Chapter 34 New York Center Again

After graduation, I spent a couple of months back home in Memphis. Late in July, I bought a gold Volkswagen Beetle with a sunroof and stereo and drove north toward New York City. I thrilled as the New York skyline came into view beyond the tank farms and chemical plants of Elizabeth, New Jersey. Then it was down into the Lincoln Tunnel.
The tiled interior of Lincoln Tunnel goes forever. The high walkway along the side. The little green lights in the ceiling. The two men in the tiny observation cage at the halfway point. Then I was back in the light, in Manhattan. I felt instantly at home, but the streets were intimidating. I had never driven in the city before. I found Eighth Avenue and headed north. I passed Port Authority Bus Terminal then Forty-second Street. Home. The porn shops, electronics stores, pizza joints. Garbage on the sidewalks and in the gutters. The hardware store. A crazy man in the crosswalk at 43rd Street, gesticulating and cursing toward the sky.
People were out and about, but it was Sunday morning and the streets felt lazy. I turned onto 46th Street and pulled up in front of the glass doors of the Center and climbed out. Mrs. Toby was at her reception cubicle. Her face lit up. She ducked under the end of the counter and gave me a hug. She hadn’t gotten any taller. Her head came up barely to the middle of my chest.
“You’re here! I can’t believe it!” She held me at arms length grinning up at me. “We are all happy to have you back. Let me call Mrs. Harding.”
She ducked back under the counter to her phone. “Mrs. Harding, Johnny’s here. He’s going to need a key to his apartment.”
“So how've you been? What’s been happening with you since you left here?”
“Oh, you know. I finished college then went to seminary. Now I’m here.”
“I’m so glad. You know this Metro Ministries is working really hard to make this a real evangelistic center again. Since Colin left, we haven’t had much going on. You heard about Colin, right?”
As she asked about Colin her face clouded–more with a mother’s disappointment at lost potential than scorn or condemnation.
“Yeah, I heard. Where is Colin now?
“I think he’s somewhere in Pennsylvania, maybe in Reading where Dr. Jones lives.

My apartment was on the front west corner of the building. Three rooms–living room, kitchen, bedroom–plus a bath. The windows in the bedroom and living room looked down on 46nd street. There was no furniture. I borrowed four metal folding chairs from the basement, spread out my sleeping bag and was all set.
I headed out to check out the neighborhood. It was all there. The smell of urine in the subway entrances. The grids of purple glass blocks in sidewalks which I presumed provided light for underground utility rooms. The horns of taxis and the distinctive “thunk” they made when driving through potholes or across irregularities in the pavement. The prostitutes in their improbable dresses with hems just inches below their panties and necklines halfway to their navels. The tiny grocery stores in nearly every block along Eighth Avenue closely supervised by the owners.
On the streets (as opposed to the Avenues which ran north and south) were the theaters. On 47th Street, “O Calcutta” was playing. The posters in front vividly portrayed the nudity of the play while cleverly hiding nipples and genitalia.
The large parking lot at the corner of 48th and 8th Avenue was still there, much to my surprise. I thought it would have been turned into a high rise by now. West of Eighth Avenue, in the neighborhood known as Hell's Kitchen, were the familiar brownstone stoops and the Catholic Church. The pocket park still held basketball hoops and benches. Mothers sat on benches in the sun with their strollers beside them. I was home.