THE NINTH PAGE

It was impossible to stay in New York for the advertised $10 a day when the base was wiped out by a night’s stay at the Broadway Central.

The B.C. was a huge and dangerous fleabag, a holdover from lower Broadway’s swell hotels of the nineteenth century. Once grand enough for high class true crime and true romance, it had fallen deeper and deeper into disrepair and disrepute since the president of the Erie Railroad had been fatally wounded in a love spat over an actress back in the eight-teen seventies.

Nearly a century later as I carried up to my room my suitcase and satchel of books, I looked at stains and wondered if perhaps they were a sanguinary memorial of the slain railroader. Had the loving couple consummated their tragic affair in my little room, no doubt hacked from a suite? Had the sheets been changed?

A quick scouting of the neighborhood sent me scurrying back to my room as night closed in with its strange sounds of sirens and honking outside and the somewhat human noises uttered through the cheap, thin walls of the B.C. Sleep did not come easily. I did not rise until midday the next day, a strange, new time for a country boy.

The raveled sleeve of care unraveled all the way up to my armpits as I anticipated the next day’s job search.