YOUNG MAN ON
two o’clock a thumping bright Rita Hayworth and
SIXTH AVENUE
By Mark Halliday, 1995
H e was a young man in the big city. He was a
young man in the biggest, the most
overwhelming city—and he was not
overwhelmed. For see, he strode across Fifth
Avenue just before the light changed, and his head
was up in the sharp New York wind and he was
thriving upon the rock of Manhattan, in 1938. His
legs were long and his legs were strong; there was no
question about his legs; they were unmistakable in
their length and strength; they were as bold and
dependable as any American machine, moving him
across Fifth just in time, his brown shoes attaining
the sidewalk without any faltering, his gait unaware
of the notion that legs might ever want to rest. Forty-
ninth Street! He walked swiftly through the haste and
blare, through the chilly exclamation points of taxis
and trucks and people. He was a man! In America,
’38, New York, two o’clock in the afternoon,
sunlight chopping down between buildings, Forty-
ninth Street. And his hair was so dark, almost black,
and it had a natural wave in it recognized as a
handsome feature by everyone, recognized
universally, along with his dark blue eyes and strong
jaw. Women saw him, the all had to see him, all the
young women had to perceive him reaching the
corner of Forty-ninth and Sixth, and they had to
know he was a candidate. He knew they knew. He
knew they knew he would get some of them, and he
moved visibly tall with the tall potential of the not-
finite twentieth-0century getting that would be his
inheritance; and young women who glanced at him
on Sixth Avenue knew that he knew. They felt that
they or their sisters would have to take him into
account, and they touched their scarves a little
nervously.
He was twenty-five years old, and this day in
1938 was the present. It was so obviously and
totally the present, so unabashed and even garish
with its presentness, beamingly right there right now
like Rita Hayworth, all Sixth Avenue was in fact at
the young man strode south irresistibly. If there was
only one thing he knew, crossing Forty-eighth, it
was that this day was the present, out of which
uncounted glories could and must blossom—
when?—in 1938, or in 1939, soon, or in the big
brazen decade ahead, in 1940, soon; so he walked
with fistfuls of futures that could happen in all his
pockets.
And his wavy hair was so dark, almost black.
And he knew the right restaurants for red roast beef,
not too expensive. And in his head were some sharp
ideas about Dreiser, and Thomas Wolfe, and John
O’Hara.
On Forty-seventh between two buildings
(buildings taller even than him) there was an
unexpected zone of deep shade. He paused for half a
second, and he shivered for some reason. Briskly
then, briskly he moved ahead.
In the restaurant on Seventh Avenue he met his
friend John for a witty late lunch. Everything was—
the whole lunch was good. It was right. And what
they said was both hilarious and notably well-
informed. And then soon he was taking the stairs
two at a time up to an office on Sixth for his
interview. The powerful lady seemed to like his
sincerity and the clarity of his eyes—a hard
combination to beat!—and the even more powerful
man in charge sized him up and saw the same things,
and he got the job.
That job lasted three years, then came the War,
then another job, then Judy, and the two kids, and a
better job in Baltimore, and those years—those years.
And those years. “Those years”—and the kids went
to college with new typewriters. In the blue chair,
with his work on his lapboard, after a pleasant dinner
of macaroni and sausage and salad, he dozed off.
Then he was sixty. Sixty? Then he rode back and
forth on trains, Judy became ill, doctors offered
opinions, comas were deceptive, Judy died. But the
traffic on Coleytown Road next morning still moved
casually too fast. And in a minute he was seventy-
five and the phone rang with news that witty John of
the great late lunches was dead. The house pulsed
with silence.
Something undone? What? The thing that
would have saved—what? Waking in the dark—
maybe something unwritten, that would have made
people say “Yes that’s why you matter so much.”
Ideas about Wolfe. Dreiser. Or some lost point
about John O’Hara.
Women see past him on the street in this
pseudo-present and he feels they are so stupid and
walks fierce for a minute but then his shoulders settle
closer to his skeleton with the truth about these
women: not especially stupid; only young. In this
pseudo-present he blinks at a glimpse of that young
man on Sixth Avenue—that young man ready to
stride across—but a taxi makes him step back to the
curb, he’ll have to wait a few more seconds, he can
wait.