalk can involve many such quick and important judgments. Somehwere below 42nd St, for example, I found myself behind an impressively large black man. I would guess he was at least 6'4 and 250 pounds, and he was leading a girl, no more than 5 or 6, by the hand. The remarkable thing was how quickly and how deftly he was moving, without making her sprint and stumble to keep up. This wasn't new to him, or to her; she knew what it took to keep up. They were right in front of me, and I saw my chance to make some headway through the crowd. He was wider than me, even with my bags, and the two of them together, hand in hand, were perhaps double my width. I quickened my pace and got right behind them.

If you have walked in midtown Manhattan, you know there are two fates for a pedestrian—walk or be walked over. I always note that it takes me about 24 hours in Manhattan to go from a stumbling, halting, gosh-forgive-me, oops-excuse-me idiot to a confident, striding Titan. People do not get out of your way or yield even an inch on a Manhattan sidewalk unless you show purpose. Clearly, the man in front of me exuded purpose. The sidewalk seemed to part before him, and we breezed along for about four blocks this way. When I broke right and he and the girl broke left at 34th, I resisted the urge to thank him.

I wondered for a moment what led people to give him as much berth as they did. Was it merely his size? Was it his size and the color of his skin? I was hoping that it was neither of these, that instead it was the presence of the young girl at the end of his arm. "She is so little!" I imagine them saying. "And look at her! So good following her father that way. They have places to go. He is a serious young man and he is guiding her through this maze of people. Let's give them a little extra room."

I wonder too what she is thinking. How her father's massive hand swallows hers, and how she knows that if she just keeps pace, just concentrates and turns and meaneuvers as he does, that everything will be fine and they will get to where they are going.